95 .P7 1889 Pooie, Reginald Lane, 185"^- 1939. Wycliffe and movements for ©pocljs of Cljurcl) iI)istorp EDITED BY PROFESSOR MANDELL CREIGHTON. WYCLIFFE AND MOVEMENTS FOR KEFOEM. Epochs of Church History. Edited by Professor MANDELL CREIGHTON. Fcap. 8vo, price 2S. 6d. each. THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN OTHER LANDS, By the Rev. H. W. TrcKF.K, RI.A. THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. By tlie Rev. Geckge G. Pekky, M.A. THE CHURCH OF THE EARLY FATHERS. By Alfred Plimmek, D.D. THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By the Rev. J. H. Overton, M.A. A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. By the Hon. G. C. Bkodrick. D.C.L. A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. By J. Bass IMulli.ngek, M.A. THE CHURCH AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. By the Rev. A. Cark. THE CHURCH AND THE PURITANS, 1570-1660. By Henrv Offi.kv Wakeman, M.A. THE CHURCH AND THE EASTERN EMPIRE. By the Rev. H. F. Tozek, I\1.A. HILDEBRAND AND HIS TIMES. By the Rev. W. R. W. Stei'iiens, M.A. THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES. By the Rev. W. Hint, M.A., Trinity CoHege, Oxford. THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN. By Uco Balzani. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION. Bv A. W. Ward, Litt.D. WYCLIFFE AND MOVEMENTS FOR REFORM. By R. L. PuuLE, M.A., Ph.D. IN PREPARATION. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. By H. M. Gwatkin M.A., Lecturer and late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. THE GERMAN REFORMATION. By Prof. Mandell Creighton, M.A., D.C.L. London : LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. WYCLIFFE MOVEMENTS FOR PtEFOlIM REGINALD LANE POOLE, M.A. DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IX THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG. LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1889. All rights reserved BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EUINBURGH ANJJ LONDo.N PKEFACE The present work seeks to trace the history of the different movements for reform in the system and in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, which occupy a prominent place in the interest and significance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Except so far as it deals with the life and writings of Wyclifie and with the controversial literature of the age preceding his, it makes no pretension to original treatment. In the earlier chapters I have been permitted to embody the substance of several passages in my Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought published in 1884 by the liberality of the Hibbert Trustees ; and in the latter part of the book I am under large obligations to the works of Professors Creighton, Loserth, and Maurenbrecher. I regret that I have been prevented vi Preface. by illness from giving to the final revision of the book that amount of care which is due both to the import- ance of the subject and to the kind consideration of the Editor of the series ; but I trust that the over- sights due to this cause will not be found to be numerous. REGINALD L. POOLE. Jesus College, Oxford, Christmas 1888. CONTENTS. Peeface PAGE V CHAPTEE I. Boniface the Eighth — The Papal Position. Political Elements in the Reformation, traceable in Earlier Times — Epoch of Boniface VIIL (i 294-1 304) — National Opposition to his Policy in England and France ; illus- trated by the Support given by the French to Philip the Pair — Outline of his Contest with Boniface — The Popes in Exile — Changed Character of Church Controversy — Posi- tion of the Papacy in the Fourteenth Century — Claims made by it with respect to General Councils, Ecclesiastical Preferments, Appeals, the Plenitudo potestatis, Taxation, Legations — The Canon Law — The Friars and their Rela- tions to the Ecclesiastical System — Temporal Sovereignty of the Pope J CHAPTER IL The Franciscan Controversy — Marsiglio of Padua and "William of Ockham. Divisions among the Franciscans — The Extreme Party, re- pressed by the Popes — Question of * Evangelical Poverty ' — The Friars and Lewis the Bavarian — The Defensor Pacts — Marsiglio's Idea of the Church and of the Avithority of the Clergy and of the Papacy — William of Ockham . . 22 viii Contents. CHAPTER III. The Popes at Avignon — The Papacy and England. PAGE Connexion of the Papacy with Prance — Loss of Character and Prestige — Efifect of the Popes' Absence upon Italy — Rienzi — Religious Disorder of the Age— The Papacy in • Relation with England — Provisions — Appeals— The Tribute — Papal Income from England — State of the English Clergy — Friars and Possessioners 43 CHAPTER IV. The Early Life of John Wycliffe. Wy cliff e's Birth and Fg,mily — Education at Oxford— Studies — Official Career — Connexion with the Court — Supposed Post at Oxford — First Departure from Orthodoxy — Stages in his Opinions — Friendly Relations with the Friars . . . 61 CHAPTER V. Wycliffe and English Politics. Wycliffe Royal Commissioner at Bruges — Association with John of Gaunt — Summons at St. Paul's — Papal Bulls against him (1377) — Wycliffe's Credit with the Parliament — Pro- ceedings against him by the Archbishop of Canterbury . 75 CHAPTER VI. Wycliffe's Earlier Doctrine. Wycliffe's Writings— His Theological Work— Doctrine of Lord- ship — Argument for Community of Goods — Wycliffe's View of the Separation between the Sphere of the Spiritual and Temporal, and consequent Limitation of the Power of the Keys .......... 84 Contents, ix \ CHAPTER VII. "Wtcliffe and the Great Schism. PAGE WycHffe's Tract on the Question of Sanctuary (1378) — The Papal Schism— The Poor Priests— Wycliffe's English Bible — His Denial of Transubstantiation — His Condemnation at Oxford — The Peasants' Revolt — The Earthquake Council (13S2)— The Oxford Wycliffites— Wycliflfe's Last Years . 99 Note on Wycliffes Writings f' CHAPTER VIII. LOLLARDY IN ENGLAND AND BOHEMIA. Meaning of Lollardy — Repressive Measures — Strength of Lol- lardy in England — Its Decline — Intercourse between Eng- land and Bohemia — Reform Movement in Bohemia — Conrad of Waldhausen — Milicz of Kremsier — Adalbert Ranconis — Thomas of Stitny — Matthias of Janow— John of Stekna — Introduction of Wycliffe's Works into Bohemia 113 CHAPTER IX. The Divided Papacy. The Schism of 13 78— Urban VI. and Clement VII.— Sugges- tions for Reunion — Action of the University of Paris — Renunciation of Benedict XIII. by France — Negotiations • — The Crisis Precipitated by Gregory XII. . . . 124 CHAPTER X. The Councils of Pisa and Constance. Position of the Council of Pisa — Ripening of Opinion at it — Meeting of the Council (1409)— Deposition of the Popes — Election of Alexander V., succeeded by John XXIIT. — X Contents. PAGE Council at Rome {1413) — The Council of Constance (1414) — Question of the Order of Business — Division into Nations — Flight of John XXIII. — His Deposition (141 5) . . 136 CHAPTER XI. John Hus. Hus at Prague — His Study of Wyclifife — Popularity as a Preacher — Opposition of the Clergy — Position of the University of Prague with respect to the Schism — Secession of the Foreigners, leaving the University strongly Hussite — The Archbishop of Prague's Action against Wycliflfism — Ex- communication of Hus — Attitude of John XXIII. — De- velopment of Wycliffism in Bohemia — Hus subjected to the Major Excommunication — His Journey to Constance — Question of his Safe-Conduct — Imprisonment — Examina- tion and Condemnation (1^415) 151 CHAPTER XII. The End of the First Reform Movement. Question of Reform at the Council of Constance — Sigismund's Negotiations — Surrender of Policy by the English Nation — Election of Martin V. — Dissolution of the Council of Constance — End of the Great Schism — Growth of the National Party in Bohemia — Influence of the Hussite ISIovement on the Waldenses — The Council of Basle and Eugenius IV 166 CHAPTER XIII. Religious Revival in Spain and Italy. Difficulties presented by the State of Christendom— Reforming Activity in Spain — Cardinal Ximenez — Humanism in Italy — Savonarola 1S2 Contents. xi CHAPTER XIY. Reform in Germany : The Lateran Council. PAGE Early Pietism in Germany — The Brethren of Comm.on Life — Spread of Hmnanistic Culture in Germany and England — The Council of Lateran ( 1 512- 1 5 17) 191 IXDEX 201 MOVEMENTS FOE EEFOEM /// iJie Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. CHAPTER I. BONIFACE THE EIGHTH— THE PAPAL POSITION. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was partly a religious, partly a jjolitical movement. On the one hand it was a revolt asfainst the supreDiacy Political ele- -, , -n, .> -r, i i • incuts in the 01 the rope or iiome ; on the other, it was Eelorination. . pi i i • t a restoration oi what were believed to be the docti'ines and practices of primitive Christianity, as distinguished from those which had grown up in the Latin Church since the time when it had begun to have a separate existence from the Churches of the East. Of the two motives for reform, the former was at the beginning most commonly the prevailing one ; but in a short time they became in- dissolubly united, and it became as impossible to con- ceive of a Church departing from the Roman obedience without modifying its doctrinal system, as of a Church which should admit these doctrinal changes and yefc remain faithful to Rome. This was because the Refor- mation was soon seen to imply not merely the accept- ance of this or that political or theological doctrine, C. H. A 2 JIIOVEMENTS FOR ReFORA/. but a revolution of a more vital and penetrating kind. It meant in fact the destruction of traditional ' autho- rity/ as authority, saving only that of the Bible ; it asserted the dignity of the individual man, not solely as a member of an ecclesiastical system, but as an independent being with his own religious concerns to look after : briefly, it substituted the modern for the mediaeval conception of man and of society. How far or how logically these two principles of the right of private judgement and of individual respon- Traceabiein sibiUty Were Carried into effect by the pro- earher times, -^estant reformers, it does not fall within the plan of the present work to inquire. All we have to do is to search through the weary cen- turies that witnessed the decay and collapse of the medio3val order of things, for vestiges of a striving towards something more vigorous ; and we shall not find mere vestiges, mere presentiments, of the new J spirit. No great movement ever takes the world quite by surprise ; if a revolution is only a coiq) de main its success is sure to be transient. Neither the opposition to ' authority,' nor even its application to Christian doctrine, was byanymeans the discovery of the Reformers of the sixteenth century. The general principle had been firmly thought out more than two hundred years earlier — to go no further back, — and from that date there was an unbroken succession of writers in its defence. Their aim was indeed almost entirely directed against the Papal power ; for them, authority was, as it w^ere, embodied in the Papacy. But before the end of the fourteenth century Wycliffe had extended his line of attack to some of the special doctrines of Boniface the Eighth. 3 Western tlieology ; and the movement wliicli lie began, though its effects were evanescent in his own country, became in the hands of more stimulating advocates a genuine national force in Bohemia. Still, the slight- ness of the hold which Wycliffe's doctrinal innovations, as distinguished from his ecclesiastical protestantism took upon men's minds, is significant of the fact that in this respect he did not represent any very widely spread feeling of discontent. It was not as yet the accredited doctrines of the Church, but the abuses in its external system, that aroused antagonism. Wycliffe's popularity was won, and his influence was maintained, by virtue of his assault upon the Papal power ; and it • is to such opposition as his, — essentially a political / opposition, involving the familiar antithesis of Church and State, — that the beginnings of the Reformation are to be traced. We have by implication dated our starting-point about the time of Boniface the Eighth, an epoch which is rightly accepted as marking the crisis face VIII. when the ascendency of the Papal power 1294 ij04 . ^^^^^ checked and when its decline began. Since the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen, which rapidly succeeded the death of Frederick the Second in 1250, the Empire had been left without an occupant. After a long interregnum and a disputed election, the German crown was possessed by a succession of rulers who did not aspire to be more than kings of Germany. The tradition of universal sway which had animated their predecessors had for the moment passed out of mind. There was a danger that it might be revived in the hands of the Pope, whose admitted universality 4 Movements for Reform. of spiritual power was apt to be interpreted by Limself as implying a divine right over temporal rulers ; and no time could be more favourable for carrying this claim into effect than that in which the great rival of the Papacy seemed to be once for all extinguished. Such a result was hindered by the rise of new political forces of which it had not previously been thought necessary to take account. The opposi- National . i /-n i t i ti • opposition tion between the Church and the ii.mpire was in truth changing into a general oppo- sition between the Papacy and the civil governments of the different kingdoms. France and Enn^land were growing fast in solidity and national feeling ; and under Philip the Fair and Edward the First they were strong enough to make a stand against what they deemed the encroachments of Pope Boniface. Eng- land no doubt was placed in an unfortunate position for such a purpose, in consequence of the tribute which still remained as a token of lier subjection to the Roman See ; but when Boniface attempted to interfere in Edward's dealings with Scot- land, the Parliament of Lincoln met him by a peremp- tory assertion of the king's absolute independence in all temporal concerns : ' The kings of Eng- land neither have been wont to answer nor ought to answer, touching their rights in the said kingdom, or any other temporal rights, before any judge ecclesiastical or secular, by the free preeminence of the state of their royal dignity and of custom irre- fragably observed at all times.' ^ The vigorous action too which Edward liad taken in regard to the clergy, ^ Walter of Hemingburgh, Chron. 2. 212. Bos I FACE THE ElGHTH. 5 when Boiiifiice by liis fainons bull, Clerlcis laicos^ proliibited the exaction from the clergy of any taxes or subsidies from the revenues of the Churches, may serve as evidence that John's surrender to Rome was not held to involve anything beyond a monetary obligation upon his successors. The very tribute was generally in arrear, and at length in the time of Edward the Third and under the advice of Wycliffe, who wrote a state-paper on the subject, it was expressly repudiated by Parliament and never paid again. But it was with France that the decisive struggle took place. In that country the clergy had previously enioyed immunity from taxation, so that and FiYiiice. when Philip the Fair called upon them to bear like burthens with the rest of the inhabitants, it was natural that the Pope should intervene in their behalf. Whether or not directly provoked by Philij^'s exactions, the bull Clcricis laicos certainly followed promptly upon them, and was met by open defiance on the part of France. The details of the contest do not concern us here ; but it is im- portant to notice how the King's imperious will en- forced itself upon the whole French people and made the struggle a national one. To understand the way in which this came about we have to bear in mind the process of consolidation which had been going on in the French monarchy and administration through the thirteenth century. A leading characteristic of the age is the legal spirit which prevailed not in France only but throughout the west of Europe. In the earlier years of the century the Emperor Frederick 6 Movements for Reform. tlie Second had been legislating for Sicily ; at tlie end of it another Frederick had carried on the same Growth of the ^'^^^ ill that island. The laws of Alfonso legal spirit, ^j^g rp^^^^j^ ^^ Castile, of Lcwis the Ninth of France, and of Edward the First of England, are all symptoms of the general tendency towards systema- tising and codifying law. In France this tendency had been accompanied more than elsewhere by the especially in ^i^c of a distinct and powerful class of France. lawycrs. Philip the Fair raised them at once into a position of new importance when he ex- pelled the clergy from all part in the administration of the law and made the civilists supreme in the courts. In the lawyers Philip found his stoutest and ablest supporters, and it was thanks to them that he suc- ceeded in cariying with him the general approval of the nation. For the lawyers were not a mere faculty at Paris ; their profession dispersed them over, and established them in, all parts of the realm. They not only filled many of the municipal posts, not only did they hold civil jurisdiction everywhere, but they had even appropriated part of the legal business and juris- diction of the churchmen. Through their instrumen- tality then the whole of France was made cognisant of one side of the case in dispute between Philip and Boniface ; to support that side became a point of patriotism. The clergy, whose interests had been injuriously affected by the rise of the lawyers, might liave been disposed to advocate the opposite party. But this does not appear to have been actually the case. The Gallican clergy had always prided them- selves on their national privileges. They were by an Boniface the Eighth. 7 old tradition less closely dependent upon the Roman See than the clergy of other countries ; and we do not National charac- ^^^^ ^hat as a body they resisted the policy p!i-t°yven"to' of Philip the Fair. Some did, no doubt"; Philip the Fair, ^^j^^^.^ ^^.^^^ frightened into a passive acceptance of established facts : but a great number shared actively in the national zeal which was aroused by, and which steadily supported, Philip's defiance of the Pope. It is this national character which gives the French conflict with Boniface the Eighth its historical import- ance. When, in 1301, the Pope declared Outlineofhis ... ' .^ . . ' . |. _ contest with that PliiliD held his realm of him, and Bonilace. . :: . Cited the kmg to appear before a council to be convened at Rome, the bull was publicly burnt at Paris. Philip then summoned the Estates-General of France for the first time in its history to express the national agreement: lust as Edward the First had summoned the first regular and representative Parliament seven years before, in order to prepare against a pressing national danger. The Estates- General met in April, i 302, and drew up their remon- strance, each order separately, — the nobles, the clergy, and the commons, — in the form of letters to the car- dinals and to the Pope. Boniface took their letters into consideration in a consistory which he held at Rome in June. The result of these deliberations was the issue towards the end of the year of the bull Unmn sandam, a bull which takes its place beside the bull Vcncrahilcm of Innocent the Third, and the Clericis laicos of Boniface himself, among the decisive acts of the Roman Pontificate. The bull Clericis 8 Movements for Reform. laicos merely defined the claims of the Church with respect to immunity from secular taxation ; the bull Unam sandam asserted uncompromisingly the supre- macy of the spiritual over the temporal power in all relations : ' We declare, assert, decide, and pronounce, that it is necessary to salvation that every human crea- ture be subject to the Roman Pontiff.' Negotiations between Rome and Paris were attempted, but with no success. Philip was excommunicated, and in reply solemnly arraigned the Pope before his uiie, 1^03. Parliament. He caused an appeal to be read before it, in which he promised his efforts to have a general council summoned in order to carry into effect the deposition of Boniface. The assent of the Estates having been given, the appeal was con- firmed by no less than seven hundred acts of adhe- sion from bishops, chapters, monasteries, the several orders of friars, and the University of Paris. Emissaries of the French King were meanwhile in Italy. They professed to be working purely for the pacification of France and the Papacy ; but their real object became evident enough when they ^ep emery, j^pp^j^^.g^^ ^^ Auagui, wherc Bonifacc was residing, attended by a body of armed men, hired chiefly from the neighbouring and rival city of Feren- tino. An attack was made upon the palaces of the Pope and of the cardinals. They fled and hid them- selves ; only the Pope remained dauntless. His life was spared, but he was subjected to an ignominious imprisonment for some days. ^Vt last he was rescued by the people of Rome ; but the outrage he liad suffered was too much for a man of eighty-six years to Box I FACE THE Eighth. endure. He died in a niontli, of a fever, or, as some say, madness. The catastrophe which befel him, abso- lutely without precedent in the history of October II. i i\ c> • n t t i the ropes lor centuries past, led directly to the humiliation of the Papacy under the shadow of France. After a short interval, — the uneventful pon- The Popes in tificato of Benedict the Eleventh, — a Pope exile. ^^,^g elected through French influence, the first of the line of French Popes. Clement the Fifth fixed his seat in France, and then just across the border at Avignon, where it remained until 1376. The return of the Papacy to Eome was quickly followed by the Great Schism which was not finally healed until more than half-a-century after. The Babylonian Captivity, — as the Papal sojourn at Avignon is called, — and the Great Schism, each in its own way, produced a current of feeling in Western Christendom which threatened to be fatal to the old theory of the universal supremacy of the Pope. At Avignon he sank into the position of a mere French ally, and was in consequence exposed to the same sentiments of national hostility which the action of France aroused in other countries, such as Germany or England, towards herself. After the schism, when there were two or, it might be, even three Popes, the real position of each was separated by a still greater dis- tance from that which he claimed to hold. And when at last union was restored to the Papacy, the process of disintegration in the allegiance, of weakening in the affections, of "Western Christendom had gone too far to be arrested. The head of the Church by this 10 Movements for Reform. time had given up reform as hopeless ; it was enough if he could maintain the state of things as it was : and so little vigour was left in the system that when the Protestant revolt was raised, it seemed for a while as though the entire ancient order was doomed. That the Catholic Church after all survived, and, what is more, that it recovered its vitality and won back much that it had lost, was due to the fact that it at last itself set to work in earnest to reform its in- ternal organisation. Had it done so a century or two earlier there might have been nothing lost to need winning back. The opponents and tlie advocates of the Papal prero- gative in the fourteenth century adopted a different mode of warfare from that which was cus- Changed char- . v j.- n i. ' ^ acter of Church touiary lu earlier times. Controversial con rovers^. pamphlets and letters had always been written on either side ; but now a controversial litera- ture comes into existence which bases itself less upon the occasional questions of the moment and more upon general principles. It takes a broader view of the nature of the State and of the relations of the temporal and spiritual ; in a word it seeks to lay the founda- tions of a political philosophy. It is this literature which gives a special interest to the ecclesiastical disputes of the period ; bat in order to under- stand its bearing we must first glance at the posi- tion held by the Papacy, as it was and as it claimed to be. First, as the head of the Church, or, as he had now come to call himself, the Vicar of Christy the Pope The Papal Position. it assumed the riglit of summoning general (tliat is, ecumenical) councils and of confirming their acts. PapiU claims. The council advised, but he claimed not General ^^^1 '^^ Originate its decrees but to give councils. them a ratification without which they were invalid. It must not be forgotten that formerly the power to summon such councils had been held to be a part of the imperial prerogative, or at least a right to be exercised by the Emperor and Pope conjointly. Secondly, the Pope had extended his direct control over the Italian and then over all metropolitans, and Ecclesiastical finally over all bishops ; since upon the for- i.referments. ^^^^ ]^q Conferred the idcdlium, the symbolic token of their office, and the election of the latter was apt to be insecure without his confirmation, though this was not legally necessary. If the Pope made no positive assertion of a right to dictate the election of a particular person to a bishoprick, his request, or, as it was now termed, his mandate^ amounted in some coun- tries to a compulsory nomination. Besides this, he exer- cised the power of deposing bishops and of translating them from one see to another. The annates, or fees payable to the Koman court on collation to a bishoprick or abbacy, which it was afterwards attempted to extend to the case of every sort of benefice, formed an important part of the Papal revenue ; and the practice of repeat- edly translating prelates, so as to multiply the occasions for such payments, became a favourite device with fin- ancially-minded pontifis like John the Twenty-second. The freedom of election asserted for the English and other Churches thus came to have little meaning. In the third place, appeals to the Pope were encou- 12 Movements for Reform. raged in causes of the most various kinds and from a constantly increasing sphere of jurisdiction. It woukl be unjust to deny the abstract nobility of a conception which sought to erect a supreme court of appeal high above all earthly considerations. But the Papal Curia, with whatever justice, w^as gene- rally suspected of partiality, corruption, even direct venality ; and the evils with wdiich these appeals were attended, — the tediousness of the procedure and the frequency with which appeal followed appeal, while parties were restrained from action until the last appeal was decided — had long been a standing source of com- plaint with the more conscientious clergy. Fourthly, the Pope claimed a universal power of absolution and dispensation. This is implied in the The pieniiudo f^T^^i^ous pliraso of his 'pUnituclo 'poUstatis. 2Jotesiatis. j^-^ ^j^^ words of ouo of the greatest and most thoughtful supporters of the hierarchical theory, Saint Thom.as Aquinas, ' the Pope hath the fulness of power in the Church, in such wise that wdiatsoever be enacted by the Church or by the prelates of the Church is subject to dispensation by him.' This de- finition covers all matters of human or positive law, and only excludes matters belonging to the ' law of nature ' and articles of faith.'' But according to other authorities, and possibly, in one place elsewhere,^ to Saint Thomas himself, not even articles of faith were exempted from the Pope's power of alteration, though not of dispensation. Fifthly, the Pope claimed the right of exacting taxa- ^ Thorn. Aqnin,, Qitcestiones quodlihctaks, vi. 13. ^ Secunda Secunda, i. 10. The Papal Position. 13 tion from the Cliurclies of Christendom, How far this claim was actually enforced varied, of course, with the circumstances of the different countries. Taxation. . In r ranee, lor instance, even though the I^ragmatic Sanction of 1269 be now rejected as a forgery, it was frequently denied ; in Castile, on the other hand, by the enactment of Alfonso the Tenth, soon to receive the sanction of law, it was expressly conceded. In England, whicli ranked theoretically as a fief of the Holy See, the right was incessantly and oppressively exercised. Sixthly, for the past two centuries and more, the custom had been growing up of sending legates from the Pope to enforce both liis fiscal and his judicial claims over the different countries. The legate superseded the authority of the national clergy and held provincial councils as the Pope's representative. Even in England, where the Arch- bishops of Canterbury from the time of Stephen Langton were regularly appointed legates, the mission of a special legate (ct latere, as it was termed) was held to override the prerogative of the permanent officer. Seventhly, the Papal power had received an enor- mous extension from the codification of the Canon Tiie Canon Law. This body of prescriptions is of a Law. -.g^.^. composite origin. The so-called Isi- dorian Decretals, a great part of whicli was forged in tlie nintli centuiy, thougli professing to be a genuine collection made by Isidore of Seville at the beginning of the seventh, had rapidly won general acceptance ; but various interpretations of them had come into existence among the lawyers, and it became desirable for a text- 14 Movements for Reform. book to be ari-angecl wliicli sliouki compare and recon- cile these discordant glosses. This text-book was the work of a Benedictine monk, Gratian, in the middle of the twelfth century ; and the Becretitm Gratiani, in three books, forms the first ^?a?'^, the basis, of the authorised Corjjus Juris Canonici. But oppor- tunity was soon found for further explanations and distinctions, the most important of which were con- sciously directed towards the enforcement of a higher doctrine of the Papal prerogative. In the earlier decretals there was a good deal that, instead of sup- porting, stood in actual contradiction to the theory of the Papal power as it became gradually developed ; and accordingly the later portions of the Corpus Juris Canonici were written not merely as a commentary upon, and a supplement to, the Decrctum Gratiani, but also to no small extent as a corrective to the imperfect doctrine therein contained of the rights of the Papacy, — a doctrine by no means satisfactory to canonists of the type of Gregory the Ninth. It is to this Pontiff that we owe the second 'part of the canon law-book, or, more accurately, the first five books of it. The work was done at the Pope's command by a Domini- can friar, Baymond of Pennaforte, in 1234. A sixth book was subsequently added by Boniface the Eighth in 1298 ; and, to conclude the series, as the traditions and usages of the spiritual courts grew in bulk with the growth of the Papal assumptions, new supplements were authorised by Clement the Fifth in 1308, and by John the Twenty-second in 13 17. These two supplements are known as the Clementines and the Extravagantcs. The Exiravagantcs (divided into two The Papal Position. 15 books) were thus named because they were intended to meet difficulties and obscurities ' running outside/ that is to say, not resolved by, the previous collections. By these stages grew up a body of laws, and as a natural result a body of lawyers, expressly devoted to the maintenance, the consolidation, and the enlarge- ment of the powers and privileges of the Church as against all temporal authority, and of the Roman See as against all authority temporal or spiritual whatever. The autocracy of the world, the ^;/6'm/z^<:/o 'potestatis, is now centralised in a single power and in one person ; that is to say, by its own theory, expressed in its own law-book. The acceptance which it met with, so far as it touched temporal interests, was by no means so unequivocal or so universal ; and the history of the two centuries following Boniface the Eighth is the history of how this hierarchical theory broke down in practice. Before this time the Papacy had received an immense accession of strength by the foundation of the mendi- cant orders, the Friars Preachers and Friars Minor, — black friars ^ and grey friars, — better known by the names which have been given them in modern times from their founders, the Spaniard Saint Dominic and the Italian Saint Francis of Assisi. In earlier centuries the monastic system had once and again been reformed and vitalised by the creation of new orders, or by the establishment of houses affiliated to the older houses and distinguished only by the greater purity and greater strictness of their discipline. Such had been the Cistercians and the Bernardines, ^ By mediaeval writers the Dominicans were often called Jacobites, from the dedication of their great church at Paris. 1 6 Movements for Reform. offshoots of the Benedictines ; and the new orders of the Carthusians and the Carmelites : all of which originated between the last twenty years of the eleventh century and the middle of the twelfth. Their increase was checked by the action of Innocent the Third, who in the Lateran Council of I 2 I 5 expressly forbade the establishment of any new monastic order, ' lest too great diversity of practice should bring serious con- fusion into the Church of God.' Of quite a different character were the two orders of mendicant friars which arose almost simultaneously in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. They were unlike any order before them ; they were unlike any sect. Both setting forth with a missionary purpose, the band of Preachers organised by Saint Dominic devoted themselves to the w^ork of counteracting heresy and error, and of drawing over the heathen to the Christian f\iith ; the Friars Minor, led by Saint Francis, sought more directly to revive the life of Christ and his apostles, and to bring the civilis- ing influences of Christianity to bear upon the neglected populations of the towns, the rapid growth of which had left large regions destitute of spiritual oversight. Soon these orders were joined by the Carmelites, who adopted the Franciscan rule in 1245, and b}^ the Augustinian hermits, whose order was founded in 12^6} While the monks practised their discipline with a view to their own personal advancement in the religious life, the friars bound themselves to, and trained themselves by, an even stricter rule, with the 1 It is hardly necessary to warn the reader against confounding these Austin friars with the Augustinian canons, whose rule was estab- lished in the eleventh century. The Papal Position. 17 single object of devoting tlie virtues tlius acquired to the good of others. They dwelt not apart from the world, but in its midst ; for many years, in conformity with the founders' injunction, they had no house of their own. They lived on alms, and took no thought for the morrow. The sole aim of their work was to root out error and to plant the truth. This is no place to describe the extraordinary begin- nings and progress of their enthusiastic career. For the present purpose it is onlv necessary to Their relations ^ i i n " i • totheecciesias- observe that the unmeasured popularity won tical system. ~i ^ n ' t i • t i by the iriars was directly serviceable to the Papal policy. By the privileges conferred on them by the Popes they were made absolutely independent of the bishop and clergy of the diocese in which they might choose to settle themselves, and subject alone to the See of Eome. The mendicant orders thus formed, as it were, the Pope's standing arm}^, free from all control of the local spiritual authority. Diffusing themselves everywhere, they extended with their influence the high doctrine of Papal autocracy. The favour with which they were received gave them the last thing contem- plated by Dominic or Francis, wealth ; and enabled them to depart completely from the original conception of their order by providing themselves with splendid houses and establishments. The Franciscans, too, and after their example the other orders, had auxiliary branches of unattached members, called Tertiaries, who observed the general principles of the rule in a sort of lay-capacity, and were equally pledged to the further- ance of the main objects of the society. At the same time it is needless to say that these c. IL B 1 8 Movements for Reform. powerful organisations were not so favourably received by the local clergy whose domain they invaded. Be- tween the friars on the one side, and the secular clergy and the monks on the other, hostility was almost inevit- able; and as the mendicant orders declined from their original nobility of aim and practice, it followed natu- rally that the opposition directed against them should recoil upon their Papal patrons. Their demoralisation famished a motive to some of the earliest and most bitter attacks of this kind, which were carried on in an uninterrupted course through Wycliffe down to the time of Luther. Nor was it only classes external to the orders which undermined their position. Among the Franciscans there early arose a party holding more closely to the pattern of their founder than the mass of the order was inclined to do ; and between these and their fellows an implacable strife was waged. It is in fact this quarrel concerning the obligation of observ- ing ' evangelical poverty,' — or the absolute rejection of temporal property according to the practice, it was deemed, of the Founder of Christianity and his apostles, — that originated the first controversies in the Middle Ages of what may be termed a conventional Protestant character. To these we shall come in their proper place. It is here only important to note that while the rise of mendicancy was a mainstay of the Papal power, its decline was closely connected with exaspera- tion against that power. The date at which this decline is first clearly manifested, the date at which the first serious convulsion within the Franciscan body took place, corresponds with the pontificate of Boniface the Eighth and the ^ spiritual ' propaganda of Peter The Papal Position. 19 Joliannis Olivi. Still the ^ spiritual ' party among the Franciscans was never, except for a short time during the pontificate of John the Twenty-second, more than a minority; the great mass of the order, as of the other orders, continued to be the devoted allies of the Papacy. In these various ways the Roman See maintained and augmented its ascendency, commanding, or at least claiminof to command, all the kingdoms Temporal ° . . ° sovereiKiity of the cartli ; it had come to interfere even of the Pope. . , . ■> m • m the internal affairs of the different states. Its spiritual position needed however to be confirmed by temporal sovereignty as well. For the greater its exaltation, the more striking was the contrast between the proud attitude of the Papacy towards foreign nations, and its personal insecurity or even helpless- ness in Rome itself. The mightiest of the Popes might be driven from his seat and die, as Gregory tbe Seventh died, in exile. It was thus inevitable that the Papacy should seek to establish itself in security by the acquisition of a territorial domain. Its spiritual arms might be potent enough to over- power resistance abroad j at home the Pope must perforce be also a temporal prince. By the time of Boniface the Eighth the Papal dominion extended all along the western half of Middle Italy, from Tuscany to the borders of the Neapolitan kingdom, besides detached possessions in other parts of the peninsula. The necessity of such a temporal domain at once reveals the point of weakness in the mediasval theory of the Papal autocracy. When the Church in the eleventh century undertook the task of reforming itself 20 Movements for Reform, in order that it miglit reform the outside world, it "went upon the principle that, the sharper the distinc- tion, the separation, between clergy and laity, the more readily could the former be brought to bear, as an external and consolidated force, upon the disorders of the civil society. If the Church was to exercise its due sway over the consciences of men, it was felt that it must be as free as possible from the ties which bound it to the secular State. If, for instance, the Churchman had to look to his king alone for prefer- ment, he was not likely to be as vigilant or as courage- ous in the carrying out of his duty as if he depended solely upon his spiritual chief. The independence of the clergy being thus postulated, it was but a step further to assert their superiority, their right of con- trolling the State. Gregory the Seventh professed to have discovered evidence in the Papal archives which satisfied him of the direct feudal dependence of the different kingdoms on the Roman See.-^ He founded his supremacy on a plain principle, namely, that all earthly power was the invention of worldly men, igno- rant of God and prompted by the devil : it needed not only the assistance but the authorisation of the Church.^ A political view like this evidently made demands on the clergy which could hardly be satisfied in a much more advanced stage of civilisation. It is need- less to dispute whether it was right or wrong ; it is quite enough that it was too ideal and visionary. As soon as it was brought into the sphere of practice, — so soon as the Church entered into conflict with the ^ Epist. vi. 23 in Jaffo's 'Monwncnta Grcfjorlana, pp. 46S f. ^ Epiat. viii. 2\,l. c, p. 457. The Papal Position. 21 State, — it became clear that the iinworlclllness assumed ill the Church only existed in so far that it had no material forces to rely upon ; although the weapon of excommunication which it wielded was in fact by far more formidable than any forces that the secular State possessed. If the clergy were free from civil control, society on the other hand had scant protection against their license. To make the high ecclesiastical officers proudly independent of the sovereign, was to introduce the influence of the Roman See into every court, and to put canonical obedience in danger of becoming a matter of common politics. If ecclesi- astical property was released from civil obligation, the Church was as much as before subject to the cares and the temptations of wealth. The spiritual basis of the hierarchical pretensions in fact speedily broke down on trial. The Pope in aspiring to universal dominion fell to the position of a sovereign among sovereigns ; he busied himself in the acquisition of large territorial possessions : he became a disturbing influence in the political system of Europe, and the most devout of Churchmen were constantly troubled to reconcile their duty towards their country with what they believed to be their duty towards God. The direction therefore in which the Church had been tending for more than two centuries involved elements of danger not only to society but to the Church itself; and it becomes a matter of peculiar interest to examine the modes of argument by which it was attempted, in the interest of the Church, to draw it back to a purely spiritual position. ( 22 ) CHAPTER II. THE FRANCISCAN CONTROVERSY— MARSIGLIO OF PADUA AND WILLIAM OF OCKHAM. While tlie contest of Pope Boniface the Eighth with Philip of France opened the political struggle which undermined the ascendency of the Papacy, the con- temporaneous internal dispute among the Franciscans marks the date at which churchmen began to realise the injury which Christendom was suffering from what they deemed the mistaken policy of the Popes. Each of these controversies has a literature of its own, a literature in which there are many signs of a wider interest than the mere technical, often trivial, points actually in dispute. But we must here confine our- selves to the Franciscan controversy ; for it was this which contained the seeds, and more than the seeds, of the debate as to the nature and functions of the Church, which gave substance to future movements in favour of reform. We have already noticed that within not many years of the foundation of the order, and in direct violation of its principle, the Franciscans had allowed themselves to receive endowments of enormous ex- tent ; they had their convents and their estates, and The Franciscan Controversy. 23 seemed to be turning into something not unlike a new order of monks, while completely surpassing them in popularity. The question then arose, on Divisions i n i i t i • among the wliat tenure they could hold this property Franciscans. • i . p i • Without contravening the terms 01 their pro- fession. Urban the Fourth solved the difficulty by the ingenious explanation that the friars could only enjoy the usufruct of their possessions ; the actual proprietorship of them belonged to the Pope. Nicolas the Third, however, in 1 279, in the bull E.dit qid scminat, expressly enforced the doctrine of absolute poverty as an essential element in the Franciscan rule. This bull was inserted by Boniface the Eighth in the Sixth Book of the Decretals, and thus became the established law of the Church. But the bull lent itself to various interpretations, since it allow^ed the friars the ' moderate use ' of earthly possessions ; and it was this question of interpretation that threatened a disruption in the order. The stricter school was represented by Peter Johannis Olivi, who died in 1298. His followers were consider- The extreme ^^^^ ^^ number. Many of them adopted the party. ^^^Iq ^i^ ^|^q hemiits founded by Pope Celes- tine the Fifth, giving up the Franciscan discipline as too free for their ascetic needs. The Celestinians were severely treated by Pope Boniface and the order was suppressed; but the spirit infused into its members remained powerful and extended itself among the reofular members of the Franciscan order. Clement the Fifth tried to heal the breach by an authoritative declaration of what the Franciscan rule meant ; but his bull Exivi did nothing more than repeat what 24 Movements for Refoea/. Nicolas the Third bad laid down about the distinc- tion between property and nse. The Spirituals under Ubertino da Casale were bidden under pain of ex- communication to return to the obedience of the order. The reason why the Popes took such severe action against them has been found in the fact that their Repressed by asscrtion of the duty of poverty implied a the Popes. ccnsure upon the licentious and prodigal life of the Papal court ; but in truth their doctrines were connected with various theological tenets which were directed against the very existence of the hierarchy, tenets which foretold the downfall of the existinof svs- tern and the substitution of a purer and more spiritual order of things. Visionaries these men doubtless were ; but they lived in an age which was only too ready to carry theories into practice, and in practice their spiritualism proved the vigorous ally of Ghibellinism. Some of the opinions of Olivi were condemned by the Council of Vienne in I 3 1 1 ; the sanction of Christendom was given to the policy of Pope Clement. Nor did John the Twenty-second fall short of the rigour of his predecessor in his treatment of such dangerous sectaries. He found the Dominicans willing enough to help him, and their special engine, the Inquisition, was set to work in several parts of France. For a time the Pope was assisted also by many of the regular Franciscans and by their general himself, Michael of Cesena. The points which were condemned in the bull Gloriosam ecclesiam of January the 23rd, 13 16, centred in the assertion of the Spirituals that there were two Churches, — the carnal one, ricli and profligate, which was The Franciscan Controversy. 25 governed by tlie Eoman Pontiff and his court, and tlie spiritual Cliurcli, whose ' kingdom is not of this world/ represented by the friars of the extreme section. The two parties within the order lived on until in the latter half of the fourteenth century the reformers acquired a recognised position under the name of Observants, as distinguished from the Con- ventuals, who were freer in their interpretation 01 the founder's rule. In the meantime, in 1 32 1, a new period in the history of the controversy began ; and a new party- division came into being which must be ♦evangelical carcfully kept apart from the movement led by the Spirituals, although both ran on parallel lines and both were at one in their antagonism to John the Twenty-second. This new schism origi- nated in a specific point of dogma. The question now was, not whether the Friars Minor were bound to ob- serve their vow of poverty, but whether Christ and his apostles ever themselves held any property. A sec- tion of the Franciscans maintained the negative ; and if Christ and his apostles never possessed anything whether privately or in common, the inference was irresistible that neither could his successors, the whole body of churchmen, hold any possessions : ' evangelical poverty,' in the technical phrase of the controversy, must be the law of the Church. In 1522 a chapter of the entire order was assembled at Perugia, and the doctrine of evangelical poverty was formally accepted. Michael of Cesena now stood by them, as did also the representatives of the order in other countries, including France and England. Pope John replied by accusing 26 Movements for Reform. the Franciscans of heresy ; the Dominicans and the University of Paris added tLeir voice to the Papal condemnation. Tiie Franciscans, however, held their ground ; — they were now reinforced by the powerful advocacy of the great English schoolman William of Ockliam : — but the Pope would not flinch from the necessary conclusion of his acts. He annulled the bull of Nicolas the Third and asserted that ' use ' was inseparable from ' proprietorship.' The Franciscans in their turn accused the Pope of heresy ; but repeated threats soon reduced the main body of the order to obedience. Still an influential minority, commonly but loosely known as the Fraticelli, continued firm. It was at this juncture, when the Franciscans, the old allies, the very mainstay, of the Papacy, were at open variance with Pope John, that a number of them resolved to throw in their lot with the German king, Lewis of Bavaria, and to seek by his instrumentality to carry into effect what they believed would prove the means of the regeneration of the world. The momentary results of this singular combination of forces can here be only glanced at in a few words. In 1^24 Lewis had been excommunicated Tlie Friars and Lewis bv the Pope ; but the German people held the Bavarian. i " ,, , . t^. t , , -, loyally to their King, and he resolved to make good his title by a coronation at Rome which should make him no longer a mere German sovereign but the successor — if only in theory, still the legiti- mate successor — to the universal Empire of tlie Romans. Lewis's Italian expedition was really organised and con- trolled by his Franciscan allies, though the greatest champion of their views was, it happened, a secular The Franciscan Controversy. 27 clergyman, ^larsiglio del Raimondinij lately a respected teacher in the University of Paris. To Marsiglio and to his Franciscan fellow-workers is due whatever of principle and of permanent historical significance be- longs to Lewis's scheme to rescue the Empire from the unendurable pretensions of John the Twenty-second, and to reassert for it a power and dignity such as even in the strongest days of the Franconian or Swabian emperors had been proved totally incapable of lasting vindication. Lewis's career in Italy was short and inglorious. He became for a moment master of Eome, was crowned by two excommuni- cated bishops ; an Antipope, Friar Peter of Corvara, was chosen, and Marsiglio was named Papal Vicar in the city. But Lewis, like most emperors, found him- self quite unable to maintain himself long at Rome. He retired to Pisa, and here was joined by Ockham. Michael of Cesena was also in his train. We need nob linger over the inevitable collapse of the whole under- taking. The Antipope made his submission at Avignon in 1330; the spring of the same year found Lewis again in Bavaria, his hopes in Italy not only un- realised but destroyed. Still for some years he kept up a vigorous paper- war with the Pope. The scholars and theologians on whom he had rested remained true to him. 'A strange in- ternational colony/ as it has been well described/ now established itself at Munich. ' Parisian professors, and Italian, English, and German friars constituted, with a few native statesmen and ecclesiastics, the political 1 Riezler, Die Utcrarischcn Widcrsachcr der Pdpste zur Zcit Ludwig dcs Balers, p. 76 (Leipzig, 1874). 28 Movements for Reform. and theological council of the Emperor.' Within not many years the majority of thera were friglitened back into the Papal obedience. Lewis himself long sought a reconciliation ; but often as he made offers of sub- jection, and though at one time in 1343-4 he nearly succeeded by humiliating sacrifices in obtaining what he desired from the Pope, now Clement the Sixth, he continued under excommunication until his death in 1 347. Of those who as long as they lived worked and strove for him the most memorable names are those of the two Parisian masters, Marsiglio of Padua and Wil- liam Ockham ; and it is their writings which show us the new turn which political and theological opinion was taking, the new ideas of Church and State which were silently making themselves felt. Marsi^lio's chief work, \X\q Defensor racis, was written in 1324 while he was still at the University of Paris, though he must then have already meditated a union with the German King. Professedly a treatise written with a view to the establishment of a firm peace be- tween the spiritual and civil powers, it is in fact a sustained argument for the supremacy of the latter within its own sphere : and it is much more than this ; it announces a clear constitutional system such as in the present day either exists not at all or exists only in name in the greater part of Europe. Its author was one of those rare philosophers to whom fortune gave, as we have seen, the opportunity of carrying their conceptions into practice ; who discovered also that, however capable of constructing from the founda- tion, they were powerless to reconstruct in face of the Marsiglio of Padua. 29 old-establislied and irreconcilable facts of society with which tliey had to deal. That Marsiglio's active work was a failure lay in the nature of things : his real im- portance is to be found less in the events in which he was of necessity precluded from exercising paramount control, even had he been able to exercise it with the desired success, than in the book of which those events were so impotent illustrations. To secure peace, this is the motto of the political treatises of Marsiglio's day. A French lawyer in the 'ihoBefensor J^ar 1300 was sanguiue enough to expect I'acis. ^j^.-^|. ^jjjg gj^j might be attained by the sub- mission of the w^orld to French rule ; for, he says, ' it is a peculiar merit of the French to have a surer judge- ment than other nations, not to act without considera- tion, nor to set themselves in opposition to right reason.'^ A few years later Dante, in his treatise De Monarcliia, had sought to establish universal peace by the restora- tion of one universal State under one supreme ruler. Less ambitious, though for his age not less unpractical, Marsiglio discovered the remedy in a definition of the province of the temporal and of the spiritual estate, and in a limitation of the latter to strictly spiritual matters. The boldness of such a statement will not be directly apparent to those who are unfamiliar with the immense extension which had been given to the word ' spiritual ' by the usage of the Middle Ages. But the originality of Marsiglio's general view of the ^ See the excerpts from the Summaria hrcvis . . . fclicis cxpcdi- tionis et abbrcviationis guerrarum regnl Francorum, no doubt the work of Pierre du Bois, given by Natalis de Wailly in the Notices ct txtraits des manuscrits, iS (2) 435-494 (1849). 30 Movements for Reform. nature and functions of government will become clear at once from a short sketch of his leading propositions. He does not rank with ordinary imperialistic partisans ; still less are his principles at one with those which prevailed among civil lawyers. That which he insists upon as the very basis of the social organism is a maxim which they were inclined altogether to ignore. The sovereignty of the State, he maintained, rested with the people ; by it properly are the laws made, and to it they owe their validity. If the making of laws were entrusted to a few, we should not be secure against error or self-seeking : only the whole people can know what it needs and can give effect to it. ' The community therefore of all the citizens or their majority,' expressing its will either by elected repre- sentatives or in their assembled mass, is the supreme power in the State. But it must have an officer to execute its behests, and for this purpose the people must choose itself a ruler. In Marsiglio's view election is the only satisfactory means ; to the hereditary principle he will make no concession whatever. There must be, he says, a unity in the government ; but a unity of office, not necessarily of number : so that the executive functions may be as effectively exercised through a committee as by a single prince ; only no member of such a committee must venture to act b}^ himself separately, its policy must be directed by the vote, or by a majority, of the entire bod}'. If however, as is usually the wiser course, a king be chosen, he must be supported by an armed force, large enough, accord- iug to the rule of Aristotle, to overpower the few LIarsiglio of Padua. 31 but not large enough to overpower the mass of tlio nation. But this force is not to be entrusted to him until after his election, for a man must not secure the royal dignity by means of external resources, but by virtue of his own personal qualities. The desirability of a universal monarchy Marsiglio leaves altogether an open question. He is as little disposed to magnify the pretensions of the German King to whom he dedicated his work, as he is to admit any theory of the indefeasible prerogative of kingship as such ; prerogative indeed, strictly speaking, the king has none, for the authority which he receives by the act of election is purely official ; the ' fountain of justice ' remains with the ' lawgiver,' the people, whose instrument he is and to whom he is responsible. He has to interpret the law, not to make it. So too the officers of the State derive their commission from the people, albeit the king, in conformity with law, decides the detail of their appointment, together with the other necessaiy arrangements of the executive government. Once establish the principle, and the conclusions are easy to draw. The king's power is limited in every possible direction. He has the eye of the people or of its representatives on all his actions. He may be restrained or even deposed if he overpass his prescribed bounds ; and even though his conduct be not amenable to the letter of the law, he is still subject to the final judgement of the national will. On no side is there any room for despotism ; in no point is he absolute. In treating of the different orders of society, Mar- siglio finds that one, — that of the priesthood, — presents special difficulties. For whereas the peculiar province 33 Movements for Reform. of the clergy is to instruct tlie people according to the teaching of the Gospel with a view to their eternal israrsigiio'sidea '^^^^^^i'®) they have so far abandoned this of the Church, exclusively spiritual office as to usurp all manner of temporal claims over temporal as w^ell as spiritual persons, and in particular over the E-oman Emperor: and these pretensions of the Papacy are the chief causes of discord in the world. Marsiglio therefore proceeds to examine the real nature of the spiritual office, and of its relation to the civil State. The name Church he would recall to its first and apos- tolical, its ' truest and most proper,' signification, as comprehending the entire body of Christian men : all, he says, are alike churchmen, mri ecclesiastici^ be they laymen or clerks. It is intolerable that its pre- rogatives should be usurped by the sacerdotal order. ExcoQimunication, for instance, cannot rightly be de- creed by any priest or any council of priests : they should doubtless be consulted with reference to the charges alleged, and it is for the priest to declare the sentence ; but the verdict belongs to the ' community of the faithful.' While moreover the clergy have no right to engross the name of churchman, they liave also no right to apply the word spiritical to all they do, as when they use it to protect their property and incomes from legal burthens or conditions. The clergy have indeed a spiritual office in the Church, but their general deal- ings, their tenure of land, their financial and other temporal engagements, are just as much worldly as are those of their lay brethren, and just as much sub- ject to the law of the country. Who would say that a JI/aa's/gl/0 of Padua. 33 clerg3'm all's crimes, sliould lie commit theft or murder, were to be regarded as spiritual acts ? The clergy are in these cases, and equally in all other civil re- lations, simply members of societ}^, and as members of society they must be treated ; they can claim no sort of exemption in virtue of their religious character. More than this, since the business of government is to maintain peace, it is the duty of the ruler to limit the number of clergymen in any part of the kingdom, should their growth appear likely to disturb the order and tranquillity of the State. The power of the clergy is thus not only restricted to spiritual affairs ; it can only be given effect to by Autiioritv of spiritual means. Temporal pains and penal- the clergy, ^^^g ^^ ^^^^ bclong to the law of the Gospel, which indeed is not, properly speaking, a law at all but rather an injunction (doctrina) ; for ' it is not laid down that any man should in this world be compelled to its observance,' and coercive force is part of the defini- tion of law. The priest may warn and threaten, but beyond this he has no competence. If a heretic become obnoxious to the civil law — if, in other words, his doctrine is dangerous to society — by that law he is to be tried : but of heresy, as such, there is but one judge, Jesus Christ, and his sentence is in the world to come ; errors of opinion lie beyond the cognisance of any human judicature. Marsiglio has thus arrived at the fully matured principle of religious toleration, which modern writers are apt to vaunt as their own peculiar discovery, and which modern politicians are more ready to profess in theory than to carry into practice. c. H. 34 MOVEMESTS FOR ReFOKM. It may be objected to Marsiglio's entire view of tlie spiritualty that he seems to leave out of account the exist- ing constitution of the Church, that he seems to forget that custom had classified the priesthood in ascending orders of dignity and authority, each with its proper pro- vince of power and jurisdiction. But in truth, he main- tains, this arranagement is destitute of any Scriptural warrant. In the New Testament hisliop and priest are convertible designations of the same persons ; and the Popedom, however convenient as symbolising the and of the Unity of the Church, is none the less a Papacy. later institution of which the historical growth is clearly traceable. Saint Peter had no supe- riority over the other apostles ; but even supposing he had, it is hazardous to assert that he communicated it to his successors in the Roman See, since we cannot Bay for certain that he himself ever visited, far less was Bishop of, Rome at all. The pre-eminence of the Bishop of Rome proceeds in fact not from Saint Peter's institution but from the connexion of the see with the capital of the Roman Empire. The supreme power in the Church is the Church itself, that is, a general council, formed of the clergy and laity alike, and convoked not by any pretended spiritual authority but by the source of all legislation and jurisdiction, the civil State. Thus constituted a . general council may not only decide ecclesiastical questions but even excommunicate the temporal ruler and place his land under an interdict, just because it represents the authority of the universal Church and speaks the voice of the entire community both in its spiritual and tem- poral constituencies. That it has power over the Pope Marsiglio of Padua, 35 follows necessarily from the principles already laid down. It is evident then that the Pope in his quality of Christian bishop can claim no right of supreme judge- ment in human things, even over the clergy. If he possess any such right it must have been conceded to him by human authority ; as a spiritual person he has absolutely none, and therefore properly he ought to possess none. When Christ gave to Saint Peter the keys of heaven and hell, this does not mean that the priesthood has the power by the sentence of ex- communication to place a man under civil disabilities. The keys open and close the door of forgiveness, but forgiveness is the act of God, determined by the penitence of the sinner. Without these conditions the priestly absolution is of no avail. The turnkey, claviger, is not the judge. And as for excommunica- tion, that power belongs, as we have seen, properly not to the clergy by themselves but to the community of Christians. Marsiglio goes through the standard arguments in favour of the Papal assumptions and rejects them one after another, partly by his resolute insistence on a rational interpretation of the text of Scripture, partly by the essential distinction between the sacred calliug of the priesthood and their extrinsic or worldly con- nexions. With his ideal of a Church in which these worldly ties have no existence, with his view of them as mere indications of the distance by which the actual Church is removed from primitive purity, there is no room for any talk of ecclesiastical privileges and ex- emptions. The sole privilege of the clergy is their 36 Movements for REFORAf. spiritual character. Temporal sovereignty or jurisdic- tion is an accident of their civil position ; and all inferences from the Bible which have been imagined to authorise it, — such as the famous arq-ument of the 'two swords' (Luke xxii. 38) as typifying the double powder, temporal as well as spiritual, of the clergy, — are incompatible not only with the conception of a Church, but also w^ith the plain meaning of the texts from which they are deduced. My hingdom is not of this world. It is not too much to say that we have here in the Defensor Pacis the whole essence of the political and religious theory which separates modern times from the Middle Ages. The significance of the protestant Eeformation, putting theological details aside, lay in the substitution of a ministry serving the Church, the cono^reo'ation of Christian men, for a hierarchical class. The significance of the later political revolution lay in the acceptance of the people as the source of govern- ment, as the sovereign power in the State. Both these ideas Marsiglio made his own. He had not only a glimpse of them as from afar off: he thought them out, defined them, stated them wdth the clearest pre- cision, so that the modern constitutional statesman, the modern protestant, has nothing to alter in their prin- ciple, has only to develop them and fill in their out- line. Marsiglio may be stigmatised as a doctrinaire, but he belongs to that rarest class of doctrinaires whom future ages may rightly look back upon as prophets. There is no doubt a certain element in Marsiglio's speculations in which he shows himself entirely the William of Ockiiam. Z7 cliikl of his age. This is when he approaches the question whether the Church should hold any property. As an ally of the Fraticelli he cannot but answer it in the negative. The ministers of the Church should be supported by those to whom they minister but only in the necessaries of life ; but ' no one of the faithful is bound by Scripture to pay them the tenth or any other part of his income.' The clergyman might well supply his needs by other means, as by handicraft, after the example of the apostles. But now that the Church has been enriched by ample endowments, the question arises, to whom do these endowments belong ? Granted that the clergy have the use of them, who is the real owner ? Marsiglio replies that the property can only belong to the person or persons w4io gave it, or to the State. Nor can the clergyman claim the entire use of it : he is the administrator of a trust ; and what is left over after his daily food and raiment are supplied, must be distributed to the poor. In all this Marsiglio is at one with his Franciscan friends; only what was the premise of their argument, is the consequence of his : his doctrine of ' evangelical poverty ' flows by an irresistible, if literalist, logic from the larger doctrine of the spiritual character of the clergy. With Ockham on the other hand it was a purely theological dispute, almost a mere matter of partisanship, from which he advanced to combat the general assumptions of the Papacy. Yet Ockham was by far the more practical speculator than his swifter and more adventurous fellow-worker. He was more sensible of the difficultv, of the almost SS Movements for Reform. hopeless intricacy, of the problems that called for solution. As strenuous as any man in contesting the William of ' plenitude of power ' arrogated for the ockbam. Papacy, he was unwilling to transfer it to any other person or to any body of persons. The Pope was no supreme autocrat ; indeed the Emperor was within certain limitations his natural judge. But if, as Ockham maintained, the Pope was fallible, so also was a general council. He gives us his idea of how such an assembly should be constituted : it should bo representative not only of the laity side by side with the clergy, but also both of men and women. But even this general council he would not entrust with the absolute, final decision in matters of faith. Any man, all men, may err ; and Ockham is constrained in the last resort to find consolation in the Scriptural paradox which speaks of the truth vouchsafed to little children. He is certain that the faith must live, but cannot admit without qualification any of the suggested sureties for its maintenance. He is so embarrassed by the various alternatives that arise in his mind, so per- suaded of the elements of truth that each contains in different degrees, that he seems unable to form any fixed resolution on the whole subject. Revelation of course cannot but be infallible, but he is not sure, at least he does not tell us his opinion, of the limits to which the name is to be restricted. 'Authority' was at all times an ambiguous word, and all we can con- clude positively is that Ockham did not understand it as including the canon law or any part of the special Roman tradition. Ockham liked to draw out his arguments by means ]VlLIJAM OF OCKIIAM. 39 of a dialogue ^ or in the scholastic form of ' questions.' The method allows him to throw out the most startlino* o suggestions, but at the same time saves him from the necessity of giving his own private opinion on any point. We are generally left to guess it from a balance of more or less conflicting passages. Thus it is hardly possible to arrive at a clear view of his conception of the Empire and the Papacy, in themselves and in their mutual relations. He hints that in a certain state of society it might be better to have several Popes and several sovereigns ; and although he recognises in some sort the claims of the theoretical universal Empire, there is an air of unreality about his assertions which lets us see that he has not forgotten his English birth and French training. No human institution is absolute or final, and neither Pope nor Emperor can claim exemption from the general law of progress and adaptation. If however at the present time, Ockham argues, the prerogative of the Empire reaches over the entire world in its temporal relations, this must of course exclude the Pope from all but spiritual functions. Ockham has travelled by a dif- ferent road to the same point as Marsiglio. Neither really cares about the imperial idea : all that is of im- ^ His chief political work, the Dialo'jus, which is not preserved, or at least not printed, in its entirety, is nearly four times as long as the Defensor Pads, and occupies five hundred and sixty folio pages in Goldast's edition. It wns certainly not written as a single work, and probably consists of three or more distinct treatises. I may notice that almost every writer upon Ockhani's views on Church politics has drawn his materials chiefly from the popular Dialorjiie letween a Kniykt and a Clerk, the authorship of which Dr. Eiezler has clearly proved not to be his. 40 Movements for Reform. portance to them is to erect the State into an organic, consolidated force, independent of, and in its own pro- vince superior to, the spiritualty ; and this done, they circumscribe even the spiritual part of the Papal authority by making it in all respects subject to the general voice of Christendom. The Pope remains the exponent of the Church, but appeal is always open to the Church, to the whole society, itself. The chief difference in the results of the two theorists is that Marsiglio is certain, while Ockham hesitates, about the unerring sagacity of this final arbiter. With all his vigour and independence Ockham as a political writer stands clearly on a lower level than his Italian fellow-worker. He had not that prescience of the new order for w^hich the world was becoming ripe that raises Marsiglio above the whole rank of antagonists to the hierarchical policy of the Church in the Middle Ages. Ockham, like his successor Wycliffe, was immersed in the petty, or at best the transitory, interests of scholasticism. In theological doctrine Wycliffe may by some be considered to have done more signal service. But his thoughts and those of his fellows move within the confined limits of their own time. The political theory of Wycliffe, with all its nobility, rests upon as wilful, as preposterous, a treatment of the Bible as that of any of his hierarchi- cal adversaries. Carried into practice by those who were not able to appreciate his refinements, it resolved itself into a species of socialism which was immediately seen to be subversive of the very existence of society. Marsiglio on the contrary is to a wonderful degree exempt from the trammels of tradition. Except when William of Ockiiam. 41 he urges the necessity of a return to evangelical povertv, or when he enlarges on the matters at issue between King Lewis and John the Twenty-second, we are hardly recalled to the age in which he lived. There can indeed bo little doubt that he learned very much from Ockham in the years when they worked together at Paris ; but the principles he then adopted he elaborated with far greater freedom than his friend. Ockham remains throuirh all his writino-s first and foremost a scholastic theologian ; Marsiglio ventures freely into the open field of political philosophy. Nor on the other hand can it be questioned that Ockham in his turn fell strongly nnder the influence of the Italian speculator. All his known works on ecclesiastical politics were produced at a later time than the Defensor Pads. That work was written before Marsiglio took any active part against the Pope, while Ockham's works are the defence and justification of his share in that resistance. Thus while Marsiglio ran far ahead of his better-known contemporary, though he departed so much more widely from any previous theory of the relation of Church and State, Ockham's books are the later in point of time. In fact while the former quite overleaps the confines of the Middle Ages, Ockham pre- serves the orderly sequence and continuity of mediaeval thought : and more than this, while Marsiglio in the daring of his speculation stands absolutely alone, Ock- ham, by virtue of his greater conformity to the spirit of his day, — not to speak of his eminence as a philo- sopher, unequalled among contemporaries and hardly surpassed by the great schoolmen of the generation before him, — handed down a light which was never 42 Movements for Reform. Buffered to be extinguished, and which served as a beacon to pioneers of reform like Wycliffe and Hus. In politics as well as in some points of doctrine, Ockham may be claimed as a precursor of the German Reformers of the sixteenth century ; but Marsiglio hardly exercised any direct influence on later movements of thought. The principles which ho brought into view had to be rediscovered, without even the know- ledge that he had found them out beforehand, by the political philosophers of modern times. Still it was with a true instinct that Gregory the Eleventh, in first taking cognisance of Wycliffe's views, averred that some of them contained the doctrine of the Defensor Petcis, ' doctrinam indoctam damnatce memo- rias Marsilii de Padna.'^ Wycliffe was seen to be the successor of Marsiglio. ^ Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 243, ed. Shirley ; Walsingham, Ilistoria Anrilicana, I. 346 ff., ed. Riley. With Marsiglio the bull couples the name of John of Jandun, who is stated to have been joint author of the Defensor Pacts; but as his share in the work is uncertain, I have not thought it worth while to distract the reader's attention by mentioning him in the text. ^ly own conjecture is that John helped Marsiglio iu the legal details of the treatise. ( 43 ) CHAPTER III. THE POPES AT AVIGNON— THE PAPACY AND ENGLAND. The feeling winch had been aroused against the pre- tension to contest temporal sovereigns made by Boni- face the Eighth and John the Twenty- Connexion of ti i i •! t the Papacy with second, was not likely to subside so long as the Popes remained at Avignon. The site which Clement the Fifth had chosen for his resi- dence brought the Papacy into a necessary connexion with France and with the French house now reigning at Naples, and thus with the Guelfic faction through- out Italy. The Pope became a partisan, and a French partisan. He might struggle against the overpower- ing influence of the French Crown ; but if he had to contend witli sovereigns like Philip the Fair or Philip of Valois he would generally struggle in vain. It was only during the interval between these Kings, when France was ruled by the three sons of Philip the Fair, that the Pope could venture upon independent action. Still, even if the Popes could at any time feel themselves free from the control of the French King, none the less was their policy guided by French in- terests. The colleofe of cardinals became in effect a 44 Movements for Reform. French club ; the policy of the Pope was, as a rule, the policy of the King of Naples, the King of Naples commonly the close ally of France. Nor was the Papacy merely tending more and more to become a political institution ; its spirit and whole j^^j,j,Qf manner of life was becoming secularised. character, ]^q doubt there had usually been luxury enough and splendour enough when the Popes lived at Rome or in its neighbourhood ; but at x\vignon the spiritual character of the Papacy seemed in danger of being totally forgotten. John the Twenty-second had used his position mainly as a means of getting money and providing for his friends. His successor, Bene- dict the Twelfth, righteously broke the tradition ; he set his face firmly against nepotism, the holding of benefices in plurality, and the like abuses ; but this very fact made the cardinals all the more anxious to restore it. When Benedict died they elected a French courtier and statesman who took the name of Clement the Sixth, and Clement reproduced and perpetuated Clement VI. ^lic System. His manners, and for that 1342-1352. rnatter his morals, were entirely those of a man of the world ; and under his rule Avignon became more than ever notorious for its sensuality and splen- dour : it had the same sort of reputation as Paris had in the time of the Second Empire. The contradiction between the theory and the reality of the Holy See had never been so glaring since its rise to ascendency in the eleventh century : the ' Church ' might now seem to be quite lost in the ' world,' and the Pope to be in effect no longer the spiritual head of Christendom, but the prince of a secular court. The Popes at Avig\'ox. 45 It was thus also that his opponents treated him. Nothing can be more significant of the influence exerted by the controversial works of which we have spoken in the preceding chapter, than the statement of a contemporary chronicler that Duke Albert of Austria in I 343, in refusing to allow the inter- dict of Pope Clement to be observed in his dominions, explained that the Bialogus of Ockham had been sent him by the Emperor Lewis ; — evidently this, he means, had supplied him with a knowledge of the true bearing of the facts. Nor is this an isolated example ; on all sides, excepting in France itself, we see signs of the irritation which the Papal policy excited. In 1338 at their memorable meeting at Reuse the German electors unanimously declared that the title of him whom they chose as king was valid without the con- firmation of the Pope, thus repudiating the specific claim from which Lewis's conflict with John tho Twenty-second had arisen. Nor again was the feeling displayed confined to open political opponents. In this same year two cardinals arrived in England with a mission to eSect a pacification between Edward the Third and Philip of Valois. They were at once seen to be French partisans, and the Archbishop of Canter- bury himself preached against them. Just then too Edward was made Imperial Yicar by Lewis. Popo Benedict remonstrated in vain, and the appointment was only revoked when Lewis found it to his advantage to come to terms with France. Edward all the while was professing the utmost devotion to the Pope, but he calmly refused to accept his ruling in these affairs of State. Except in the conventional phraseology of the 46 Movements for Reform. correspondence there is liarJly a pretence at reo^arding the Papacy as a spiritual power : it was treated to all intents and purposes simply as any other of the powers of Europe, with interests of its own, just as England or France might have its private, national interests. The Popes had their victory over Lewis the Bavarian, but the victory cost them a large part of the prestige which \vas still left to them in the eyes of religious men. Meanwhile their absence from Italy, where they held, it must be remembered, vast territorial dominions, left Effect upon ^^^^^ country a prey to every sort of disorder, Italy. petty despotisms rising into prominence in the north, and the encroachments of the King of Naples advancing upward from the south of the peninsula. Rome itself was in a state of perpetual anarchy through the feuds of the noble families of the city and the lack of any firmly established government. Yet the Roman revolution of 1347, the famous tri- bunate of Rienzi, must not be confounded with movements hostile to the Papacy, nor must it be given more importance than it realh^ deserves. Rienzi (Cola the son of Lorenzo) took his first steps towards obtaining the sovereignty of Rome in union witli the Papal legate, Raymond bishop of Orvieto. T]ie legate was no doubt his docile instru- ment ; but still for most of the brief months in which Rienzi ruled, he l^.ad the Church on his side. A man of great eloquence and enthusiasm, of high-pitched and often visionary ideas, he infused his own spirit into the Ronian people, and made them believe that the dreams which he had called up out of old Roman history were The Popes at Avignon. 47 capable of realisation in the time of Home's utter degradation. Such was the sway he held over them that the people were content to submit to an adminis- tration of justice far more severe, because far more equitable, than anything that had been known to them for centuries. But the city, it is evident enough, was not prepared for such a revolution as he carried out. It might prevail for a moment, — actually, it held its ground from May to December I 347 ; — but the causes which had so long made Rome a scene of tumult and anarchy could not be uprooted once for all. Rienzi himself was not fitted by nature for the calm continu- ous government of a State. He became vain-glorious, arrogant, egoistic : he ceased to believe in himself, — the most dangerous thing for a man who has raised himself to power ; — and thus at almost the first breath of opposition he fled from Rome, and hid himself among the Fraticelli on the border of Naples. The choice of his retreat is significant, for we cannot but observe that a movement such as he led implied a necessary reflexion on the Popes whose departure from Rome had caused the disorders he soucrht to remedy : Rienzi was making reforms which it was their duty to have made. He condemned in indignant language their desertion of the holy city. Hence it was that he fell under the censure and malediction of Clement the Sixth as a usurper of the Papal rights. While professing and intending the utmost reverence for the Church, Rienzi was vigorous in attacking abuses in it as well as in the State. He desired to reform both. He was aware how far the Church of his day was separated from that of the apostles. Perhaps 48 Movements for Reform. already during his Roman ascendency lie was imbued, as we know lie was afterwards, with the Franciscan doctrine of evangelical poverty. We cannot help com- paring him with that older Roman patriot, Arnold of Brescia, who held and enforced the same views as to poverty and primitive purity years before Saint Francis was born, who made a revo- lution in Rome not unlike Rienzi's, but who, unlike Rienzi, fell a victim to a greater power than himself and was condemned to death by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Rienzi remained in obscurity for more than two years. Then, in the summer of 1 3 50, he went to Prague to lay his case before the Emperor, now Charles the Fourth, most ecclesiastical of princes, who would have no dealings with him until he had made his peace with the Pope. To Avignon therefore Rienzi pro- ceeded, was tried by three cardinals, and — the common penalty when a man was less a criminal than a dangerous person to leave at large — was condemned to imprisonment. But nothing can show us more decisively how unreal was the cause of liis condemnation than the fact that in the very next year he was sent back by the Pope, with the title of senator, in company with the military cardinal legate Albornoz, to set matters in order in Rome. He had not been long there before a riot broke out, and the Octobers, fickle populace fell upon him and slew him. '^5'^ The tribuneship or senatorship of Rienzi left no imitators : Rome, with or without a Pope in her midst, went on as before ; and no attempt was made to restore the idea of a Republic until a century later, The Popes at Avignon. 49 and then the attempt was as futile as Rienzi's had been. At the death of Clement the Sixth in December 1352 the college of cardinals was almost wholly French. He had himself promoted twenty-nine car- dinals, and twenty-four of them were Frenchmen. The college before entering the conclave for the election of a new Pope passed two resolutions, one to prevent the enlargement of their number and thus to secure for themselves a permanent majority, the other estab- lishing their right to one-half of the Papal revenue. Innocent VI. They then elected Stephen Aubert, a Limou- 1352-1362. g|j^^ ^Y\o took the title of Innocent the Sixth. He immediately rescinded the act of the college to which as cardinal he had sworn a few days before. He set his face firmly against pluralities, non-residence, and similar abuses ; nepotism was a licence which he only allowed to himself. He also tried to keep the vices and extravagance of the cardinals within bounds, and per- sonally showed a good example in this respect. The success of his legate Albornoz in reducing the Papal dominions in Italy to comparative tranquillity might now appear to open the way for the Papal Court to return to Rome. But Innocent had no ambition to enter upon so dangerous an enterprise. Whilp France was sinking into temporary insignificance, he still kept to the fixed policy of his predecessors ; he held aloof from Edward the Third, and resolutely declined to pro^ mote a single English cardinal. His successor William Grimoald, Urban the Fifth, was a Benedictine monk of high character. Frugal and austere in his own life, he did as much as any man C.H. D 50 JMOVEMENTS FOR REFORM. could to clieck the abuses wliicli still reigned in tlio Court at Avignon. What he saved in display and luxury he spent munificently in founding ' and restoring monasteries ; he founded him- self a college at Montpellier for the study of theology and the canon law, and supported (we are told) no less than a thousand scholars in different universities. The real earnestness of Urban's aims is proved by the fact that he not merely promised, as several Popes before him had done, to return to Eome, but actually did return. The city itself was too insecure for a permanent residence, but Urban main- tained himself not far off, at Montefiascone, for three years. The constant opposition however of his car- dinals, who pined after the delights of Avignon, added to the unruly state of the country which Albornoz had only been able for a time to appease, coni- ' pelled the Pope at last to go back to Avig- non, where in a few months he died. He was followed by Gregory the Eleventh, a nephew of Clement the Sixth, whom his uncle had made a cardinal at the age of seventeen or eighteen, and had carefully educated in the professional studies of theo- logy and canon law. Gregory, though a man of great ability, was continually foiled by the political difficul- ties against which he had to contend. In Franco itself, despite the treaty of Bretigny, there was chronic war on a small but not less exasperating scale, while in Italy the rise of the Yisconti to ascendency threat- ened to destroy once for all the territorial position of the Papacy there. It was this latter cause which in- duced the Pope to follow Urban's example and return The Popes at Avignon. 51 to Rome. He readied the city in January I 377, and like Urban, there is little doubt, would have abandoned the undertaking had he not been surprised by death — he was only forty-seven — in the spring of the following year. With Gregory ends the inglorious line of the Avignonese Popes ; his pontificate is followed by the humiliation of the long schism which distracted the allegiance of Europe for more than a generation. While the Popes were mainly occupied with political affairs, and while the demoralisation in high places was Reiidous penetrating every rank in the Church, the disorder. rcHgious disorder of the time manifested itself in various and incongruous forms. The laity sank into an easy-going secularism, only to be broken by occasional outbursts of fanatical enthusiasm. Thrice in the first half of the fourteenth century Italy was disquieted by the appearance of crowds of ' Flagellants,' wild people who expiated their sins by unremitting terrible scouroino-s : the third time, during: the panic of the black death, the rage spread over Western Europe ; a visitation of this sort was never unattended with movements of religious ex- citement. In England indeed the Flagellants hardly made any stir ; in France the King and the University of Paris forbade and condemned their practices : but in Germany and the Low Countries their fanaticism was unrestricted and beyond control. They heralded the end of the world, plainly foreshown (it was held) by the universal pestilence. Superstitious beliefs of dif- ferent kinds seem now to grow in prevalence. The chronicles are full of records of persons ' possessed,' and of their fearful deaths. Prophecy is revived and 52 Movements for Reform. visionary preachers acquire a strange sway over tlie people, especially of Italy, and even over the less excitable Popes. Some, like the friar John de Roche- taillade, were quietly suppressed by life-long imprison- ment ; but others, the two prophetesses, Saint Bridget of Sweden and Saint Catharine of Siena, enthusiasts with the purest aims but of highly hysterical tem- perament, had no little influence in arousing among the Italians a sense of the necessity that society should reform itself, as well as in urging the Popes to take up their residence once more at Rome. The very ex- travagance of these religious movements is but a new evidence that the life of the Church was deranged and needed to be disciplined by more Christian rulers than those it then possessed. There was not one of these preachers or prophets who did not couple, with his visions of the future, denunciations, as severe as they were true, of the vices of the Papal government. But the first declared resistance to it on a large scale of which we have to speak started not from the moral so much as from the political difficulties which it was felt to involve. France in tlie days of Boniface the Eighth, Germany under John the Twenty-second, had each shown how a national feeling must perforce rise into existence against the aggression of the Papacy. England, as yet peculiarly free from heresy, and liberal above other countries in its gifts to the Papal treasury, was now to take up the cause which France had no longer any reason for maintaining, and which Germany had given over in despair. And England, thanks partly to the The Papacy and Exgland. 53 submission of King John, was treated by the Popes in a more masterful way than other countries.^ During the reign of Edward the Second Papal provisions and reservations, — that is, in most cases, the appointment by the Pope to a benefice during the lifetime of the incumbent, — were multiplied to an extent previously unknown. Appeals to the Papal Court and applications for dispensations and other privileges from it were more and more felt as a national grievance. The annual tri- bute pressed the more hardly as the land was drained of its resources by the exhausting succession of wars with France. Against each of these practices Edward the Third took repeated and resolute action. When in 1343 Clement the Sixth 'provided' two Pro visions. ti -t^tii c t-t- cardmals to English benefices, the King expelled their proctors (who had come over to take possession) from the kingdom, and wrote a letter of serious expostulation to the Pope. But the efiect of such remonstrances was generally lost, because the King was not disinclined to avail himself of the Pope's mediation for the purpose of appointing men whom he himself desired to promote. At last in 135 I the statute of Provisors condemned to imprisonment all who should receive Papal provision, at the same time ingeniously transferring the patronage of such bene- fices to the King. The Pope however still retained his right to appoint to sees left vacant by translation, ^ See on this whole subject Bishop Stubbs's Constitutional Uistory of England, 3, ch. xix. : ' England seems to have been the great harvest- field of imposition.' Compare also Mr. Hunt's volume on 7Vie Enrjlish Vhitrch in the Middle Af/es, in the present series, which has appeared 6ince this work was written. 54 Movements for Reform. tliat is, by the removal of a bishop from one see to another ; and it is a suflicient proof that the Statute of Provisors had not afforded the necessary safeguard against the abuses at which it was aimed, that a con- gress had to be arranged in I 374 to reopen the whole question.-^ The opportunity for escaping the jurisdiction of the royal courts by an appeal to Rome was not unnatu- rally regarded as an injury to the rights of the King of England. In 1358, when the Bishop of Ely carried an appeal to the Pope, and obtained the excommunication of some members of the royal Council, the King imprisoned the envoys from the Papal Court, had them tried by his justices, and finally put to death. But it is certain that since the death of Henry the Third appeals of an important character had become greatly reduced in number. The ordinance of 1353 ' against annullers of judgement in the King's courts ' forbade nnder stringent penalties the prosecution in foreign courts of suits cognisable by the law of England. In 1365 a statute was passed which expressly directed the prohibition against suitors in the Papal Court; and finally the great statute of Prasmunire in 1393 declared that any one who should obtain bulls or other instruments from Home was liable to forfeiture. The Popes in vain attempted to obtain the repeal of this statute, and from the date of its enactment appeals to Pome became less and less frequent. At the same time the spirit of it was evaded by the continued permission of the practice of dispensations. Instead of cases being heard by ^ See below, pp. 75 f. The Papacy and England. 55 tlie Pope in person, they were no\7 brouglit before judges whom he commissioned to act for him in Eng- land ; and thus in reality the foreign jurisdiction re- mained, though it was now exercised on English soil. The King had still the power to prohibit such acts, but he found it convenient to waive it. The third cause of discontent against the Roman Court to which we have referred arose from the obliga- tion of payino- an annual tribute of a thousand Tlie tribute. i i -r. r\ n marks to the Pope. On financial grounds, especially during the French war, this debt was felt to be burthensome ; it had already fallen into arrear since 1333. Still if this payment was a legal due, the fact of its inconvenience would furnish no argument against its payment. It was however regarded as an iuiposition resting upon a personal act of King John, unauthorised by and thoroughly dishonourable to the English nation ; and this is the reason why it not merely fell into arrear but was at length repudiated. We may be inclined to dispute the morality of this repudiation, which was sanctioned in 1366 ; but the truth is that parliamentary institutions had by that time become so necessary a part of our governmental machinery that men were hardly able to go behind them and conceive of a time when the King could constitutionally act without them. Even had this not been the case, the objection to recognise what this payment implied, namely, the feudal dependence of the English Crown upon the Roman See, at a time when the Pope was understood to be the declared ally of France, is an objection clearly intelligible, if not defensible, on grounds of genuine national sentiment. For our 56 JIIOVEMENTS FOR REFORM. present purpose the repudiation of the tribute is of interest since it gave, so far as is known, the first opportunity to Wycliffe for appearing as the sup- porter of the parliamentary contention against the Koman supremacy. It is worthy of notice that in 1374, when the Pope repeated his claim for the tribute and demanded that the King should levy a talliage to support him in his contest with the Flor- entines, while the churchmen present in a Great Council refused to deny the Pope's right, the Pro- vincial of the Dominican order asked to be excused replying, but another friar John Mardesley flatly- denied all temporal power to the Papacy, and the secular lords, seemingly with one consent, main- tained that King John had no right whatever to yield his realm to the Pope and that the grant was totally illegal.-^ Besides the tribute, the Eoman Church drew an income from England from three distinct sources : Papal income ^^'^t, there was the ancient Romescot or from England. Peter's pcucc, which had long been com- muted for about ^200 ; secondly, there were fees for bulls and dispensations, and on promotion to bishop- ricks and other benefices ; and thirdly, voluntary offerinofs. It was not so much the sums that were exacted as the manner of their exaction that raised discontent. The collector appointed by the Pope carried out his duties usually in such a way as to make him highly unpopular both with the clergy and the laity. Travelling through the country in great 1 An account of these curious proceedings will be found in the continuation of the Ealogium Uistorlarum, 3. 337 ff. The Papacy and England. 57 state and witli a numerous retinue, his attitude was apt to be imperious, and tlie offerings demanded by him could hardly be described as voluntary. It was complained by the Commons of the Good Parliament that the collector's emissaries acted as spies, noting vacancies — no doubt both present and prospective vacancies — in benefices, with a view to the exercise of joatronage by the Pope.'^ Besides this, the very posi- tion of the collector in the kingdom was felt as an intrusion, and an oath had to be framed to bind him to do nothing against the King's majesty or the law of the realm. Probably indeed in the latter part of the fourteenth century the Papal collector was not so im- portant a person as he had been in earlier times ; yet the feeling against him combined with a general irrita- tion at the conduct of the Papacy, and like the question of the tribute it furnished Wycliffe with an argument against the secularised condition of the Church which was accepted as just by a very considerable party among the laity, and not the laity only, of England. For the feeling of discontent spread itself in various ways, and found expression in various forms. The state of the ^^^k that Church matters should enter into ELigiish clergy, common party politics had now become a reality. The high ecclesiastics saw that their interests were to a great extent bound up with those of the Pope, to whom many of them owed their ap- pointment ; and against them there rose up a power- ful party among the nobility, who had no doubt views of their own as to the proper persons to whom the * Forty-fifth petition of Parliament of 1376, in the Rotali Pavlia- mentorum, 2. 33S. 58 ]\l0VEMENTS FOR ReFORM. vast ecclesiastical revenues should be transferred. The desire of plunder is a frequent element in reforming policy ; and in the days of Richard the Second a party of the nobles, equally with the socialistic rebels of I 3 8 1 , though they started from entirely opposed principles, tended towards schemes of spoliation. At the same time the fact that a majority of the bishops generally belonged to noble English families prevented the oc- currence of more than temporary conflicts with the secular nobility. Further, if they were divided among themselves, much more were the inferior clergy. The ordinary parish priest, the secular clergy at large, had interests which placed them in direct and continual conflict with the mendicant orders, and the mendicant orders had a standing feud with the monks. The old dispute about the necessity of the observance of poverty was by no means forgotten, and every now and then broke forth into violent controversy. J In 1356 Richard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Ar- magh, found such a controversy raging in London, Friars and ^^<^ prcached strongly against the Franciscan I'ossessioners. tencts. The result was that by the influ- ence of his opponents he was cited to Avignon ; there in November 1357 he made his defence in a sermon which is still preserved and which throws a clear light on the causes of the widespread animosity that existed against the friars.^ The Archbishop goes to the root of the matter, and assails the principle of begging — except for sheer need — as unauthorised by the example ^ It is entitled Defcnsorium Curatorum, and has been several times piinted, e.g. in Edward Browne's Appendix to Gratius' Fasciculus Jlcrum cxjiclcndo.rum et Jnyicndavum, pp. 466-486. The Papacy and England. 59 of Christ, and tlierefore, since this is the pattern laid down by Saint Francis, unauthorised by tlie founder of the order. His practical charges, however much ex- aggerated we may hold them, are of particular interest. The friars, he says, departed from the rules of their profession in greed for increased power and influence. They interfered with the legitimate authority of the parish clergyman by taking upon themselves to hear confessions. True, this privilege was once conceded to them by Alexander the Fourth ; but subsequent de- crees had modified it so as not to impair the rights of the parish priest : yet in spite of this the friars had o;radually gained an ascendency over the minds of the people, and thus not merely done wrong to the parson but diverted into the funds of their order the offerings which should have been employed for the benefit of the parish. Another charge made by FitzEalph is that the friars encroached upon the rights of parents, making use of the confessional to get hold of their children and induce them to enter their convents, to become in due time friars themselves. Hence, the Archbishop states, the University of Oxford had fallen to one-fifth of its former numbers : parents were un- willing to send their sons thither, and preferred to bring them up as farmers, so that the ministry of the Church failed of its natural supply. It was the arguments of FitzPialph that furnished a model to Wycliffe when at a late period in his career he came to take up arms against the friars : Fitz- Ealph was also the chief source of some of Wycliffe's most characteristic views. Here however we only notice his polemic as an illustration of the hostility 6o Movements for Reform. which existed between different sections of the Church. No reader of contemporary chronicles written by monks or by friars is ignorant of the strong motives of interest and partisanship that held them asunder, or of the strong expression which their animosity took. While thus the jealous opposition of seculars, friars, and monks, happily prevented the formation of a single Church party with anti-national views, — a danofer which had arisen in earlier centuries of the ]\Iiddle Ages, — at the same time it helped to keep alive the popular notion that the Church was in an evil state. The prevalence of pluralities and non- residence encouraged this idea ; and it is probably not too much to say that in the latter part of tbe four- teenth century there were few persons in England (whose interests were not directly connected with them) who were not sensible of the abuses under which religion was labouring and of the necessity of some sort of reform. ( 6i ) CHAPTER lY. THE EARLY LIFE OF JOHN WYCLIFFE. There are few medieval writers about whose early life we are at all satisfactorily informed. The most tangible facts about them commonly rest upon later tradition, and the contemporary data are as a rule so fragmentary that without fuller knowledge than we possess it is hopeless to reconcile their apparent contradictions. To no bio- graphy are these remarks more applicable than to that of John WyclifFe. Every fact in his early history has been the subject of lively controversy ; and while in the present work results should be stated rather than processes, it will be impossible to avoid reference to the doubts which still hang over some of the critical points in his career. For Wycliffe's birthplace, beyond Walsingham's state- ment that he was a northerner, our sole authority is John Wycliffe's birth Lcland, who travelled through England in and family. ^|^g scarch for historical materials in the latter part of the reign of Henry the Eighth. Leland tells us in one place that Wycliffe derived his origin from the village of Wycliffe-on-Tees, a name familiar to readers of Marmion ; elsewhere he notices that 62 Movements for Reform. he was born at Ipreswel (evidently tlie place now called Hips well), a mile from Richmond in Yorkshire. The two passages are of course easily reconcilable : one indicates the family from which he sprang, the other the village where he was actually born ; and there is now no further difficulty about the matter, though all his biographers have been misled by a misprint in the edition of Leland into seeking after an imaginary vil- lage called Spreswell. The date of Wycliffe's birth is entirely unknown. As he died of paralysis in I 384, it has been argued that he must have been advanced in years, so that it is unlikely that he was born much after 1320. After the practice of those days he no doubt came up to Oxford quite young. The objection that the dan- Education at g^r of the roads would preclude a boy from Oxford. making so long a journey is not only raised in ignorance of the organisation of ' bringers of scholars ' and common carriers which was employed for this particular purpose, but is also contradicted by the fact of numerous pupils being sent to Oxford at a very early age from all parts of England, in the Middle Ages. Considering that, with an academical popula- tion of a good many thousands, only five small colleges then existed, the probability would be that Wycliffe was not attached to any college, were it not the case that a specially northern college existed in the foundation of the Balliols of Barnard Castle, not many miles from his home, that several indications are found of a connexion between his family and that college, and above all that John Wycliffe himself subsequently t)ecame Master of Balliol, an office which bv statute The Early Life of John Wycliffe. (j^ could only be given to a Fellow of the house. There is therefore no reason for disturbing the generally accepted view that it was here tliat he received his university edncatiou, though at the same time it is possible that he previously went through a rudi- mentary 'grammar' course, such as, in the dearth of local schools, was very commonly pursued at Oxford. The studies required for the degree of Bachelor of Arts can only be gathered imperfectly from detached notices. The old distinction of the seven studies. Ti 1 1 • • 11" liberal arts, the trixium belongmg to the undergraduate course, and the quadrivmm being pre- liminary to the degree of Master, had long been obso- lete, though the names lingered on. The immense expansion of philosophical interest consequent on the translation of the works of Aristotle in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, before which time only some of his logical treatises had been known to Western Christendom, had in fact rendered the old classifica- tion quite inadequate. But the system which took its place is obscure. ' While grammar and logic wers invariably studied before determination,' the last exerr cise before proceeding to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, ' and music, geometry, astronomy, and moral philosophy, after determination ; there was no fixed rule of general obligation as to the time at which rhetoric, arithmetic, and natural and metaphysical philosophy should be studied. Priscian, Donatus, and Terence were the authors most frequently read in the schools of grammar; Porphyry, Boethius, Aristotle, and Petrus Hispanus, in those of logic ; and Aristotls 64 Movements for Reform. again in those of tlie three philosopliies.'^ It is almost unnecessary to add that in WyclifFe's time Greek was unknown as a subject of study in Oxford. After about four years the scholar would ' determine/ at the age perhaps of seventeen or eighteen ; three years of further study would enable him to ' incept,' in other words, to become a Master of Arts. Beyond this stage no Fellow of Balliol could proceed, since in 1325 the College had ordered, by a deed to which Richard FitzRalph was one of the signatories, that its Fellows should apply themselves exclusively to the liberal arts. The study of theology was thus pro- hibited to them, at least so far as it led to a degree in that faculty. In I 340 however a new endowment established six theological fellowships, the holders of which were bound to incept in divinity within thirteen years. Under these conditions probably Wycliffe resided at Balliol until he was elected Master, some time after 1356, but not later than I 360. A diffi- Official career. , , . ^ ^ . „ , ^ , culty has indeed arisen from the fact that a certain John AVycliffe was Fellow of Merton in 1356. It is clear from the precision of the notice in the Merton records, that this Fellow was believed to be the reformer, by those who ought to have known, not many years after his death : at the same time there is a preponderance of evidence to show that he was confounded with a namesake. At least, as we have said, Wycliffe must have been a Fellow of Balliol at the time of his election as Master. So soon as 1 3 6 1 ^ II. C. Maxwell Lyte, History of the University of Oxford, 200 f. The hARLY Life of John Wyclifff. 65 he accepted a college living, that of Filling-ham in Lin- colnshire, and probably left Oxford for some time. In 1363 however he was back again, this time resident in Queen's College, a fact which is explained by the practice of letting rooms not required by the college /to other members of the University. At Queen's Wycliffe appears to have lived for part at least of the 3-ears 1363—5. In 1368 he obtained from the Bishop of Lincoln leave of absence from his benefice for the term of two years, in order to ' devote himself to the study of letters at Oxford ; ' but being presented almost immediately to the living of Ludgarshall in Buckinghamshire, he was probably able to combine his parochial duties w^ith a frequent residence at Oxford, the distance beins^ not more than some fifteen miles. Plainly his interests were more closely connected with his Universit}^ than with his parish ; and if, as is gene- rally believed, he was now engaged in the course of study required for a degree in theology, it was neces- sary for him to spend much of his time at Oxford. But already Wycliffe had become an influential person not only at Oxford but at the royal Court. We Connexion ^^'^'^ already uoticcd that in 1366 Parlia- with the Court, j^gj^^ rcfuscd to pay tribute to the Pope. Whether Wycliffe had anything to do with counselling this policy is unknown ; but at least his advocacy was employed to defend it. A certain monk, it appears, had protested against the action of Parliament, and Wycliffe was called upon to reply. The tenour of the document which he produced ^ is decidedly of an ^ Dcterminatio qucedam de dominio, printed by John Lewis, Life of JViclif, Appendix 30. C. H. E 66 Movements for Reform. official cliaracter. ^ As/ he says, ' I am tlie King's chaplain {iKcidiaris regis clcricus talis qucdis) I willingly take upon myself the task of making answer.' Besides his own arguments, -which are chiefly devoted to the maintenance of the view that the civil State has the power of depriving the Church of its possessions in case of need, Wycliffe gives an account of the speeches made by seven lords ' in a certain council ' against the payment of the tribute. This has been some- times regarded as a genuine Parliamentary report ; but some remarkable coincidences with Wycliffe's special political views, not to speak of the way in which each speaker is made to keep to an entirely distinct line of argument, show that whatever their foundation, the form in which the speeches are de- veloped is Wycliffe's own. In this light the tract is of great interest as affording the first glimpse we have into his opinions on the general question of the relation of the civil State towards the Church. The second lord, for instance, argues that ' no tribute or rent should be granted save to those who are capable,' and therefore not to the Pope : ^ for the Pope ought above all to be a follower of Christ, but Christ would not be a pro- prietor of civil lordship, and so neither should the Pope.' This is Wycliffe's doctrine of evangelical poverty. The third lord maintains that the Pope as * the servant of the servants of God ' (in allusion to the formal heading of Papal documents) ought only to receive taxes in return for service (ininistcrium) rendered ; but since he does nothing to benefit our kingdom, but on the contrary helps our enemies, we The Early Life op John Wyclifee. 6j ought to witliliold the payment. Here again is AVycliffe's position that ' lordship ' involves tlie reci- procal relation of ' service.' The fourth lord argues that the Papal claim to be lord-in-chief of Church property is prejudicial to the King's rights, since on this showinof one-third of the land of Enofland must he outside the King's lordship : but there cannot be two lords of the same territory, so that only one of the two can be truly lord-in-chief; and this lord-in-chief must be the King. A similar statement as to the amount of ecclesiastical property in England (except that it is now reduced to one-fourth) appears later on in Wycliffe's treatise De Ecclesia (ch. xv.) with the same inference as to its bearing on the royal prero- gative. The fourth lord proceeds to say that, since the Pope in these respects plainly ' holds ' of the King, he ought to do homage and service for his tenancy ; which as he omits, he forfeits all rights, and the obligation of paying tribute ceases. The fifth lord maintains that King John's surrender as the price of his absolution and of the relaxation of the interdict was in itself simoniacal, and therefore void ; an argument much more likely to occur to a theo- logian than to a layman. We give these examples of the lords' speeches, partly in order to show that, in the shape in which we have them, they are not speeches actually made by the advocates of King Edward's policy, but rather represent the arguments which appealed to Wycliffe himself as appropriate to the occasion ; and partly to introduce the reader to a style of reasoning which forms a highly characteristic element in Wycliffe's treatment of Church politics. 68 JMOVEMENTS FOR ReFORM. Just before this first action of WyclifFe's in regard to public affairs, lie had received, according to the view Supposed post now generally accepted, the office of Warden at Oxford. Qf Canterbury Hall in Oxford,^ a foundation the site of which is still marked by the Canterbury quadrangle of Christ Church. This Hall had been established a few years earlier by Simon Islip, arch- bishop of Canterbury, as a mixed foundation of monks and secular clergymen ; in December 1365 he removed the regulars and appointed seculars in their place, with "Wyclifie at their head. Obviously, as indeed one might have foretold from the beginning, the association of clerks in many ways so opposed was not a successful arrangement ; and we can hardly doubt that the change made by the Archbishop was determined by som.e de- finite outbreak of hostility between the rival elements in the Hall. At the same time it could scarcely be expected that the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, for whom it had been in part designed, would bear the loss of their privilege patiently. So when Islip 1 In a popular work like this I give the accepted statement. But I am bcjund to add that I am by no means convinced of its truth. Archbishop Islip was at the time he nominated the Warden, lying paralysed at IMayfield in Sussex, and the vicar of Mayfield was a John W}cliffe, who had in all probability been a Fellow of Merton College — Islip's own college — and had been presented to his living by the Arch- bishop, Combining these facts I cannot but believe that it was this Wycliffe who was made Warden of Canterbury Hall. His Wardenship was of short duration ; it ended in a scandal ; and it was almost inevitable that, wilfully or not, the identity of name should cause this scandal to be used against the reformer. Wycliffe's own allusion to the subject (Dc Ecd., cap. xvi. pp. 370 f.) need not mean more than that the case occurred within the knowledge of those whom he was addressing, not necessarily that it related to himself personally. The Early Life of John Wvcliffe. 69 died, and the Benedictine Simon Langham became archbishop in his room, Wvcliffe was naturally enough ousted, and with him all his secular fellows. It was seen that the foundation could only consist satisfactorily of one of the two classes, and the monks were now in favour. Perhaps both the appointment and the removal of Wvcliffe were somewhat high-handed actions, but it is hard to to say whether either Archbishop overstepped his lawful powers, except in omitting to seek the royal confirmation for his appointment. Wycliffe and his friends appealed to Rome, but their proctor on more than one occasion failed to appear before the Court, in spite of due summons. Contumacy like this was fatal to a suit, but the Papal Court seems to have given an honest judgement against Wycliffe, since there could be no manner of doubt that the original scheme of foundation expressly con- sidered the interests of the monks, and these interests had been set at nought by Islip's subsequent change. Granted that the Hall, if it was to prosper, must con- sist only of monks or of seculars, the former might fairly possess the prior claim. The Papal decision was given on the iith May 1370; it was confirmed by the King on the 8th April 1372. The dates are of importance because it has lately been pretended that Wycliffe only turned to politics when his depriva- tion from the Wardenship at Canterbury Hall had discredited him at Oxford ; whereas it is undisputed that his political activity began in 1 366, and at the same time his Latin works prove that from this time onwards he was as regularly engaged in teaching at Oxford as his parish duties allowed him to be. If 70 Movements for Reform. any blame attaches to any one in the affair of Canter- bury Hall, it must be to Archbishop Islip. All the other features of the dispute are common to the end- less rivalry between monk and secular which we en- counter continually in the Middle Ages. The question throughout is one of party rather than one of right and wrong. If this series of transactions really refers to Wycliffe the reformer and not to a namesake, we derive from it one more fact in his academical advance- ment, namely, that by the time of his appeal to Urban the Fifth he was a Bachelor of Divinity. That in 1374 he was a Doctor is known positively from the letters patent nominating him to be a member of the royal commission to confer with the Papal representatives at Bruges on the question of ' provisions ; ' but how much earlier he proceeded to that degree there is at present no means of ascertaining. This date however is of peculiar importance, since it has been uniformly stated that it was first after his admission to the degree of Doctor that Wycliffe fell into erroneous views in matters of theology. Considering ture from tlic time of life at which he had now arrived it is perhaps allowable to conjecture that the date was prior to I 370. Various attempts have been made to fix this supposed turning-point in Wycliffe's career more closely.^ It was asserted in his ^ Shirley's arg;nment for a much earlier date, derived from a state- ment of Wycliffe's in his Detcrminatio contra Kylinyliam (printed in the appendix to the FascirnU Zizaniorum, p. 456), appears to rest upon a forced interpretation of that passage. The Early Life of John Wycliffe. yi own lifetime that his deprivation of the "Wardenship of Canterbury Hall led him to oppose the monastic system. Another early but unsupported tradition declared that disappointment at not being promoted to the bishoprick of Worcester — either in 1363 or 1368 — was the cause of his attack upon Church endowments. But even if the facts be so, it is hopeless to argue about motives. A personal element is too often present in the actions of the best men ; but we have no right to seek it in what may be after all merely the scandal current among their detractors. Besides, when a man comes into collision with a system, it is perfectly possible for him thus to become alive to defects in that system which he had previously accepted without suspicion as part of the established order of things, without this change of view being at all associated with personal feelings of jealousy or disappointment. In Wycliffe's own case it is sufficient to observe that until in i 3 8 i he ex- tended his attack to the doctrine of transubstantiation he was treated with the greatest respect by opponents. In his controversy with Cuningham, for instance, both combatants hit hard ; but the blows are given with the accustomed w^eapons of mediaeval disputation. There is a mixture of respectful criticism and of mild banter which shows us that we are reading simply a scholas- tic controversy between friends. Wycliffe's bitterest opponents, contemporary and later, are unanimous in their testimony to the high, if not the unique, position which he occupied in the Oxford schools ; and it is remarkable that when in 1377 Pope Gregory the Eleventh issued five bulls against sundry opinions attributed to him, three of these addressed to the J 2 Movements for Reform. Arcliblshop of Canterbury and the Bisliop of London make no mention of heresy, a word which only occurs in the bulls sent to the King and to the Univ^ersity of Oxford. The distinction may appear trivial ; but, remembering the care with which Papal documents were drawn up, it seems lawful to infer that the Pope did not then feel justified in bringing a charge of here- tical depravity against Wycliffe under a strictly eccle- siastical cognisance. The difficulty which exists in attempting to fix accurately the steps by which he was led into here- st:irres in his ^^^^ opiuious lias not yet been removed by opinions. ^j^y positive evideuco in his Latin writings. When we consider that in all probability the whole mass of his English works, including the two transla- tions of the Bible of which he was in part the author, are crowded into the last six or eight years of his life, we cannot say with certainty that his Latin writings, which are in the main earlier than his English ones, must necessarily have occupied more than a like num- ber of years. All that can be safely affirmed is that a certain number of works of a distinctly scholastic character, and with no features of individuality to separate them from others of their class, belong to an earlier date, let us say, than his admission to the degree of Doctor of Divinity, an event which we have placed approximately in 1370. From this time on- wards he devoted himself to expanding and illustrat- ing the views which he had doubtless already delivered in academical 'determinations' and lectures. Of such a development we have a clear instance in the relation subsisting between the tract concerning the Papal The Early Life of John Wvci.ifFE. 73 tribute in 1366 and his great work On Civil Lord- ship, of wliicli we can only say positively that it was written previously to 1377. The career of Wycliffe as an ecclesiastical politician runs evidently straight on from 1366; though his important writings on subjects involved in his political position are apparently some years later. It is clear that the Papal schism of 1378 was a determining force in the current of Wycliffe's speculation on the problem of Church and State ; but there is no sort of break in its course. Graduallv unfoldinor his views and jj^radually seekinc^ to find his way to the bottom of the points at issue, lie arrived at the double conclusion that the influence of the priesthood, as such, must be counterworked by the instruction of the laity in religious matters in their mother-tongue, and that the superstitious power (as he conceived it) attaching to the office of the priest rested upon the doctrine of transubstantiation, a doc- trine which Wycliffe came to believe was not founded on the authority of Holy Scripture. This last stage in his life is definitely dated in the spring of 1381 ; while his organisation of a system for English reli- gious teaching can hardly have been begun earlier than the condemnation of his views by the Pope in 1377. Thus from being a mere scholastic theologian Wyclifie came into conflict with the ruling forces in the Church first through his views as to the relation between Church and State, and secondly through his denial of what had been for some centuries a cardinal doctrine of Western Christianity. To this digression from the main course of Wycliffe 's biography we may add one remark which is the more 74 Movements for Reform. ueedful since it relates to a question which has been often agitated on insufficient knowledge : during all AV\xlifte's earlier career he had professed nothing but respectful admiration for the mendicant tious with tiie ordcrs ; in attacking Church endowments he had naturally opposed the monks, the ' possessioners,' as well as the rich secular clergy, but the friars remained free from his assault ; it is only in the last stage of his career that his polemic is directed, and now directed specially, against the friars. In other words the views which, perhaps in oral lec- tures, perhaps in written treatises, he had learned from Eichard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armagh (who had been Vice-Ohancellor of the University of Oxford about 1333), Wycliffe had at first applied only to the elaboration of his doctrine of dominium or ' lord- ship ; ' he had been content to combine them with the Franciscan position, which he had read in Ockham, of the necessity of evangelical poverty. In later years, while retaining his belief in this obligation, he accepted FitzRalph's attitude of uncompromising hos- tility to the mendicant orders. The seeming paradox of opposing the friars and yet upholding their specific tenet may be explained by the distance at which the friars of Wycliffe's day stood from the manner of life enjoined by their founders. At the same time it can hardly be questioned that the alliance which existed between the orders and the Papacy was not without influence in deciding Wycliffe's opposition to them. ( 75 ) CHAPTER Y. WYCLIFFE AND ENGLISH POLITICS. We now return to the time in WyclifFe's life in which as Doctor of Divinity he was actively engaged in work at Oxford, holding at the same time his living of Ludgarshall and a position of influence — probably he was still chaplain — at the Court. Of the favour in which he stood we have two proofs, both in the year I 374. First in April he was nominated by the Crown (in the minority of the patron of the living) to the rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. Kext in July he was appointed one of the royal am- Wvcliffe Royal "^ ^ ^ • i i t^ t Cnmiuissiouer bassadors to confer with the Papal represen- at Bruges. . tatives at iiruges ; his name stands second on the commission, next after that of the Bishop of Bangor ; and the dignity of his office is shown by the fact that he received payment at the noble rate (ac- cording to the then current value of money) of twenty shillings a-day. The negotiations were concerned with the old question of the Pope's right to interfere with Church-appointments in England, but the results were, as might be expected, practically illusory. Temporary concessions were made both on the part of the Pope and of the King, but they were such as might seem 7 6 3Ioi'j-:mf.xts for Reform. rather to establish than to impair the former's claim. It is however possible that some further points of agreement were arrived at, as a consequence of the congress, though not actually decided at that time ; since certain articles which were laid before Parlia- ment in February 1377, contain concessions which were stated to have been made by the Pope, though not committed to writing. Still, as we have before said, it was rather for the King's interest to make use of the Pope's pretension for the benefit of his own candidates than to surrender it in obedience to the national complaints. A system of collusion kept the system of provisions alive long after it was statutorily con- demned. The commissioners at Bruges had their rew^ard : the chief, Bishop Gilbert, was translated to the more valuable see of Hereford ; Wycliffe was given a prebend in the collegiate church of Westbury, which he soon resigned, possibly from some scruple about the tenure of benefices in plurality. Henceforward he was plain rector of Lutterworth and resided often at his living, though it is also certain that he gave up neither his occupation as a theological teacher at Oxford nor as an influential person in London, where he used to preach, and is admitted even by his enemies to have made a strong impression both upon nobles and citizens. Association . withjuimof Whether or not it was through John of Gaunt that he first came into notice at Court, it was manifestly through this connexion that he continued to be employed as the Duke's agent in what many people regarded as mere partisan work. The problem of Church and State in John of Gaunt's mind WVCLIFFE AND ENGLISH POLITICS. yj assumed the simple form, how best to plunder the rich ecclesiastics for his own ends : Wycliffe's position in the matter was that endowments were an innovation, and a hindrance to the proper spiritual purpose of the Church. The ideas of the two converged only in their common dislike of the endowed classes whether of priests or monks. Wycliffe possibly did not see clearly how far his protector aimed ; he was content to be made use of, with his mind too full of his own honest desire for the purification of the Church, for him to be able to perceive that the alliance into which he had entered was very naturally liable to be misunderstood. He was regarded as the Duke's tool, and was attacked as such. In February 1377 he was summoned to appear before Convocation in London to answer sundry charges Summons at ^^ erroueous teaching. What these charges St. Paul's. ^,xQrQ is not known, but there can be little doubt that they related to his views on the subject of the possessions of the Church and to the limitation which he sought to impose upon the power of excom- munication. His appearance in Saint Paul's Cathedral of itself shows us the character which the case bore. He was accompanied by the Duke of Lancaster and by the Marshal of England, the same Lord Percy who was a few months later raised to the earldom of Northum- berland. Four Doctors of Divinity belonging to the mendicant orders were in the Duke's train. Unfor- tunately the trial came' to nothing, for before Wycliffe could open his mouth, the court was broken up by a rude brawl between his protectors and William Courtenay, the bishop of London. The citizens would yS Movements for Re for a/. not endure to see their Bishop insulted in his own church, and a riot ensued. John of Gaunt's palace in the Savoy would, we are told, have been destroyed but for the prenerous intervention of the Bishop. Wycliffe, personally innocent, may well have suffered in credit by the behaviour of his friends, but of this nothing is recorded. The next proceedings against him were the issue of negotiations which must have been set on foot some time before the affair at St. Paul's. The result appeared in the promulgation of five Papal bulls against liis teaching. The first rumour of them reached Wy- cliffe, as he himself tells us {De Fcclcsia, ch. xv.), from the mouth of the Bishop of Rochester in Parliament. AVycliffe apparently was there in his quality of royal chaplain, and the date must be earlier than March 2, when the session ended.-^ But the bulls themselves were not actually issued for near three months. In January 1 377 Gregory the Eleventh had en- tered Bom 6 and terminated the exile of Avignon ; towards the end of May he issued the bulls aj^^ainst agalnst Wycliffe : so that the restoration of ^^ ' the Roman Papacy is almost coincident with the beginning of the campaign against the chief assail- ant of those abuses in the Church system which had grown to their maturity during the exile. Three of the bulls were addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, one to the University of Oxford, and one to the King. Enclosed was a list of eighteen 'conclusions' taken from Wycliffe's writings — in some copies they are enlarged to nineteen ; — if found guilty of maintaining them he was to be im- ^ The next Parliament met on October 13. Wycliffe axd English Polffics. 79 prisoned and to await tlie Pope's sentence. The bulls expressly affirmed Wycliffe's intellectual lineage ; he was following in the error of Marsiglio of Padua : and the articles with which he was charged relate solely to the questions agitated between Church and State, how far the Church's censures could lawfully affect a man's civil position, and whether the Church could rightly receive and hold temporal endowments. The main points in these conclusions are as follow : L— V. No man can grant anything to another and to his descendants in perpetuity : possession and the right to possess depend upon a man's being in a state of grace. VI. If the Church fail in its duty, the temporal lords may rightly and lawfully deprive it of its tem- poral possessions ; the judgement of such failure lying not with the theologian but with the civil politician. YII.— X. The mere act of the Pope, or of the Pope and cardinals, has of itself no power either to enable or to disable any man. Excommunication is of no effect unless its object be already self -excommunicated [by his sin]; it ought never to be exercised except upon offenders against the law of Christ. XL, XII. There is no warrant in the practice of Christ and his disciples for excommunicating a man for the withholding of temporal goods, nor have his disciples now-a-days the power to enforce temporal exactions by ecclesiastical censures. XIII., XIV. The Pope, or whosoever pretends to * bind ' and * loose,' only ' binds ' and ' looses ' so far as he conforms himself to the law of Christ. XV. Every duly ordained priest has the power of 8o Movements for Reform. conferring the sacraments, and thus also of absolving the penitent. XVI., XVII. repeat in stronger language assertions already contained in earlier articles : the King has a right to deprive churchmen of their property if they habitually misuse it ; all grants being conditional, no matter who made them, it is lawful to take them away if they are improperly used. XVIII. A churchman, yea, the Roman Pontiff him- self, may be rightly rebuked and even arraigned by his subjects and by laymen. The death of King Edward the Third on the 2 1st June necessarily prevented any immediate action being taken against Wycliffe ; nor indeed credit with was the time favourable. Though John of Gaunt was not in the new council of government, the Princess of Wales, who had the natural charge of the young King, seems to have been not less favourably disposed towards Wycliffe. As soon as Parliament met he was consulted by it as to the right of withholding the national treasure from passing out of the country even at the Pope's demand ; a right which he supported in a state-paper still ex- tant, which does not read as the w^ork of a man who anticipated serious proceedings against him.^ He admits the possibility that the Pope might lay Eng- land under an interdict in the event of its refusal, just as he had laid Florence a year earlier ; but such a proceeding Tvould be of no effect : ' Supposing that the disciple of Antichrist should break forth into such madness, it is one comfort that censures of this sort ^ It is printed in the Fasciculi Zizaniorum, 258-271. WVCLIFFE AXD EXGLISH POLITICS. 8 1 are not binding in the eyes of God.' It would be a misreading of this passage to infer that Wycliffe had ah-eady learned to associate the name of Antichrist with the Pope. Should he take such action, Wycliffe says, he would be the disciple of Antichrist, but he has just before stated his conviction that ' our most holy father ' would not do anything so unreasonable. Nevertheless it is plain that Wycliffe was, not unnatu- rally, moved by the condemnation of his opinions, and at the same time that he relied with assurance on the support of Parliament. Was it likely that it should consult him on a matter so intimately affecting the rights of the Papacy, and yet allow him to suffer for the expression of his general opinions on the subject ? Accordingly with full confidence he laid his answer to the Pope's bull before the House.^ Nor had he mis- reckoned the drift of English opinion ; for, although no immediate steps are known to have been taken by Parliament on his behalf, we find it next year again invoking his advice, and when the critical moment of his trial arrived it was the Princess of Wales — the virtual regent — herself who ordered the proceedings to be stopped. The Pope had indeed unwittingly succeeded in harassing a variety of ' interests.' The Court had no Proceedings ^^^h to loso a useful and devoted servant ; against him. ^|^q people of England to a great extent felt that Wycliffe, even though in some ways he might be in error, was really fighting their battle ; and the University of Oxford was angry that a distinguished member of its body should be attacked, and chafed still ^ Printed in the Fasciculi Zizaniorum, 245-257. C. //. F 82 Movements for Reform. more at the invasion of its privileges threatened by the subsequent action of the bishops. For the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, instead of simply demanding Wycliffe's arrest, ordered that an December 18, enquiry should be held by the Oxford 1377. divines, and that WyclifFe should be sent on to be heard in person in London. The Oxford masters on the other hand, who had at first hesitated to receive the bull at all, some maintaining that the Pope had no right to order any man's imprisonment in England, finally resolved merely to enjoin Wycliffe o / to keep within the walls of Black Hall until they had come to a decision with respect to his opinions. The judgement was that the articles recited in the Papal bull were orthodox (fcras), but so expressed as to be susceptible of an incorrect meaning, a judgement doubt- less determined quite as much by academical feeling as by theological considerations. Still this did not free Wycliffe from the obligation of appearing in London, and the result might have been unfavourable had not the Princess of Wales sent a messenger on the eve of the appointed day, early in I 378, to forbid the bishops to give sentence against him. Wycliffe appeared in the chapel of Lambeth Palace, but while the bishops were anxiously pondering how to obey the Pope without offending the Princess of Wales, the session was cut short by an inroad of the London citizens with a crowd of the rabble at their heels, and Wycliffe escaped either scotfree or at most with a mild request that he would speak no more touching the conclusions in question.^ 1 So substantially the continuation of the Euloyium Historiarum, 3, 347 f., and the St. Alban's chronicle given in the Chronicon AnrjUcv, Wycuffe and Ex gush Politics. 83 It was a singular turn in popular feeling which changed WyclifTe from a hireling of the Duke of Lancaster into a sort of national champion ; and we can hardly be wrong in thinking that his report to Parliament con- cerning Papal demands for money had a good deal to do with the change. Ho-wever this may be, "Wycliffe returned to his old work and abated nothing of his vigour in the defence of what he considered the pure doctrine of the Church, a defence which necessarily involved an attack upon other doctrines and practices which he believed to be false and injurious. Immediately after the affair at Lambeth, occurred the schism in the Papacy which did more than anvthinfr to hasten his movement towards the position of a more radical reformer. It will be convenient therefore here to interrupt the story of his life in order to consider the nature of the opinions w^liich he had formed previously to that determining crisis, not in his career only, but in the history of meditfival Christendom. 173 f., 1S3, and in Walsingham's Ilistoria AnrjUcana, I, 345, 356. Those who speak of W^xliffe as having been enjoined to silence at St. Paul's a year earlier rely on chronicles which confuse the two hearings {eg. the continuation of the Polychronicon printed at the end of Mr. Rlaunde Thompson's edition of the Chronicon Anrjlicv, 396 f.). r 84 ) CHAPTER YI. WYCLIFFE'S EARLIER DOCTRINE. Wycliffe's writings are principally lectures, sermons, and sliort tracts written for special occasions. With Wycliffe's ^^^ exception of two works written in the ■writings. form of dialogue, there is not one of his productions of any considerable length that can be shown to have been originally written in the shape in which we have it, that is to say, as an independent literary composition. So far as they have been pub- lished, all the books that make up his Samma — many of which form substantial volumes when printed — were written as lectures, some perhaps in part as sermons ; and sometimes they include shorter tracts which ori- ginally stood by themselves. Wycliffe wrote as the occasion required, and put together what ma'^crials he had ready to hand quite without regard to literary exi- gencies. Hence it is natural that his writings should be full of repetitions, should cover the same ground more than once, and should be generally defective in arrange- ment. But this is only true when we look at them as complete books : their separate parts are severely drawn up according to logical rules, coordinated and subdivided in manifold-wis^e accordinsf to the taste of Wycliffes Earlier Doctr/xe. 85 the schools ; only unfortunately this same taste dc- nianded that the same points should be proved and re-proved, distinctions invented, analogies forced, and the real scope of the book industriously, as it were, concealed from view. These characteristics are indeed what we expect in the age of the extreme debasement of the scholastic method, when logic had ceased to act as a stimulus to the intellectual powers and had become rather a clog upon their exercise, and when men no longer framed syllogisms to develop their thoughts, but argued first and thought, if at all, afterwards. The course of the main argument is perpetually inter- rupted ; there are digressions, meanderings, excursions, innumerable : we seem to be moving rapidly, but we soon discover that we are moving in a circle. Such are the limitations of the world of thought in which Wycliffe lived. His formal treatment is of the poorest and most wearisome description : it is only when wo reach the special points which he set himself to prove, and which he thought he proved by means of all these clumsy processes, that we at all realise the intellectual vigour which, in spite of his method, Wycliffe possessed in no contemptible degree, although it is no doubt vain to compare him with the greatest thinkers of the Middle Ages. To the faults of his method too must be added those of his style. His Latinity is that of a time when scholars were ceasing to think in Latin. It is significant of his position that he is one of the founders of English prose-writing ; indeed often the readiest way of understanding an obscure passage is to translate it into English. We admire, while we 86 Movements for Reform. can hardly understand, the devotion which moved his disciples laboriously to transcribe his crabbed treatises in such numbers that, after all that burning and con- fiscation has done, they still exist, mostly in several copies, in the libraries of Vienna, Prague, and other places on the Continent, as well as in the English Universities, at Dublin, Lambeth, and elsewhere. We refer solely to Wycliffe's Latin works ; and of these it is not necessary to go beyond his works On the Lordship of God and On Civil Lordship, in order to obtain a clear view of the essential part of his teaching prior to the schism of 1378. His earliest productions, philosophi- cal treatises of a purely scholastic character, need not be more than mentioned. Only one has as yet found its way into print, and this is believed by its editor to I'epresent the mere notes of his lectures taken by one of his scholars.'^ When he passed to theology he did not, so flir as is known, for many years run counter to the received Histheoiogi- opinions of the Church. The impulse which caiwork. 2g^ j-^-Q^ further may be clearly traced to the teaching of Richard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armagh, w^ho had been a Fellow of Balliol College some years before WyclifFe himself. FitzEalph's attack upon the /mendicant orders had proceeded from a denial of their special doctrine of ' evangelical poverty ' to the de- velopment of a general theory of the relation of God to man which he formulated in the term domininm or ' lordship'. Wycliffe borrowed the conception from him, but endeavoured to combine it with the very doctrine of poverty against which his master had written. ^ Dc compositionc hominis, edited by R. Beer, 1884. Wycliffe's Earlier Doctrixe. Sy l\ot]ni\erty. Wycliffe was called upon to 100 Movements for Reform. write a defence of the duke's action at Westminster. This paper, which is still preserved and incorporated in the treatise Do. Ecclcsia^ seeks to lay down the limits within which the privilege of sanctuary is per- missible, and maintains that the duke was right in invading the sanctuary in order to bring escaped prisoners to justice ; it was they who began the attack and so the duke's officers cannot be blamed for the bloodshed which ensued. Wycliffe points out that the canon law itself admits exceptions to the universal privilege of sanctuary, and urges fairly enough that the privilege is one specially liable to be abused to the injury of society and the public peace. At the same time, when it is borne in mind that the viola- tion of the sanctuary was the last stage in a series of high-handed acts done by John of Gaunt in the mat- ter, one cannot help feeling that it was not a good case for argument on general grounds, and that Wycliffe did not raise his reputation by undertaking its defence. This 3' ear 1378 forms a turning-point in the re- former's life. On March 27 Pope Gregory the Eleventh Tiie Papal ^^^^ 5 ^^^^ successor Urban the Sixth was schism. elected, April 7. The French members of the cardinals' "college were highly dissatisfied at the return of the curia to Italy ; and the violent, tyrannical behaviour of the new Pope soon brought matters to a crisis. The validity of his election was called in ^ The subject is discussed at large from ch. vii. to xvi. inclusive ; but apparently only ch. vii., which exists in manuscript in a separate form, is the actual state paper, unless indeed the whole section (ch. vii.-xvi.) be not an elaboration of this. Wycliffe axd the Great Scii/sm. ioi question ; it was declared void, and in September an Antipope was chosen, who took tlie style of Clement the Seventh. Attachment to one or the other of the two claimants very soon became a question of nationality. Clement was naturally supported by France, and France followed by the Spanish kingdoms, Naples, and Scotland ; while England and the north (Flanders, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland), as well as Portugal, remained loyal to Urban. For / nearly half a century there were two lines of Popes, ^ Urban and his successors holding their own in Rome, or at least in the greater part of Italy, while Clement returned to Avignon and continued the tradition of the Babylonian exile. It was the Great Schism which changed Wycliffe from a critic to a declared opponent of the Papacy. Wyciiffe's poor ^^^ ^^ ^his change there were stages. First, v priests. £^ seems, he was mainly occupied in making his gospel known among the people of England at large. He set on foot an irregular body of itinerant preachers, and supplied them with an English Bible to direct their teaching. Neither of these schemes appears to have excited any immediate suspicion among churchmen. The * poor priests ' were not neces- sarily intended to conflict with the rights of the beneficed clergy. The conception that lay at the root of the institution was practically the same as that which had inspired the founders of the great mendicant orders. Nor again were the ' simple priests ' or ' poor preachers ' whom Wycliffe sent out over England as a rule illiterate men. Some of them no doubt were, but many were Fellows of Oxford colleges and some seem 102 Movements for Reform. to Lave enjoyed liigli respect in the University. The main principle on which they were designed to act was to supplement the services of th^ Church, which, held as they were in a language not understood of the people, tended to become a lifeless formality, by regular reliijfious instruction in their mother-touo^ue. In this aim Wycliffe was really carrying out a well-known tendency of his age. In 1362 it was ordered that English should be used in the courts of law. In 1363 the speech of the Chancellor in opening Parliament was in English ; and the practice was thenceforth fre- quently repeated. In 1 3 8 i Archbishop Courtenay, the Chancellor, opened Parliament with an English'sermon, and Archbishop Thoresby of York was active in pro- moting the use of the mother-tongue in preaching and in offices of devotion.^ >1 Wycliffe was distinguished from other workers to the same end by the fact that he not only urged the TheEncriish ^^^ ^^ English but made this use possible Bible. i^y ^Ijq translation of the Bible which he planned and superintended, and in great part executed himself. Parts of the Bible had been done into Eng- lish long before Wycliffe's time ; but Wycliffe was the first populariser as well as the first completer of the English Bible : and the fact that some hundred and fifty manuscripts, containing either the whole or some part of his versions, remain to us in spite of the vigorous measures taken to suppress them, is evidence enough of the wide diffusion which those versions obtained. As for the manner in which the transla- tions were made the following particulars may suffice. 1 See Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Eivjl, 2, Wycliffe and the Great Schism. 103 Wycliffe liimself started witli the New Testament : then his disciple Nicholas Hereford began the Old, which appears to have been completed by Wycliffe. Afterwards the whole was revised by John Purvey, his friend and assistant in his parish work at Lutterworth ; and this second edition was finished shortly after Wycliffe's death. Naturally it became the accepted text, and nearly all the existing copies are taken from it. In the edition of the work published at Oxford in 1850 under the care of Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederic Madden, Wycliffe's and Purvey's versions are printed in parallel columns. It is hardly neces- sary to add that the translation was made not from the originals but from the Latin Yulgate. These* labours might seem to have engrossed Wy- cliffe's energy in the years from 1377 or 1378 onwards ; and yet it was during this very time that he pro- duced probably the majority of his numerous writings. It was also during this time that he exposed himself to a definite charge of heresy. The influence of his preachers was quickly felt throughout the country. The common people were rejoiced by the simple and homely doctrine which dwelt chiefly on the plain truths of the Gospel, while the pungent invective which accompanied it added zest to their discontent at the heedless pastors whom they saw too generally about them. The feeling of resentment against the rich clergy, monks, and friars, was widespread but unde- fined. Wycliffe turned it into a distinct channel, — he was now persuaded that the friars were as bad as the monks ; — and his organisation enabled him to scatter his denunciation of them far and wide on a cono^enial 104 Movements eor Reform. soil. At the same time lie insensibly passed from an assailant of the Papal, to an assailant of tlie sacerdotal, po^Yer ; and in this wav was led to deny the Wvcliffe's ^ . / -^ denial of trail- speakmg evideiice of that power conveyed m substantiation. , t • /» t . . rn ttt the doctrine or transubstantiation. io Wy- cliffe as to some of the later reformers the doctrine was objectionable not primarily for theological but for political reasons. Of course he had to support his contention by theological arguments ; but these, it appears to us, were much rather the buttresses than the foundation of his view. He felt deeply that the failings of the Church arose in great measure from the pretensions of the priest- hood. They were, he held, abusing their trust when they claimed authority over their brother Christians, since all Christians were equal in the sight of God. To admit therefore that the priest had the power of * making the body of Clirist ' (this was the accepted orthodox phrase), was to exalt him to a position irre- concilable with that view of the Church which Wj'clifle maintained. Still the doctrine of transubstantiation had been generally accepted in the "Western Church for more than five centuries, and had been formally and authoritatively laid down for three. It had been fortified by all the subtle learning of the great school- men, and had gradually become the citadel of the priestly power. To take away this power of working a daily miracle was at once and justly felt as the most serious attack upon the whole church-system. In the summer of i 38 i Wycliffe first publicly denied that the elements in the sacrament of the altar suffered any material change by virtue of the words of conse- cration. The real presence of the body and blood of JVVCL/FFE A AD THE GrEAT ScilJSM. I05 Christ he entirely believed ; ^Yhat he denied was the change of substance in the host. The heresy was His condcmiia- proiuulgatcd in Oxford, and the Chancellor tiou at Oxford, ^f ^|jg University, William of Berton, was bound to take official cognisance of it. He summoned twelve doctors of theology and law, half the number being friars, to add their weight to a solemn and authoritative decree condemning the new doctrines maintained by ' certain persons filled with the counsel of the evil spirit,' but avoiding the mention of Wycliffe's name. The condemnation was announced to Wycliffe as he was sitting in the schools of Austinfriars in the act of disputing on the subject. He refused to accept the judgement, and made appeal, not, it was remarked, to the Pope or to any bishop — according to the invari- able practice in a matter of heretical depravity, — but to the King ; whereupon John of Gaunt, whether to protect his old ally or to disclaim any further association with him, promptly sent down a messenger to Oxford, enjoining Wycliffe to say no more on the perilous ques- tion. The reformer however continued to maintain his thesis, and was 2:>lainly not afraid of the University taking more serious measures against him. It is even possible that the Chancellor's act so strongly excited the feeling of the place that he had soon to resign his office, and was succeeded by one Robert Rygge, who more than inclined to support Wycliffe.-^ While Wycliffe was thus entering upon his most ^ Tlie precise order of events is uncertain, since Anthony Wood's dates for the successive chancellors do not allow of Berton's holdinj^ the office in 1 38 1, and no materials have yet been discovered for settlin;^ the chronology. I suspect that the actual condemnation did not take place until the beginning of 1382. io6 Movements for Reform. serious encounter with the established powers of the Church, perhaps before his teaching was actually con- demned by the University, a struggle of a different kind arose in England, in which it was natural that Tiie Peasants' ^^^^^ should sce the Carrying into effect of Revolt. 2^-g revolutionary principles. The peasants of the Eastern counties rose in arms ; they were joined by many of the baser sort, and much havock was done. Archbishop Sudbury was only the most conspicuous of a large number of victims. There is no evidence to connect Wycliffe personally with the rising. One of its leaders, John Ball, indeed made a confession that he learnt his subversive doctrines from Wycliffe. But the confession of a condemned man can seldom be accepted without reserve ; and Ball's assertion is invalidated not only by the repeated testimony of a contemporary his- torian, Knyghton, that he was a precursor of Wycliffe, but also by documentary evidence that he was excom- municated as early as 1366, long before Wycliffe ex- posed himself to ecclesiastical censure. The fact also, of which there is no doubt, that the rebels directed their special hostility against the Duke of Lancaster, is byitself enough to clear Wycliffe of any complicity in the affair. Had he not only supported it but also turned against his old patron, it is hard indeed to understand how it was that he was not brought up for trial. Wycliffe in truth was always careful to state his communistic views in a theoretical way ; they appear moreover to be confined to his Latin writings. At the same time it is very pos- sible that his less scrupulous followers translated them in their popular discourses, and thus fed the flame that burst forth in the revolt of 1381 ; perhaps it was a Wyclitfe and the Great Schism. 107 consciousness of responsibility in it that led tliem to cast the blame on the friars. Yet all readers of Eng- lish history know that there were deeper causes for disaffection in tlie social state of the country, of them- selves sufficient to account for the rebellion, without there being any need to call in the influence of Wy- cliffe ; though on the other liand one might wish that he had more publicly declared his condemnation of the excesses of which he was well aware, a condemnation which is only incidentally expressed in a single passage of his treatise On Blasphemy. When order was again restored, Courtenay who now succeeded Sudbury as Archbishop of Canterbury took The Earthquake ^ctive mcasurcs for repressing Wycliffite Council. opinions. He summoned a synod to ex- amine them, and ten bishops and fifty other persons assembled at the Blackfriars in London on the 17th May, 1382. The first session was interrupted by an earthquake, which was differently interpreted as a sign of the divine approval or anger. The Earthquake Council had no choice but to condemn the doctrines ; but Wycliffe does not appear to have been present nor any action at ail to have been taken against him per- sonally. His good fortune is inexplicable unless we accept the usual explanation that his popularity at Oxford rendered him a formidable person to attack. He was left at peace and the storm fell upon his disciples. The sequel forms a curious episode in university history. The Archbishop sent down a commissary. The Oxford Estcr Stokcs, to Oxford, with a mandate to Wyciiffites. prohibit the teaching of incorrect doctrines, but avoidinsr anv mention of the teacher's name. The io8 Movements for Reform. University authorities were by no means pleased at this invasion — so they held it — of their ancient privileges, '^i'lie Chancellor, R3'gge, had just appointed Nicholas Hereford, a devoted follower of Wycliffe, to preach before the University : he now appointed a no less loyal follower, Philip Repyngdon, for the same office. Stokes reported that he dared not publish the Arch- bishop's mandate, that he went about in fear of his life; it appeared that not the Chancellor only but both the proctors were Wycliffites, or at least preferred to support the Wycliffites to abating one jot of what they considered the privileges of the University. Still, when the Chancellor was summoned before the Arch- bishop in London he did not venture to disobey ; and promptly cleared himself of any suspicion of heresy. The council met again (June 1 2) at the Blackfriars, and Rygge submissively took his seat in it. Short work was made of the Oxford Wycliffites : they were generally, and four of them byname (Hereford, Repyng- don, John Aston, and Lawrence Bedeman), sus- pended from all academical functions. Rygge re- turned to Oxford, with a letter from Courtenay which repeated the condemnation of the four preachers, add- ing to theirs the name of Wycliffe himself. But the Chancellor protested he dared not execute this mandate, and a royal warrant had to be issued to compel him. ]\[eanwliile he showed his real feeling in the matter by suspending a prominent opponent of the Wycliffites who had called them by the offensive name of ' Lol- lards.' But the council in London went on to over- power the party by stronger measures. Of the four men named, Hereford and Repyngdon, who had sought Wycliffe a\d the Great Schism. icq in vain the protection of John of Gaunt, were excommu- nicated ; Aston and Bedeman condemned as heretics. For a while they hid in the country ; but before long they all recanted and were restored to their privileges in the Universit}^, with the exception of Hereford who fled to the continent and is believed to have been im- prisoned by Pope Urban the Sixth. The Wycliffite party at Oxford was not however extinguished. Aca- demical feeling probably went quite as far as personal attachment to Wycliffe in keeping it alive and vigorous ; and the most stringent measures of Archbishop Arun- del a quarter of a century later were necessary to break its strength once for all. But so repressive was the policy of Arundel that the overthrow of Wycliffism involved also that of the intellectual independence of the University itself. The history of Oxford for more than a century to come is a history of almost unrelieved decline in learning, morals, and religion. Wycliffe's opinions were thus condemned, but no attempt seems to have been made to bring Wycliffe wyciiffe'8 last himsclf to judgement. He remained at large years. ^^^ unmolestcd. It is said indeed that he appeared before a council held by Archbishop Courtenay at Oxford, and made a recantation ; but our single authority for the statement fortunately gives the text of the recantation, which proves to be nothing more nor less than a plain English statement of the condemned doc- trine. It is therefore lawful to doubt whether Wycliffe appeared before the council at all, and even whether he was summoned before it. Probably after the over- throw of his party at Oxford by the Blackfriars Council AVycliffe found it advisable to withdraw permanently to no Movements for Reform. Lutterworth. That his strength among the laity was undiminished is shown by the fact that an ordinance suppressing his itinerant preachers passed by the Lords alone in May 1382 was annulled on the petition of the Commons in the following autumn ; while it is at least curious to note that on the meeting of the pre- vious Parliament in May, on the very eve of the Black- friars' Council, he w^as not afraid to address a memorial to the Parliament in favour of a drastic measure of church-reform. In London, Leicester, and elsewhere, there is abundant evidence of his popularity. The reformer however was growing old ; there was w^ork for him to do more lasting than personal controversy ; and thus in his retirement he occupied himself with restless activity in writing numerous tracts, English and Latin, as well as one of his most important books, the Trialogus. In 1383 a crusade was ordered by Pope Urban against his rival, and Bishop Henry Despenser of Norwich led an expedition into Flanders which ended after a few months in a somewhat in- glorious colLapse. Wycliffe, to whom both Popes were equally obnoxious, made use of the opportunity to write one of his most effective tracts, The Crusade^ in which he denounced the perversion of a sacred mis- sion to the purposes of a war started by means of pro- digal offers of indulgence and sustained by the greed for plunder and the inveterate hatred of Englishmen for France. In this line of argument at least he was likely to win, as he deserved, the approval of wise and moderate men, however much they might resent his attitude towards the Papacy. At last Pope Urban cited him to answer for his opinions before him at Wycliffe and the Great Schism. hi Home : but the summons came too late. Wycliffe had already in 1382 or 1383 suffered a paralytic seizure which lamed him ; he worked on until on the 28th December 1384, while he was hearing mass, he received a final stroke from which he died on New Year's eve. He was buried at Lutterworth ; but by a decree of the Council of Constance, May 4, 141 5, his remains were ordered to be taken up and cast out, an order which was executed more than twelve years later by Bishop Fleming, the founder of Lincoln Col- lege, Oxford. Note on Wycliffe' s Writings. "\Yych fife's earlier works without exception, together with a large number of his later productions, are written in Latin ; and comparatively few of these are preserved in England. They were mostly carried by devoted students into Bohemia, some of whom were at the pains of transcribing entire works from borrowed copies in England before their return home. Such store was set by them that there are still existing three careful catalogues of the entire Latin works made early in the fifteenth century. In Bohemia tlie books suffered in the common proscription of dangerous literature ; they were seized by the ecclesiastical power and placed for safe custody in monasteries ; whence, by the irony of fate, they passed, through the secularising measures of the last century, into the public libraries of Prague, Viennn, and other places. Until lately the only works published were \\iQ Trialogus, printed (apparently at Basle) in 1525, and again at Frankfurt in 1753, and reedited from the manuscripts by Pro- fessor Gotthard Victor Lechler at Oxford in 1869 ; the tract Da Officio Pastorali edited by the same scholar at Leipzig in 1863 ; and a few minor pieces. In 1882 the Wyclif Society was founded in London, chiefly through the energy of Mr. F. J. Furnivall and Mr. F. D. i\lattbew, for the purpose of publishing a coni- l>lete edition of those works which still lay in manuscript. Its publications up to the present time are two volumes of Folcm'cal 112 Movements for Reform. Tracts, edited Ly Dr. Eudolf Buddensieg (also issued at Leipzig); De Bominio Civili liber /., edited by the writer of the present volume ; De Ecclesia, edited by Professor J. Loserth, who has also published two volumes, and nearly C(>m])leted a third, of the Sermons ; the Uialoy^is, edited by Mr. A. W. Pollard , Ve Incarnatione Verbi, edited by Dr. E. Harris; and De Composi- tione Hominis, edited by Dr. Kiulolf Beer. The English -works were, partly no doubt on account of their greater literary interest, published earlier. Besides the Wicket (a sermon on the Sacrament) which was published in 1546 and has been more than once rei)rinted, several tracts were edited by Dr. James early in tbe seventeenth, and Dr. Todd and Dr. Robert Vaughan in the present century. Practically all that AVycliffe wrote in English (except the Wicket), togeiber with a good deal ihat is doubtiul or spurious, has been collected in the Select Enrj- lish Works edited by Mr. Thomas Arnold, in three volumes, Oxford 1869-1871, and the Etujlish ^yorks Jiitherto unimUishcd, edited l)y Mr. F. D. Matthew for the Early Engli>h Text Society in iSSo." CHAPTEK VIII. LOLLARDY IN ENGLAND AND BOHEMIA. The narrative of WyclifFe's life brings clearly before us the two main principles for wliich he strove : first, Meaning of ^^^ poHtical aim to free the Church fi'om Loiiardy. '^.g connexion with temporal affairs and in- terests ; and secondly, the scheme of doctrinal reform resting upon the substitution of the ' law of the gos- pel ' for the tradition of the Church. The former principle, so far as it was bound up with his view of the desirabilit}' of a communistic state of society, died out, in its practical beariugs, with the peasants' revolt of 1 3 8 1 ; but its farther issues, ripening into a complete attack upon the existing constitution of the Church, became so closely allied with the attack upon established doctrines that it is impossible any longer to keep them separate. A Wycliffite or Lollard comes to indicate one who opposes the hierarchical organi- sation and the temporal endowments of the Church, together with a number of specific doctrines among which that of transubstantiation is the most pro- minent ; who maintains the duty of public preach- ing as paramount among the obligations of the Christian minister, and the duty of reading the Bible c. H, II J 114 Movements for Reform, as necessary alike for the layman and the clergy- man. For a number of years these views obtained a wide currency in England. It is impossible to deny that Repressive ^ho failings of the established churchmen, measures. ^^^ ^^ Speak of the general scandal caused by the schism in the Papacy, gave considerable excuse, if not justification, for their prevalence. But to allow them free circulation was a course open to serious ques- tion in the then existing state of religious opinion. The doctrine of the Catholic Church on the subject was the same as that of the Eeformed Church under Henry the Eighth, the same as that of the Puritan colonies in New England in the seventeenth century : it was the only true Church, and whoever dissented did so at his peril. It may even be doubted whether persecution, as we now hold it, was not the only consistent and the only conscientious course that could be pursued with regard to the Lollards ; the offending member must be sacrificed for the good of the whole body politic. Still humane instincts had raised a scruple as to the means applicable for the purpose, and one cannot but regret that the penalty of death for heresy should have been introduced into England at a time when the Church did not present that spectacle of union and wholesome use of its resources which might seem to justify its exclusion of alternative methods. The penalty had indeed been authorised for near two centuries on the continent of Europe, and it had not yet been discredited by such abuses as characterised it in a later age. England had not adopted it, because it had not needed it : now that heresy had infected the LOLLARDY IN ENGLAND AND BOHEMIA. II5 land, there seemed no excuse for omitting to use that remedy which had been deemed suitable by Christen- dom at large ; and, as we shall see immediately, in 1389 the penalty of death was officially used as a threat — it proved a sufficient threat — several years before it was legalised by statute. The extent to which Wycliffism prevailed in Eng- land in the time immediately succeeding the reformer's death cannot be ascertained. To say with Strencrthof '' Loiiardyiu ivnyghtou that every other man you met in the streets was a Wycliffite is doubtless an exaggeration; but it cannot be questioned that the Lollards formed a considerable part of the population. In 1395 they even ventured to address a petition to the Parliament, in which they not only repeated Wycliffe's complaints against abuses in the Church but laid stress upon some of the extreme views to which their master had hardly more than reservedly given expression. Looking then at the numbers and strength of the Lollard party, one cannot but be surprised at the small number of recorded cases in which they came under official cognisance. A few persons here and there, particularly in the diocese of Lincoln, were proceeded against; but their punishments were for the most part lenient. The gentleness with which the movement was met is probably explained in some degree by the fact that the bishops recognised the general high cha- racter and moral efficiency of the Lollard preachers, and partly also by the extensive support which they received from the country people and the country gentlemen who honestly advocated their cause in the House of Commons. In 13 89, it is true, there were ii6 Movements for Reform. some attempts at concerted measures to repress tliem: the Bisliop of Worcester issued a mandate directed, under the name of Lollards, against the itinerant preachers ; and in the same year Archbishop Courtenay visited Leicester and excommunicated certain heretics, with the result that in ten days they all confessed their errors and were admitted to penance and absolu- tion. But the chroniclers with one voice condemn the lukewarmness of the prelates in the cause of orthodoxy, noting only with praise that the Bishop of Norwich — the same crusading bishop whom we have met with before — effectually purged his diocese of heresy by a threat of connnitting AVycliffites to the flames. In 1397 indeed Archbishop Arundel held a provincial synod in which eighteen articles taken from WyclitTe's writings were condemned ; but under Richard the Second lie had no opportunity to carry the work further. A turning-point arrived in the history of the reform- ing party at the accession of the house of Lancaster. King Henry the Fourth was not only a devoted son of the Church, but he owed his success in no slight measure to the assistance of the churchmen, and above all to that of Archbishop Arundel. It was felt that the new dynasty and the hierarchy stood or fell together. A mixture of religious and political motives led to the passing of the well-known statute ' De ha^rctico com- burendo 'in 1 40 1 , and thenceforward Lollardy was a capital offence. Lamentable as were the results of that statute, it still remains a fact that only two heretics are known to have suffered death for their opinions. Doubtless the abortive movement which was believed LOLLARDY IN ENGLAND AND BOHEMIA. II7 to be directed by Sir John Oldcastle in 14 14 involved a, large number of Lollards in the condemnation to which their leader was afterwards subjected ; but their sentence was expressly decided not only by their guilt of heresy but also of treason. The one statute '- De hasretico comburendo ' had for the present but few victims ; it did its work with success Wyciiffites andveryquickly,and the Lollards in a genera- at Oxford ^-^^ ccascd to be counted among the parties of English life. Li Oxford alone had it been found necessary to take further resolute steps against them. Archbishop Arundel, who held a provincial council there in 1407, ordered that all books written in WyclifFe's time should pass through the censorship first of the University of Oxford or Cambridge, and secondly of the Archbishop himself, before they might be used in the schools. Two years later he risked a serious quarrel with the University in order to secure the appointment of a committee to make a list of heresies and errors to be found in Wyclifie's writings. The committee was eventually constituted, two hundred and sixty-seven propositions condemned, and the obnoxious books solemnly burned at Carfax. Not long after a copy of the list of condemned articles was ordered to be pre- served in the public library, and oaths against their maintenance were enjoined upon all members of the University on graduation. Yet even these ordinances did not succeed in stamping out the academical tradi- tion of Wycliffism. So late as 1427 we find Fleming, the Bishop of Lincoln, earnestly engaged in founding a college at Oxford with the express view of resisting the current of heresy, and even beyond the middle of ii8 Movements for Reform, the century there are still expiring traces — if cliiefly in the memory of the elder men — of that which had had so hearty a vitality in a previous generation. But outside Oxford the Lollards had long before this time lost all the influence and position they once Decline of possesscd, and the fact that they were reduced LoUardy. g^ g^sily and with such small expense of vio- lence can only be accounted for on the ground that the movement they represented had spent its energy and thus that the bishops did not think it worth their while to proceed to extremity against any considerable number of them, or else that the Lollards themselves recognised the hopelessness of their cause and were ready enough to return to the communion of the Church on little compulsion. Whatever be the reason, it remains cer- tain that from the time of Oldcastle's death in 1417 no further action was deemed necessary against the Lollards. They lived on in small numbers and in scattered congregations ; but their potency for the progress of English religion or the changes of English policy was past. The day of small things has come ; there is no longer a great leader, whether for good or evil, in Church or State. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century we are only, as it were, awakened to the fact that there were still Lollards in the land by the attack made on them by Bishop Reginald Pecock of Chichester, an attack made by a genuine free-thinker, w^hich involved its author himself in a charge of heresy and in condemnation. Evidently Lollardy could not be dangerous if its foremost assailant could be brought to judgement because his method of proceeding was too liberal. That there continued a Wycliffite tradition LOLLARDY IN ENGLAND AND BOHEM/A. I I9 witliout a break until the time of the Pi-otestaut Refor- , mation in the sixteenth century need not be questioned ; J but it was so slight and attenuated that it exercised no appreciable influence upon our later religious history. It was not on England but on Bohemia that Wyclifie's real legacy devolved. There his doctrines were eagerly planted and nourished, and grew up to form a power of decisive moment in the national Encriand and history. A councxion between such distant Bohemia. couutries as England and Bohemia was pos- sible in the Middle Ages in a way in which it has never been possible since, thanks to the international position of the universities and the use of Latin as an inter- national language in all concerns of education. The University of Prague recently established by the Em- peror Charles the Fourth had risen in a few years into a European eminence. Founded on the models of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford, it attracted to itself, while it sent forth to other centres, the commerce of learn- ing. In 1388 Adalbert Ranconis, a great teacher at Prague and a man himself filled with a lively zeal for Church reform, bequeathed a sum of money — for travel- ling scholarships, as we should say, — to assist Bohemian lads to study at Paris or Oxford ; and the circumstance that King Richard the Second had in 1382 married a Bohemian queen naturally encouraged a further inter- course between the two countries, especially since Queen Anne herself was believed to be not unfriendly to the new doctrines. The Bohemian students con- tinued to flock to England long after her death in 1394, and there are manuscripts in existence of Wycliffe's writings which were transcribed by them in 120 Movements for REFOR^f. remote English villages as late as the first quarter of the following century. While thus in several wa^'s a road was opened for the passage of Lollard opinions into Bohemia, in that ncformmove- countrv also there had been for some time ineiit in • i t • r^ /-ii i Bohemia. a steadj current m tlie dn-ection ot Uhurcli reform. Charles the Fourth, who was much more a a Bohemian king than Eoman emperor, had shown unmeasured favour to the Church. He had soucrht anxiously to correct abuses in its organisation and moral condition, and above all to purge it of any taint of heresy. That the activity devoted to the purpose in his time was urgently needed is proved abundantly by the records of ecclesiastical visitations ; it is also clear that the attempted reform failed to produce any great change. Meanwhile a succession of whole-hearted workers set themselves to stir the Bohemian people into a conviction that it lay with them to begin a move- conradof mcnt for the better. The first of these was AVaidiiausen. Qonrad of "Waldhauscn, an Augustinian friar, who however from his German birth and speech can liardly be conceived to have spoken to the Czech people at large. He seems to have possessed the magnetic genius of the great preacher, and for years before his death, which occurred apparently in middle life in I 369, maintained an unrivalled influence in his church at Prague. Unfortunately only his Latin sermons, addressed to the students, are preserved, and these naturally cannot be taken as examples of his popular discourses. Yet they show us sufficiently the secret of the power he exercised : he was first and foremost a moral teacher, an unsparing assailant of vices and LOLLARDY IN ENGLAND AND BoHEMIA. 121 abuses wherever lie found tliem, and he was no respecter of persons ; himself a mendicant, he denounced the fail- ings of his brethren. But possibly his influence was chiefly notable because Conrad was not only a preacher but a master of preachers. His sermons were eagerly collected and used as models by his hearers. So exten- sively were they in demand that a second and briefer recension of them was circulated for general convenience. If Conrad represents the German element in the re- formino: movement in Bohemia, the native Czech ele- Miiiczof ment is still more powerfully displayed in Kremsier. ^|^q work of liis greater contemporary Milicz of Kremsier, archdeacon of Prague, thongh he also was not by birth a Bohemian but a Moravian. As strenuous as Conrad was in his moral earnestness, he surpassed him in the spiritual force of his character. He laid so great a stress upon the duties of the reli- gious life that he was said to have denounced the study of the liberal arts as sinful. Far less did he spare the worldly vices of his day, whether they belonged to high or low. Bishops and archbishops were not free from his censure, nor even the Emperor Charles the Fourth himself. He had a peculiar doctrine concerning Anti- christ which probably connects him with the Spiritual party among the Franciscans, and which led him once to point to the Emperor at a great assembly in 1366, with the declaration that he was the Antichrist. Naturally he was summoned to answer for his words before the Pope ; but he escaped with a short im- prisonment at Kome. A second time he was cited, and went to Avignon in 1374, but died while he was awaiting his sentence. 122 Movements for Reform. Side by side with Conrad the Austrian preacher and Milicz the Moravian enthusiast, worked the Bohemian Adalbert scholar Adalbert Eanconis, one of the leading Ranconis. furtherers of the national movement for the advancement of Boherai'an religion and literature. He had been an eminent doctor at Paris, and was after- wards professor at the University of Prague and canon of the cathedral. He was a great teacher and a keen disputant; he was also busied in all the interests of his city and country, social, moral, and educational. But, free from any suspicion of incorrect opinions, he is only ranked among the forerunners of the Bohemian reformation because he stimulated life and thought in a way which in time converged with other and less Thomas of orthodox tendencies. The point of union is stitny. indicated by the position of Thomas of Stitny, who was a warm friend both of Milicz and of Adalbert, correct himself in doctrine, but troubled and perplexed by the religious tumult that arose about him in the closino" years of the fourteenth centurv. / Matthias of Janow, who died in 1394, is another link, in fact he has generally been conceived to form Matthias of ^^ direct link, connecting these earlier jauow. teachers with John Hus. Such a view of his relation can hardly be maintained, since on the one hand there is no trace in him (with a single exception) of any opposition to the accepted Church system either in doctrine or organisation, and on the other there is no evidence that Hus derived any of his ideas from him. Matthias like Stitny represents the last stage in the national reform-movement, before it came into contact with foreiorn influences : in other words he LOLLARDY IN ENGLAND AND BoHEMIA. 1 23 prepares the transition in Bohemian opinion which was decided in a Protestant direction by the impor- tation of the works of Wycliffe. Personally attached both to Adalbert Eanconis and to John of Jenzenstein the Archbishop of Prague, a traveller and a Paris student, Matthias became a canon of Prague and won an influential position through his writings. With an ascetic strain of temperament, he was naturally roused to reprove sharply the existing disorders of the Church. If at one time he included among these the popular excesses of image-worship, he had no scruple in making an ample retractation when called upon in I 389. It is indeed not in any point of doc- trine that he approaches the coming religious move- ment, but in the tone of his mind, his ardent study of ^ the Bible, and his advocacy of preaching in the mother- tongue. The former of these two characteristics is that which gradually becomes more and more prominent ; the John of latter is conspicuous in the aims of all the Stekna. Bohemian reformers, perhaps in none more than in John of Stekna, of whom Hus speaks as ' the illustrious preacher with trumpet-voice.' But such vernacular sermons were no novelty in Bohemia ; they are mentioned by Ludolf of Sagan, who lived towards the end of the fourteenth century, as a time-honoured institution. In Prague, he says, ' there was from of old a people mixed of two languages, wherefore the rectors of the churches were wont to preach in either of them, even as they thought expedient for their hearers.' But, just as in the parallel movement in England, this popular preaching furnished a means 124 liloVEMENTS FOR ReFORM. that lent itself readily to adaptation, and tliiis to tlie diffusion of the new religious views. Those new views had indeed not as yet been introduced into Bohemia; the native growth might seem only so far dangerous that it was severely critical of abuses in the Church. But the Bohemian teachers unquestionably prepared an atmosphere of feeling that at least in the public mind tended towards an antagonism to the state of religion as it then was, an atmosphere the existence of which was essential to the success of Hus's teaching a few years later. The bringing of Wycliffe's books into Bohemia forms the decisive epoch which divides the reforming movement there into two distinct periods, of Wycliffe's and gave an entirely fresh vitality to it. The date of this importation has generally been fixed in 1406 or 1 407 ; but it is certain that a number of Wycliffe's writings were read in Bohemia several years before this. Hus himself made a copy / of some of his philosophical treatises in 1398, and about three years later Wycliffe's theological writings were carried home by Jerome of Prague on his return from studying at Oxford. The books must have been eagerly read and multiplied ; the doctrine must have spread like wildfire: for in May 1403, when it had probably been known hardly more than a year in the country, it was solemnly condemned by the University of Prague. The condemnation included the twenty- four articles condemned by the Blackfriars council of 1382, as well as twenty-one others put forth as taken Y from Wycliffe's writings by one of the Prague masters. Hus's protest on this occasion brings him for the first LOLLARDY IN ENGLAND AND BoHEMIA. 1 25 time forward as a disciple of WyclifFe. Its issues belong closely to tlie personal history of the reformer, to which we cannot turn without reviewing the con- temporary history of the Schism and the attempts to restore unitv in Christendom. ( 126 ) CHAPTER IX. THE DIVIDED PAPACY, The accident that Gregory the Eleventh died at Rome had made it necessary that the election of his suc- The Schism cessor shoiild take place there ; and it was '378. the violence of the Roman populace that had frightened the cardinals into choosing an Italian Pope. Themselves in a great majority Frenchmen, they had soon found out their mistake, — all the sooner because five months after his election Urban the Sixth had been careful to secure himself by the nomination of twenty-eight new cardinals, a number sujSicient not merely to overpower but to crush the French majority in the college. Tvvo days afterwards the malcontents elected their Antipope, Robert of Geneva, or Clement the Seventh.^ Thus began the great Schism in the Church, which undermined its spiritual position and influence in a way that no previous rupture or contest had weakened it. Empe- ^ It is hardly necessary to mention that as the lino of popes com- menced by Clement was ultimately deposed by the Council of Constance, these Popes are not reckoned as Catholic. Hence we have the in- convenience of the repetition of the style 'Clement the Seventh,' borne also by the Pope with whom King Henry the Eighth negotiated for his divorce. The Divided Papacy. 127 rors before this had often witlistood the Pope, and set up a rival bishop ; but such resistance generally left the Pope who was assailed only stronger than before. Now it was the action of the cardinals themselves that broke up the unity of the Church; and for a./^ generation to come we find the acceptance of one pope or the other to be a mere matter of national policy in this or that country. Universal councils are held to decide between the claimants ; at first they only add to the confusion. Then Christendom thus assembled declares its power to set aside the opposing candidates, to proclaim the holy See vacant, and to appoint a lawful Pope. Even now it is long before peace is finally restored to the Church. A strain of feeling had been aroused, a sense of dissatisfaction with the existing state of things, which might be appeased for a while, but could not be extinguished. It is, in fact, fiom the days of the schism that it becomes more and more evident that a great religious change is at hand in Western Europe ; and it was the cardinals at Rome ^ in 1378 who laid the foundation of the movement which culminated in the religious revolt of the six- teenth century. If the spectacle of two pontiffs dividing between them the outward allegiance of Latin Christendom was humiliating to all true churchmen, still less was their discontent likely to be softened by the contemplation of the personal character of their champions. Urban the Sixth was a man of little cultivation of mind, of brutal manners, who could act when he joleased, and he often pleased, with the ferocity of a barbarian. Clement might not be less cruel by nature, but his 128 ]\T0VEMENTS FOR ReFORM. cruelty was so evidently directed by policy that it seemed rather to enhance the opinion men were ready to form of his firmness and resolution, while his ad- dress and courtesy marked liim as one designed to play a part in. affairs requiring the delicate judge- ment of a man of the world. In both alike the moral element is the least conspicuous, and we should seek long before we discovered a trace of it in the public career of either. Christendom looked on helplessly, depressed by the scandal, and yet impo- tent to remove it. The kingdoms of Europe were hardly one of them in a position to exercise effective pressure. At the time of the schism England had been for a year past governed by a boy ; France was shortly to pass under the rule of another, who grew up to be a maniac ; while in Germany, a few months after the schism broke out, Charles the Fourth died, and was succeeded by his son, the drunken Wenzel ; Naples, always a disturbing force in Italian politics, was now during the last years of Queen Joan the First divided among the factions that strove for her inheritance. Each Pope took sides in the affair. Queen Joan, after many fruitless arrangements, at length adopted Lewis of Anjou, brother to the French king, as her successor ; and Lewis as the French can- didate was as a matter of course supported by Clement, who even invested him with a new kingdom, that of Adria, consisting of the greater part of the estates of the Church. Living himself under the shadow of France he took no interest in Italy save as a means towards advancing his own cause. Urban, on the other hand, moved from place to place in the land. The Divided Papacy. 129 making himself daily more unpopular, and bent cliicflv on the establishment of his nephew Francesco Prignano, better known as Butillo, in a commanding position ; but the superfluit}^ of naughtiness in which Butillo revelled only increased his uncle's difliculties. The cardinals in his train sought to put some check on the Pope's excesses, and were rewarded by imprisonment and repeated tortures ; after a time five of them were secretly murdered by Urban's command. In the midst of all this tumult and fury Urban was ceaselessly engaged in the task of conquering the allegiance of those who upheld his rival. The ' Cle- mentines ' must be opposed by arms, and crusades were set on foot with a profuse expenditure of indulgences. In 1383 England, so long excited by military enter- prises, entered eagerly into the religious expedition to Flanders, headed by Henry Despenser, Bishop of Nor- wich, but less because it was enjoined by the Pope than because it was an attack upon France and the dependants of France. The failure of the campaign did not prevent the expedient being repeated ; and when John of Gaunt joined the King of Portugal, wdio stood by Urban, in an attack upon Castile, this also became a crusade and was promoted by such lavish bulls of indulgences as to inspire amazement, if not disgust, in the minds of sober men. Doubtless in thus arousing and playing upon the adventurous instincts of Englishmen Urban was influenced by the fact that it was from England that he drew his principal means of support : to keep her employed in his service was the most likely way of sustaining his interests. But the whole history of the devices he adopted is a preg- c. H. I I JO IITOVEMENTS FOR ReFORAL nant satire on the cliaracter wliicli the head of the Church assumed ; and while Urban preyed upon Eng- land, Clement made as industrious, if less productive, ravages upon France. In 1389, a few mouths before the jubilee from which he expected a rich harvest, Urban died at Rome, and his line was continued by the election of a Neapolitan cardinal, Boniface the Ninth^ The longer the schism lasted the more impracticable did it appear to heal it, and still the more necessary Suggestions ^^^ it that action should be taken. Three for reunion, chief proposals gradually formed themselves. Either a general council should be summoned with full powers to deal with the rival claims ; or the claims should be submitted to arbitration ; or each Pope should abdicate, either to his own college of cardinals, or to a joint body of the two colleges of the two Popes. The first of these alternatives, though the earliest to be sug- gested, was not at first pressed ; the second was seen to labour under the decisive objection, that it would be hardly possible to enforce the arbitrator's award ; while the third was exposed to the double disadvantage that, however eager a Pope might profess himself to promote union, he could never admit the possibility that he was not the lawful Pope, and that in like manner neither Pope could admit the legitimacy of the college of cardinals created by his rival. The one Pope and his college must of necessity regard the other Pope and his college as schismatical. The very sublimity of the pretensions of the Papacy took it out of the cognisance of earthly arbitration or jurisdiction. On the other hand the splendour of these pretensions, how- ever essential they might appear to the Pope himself, The Divided Papacy. 131 had been so rudely shattered by the shock of the schism that it now seemed more possible to deal with them. Apart from personal considerations which might alien- ate men's feelings — the cupidity, the meanness, the self- seeking of the Popes, — the great idea of the unity of Christendom had been broken, and this must be re- stored at whatever expense. The University of Paris was foremost in taking measures to promote this end. Pope Boniface so far entered into them that he opened negotia- Action of the . •i/^ii ^ c\' ^ i i- University of tions With uharics the bixth ; but his motive was simply to endeavour to win back France from his rival. The proposals of the University con- taining the three alternative suggestions above men- tioned were favourably treated by the King ; and by his order they were sent on to Avignon, where the cardinals were induced to confess that there was no choice but to accept some one of the schemes proposed. Clement soon after died of apoplexy, and the cardinals forthwith elected Peter de Luna, a Spanish cardinal, who took the title of Benedict the Thirteenth. The choice and the circumstances were alike signifi- cant ; for the new Pope had been the most powerful of Clement's counsellors and was deemed the most resolute against any compromise with the Italian Pope. To this end he had laboured, and he had his reward. But besides this, at the moment the cardinals were engaged in his election, messengers from France were on their way to Avignon urging that no step should be taken without further consideration. The King and the University each sent their advice, but Benedict was already elected. lie had however solemnly under- 132 Movements for Reform. taken to do all lie could to end tlio schism, even thougli he were required to abdicate ; and this proviso was gladly seized by those who were earnest in the matter as giving- an opening to steps of a practical kind. The University of Paris advised that both Popes should resign. Its judgement was read in February 1395 be- fore a national council in the capital, and was sustained by a majority of about four to one. A mission, headed bv the Dukes of Burmindv, Berrv, and Orleans, pro- ceeded to Avignon to lay before Pope Benedict the various schemes that had been proposed and to urge him to abdicate. The cardinals appeared not unfavour- able ; but the Pope stood firm, and his strenuous resist- ance to every proposal in detail rendered the negotia- tion fruitless. The long interchange of schemes that followed has its importance because it served to prepare public opinion for a more penetrating reform than the mere removal of the existing occupants of the Papal throne, and brought into conspicuous notice the views and aims of men like Jean__Grerson and Pierre d'Ailly, who were destined to exercise so profound an influence upon the later developments of the ecclesiastical history of their time. Nor was it only at Paris that the ques- tion was agitated. Other universities were also con- sulted, and Oxford and Toulouse gave their decision in favour of the summons of a general council to decide the matter. It was afterwards seen that they had judged rightly, that their scheme was the only prac- ticable one. But for the moment the alternative of abdication was more popular. It was accepted by Eichard the Second, as well as by the King of France, The Divided Papacy. 133 who solemnly agreed to ifc at a meeting which he had at Rheims with Wenzel in March 1398. The three leading princes of Western Europe were thus in accord as to the principle on which the difficulty should be adjusted. Pierre d'Ailly, who was now Bishop of Cambray, was despatched to the courts of Eome and Avignon with a charge to announce the resolution ; but the mission was ineffectual, since each Pope without J absolutely rejecting the proposal insisted that his rival should set the example of abdicating. While these negotiations were going on, a national ■ council was held in Paris. It was summoned by the royal command in May, and after lons^ de- Renunciation "^ . . "^ ^ , ^ of Benedict bate it determined to renounce allegiance to Benedict the Thirteenth : this resolution was ratified by the King in the following July. Benedict thus lost the support, above all the pecuniary support, upon which he depended from France. The Marshal Boucicault was next sent to Avignon with an armed force to compel the Pope's submission ; and Benedict v' after a long siege accepted terms by which he was left a partial prisoner in the hands of the citizens of Avignon. In this state he continued for nearly four years, until March 1 403, when he made his escape. But in the meanwhile several things had occurred which tended in his favour, or at least removed elements which stood in the way of his recognition. The English and the German King had each been deposed ; and in France Pope Benedict had found a protector in the Duke of Orleans. He had thus the benefit of a partial re- action ; and soon after his escape a national assembly was held at Paris in which the Orleanist party secured 134 Movements for Reforal tlie acknowledgement of liis title, subject to an engage- ment on his part to resign in the event of Boniface's abdication, deposition, or death. In little more than a year such an opportunity oc- curred. Boniface, who had spent his energies on two main objects, the making provision for his friends and the securing of his temporal power in Borne and the Estates of the Church (in which latter aim he achieved a remarkable success), died on the ist October 1 404; I but such was the tumultuous condition of Bome and such the peril from without, that the cardinals had hardly a choice but to proceed at once to the election of a new Bope. They took an oath that whoever should be made Bope would abdicate if necessary in the interest of the restoration of union ; and a Nea- politan cardinal was elected, who took the name of J Innocent the Seventh. Negotiations were promptly resumed between the two Bopes. Benedict started from Avignon, in order, as he professed, to come to terms with Innocent. He travelled leisurely until in a 3^ear's time he reached Savona. But he soon found he was in danger of losing his support from France. The University of Baris was still active in debating the great problem of restoring union ; it again raised the question of withdrawing obedience from Benedict. The matter was referred by the King's council to the Barliament which met in June 1406, and the result of a long discussion was to declare in set terms ' that the Gallican Church should remain thenceforth and for ever free from the services, tithes, procurations, and other additional subventions unduly introduced by the Boman Church.' The national element was The Divided Papacy. 135 again about to play its part in the relations between France and the Papacy, and a synod was appointed to meet in the following November to consider the press- ing scandal of the schism. But before the synod met Innocent the Seventh was dead. A hope arose once again that the favourable mo- ment had come, and that Christendom would now be rescued from the evil of division. But the blind haste of the Roman cardinals disappointed all such expectations. They elected, however, one who was believed to be in accord with the universal desire for reunion, and openly chose him for that reason. They also tied his hands by prohibiting the creation of any more cardinals for a period of fifteen months. The new Pope was an aged and respected Venetian, An^lo Correr, who was crowned under the ec. :,, 140 . ^.^j^ ^^ GregoryL.jt]ie Twelfth. He soon moved northward, to Viterbo and Siena, in order to have the promised conference with Benedict. He was at Lucca by January 1408. But as he drew nearer to Savona the difficulties of the situation appeared to him, a man now of past eighty years of age, unsur- mountable. He sought to change the time or the place of meeting, and trust to the kindness of fortune. Rome was now in the hands of King Ladislas of Naples. Danger seemed to lie both before and behind the anxious Pope. Think- ing to gain strength he created four cardinals, an The crisis ^^^ which was naturally understood as proof rrecipitated. q£ j^'g ii^igincerity and which hastened a crisis that led irresistibly to his own downfall. The old cardinals repudiated their new colleagues and with- 136 Movements for Reform. drew to Pisa, where tliey published their appeal from Pope Gregory to a general council. If Benedict's opportunity had now come, he did not know how to make use of it. But in truth difficulties were rising about him not less serious than those which encompassed Gregory. In the previous Novem- ber Benedict had lost his main advocate in France by the murder of the Duke of Orleans, whose removal had given free room again for the University of Paris to move and work in. It now roused the Kino: to announce formally to the Pope that until one Pope was acknowledged by Christendom France withdrew her obedience from both claimants. Benedict was ready with his answer: he had written a bull, dated months back but never promulgated, in which all who resisted the Pope and cardinals by renunciation or appeal were declared excommunicate ; and that bull he now despatched to the King. It was as fatal a step to him as the creation of the cardinals was to Gregory. The Uni- versity of Paris pronounced the bull to be a flagrant invasion of the dignity of the French crown and nation, and it was publicly destroyed with contumely. Bene- dict's interests at Paris received a blow from which they never recovered ; and the Pope had no choice but to flee to Spanish ground, where he might feel at least personally independent both of France and Italy. So to Perpignan he retreated, and there in November 1408 he held a council which was intended as a counter-manifesto to that summoned by the cardinals at Pisa for the following March. In like manner — to anticipate for a moment the order of events — ^just as the Council of Pisa was closiniz its deliberations, The Divided Papacy. 137 Gregory also lickl liis council at Civiclale in the Gulf of Venice, a council more poorly attended and more inconclusive than that of Benedict. Both Popes seemed bent on ending their reigns in melodrama ; and by this time the Council of Pisa had added a third claimant to tJie obedience of Christendom. ( 138 ) CHAPTER X. THE COUNCILS OF PISA AND CONSTANCE, The importance of tlic Council of Pisa lies in the fact that it recognised, for the first time since the great Position of the development of the Papal power, the neces- couuciiofrisa. g^^.^ ^f Subjecting it to some definite limi- tations. Hitherto there had been no redress against an incompetent or disreputable Pope. Often indeed the secular estate, as represented by the Emperor or more recently by the King of France, had stepped in to protest against the actions of a Pope, or even to declare his deposition and appoint another Pope in his room. But the mere fact that such proceedings had originated from secular persons, however largely they might be supported by the clergy, prevented them from receiving universal acknowledgement. They in- variably failed of more than a momentary success, be- cause they were felt as an intrusion by the laity upon the domain of the Church ; they appeared dangerous, even sacrilegious. Now however it was the cardinals themselves who by the summons of the Council of Pisa opened the case against the rival Popes ; as indeed upon tliem that duty lay with peculiar weight, since it was the cardinals — their own predecessors in title — who were The CobwciL of Pisa. 139 directly responsible, as we have seen, for the existence v of the schism. Had they borne with Urban the Sixth, liard though it were, and not ventured upon the peril- ous innovation of setting up Clement the Seventh in opposition to him, the schism and its far-reaching con- sequences might have been avoided. Other Popes with even less claim than Urban to the allegiance of Chris- tian men had been endured ; and it was the mere par- tisanship of the French faction in the college that brought this great evil upon Europe. But, an evil though it was, the schism had at all events tauo^ht men to look facts in the face and clear Ripening of their minds of a good many notions which oi.inion at it. thougli not a part of ancient tradition were still old enough to have acquired the dignity of axio- matic truth. We perceive the rapidity with which in a single generation opinion had moved towards the position of Wycliffe with regard to Church politics, when an accredited exponent of Church principles, Pierre d'Ailly, could declare without offence, just be- fore the meeting of the council, what was precisely Wycliffe's own doctrine respecting the Church : ' The head of the Church,' he said, ' is Christ ; and the v unity of the Church consists in union with him and not in union with any particular Pope.' Right though it was that the Papal power should be organised as the regular machinery for the government of the Church, still the original authority remained with the Church catholic, which in case of need was bound to exercise it for the common good of Christendom. A general council to carry out such a purpose might be summoned by the cardinals, and not by them merely 1^0 Movements for Reeorm. but by any faitbful men who were in a position to secure its efficiency. Tlie council niiglit call upon the rival Popes to defend themselves and, if they refused, might take proceedings against them as schismatical ; while in the last resort it was empowered to make a new election, provided only that it felt sure of the sup- port of the Catholic world. Such were the views with reference to the power of the ecumenical council expressed by Ailly. Their correspondence with Wycliffe's doctrine, especially con- sidering that it is quite unlikely that their propounder was at all acquainted with the English reformer's writ- ings, is but another evidence of the way in which opinions that had hitherto been discussed by scholars in a speculative manner had now passed into the com- mon currency of religious men and had come to furnish the motive-power by which the Council of Pisa acted, or at least upon which it depended for popular support. Yet if the council had (to use a modern phrase) to appeal to the constituencies, its practical procedure was guided by less generous and more worldly principles ; and the man who controlled its deliberations and gave them their definitive form was one who simply worked for his own aggrandisement, the famous or infamous Baldassare Cossa, destined very soon to become Pope and in not many years to be deposed with ignominy by a far more powerful and more representative council than that which met at Pisa. The council summoned by the cardinals met on the morrow of Lady Day 1409. Besides twenty-two cardinals belonging to both colleges, there were pre- sent either in person or by proxies two hundred arch- The Council of Pisa. 141 bishops and bishops, and nearly as many abbots ; repre- sentatives of the religious orders and chapters, of the Meetin-ofthe ^ings and great princes of Europe (those Council uf Pisa. Q^ Spain being conspicuously absent), and of eleven universities ; tog^ether with a multitude of doctors of theology, making up a total not far short of a thousand members. At the first session of this im- posing assembly the two Popes were cited, and on their non-appearance it was agreed that after a fair interval they should be pronounced contumacious. Consider- able discussion took place during this interval ; oppo- sition was aroused, and the term was prolonged. At length on the 25 th May Gregory and Benedict / Deposition of ^cro declared guilty of contumacy, and on v the Popes. ^^^ ^^l^ Juue they were solemnly deposed. Only then did the ambassadors of Pope Benedict make their appearance, and in spite of the appeal of the King of Aragon the council declined to hear them : it had empowered the cardinals to elect a new Pope, and they were now about to enter conclave. Their natural choice would have fallen on Baldassare Cossa, but he besought them earnestly to pass him by. They were resolved however not to bind themselves for too long Election of ^ time, and so chose a man past seventy years ^' Alexander V. ^f ^g^^ highly esteemed for learning and liberality, Peter Philargi, who as a Greek might be accepted as a convenient compromise at a time when the Pope's nationality had so long been an incentive to division. This done, the council felt it had exerted itself sufficiently ; the questions of Church reform which stood as part of their business were hardly touched, but a new council was promised for April 1 4 1 2. Then on the 142 Movements for Reform. 7tli August the fathers of Pisa, dissolved their sessions, congratulating themselves on having restored unity to Christendom, when they had in fact only added one more to the rival claimants of the Papal See. The council had placed itself too entirely in the hands of the cardinals, and had been too abrupt in its dealings with Benedict and Gregory. It assumed the validity of its own position and declined to enter into the difficulty of theirs. Some years more of negotiation and conflict were needed before the purpose for which the Council of Pisa strove ineffectually could be secured by the Council of Constance. The Pope who owed his election to the council, Ah ander the Fifth, lived less than a year; and his pontificate John XXIII i^ ^^b' noticeable for the support which, as a 1410- Franciscan, he gave to his order, in such a way as to arouse all the antagonistic forces of the Uni- versity of Paris, and for the vigorous proceedings of his legate Cossa in Italy, which ended just before he died in the recovery of the city of Rome. Cossa, it was seen, was the one man who would succeed him, if the third line of Popes was to be continued with any vitality. His energy in conducting affairs that called for despatch and resolution was a conspicuous merit, and his steady hostility to the encroachments of Ladis- las of Naples was felt to be so valuable a qualification as to outweigh any compunction that might be excited by his notoriously bad private character. He main- tained through life the notions of honourable dealing that ho had learned in his early apprenticeship as a pirate. Perfectly unscrupulous and profligate to a degree that shocked even Italy in his age, the pressing The Couxcils of Pisa and Constance. 143 need of a strong defender against Naples decided his election, and on the 1 6th May 14 1 he became Pope under the name of John the Twenty-third. But the hopes that he would overcome Ladislas were soon dis- appointed, for though he defeated him a year later the victory was worse than fruitless. The Neapolitan power grew in strength until in June 1 4 1 i it was able to impose terms of peace upon the Pope, who acknowledged Ladislas as King of the Two Sicilies — though the island belonged to Aragon — on the sole condition that he would bring pressure to bear upon Gregory the Twelfth to induce him to abdicate. The council announced by that of Pisa to be held in the spring of 1 4 1 2 was actually held at Rome in Council at February 1 4 1 3. The one act for which it is Home, 1413. remembered is the condemnation of WyclifFe's writings which was decreed on the 13 th February and forthwith carried out by a solemn burning of the books on the steps of St. Peter's. But what made a deeper impression upon those present at vespers in the Pope's chapel just before the first session of the council, was the appearance of an owl which, when the Holy Spirit was invoked, came and settled upon the Pope's head. The significance of so sinister a portent could not be mistaken. At the council itself the attendance was so thin, and the members were so certain that the presiding forces at it were not in earnest in the matter of reform, that it broke up of itself without being formally dis- solved. On the 3rd March John the Twenty-third summoned another which should meet in the following December, — where, was to be fixed hereafter. John, it mav be affirmed, had no idea of fulfillincr this 1^4 MOVEMESTS EOR REFORM. cn into the University 01 Jrrague, and there without gaining special distinction as a student he ob- tained the immense advantas^e of listening: to teachers whose influence by degrees changed entirely his manner of thought. Among these were some who afterwards ranked among his chief enemies, such as Stanislas of Znaim and Stephen of Palecz. In 1393 he became Bachelor of Arts and in the following year of Theology ; in 1396 he incepted as Master of Arts, but never pro- ceeded to the degree of Doctor in Theology. In 1 40 1 he was Dean of the philosophical faculty, and next year Eector of the University. His University career was thus, like all his life, unpretentious but honourable. He had won the respect of his fellow-scholars without making his mark by any startling achievement. ^ I venture to depart from the practice of Czech writers in indicating the softness of the letter c by a cedilla. 152 JIIOVEMENTS FOR ReFORM. Some time before liis election to the Rectorsliip, which he liekl but half a year, he had been engaged not only as a lecturer in the University, but also in active clerical work. In 1400 he had been ordained priest, and two years later was appointed preacher ;it tlie Bethlehem Chapel at Prague, an office which required him to deliver sermons in the Czech lan- guage. At the University he had known WyclifFe's His study of philosophical treatises, some of which, copied wyciiffe. ^^|. |^y |^-g q^,^-^ hand, are still preserved ; and probably while he was Eector he made the acquaintance of the Englishman's theological writings, which, as we liave already noticed,-^ had early passed into Bohemia. These almost in a moment gave rise to eager contro- versy among the students and teachers at Prague, and soon came to form the groundwork of a religious move- ment in that country of a far deeper, more general, and more abiding character than was the case in Eng- land. But Hus's studies in Wycliffe did not make him the less a devoted son of the Church. He respected his English master, and when AVycliffe's doctrines were examined by the University of Prague, made his protest — it seems mistakenly — against the correctness of the passages stated to have been ex- tracted from Wyclifie's writings. The doctrines were condemned by the majority ; and thenceforth ' Wiclefy * became a burning party question in the University. In 1407 or 1408 two Bohemian students, Nicolas I'aulfisch and George of Kniehnicz, brought back to I'rague from Oxford, together with works of Wycliffe — one with their colophon is extant — a testimonial ^ Above, pp. 119, 124. John Hus. \ 5 3 bearing the seal of tlie University of Oxford and declaring the correctness of Wycliffe's teaching. The document was almost certainly a forgery, though the bringers of it were quite innocent of the fraud ; but it aroused a good deal of excitement at Prague, and Hus, having no doubts of its genuineness, gladly availed himself of it as a vindication of his own discipleship. All this time Hus had been rapidly making his way into the hearts of the Bohemian people. They listened to his discourses with a conviction His popu- 1 1 • • T lurityasa that auswcrs to an absolute smceritv and preacher. . . "c* ^ single -mmdedness on the part 01 the preacher. And Hus's mind became more and more under the dominion of Wycliffe's teaching. He was not content with moving the religious sentiment of his hearers ; he must denounce the evils in the Church at large. For a time his efforts were viewed with favour by Zbynek, the Archbishop of Prague, a worthy and well-meaning, if somewhat illiterate, prelate, who asked him to report to him any evils that came before his notice in the Church. Through the same influence Hus appears in 1 40 5 as preacher to the annual synod, in which quality he did not spare the vices and dis- orders which he saw in the lives and conversation of the clergy. But by 1407 the Archbishop had come to feel that Hus was going too far, or at least too fast. He had already been warned by Innocent the Seventh in 1405 of the necessity under which he lay of uproot- ing Wycliffism in his province ; and when in 1408 the Opposition of clergy of his diocese addressed him a me- the clergy. niorial agaiust Hus, on account of the attack, as they considered it, which he had made upon 154 MOVEMEXTS FOR ReFORM. themselves in his last synodal sermon, Zb3'nek could not but connect his actions with the danger which it was his duty to resist. Hus therefore was deprived of the oflice of preaching before the synod, but in other respects he was left as before. On the 20th ^lay the Archbishop repeated the former condemnation of the AVycliftite articles, but the Bohemian nation in the University so modified the condemnation when urged upon them as to show that they were not pre- pared to admit that Wycliffe's doctrine as such was heretical. The Bohemian nation was soon however to take up a more resolute position with regard to the chief ques- tions at that time agitated in the Church. In 1408, when the Council of Pisa was already summoned by the cardinals, King Wenzel of Bohemia (he was no longer King of the E-omans) renounced his obedience to Pope Gregory the Twelfth, and sought to obtain the support of his own clergy and University for an atti- tude of neutrality towards the rival Popes. The Arch- bishop of Prague however declined to follow him, and of the four nations at Prague only the Bohemian n greed to be neutral ; the other three stood by Gregory. They were also parted by the old scholastic feud ; the Bohemians were realists, while the others were nominal- ists. The Bohemians thought that they might use the opportunity for establishing the predominance of their nation in the University. They requested Wenzel to grant them three votes to the single one of the foreign nations, llus was an ardent advocate of the change. It became a national question between the Czech and the other elements in the University, and on the 19th John Hus. 155 January 1 409 the King — willingly enough, we may believe — issued the required decree. It is seldom that a mere academical ordinance is a matter of the first importance in the history of a people ; but the decree which placed the Czechs in a Sgcgssioh of the foreigners positiou of comuiaud at the University of Prague formed a very real landmark in that of Bohemia. A multitude of scholars, estimated variously at between two and twenty thousand — in any case a considerable proportion of the total number of masters and students, — quitted Prague, and went forth to found or to invigorate the Universities of Vienna, Leipzig, and Cologne. At Leipzig the building now occupied by the philosophical faculty is the very house bought by the Prague scholars on their first arrival to make the beginning of a famous seat of learning. The old University lost in a moment its international position and its high distinction among the schools of leavincrthe Europc. But this vory fact was favourable S^onSy*^^ to the development of a purely Bohemian Hussite. current of opinion there ; and as Hus had been through all these proceedings the leader of the ^ patriotic ' party, it was almost inevitable that this should become identified with his teaching. And with the departure of the foreign masters and students the strength of the national spirit of the Bohemian University steadily increased. The Archbishop of Prague however had no choice but to place himself in opposition to this current of feeling. In the autumn of this same year he was persuaded to acknowledge Alexander the Fifth, and having so acknowledged him he was 156 Movements eor Reeor.u. bound to carry out that Pope's bull of December 20, ordering liim to suppress the writings and influence The Arch- ^^' WycUfFe in Bohemia; even though he tiona^aiist ^^^^ ^ J®^^ earlier publicly declared that wycUffism. j^q -^^^ already succeeded in destroying heresy and that there were no longer any heretics in his diocese. A commission was appointed, ^'*'°* seventeen works of WyclifFe were named as open to objection, and all copies of them were ordered by the Archbishop to be burned, while preaching in any unauthorised place was interdicted. On the 2 1st June the University of Prague solemnly protested against this ordinance ; Hus and some other members of it appealed to John the Twenty-third : but on the 1 6th July the books were burned, the number of volumes collected for the purpose being more than two hundred. A surer proof of the popularity of Wycliffe's teaching could not be desired ; and the result of the act of Zbynek was at once to connect Bohemian patriotism still more closely, and now indissolubly, with Wycllffism and with the personal guidance of Hus. The first measure led necessarily to a second, and two days after the burning of the books Hus was pro- KKcommnnica- nouuced excommuuicate, in company with liouofuus. ^^ those who had not surrendered their copies of Wycliffe's works. Hus was now more than ever the popular hero ; whoever ventured to say a word against him or against Wycllffism was apt to be roughly handled by the citizens of Prague ; and the Archbishop became the subject of ribald satirical verses. Hus preached all the more vigorously against the per- John Hus. 157 secution of tlie memory of a teaclier Tvliom, though he did not follow him in all points, he revered as one who had given the motive-power to his own life. King Wenzel himself did his best to help him, and wrote to Pope John the Twenty-third maintaining that there was no heresy in Bohemia, and requesting him to annul the late proceedings. It is curious that in the interval Pope John had appointed four cardinals to examine Zbynek's action, and they had reported that he was not justified in ordering Wycliffe's books to be burned. Zbynek's friends however demanded a new inquiry, and this was conducted by Cardiual Oddo Colonna, the future Pope Martin the Fifth, who decided firmly in the Archbishop's favour. Soon after this King Wenzel's letter was despatched, together with others from ipfluential persons in Bohemia. But in the circumstances there was evidently no choice but to carry out the judgement of Cardinal Oddo, who cited Hus to appear at Rome and defend himself. Hus did not himself go, but sent three proctors ; their arguments were judged unsatisfactory ; and Hus was again excommunicated. But John the Twenty-third found that the uncer- tainty of his title made it advisable to limit the sphere Attitude of of opposition. There was a dispute, as it johnxxiii. ^j^g^ -^^ Germany as to the recent election of the King of the Romans. Sigismund of Branden- burg and Jobst of Moravia both claimed the title, while Wenzel had never acquiesced in the act of 1 400 which deposed him. The Moravian claimant died, it is true, in January 14 ii, but Sigismund's acknow- ledgement was not secured until July ; and much 158 Movements eor Reform, depended on the question whether Sigismund would recognise John as Pope. Besides, if the latter drove Wenzel to extremities, there was a risk that he might transfer his allegiance to Gregory the Twelfth. John's interest therefore required that he should treat the Bohemian question in a generous spirit ; and, thanks doubtless to his mediation, the stress of feeling in that country became gradually calmer. The King had at first adopted some severe measures against Zbynek and the Church, and Hus had come to Wenzel's aid with areruments borrowed from Wvcliffe. But a com- promise or understanding was afterwards arrived at, and the Archbishop was persuaded to take up a con- ciliatory line of policy with regard to Hus, if Wenzel on his part would act with greater moderation towards tho clergy. Zbynek however died in the autumn of 1 4 1 1 before the arrangement had been carried into effect. The death of Archbishop Zbynek removed the per- sonal element in the controvers}^, and left it freer to work in a more extended field. The ques- Developmeiit . i • . • i t i j i t • • ofwyciiffism tiou up to this timc had been the admissi- bility of Wycliffe's teaching ; it now became the application of that teaching to the larger problem which arose out of the religious disorder of Bohemia, the distracted state of Christendom at large, the division in the Papacy, and the individual actions of John the Twenty-third. Pope John soon gave an opportunity for this new expansion of Wycliffism. Before the end of 141 1 he issued indulgences to promote a crusade, or in other words to promote his Italian schemes ; and Hus, in mind of Wycliffe's attack upon the English crusade in Flanders thirty years earlier, raised an ener- John Hus. 159 getic protest against tlie act and the whole theolo- v gical basis on which it rested. In June, to the alarm of the University, he held a public disputa- tion on the subject, in which Jerome of Prague eagerly joined ; the younger students, in the enthu- siasm of freshly excited zeal, led the latter in triumph through the city. The whole place was in an uproar, sermons preached in support of the Pope's bull of in- dulgence were angrily interrupted, and in a few days matters reached such a pitch that the bull was carried about in a mock procession and finally burned. King Wenzel now became aware that, whatever his private feeling in the contest, he must take measures against these unruly proceedings. The law was brought into execution, and three men who had openly protested against the preaching were put to death in spite of Hus's attempts to secure their reprieve. But the popular excitement was only kindled anew, and it was considered prudent to liberate others who had been imprisoned during the late riots. Just before this commotion Hus's enemies in the theological faculty of the University had shown their strength by repeating the condemnation of the forty- five articles of Wycliffe, together with six others ascribed to Hus, and further by persuading the King to confirm and enforce their sentence. Hus in conse- quence, however much he might possess the support of the Bohemian people at large, could no longer claim that of official authority. His opposition to the indul- gences made it inevitable that John the Twenty-third should abandon his previous policy of moderation towards him. He now deputed a cardinal to reexamine i6o Movements for Reform, the charo'cs airainsfc IIus, with the result that the neater excommunication was pronounced against him, and IIus subjected ^ollowcd bj a second bull which commanded Ixilmmuiu- ^^^^^^ ^^^ person should be seized and that cation. j^g sliould be handed over to the spiritual authority to be burned ; the chapel of Bethlehem was to be destroyed. Hus, who indeed seems to have been in no danger, replied by an appeal to the sen- tence of a general council, and in the end to that of his supreme judge, Jesus Christ. The King however advised him to withdraw from Prague ; and, for this reason and to save his friends trouble, — not in the least from any thought of cowardice, — before the end of the year 1 4 1 2 he disappeared from public notice. He remained in his retreat far away in the country for nearly two years, and visited Prague but seldom and His journey to Only in sccrct ; until at last the assembly Constance. ^^ ^^ Council of Gonstance required his attendance there to take his trial before a body whose decision might be felt to represent the sober judgement of all Western Christendom. He was not indeed under any bodily compulsion to appear and defend himself; but he saw rightly that such a course was essential to the eventual success of his aims. He was careful to obtain an official certificate of his orthodoxy before leaving Bohemia. Then in October 14 14 he set out on his journey towards Constance, and was afterwards provided with a liberally expressed safe-conduct from Sigismund, the King of the Romans, ensuring him against molestation on his going and returning as well as during his stay at Constance. Much has been written upon the subject of this document, and it has John Hus. i6i repeatedly been stated that Sigismund's acquiescence in Has's condemnation involved a grievous breach of faith towards him. On the other hand it has been main- tained that a safe-conduct, as such, could promise pro- tection to an accused person on his way to trial, during the time of the trial, and in the event of his acquittal on his return journey, but could not interfere with the consequences of his condemnation. Neither of these assertions can be admitted in its entirety. The latter is excluded by the fact that it was never referred to at the time, even when the argument would have been most convenient ; wdiile as to the former, considerinsr that Sigismund gave the safe-conduct to one whom he knew to lie under excommunication and yet added no words of reservation to the jorotection offered to Hus, as was usual in cases of the kind, it may be pre- sumed that he believed he had powder to defend him. When therefore he suffered Hus to be imprisoned and then carried out the sentence of the council upon him, Sigismund appeared to be guilty of treachery. Yet we ma}^ doubt whether he was aware of the usage which placed a spiritual offender wholly beyond the protec- tion of any lay authority ; and it has been well pointed out that Germany and especially Bohemia knew so little about the Inquisition and the systematic rules according to which heresy was dealt with, that surprise and indignation were excited by the application to Hus's case of the recognised principles of the canon law. *The council could not have done otherwise than it did without surrendering those principles ; ' ^ ^ H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition of the Middle Aaes, 2. 467 (iSS8\ 1 62 MOVEMESTS FOR REFORM. but Has none the less was convinced that at Con- stance lie was under no personal risk. There was this simplicity in his character that he took things too literally, did not understand them as a man of the world would have done, but interpreted tliem for him- self in the light of his own single-mindedness. He was thus deceived as to the extent of his protection, and complained bitterly when it was too late. Hus was accompanied on the road to Constance by several Bohemian noblemen ; he reached the place on the 3rd November. Before the end of Imrri-onment. iit~» t ti it the month the Jrope and cardinals resolved that he should be put in prison, and after a brief hear- ing, which came to nothing, he was confined in the Dominican convent on an island in the lake. Sigis- mund on his arrival demanded Hus's release on the faith of his safe-conduct; but the Pope, the cardinals, and the council were obdurate. The truth was that, however earnestly Hus might urge, and probably urge with justice, that he was pure from the stain of heresy, the events which had happened in Bo- hemia were convincing to those who knew only their general purport, that there was a iwim6j facie case against him. The council felt that it was its duty to restore unity in Christendom, and nothing could be less conducive to this purpose than the dis- semination of views and practices at variance with the general sentiment of Christians. More than this, those who were in earnest in the cause of reform felt that their hopes of success would be gravely imperilled if there were a suspicion that under the name of reform there lurked a desire of John Hus, 163 making far-reacliing changes in tlie organic system of the Church. In these circumstances a man with the charges against him wliich were alleged against Hus could not expect to go free. Besides this, a heretic as such had been often decided authoritatively to be beyond the protection of any temporal power. Sigis- niund thus was helpless to intervene in Hus's favour ; and later on, in March, when Pope John's flight might seem to give him the opportunity, he had learned to acquiesce too completely in the action of the council for it to be possible to take any independent step. Two successive commissions were appointed to ex- amine into the opinions of Wycliffe and Hus. The His examina- sccoud reported on the 4th May condemn- tion, -^^^ ^I^Q forty- five articles from Wycliffe which had been the cause of the controversy at Prague, together with more than two hundred others which had been supplied by the zeal of the University of Oxford. Wycliffe's writings were ordered to be burned; his bones were to be dug up and cast out.-^ This famous decree, it was at once felt, involved in it the fate of Hus, even though (as was the fact) he was free from error on the cardinal point of the sacrament of the altar. His friends renewed their protest against his imprisonment, but without effect. They were answered by a promise of Hus's speedy trial. On the 5th June he was heard, but the case was already hopeless. Each side was reasoning from a different set of premises, and divided also on the first principles of philosophy ; and Hus's general view of the nature of the Church and of ^ See above, p. ill. 164 Movements eor Reform. tlie pricstliood — a view which he liacl borrowed in its entirety from AVyclitfe — was by itself sufficient to con- vict him, even though that view might be adequately supported by arguments from the fathers and from certain portions of the canon law. For two days more, on the /tli and 8th, he was heard at length. The council did all it could to induce him to submit to its judgement ; but Hus, though fully persuaded of his complete orthodoxy, felt that as to recant any- thing which he believed was impossible, so to accept a form of statem^ent which was not his own, would be to play his conscience false, while charges which had been wrongly brought against him he could not abjure because he had never held. It became almost a wrangle about words : Hus uro-ed that he would defend nothino^ obstinately but would submit to better instruction ; the council maintained that he must abjure without qualification everything that had been charged against him. And out of this miserable dispute, in which aiidcondem- neither side could, and one side would not, nation. understand the other, came the fatal act by which Hus was condemned to death. On the 6th July he received his sentence, was degraded from his orders, and handed over to the secular arm. He was straightway led w^ithout the city into a field where the stake was ready. For the last time he was besought by the Palsgrave Lewis of P^avaria to make his peace with the Church ; but he, who had always (we know) desired to die for the truth, once more repeated his willingness — ' I am ready to die in that truth of the Gospel which I have been taught and written;' — and so, chanting his prayer for mercy from the office for John Hus. 165 the Burial of the Dead, the flames were kindled about him. Thinking to extinguish heresy, the Council of Constance had made it the national faith of Bohemia, and had made the martyr Hus the national hero and the national saint. ( i6C ) CHAPTER XII. THE END OF THE FIRST REFORM MOVEMENT. The Council of Constance had now carried out two out of tlie three objects for which it was assembled. It had deposed Pope John the Twenty-third ; a few weeks later Gregory the Twelfth abili- cated ; and Benedict the Thirteenth maintained an obscure, and daily more insignificant, position in Spain. It had also, as it believed, put dowm heresy by the death of Hus, followed as this was in the following spring by the trial and death of his most active dis- ciple Jerome of Prague. What remained was to Question of cliooso a ncw Pope and to set on foot some Kefoim. effective scheme of reform. It was really the earnestness with which an important party in the council laboured for this end, that had operated most to Hus's prejudice. The council had presumed to cast out the Pope : some of its members stood com- mitted to opinions involving more than a merely per- sonal change in the Papacy ; to some of them it seemed desirable that the position of the Papacy must undergo certain modifications, must submit to certain restraints, in order to command the obedience of Europe. How much the more anxiously must they avoid giving End of the Fjrst Reform Movement. 167 countenance to any movement wliicli threatened to undermine the foundations not of the Papal only but of the priestly power itself. Men like Ailly, the Car- dinal of Cambray, proclaimed the preeminence of the Church as above the Pope, just because it was essential to the carrying out of the objects of the council. But they had not a thought of attacking the mediaeval Church system in a vital part. By their assent to the condemnation of Hus they had now proved that their proposals of reform were not to overpass the limits of correct Churchmanship ; and to this business they at once proceeded when the preliminary obstacles had, as we have seen, been removed. But the very fact that the most pressing work of the council had been accom- plished made it all the harder to secure unanimity about the further measures to be pursued. Sigismund almost immediately quitted Constance on a great tour of pacification. His aims were of the most comprehensive kind : Europe was to be united by his mediation to form a grand crusade against the advancing power of the Turks. But the year of the battle of Azincourt, Sigismund's wlicu France beyond this was torn between negotiations. ^^^^ YYViA factious, was hardly a propitious moment for so ambitious a scheme. It insensibly narrowed itself and assumed a practical character. First the Emperor went to Perpignan to make terms with Benedict ; Benedict himself was obdurate, but the King of Aragon agreed that Spain should send its representatives to the council. In the following March Sigismund was at Paris, in May in London. After his alliance with Henrv the Fifth concluded at I 68 MOVEME.XTS FOR ReFOR.U. Canterbury in August lie returned to the Continent, and reached Constance again in January 14.17. In tliese days of rapid communication we can hardly imagine a council sitting aimlessly through a 3'ear and a half of comparative suspense. It had been ■ wrangling about the order of proceedings ; each nation had its own grievances which appeared to it of chief moment, and was anxious to give them an opportunity of early discussion. Then new combina- tions of party were formed, and the alliance which Sigismund had made with England had the natural effect of drawing the French towards the Italian side. In the July after his return the council at last took the positive step of declaring Benedict no longer Pope. A committee was then appointed to set about measures of reform ; but it had hardly been named before its work was practically superseded by the proposal that a new Pope should be first elected, and the election of a Pope, it was evident, might, and probably would, frustrate the power of the council for further action. But the council was excusably weary of the protracted debating, which seemed to have no definite end, of various and discordant plans. In September the death of Robert Hallam, Bishop of Ralisbury, deprived the English nation of its leader and Sigismund of one of his main supporters. A month later, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, and afterwards cardinal, appeared at the Surrender council ; and his arrival coincided with the tiurElSiish decision of the English nation to throw in ""'*""• their lot with the Italian party. Probably Henry the Fifth had been made aware of the hope- Eh'D OF THE First Reform Movement. 169 lessTiess of carrying a struggle in which parties were so evenly balanced to a successful conclusion, unless the council were to sit for ever ; and his half-brother was sent to effect the change of front with as little irrita- tion to the Germans as could be avoided. Yet one cannot but feel that the death of Bishop Ilallam was an important, if not a vital, element in the success of this manoeuvre. The English abandoned the Germans ; by the beginning of October they had no choice but to acquiesce in the immediate election of a Pope. Even the stipulation that the Pope should be bound to set about the work of reform without delay, was not ac- cepted ; and the council, contenting itself with the decree that future councils should be held every five years (the next however being in seven years), formu- lated a basis for the election of the Pope. On the 30th October this was arranged : the Pope who should be chosen was to cooperate in the task of reforming the Church in a variety of matters enumerated under eighteen heads, and this before the council should be dissolved ; he was to be elected by the cardinals to- gether with six nominees of each of the nations. On Election of ^he I I th Xovember the electors met and Martmv. choso the Romau Cardinal Oddo Colonna, a poor man though of illustrious family, of high character, who took the title of Martin the Fifth. The council had now sat all but three years, and every one was weary and anxious to find a colourable excuse for considering its work completed. After the new Pope had repeated the condemnation of the errors of Wycllffe and Hus, and the council had disposed of some of the least controverted and least important i;o Movements for Reform. questions of reform, it was arranged that the rest of the eighteen articles should be dealt with by means of separate conventions or ' concordats ' with the different nations, a plan which was devised not less to minimise the weight aud value of the future concessions, than to save the friction which had long become intolerable through the jealousy of the component elements of the council. The consequence was that the concordats proved little better than illusory ; the reforms were small in the present, though a prospect of more w^as offered in the future : but even those who had been earnest in their advocacy of reform were content to leave their labours unfinished in the hope that the next council (for this was a fixed engagement agreed upon by the Council of Constance) would be better able, with the ground freer, to work for the common good of Christendom. So the Council of Constance Dissolution of was dissolved on the 2 2nd April 141 8. cm.Su^.e!^''^ It was succccded by that of Pavia in 1423, ^'♦'^- afterwards removed to Siena ; but this was too much wanting both in representative character and authority to effect anything of importance. The conciliar movement was in danger of dying out when it was revived by the assembly of the Council of Basle in 143 1, and the Council of Basle was only called because the state of affairs in Bohemia was too urgent to brook longer delay. The last years of the Council of Constance display a ]):iiuful contrast to the enthusiasm and vigour with TiKioftho whicli it had been heralded and opened. Credit Schism, j^^ tangible results were seen, it is true, in the reunion of the ]\ipacy. ^Martin the Fifth was End cf the First Rrform Movement. 171 at once accepted by most, and very soon he liad no rival to contend with. John the Twenty-third sub- mitted in June 141 9, was made a cardinal, and died soon after; while the history of Benedict's succes- sion in Spain exhibits the disintegrating tendency of schism on a truly microscopical scale. When he died in 1424 three of his cardinals elected their Pope, Clement the Eighth, and one chose his own private Pope, Benedict the Fourteenth. Five years alter Clement was appeased by the bishoprick of Majorca, while Benedict as late as 1432 was thought worth imprisoning and sending to Pope Martin. But the gain of restored unity in the head of Christendom had to be set against a state of things rapidly assuming the dimensions of a civil S.'t'milarVy war in Bohcmia. On Wenzel's death in ,n Buhenna. ^ ^ ^ ^ Sigismuud succceded, and had to face the revolt of his capital; within two years he was driven from the country. The reforming party among the Bohemians was acting in a spirit of vengeance for the death of their chief. They poured into the monas- teries, wrecked every image andrelique, and handled the monks or friars with the ferocity of religious hatred. Often they put them to death, sometimes by burning. Nothing was safe from the outrages of this fanatic — or drunken, if the monks speak true— rabble ; no place was sacred to them. The most beautiful churches with their choicest ornaments were burned without remorse. Everything that marked the influence of German art or Catholic allegiance was the prey of this puritan frenzy. Slavonic patriotism combined readily with the forces of relio-ious zealotry, and the Hussites for a while domi- i;^ Movf.MEXTs FOR Refora/. iiated tlie laiul. But the}" soon split into two divi- sions, wliicli agreed in their common attitude of resistance to Catholic control, but differed as to the means by which their ojoposition should be carried into effect. The moderate joarty were called Calixtins (or Utraquists) because they allowed the cuj) to the laity in the Lord's Supper ; and these represented fairly the opinions of Hus himself. The others fell into several branches, united only by their common policy of war ; the extreme section among them not only accepted without reserve the tradition of Wy- cliffe, including his denial of transubstantiation, but went on into a variety of strange beliefs and prac- tices, some visionary, some materialistic, which threatened the success of their more sober brethren. These, the orthodox members of the radical party among the reformers, banded themselves round their leader John Zizka, who united first-rate abilities as a warrior and military organiser with a profound earnest- ness in the faith of Hus. His camp at Tabor furnished not only a rallying-point for those who came to glory in the name of Taborites, but a strong place of defence, which held its ground victoriously until after a long and desolating war the radical party among the re- formers, under Zizka's successor Procopius the Great, was crushed at the battle of Lipan in 143 4. Before this the Council of Basle had received dele- gates from Bohemia and had sought to bring them over by patient hearing and argument. Cardinal (jiulano Ccsarini, legate in Germany and president of the council, showed an earnest desire to be concili- atory and a generosity of spirit which communicated ExD OF THE First Reform Movement. 173 itself to others ; for lie was known for the saintliest churchman of his time, and in all ways beyond re- proach. The general moderation and good temper of these proceedings compare most favourably with those which had led up to the condemnation of Hus, and the absence of any thought of vindictive measures shows that the world had learned something at least from the lessons of Constance, though the dread of Hussitism as a militant and extending power in Europe may not have been without influence in counselling moderation. At the council itself no definite result was arrived at ; but further negotiations led ^'^^^" to a concession, within certain limits, of the practice of administering the communion to the laity in both kinds, as well as a compromise, rather of words than of reality, in regard to the other Bohemian de- mands touching discipline over moral offences, the license of preaching, and the possession and use of temporal goods by the clergy. Sensible of the toler- ance and good intentions of the council, the moderate advocates of reform were ready to unite with the con- servative nobility to put an end to the struggle ; and a year later the Taborites suffered their final defeat, which left them no longer an influential party, far less a national force, in Bohemia. Yet the extreme views to which the Czech move- ment had tended left their memorial not only in Bohe- mia (where the extreme reformed party emerge again in a few years as the ' Unitas Fratrum,' or Bohemian Brethren, by us best known as the Moravians), but in Germany and beyond Germany ; for it was to this impulse that the Waldensian communities in Dau- 174 HIOVEMEXTS FOR ReFORM. ])]iinL' and Piedmont owed their cliaracteristic features. The okl belief that the Waldenses (or Vaudois) re- infliienceof present a current of tradition continuous niov"niem°on ^^oui the assumed evangelical simplicity the Waldenses. ^f ^]^g primitive Church has lost credit since a critical examination of their literature has placed beyond a doubt the fact that it contains no element of anything but a Catholic nature which is earlier than the time when the Bohemian, and above all the Taborite, influence is known to have been excited in the Waldensian valleys. It is known, in- deed, that the Waldenses excited the suspicion of the Catholics and subjected themselves to the rigour of the Inquisition by certain views which implied a disparage- ment of the value of holy orders, maintaining that laymen might, if necessary, perform sacerdotal func- tions, and that the efficacy of the ministration of the sacrament depended on the virtue of the celebrant. But otherwise the imagined primitive Christianity of these Alpine congregations can only be deduced from works which have been shown to be translations or adaptations of the Hussite manuals or treatises. The special Protestant tenets of the Waldenses are there- f(n'e not of native growth ; and the sole point in which they are held by competent scholars to have influenced the later course of the reformation, lies in the fact that they had a version of the Bible in their vernacular. It is possible that this version may be the original from which the early German Bibles were translated ; but the connexion is not yet proved, the balance of learned opinion is against it, and even if it were proved it would not follow that the Waldensian movement End of the First Reform Movement, ly^ was in any respect liostile to the Catholic tradition. For in France a version of tLe Bible was set on foot in the thirteenth century, just as in England some parts of it were translated long before Wycliffe's time. The Council of Basle had been summoned, as we have seen, to cope with the Bohemian difficulty ; but The Council wheu its prudcut concessions had been ot Basle. effectual in confining the influence of that movement within the limits of Bohemia, and when its most pressing work seemed accomplished for it by the overthrow of the Taborites, the council, which from the outset had been thwarted by the Pope, turned its energy towards the aim of establishing a permanent control over him, an aim which involved an irrecon- cilable conflict with the Papacy. The positive results of the sessions of the two following years are found in a variety of resolutions dealing with the morals of the clergy, freedom of election in churches, disputed questions relating to the patronage of benefices, the restriction of appeals and of interdict, and the reduc- tion of the number of the cardinals ; above all a heavy blow was struck at the Pope's resources by the aboli- tion of the right to levy annates or dues on appoint- ment to a benefice. Extreme as these measures were, they received at the time no small measure of support outside the council. In 1 43 8 Charles the Seventh of France, by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, recog- nised the authority of the council and placed the essential points of its decrees, in particular the aboli- tion of annates, on a legal footing in France. The opportunity for keeping money from passing out of the country was too valuable to be lost. In Germany 1/6 MOVEMEXTS FOR REFORM. also, a j'ear later, the Diet of Mentz publislied a law of a like purport. Both countries were disposed to gain their own practical objects by much the same method as that arranged in the concordats of the Council of Constance. But Eiigenius the Fourth, the successor of Martin the Fifth (who had died in 1 431), considered not inexcusably that in this course of action the very existence of the Papacy was at stake. He ordered the dissolution of the council ; and when the fathers at Basle not only declined to follow him, but pronounced him contumacious and resolved upon his suspension, he held an independent council of his own at Ferrara ; then transferred it in 1439 to Florence, and was able to effect what appeared to be the signal success — though in fact it was only successful for a moment — of reuniting the Greek Church in the Catholic communion. Meanwhile the obstinate Coun- cil of Basle decreed the Pope's deposition, and chose an Antipope. The truth was that neither was it strong enough to coerce the Pope, nor the Pope to coerce it. But insensibly Eugenius gained the day. After a time of hope, and then an interval of uneasiness, the Anti- pope Felix the Fifth faded into a nonentity, and in little more than eight years after his election he was glad to abdicate. Long before this the council was dying of exhaustion, and it came to an end almost simultaneously with Felix' abdication at the beginning of 1448. What it had really proved was the incom- patibility of the conciliar system with the accepted position of the Papacy. This incompatibility had not come into clear light ExD OF THE First Reform LIovement. 177 in the Council of Constance, because its business was to see to the removal of the existing Popes and then to set up another who should carry out the principles which it laid down. It dealt rather with what should be in theory the Pope's relations to the council, than what they were in fact. For until the election of Martin the fathers at Constance had no occasion to consult the personal wishes or policy of any Pope, and Martin was too wise to begin his pontificate by raising objections. He had submitted to certain restrictions for a prescribed space of five years : and when the time was over he was all the freer to exercise as complete a prerogative as any of his predecessors. This power he handed on to Eugenius ; and Eugenius was a man wdio, whatever his faults of temper, knew how to use his opportunities and to avail himself of the blunders of his antas^onists. Greatly as men desired to see the limits of the Papal authority defined, especially in its relation to the Churches of the different countries, they were not pre- pared to support the council in reducing that authority to a shadow or in binding its exercise by impossible conditions. And when the council went on to compro- mise itself by the creation of a new schism, its failure became a certainty 5 and its failure involved not only the collapse of the conciliar movement but also a steady reaction in favour of the Papal system. In the very year of the dissolution of the council the con- cordat of Vienna abolished the Mentz decrees, and with minor modifications left things as they had been. The progress of the change of feeling is marked, step by step, in the career of a clever Italian, iEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius the Second, C. H. M 178 Movements for Reform. tlien a layman and a libertine, who from an eloquent supporter of the council and secretary to its Antipope, passed into the service of the Emperor Frederick the Third, and manoeuvred his policy with the view of re- storing harmonious relations with the Pope, not with- out regard to contingent advantages to the secretary. Bat iEneas Sylvius is only a type of the class of diplomatists developed in the tedious wrangle be- tween council and Pope, in which larger views and nobler aims degenerated into vain personal self- seeking. Eugenius died, February 23, 1447, before he could witness the completion of his hopes ; but his succes- sors were able to secure the fruits of the victory for a long course of years. The victory was won at a heavy cost both for the Popes and for Christendom ; for the Papacy recovered its ascendency far more as a political than as a religious power. The Pope became more than ever immersed in the international concerns of Europe, and his policy was a tortuous course of craft and in- trigue, which in those days passed for the new art of diplomacy. In Italy itself, where a few states were consolidating themselves at the expense of their smaller neighbours, the Pope was more than ever a temporal prince, guiding his actions by the rules of license and overreaching as his rivals. While too his spiritual position seemed to be quite obscured, his temporal supremacy itself was menaced by a perpetual entangle- ment with political affairs, in which he had no choice but to act as an equal among equals, as an ally with allies. The Papacy survived as the ruler of the States of the Church ; but in this quality alone it was evident End of the First Reform Movemfxt. lyg that its claims over Christendom at large could not be long sustained. To revert to a basis of spiritual domi- nation lay beyond the vision of the energetic princes, the refined dilettanti, the dexterous diplomatists, who sat upon the chair of St. Peter during the age suc- ceeding the Council of Basle. Of signs of uneasiness abroad they could not be quite ignorant; but they sought to divert men's minds from the contemplation of so perplexing a problem as Church reform, by creat- ing or fostering new atmospheres of excitement and interest which might take the place of a current of thought that would only lead to trouble and disturb- ance ; or at best (if we may adopt the language of their apologists) they took advantage of the literary and artistic movement then active in Italy as a means to establish a higher standard of civilisation which might render organic reform needless. Feeling thus that the agency of councils was dis- credited in the eyes of Europe, and reluctant to take action themselves, the Popes threw themselves with whole heart into the interests of the day. Nicolas the Nicolas V. Fifth, who followed Eugenius, devoted himself 1447-1455. -to that which was becoming the absorbing study and well-nigh the religion of Italy, the love of classical learning and classical antiquities, — in a word, humanism. But public affairs could not leave him quite to himself and his works of art. The onward progress of the Turks was a threat to Western civilisa- tion such as no invasion had been since the Mongol advance of the thirteenth century ; and it became the Pope to stand forth as the leader in repelling the danger. In 1444 the Turks were met by a Hungarian I So Movements for Reform. armv, with a band of crusaders from otlier countries, led by Cardinal Cesarini. Overpowered by numbers, the Christians were utterly defeated and Cesarini slain. In nine years the victory was followed up by the conquest of Constantinople, and a panic fear seized upon the Latin world. Pope Nicolas at once proclaimed a crusade ; but the Emperor Frederick the Third was feeble and poor, and the forces of Germany — the country to be threatened next — were divided by jealousy. It was not until 1456, when Callixtus the Third was Pope, that the war of defence was seriously undertaken; and then the success of the crusaders in beating back the Turks from Belgrade was decided more by the heroic ardour of John Hunyadi and the Franciscan Saint John Capistrano than by the military support of Christendom. Pius II Once more in the pontificate of Pius the 1458-1464. Second there was a real attempt to carry out a crusade, but the enterprise was not matured until 1464, and was stopped at the moment of departure by the death of the Pope who accompanied it. It is almost an irony that the Pope, who stands as the model of the secular man of letters of his time, should have died a martyr to a crusade; but there are no good grounds for questioning his sincerity of purpose. He knew what was expected of him as Pope, and he did it; further into his motives it is needless to go: lie has at least the credit of setting on foot the last crusade. From his death the project was no more seriously discussed. It might be made use of as a pretext of policy or an instrument of taxation ; but in the future war against the Turk ceases to rank among A'ligious wars heralded and led by the Pope. 'ExD OF THE First Refokm Movement. iSi The Popes were content to reduce their range of activity, as much as miglit be, to Italy. Nicolas and Pius had united themselves completely with the Italian Paul II. spirit of their day ; — Paul the Second only 1464-1471. gQ f^j, departed from it that his taste was for art for its own sake, and not for classical learning because it was the fashion ; — it was but a step to pass sixtus IV. 0^ ^^'^^ realise, with Sixtus the Fourth, the 1471-1481. Pope's position as the leader of Italians ; and thus, as we have said, the Papal States became the principal object of his concern, and the Pope himself chiefly conspicuous as an Italian prince mixed up in all the intrigues and wrangles of his day. Living thus altogether in an Italian world, where spiritual aspirations were forgotten in the passion for an intellectual or artistic ideal, and where moral restraints were thrown aside in the pursuit of what- ever appealed to the senses, the Pope was unaware or regardless of the course of religious feeling in other countries, which had given efficacy to the conciliar movement at its inception, and which, though im- paired by its decline, had only suffered a temporary relapse, and was before long to resume its entire and masculine strength. The desire for reform grew up again while the Pope recked not of it, and in half a century became a force with which the Papacy with its present resources was powerless to reckon. ( IS2 ) CHAPTER XIII. RELIGIOUS REVIVAL IN SPAIN AND ITALY. Long after tlie ending of the Council of Basle the idea of calling yet another council was repeatedly expressed. The Pope mi^ht set himself ao^ainst it : but Difficulty of the .„ , ° . , °, \. state of Chris- still the suo-ofcstion, as the only expedient t^udom. . . ^ ^^ . \ . 1 that had yet reached a practical stage, was again and again put forth in France and Germany; the condition of England was not such as to enable her to speak or even think with effect on the matter. But councils had sufficiently shown their impotence to touch the real issues, to remedy tlie real evils that affected the very being of Christendom ; and it might even be doubted whether the Church itself, so deeply was every organ of it corrupted, had not outlived its day of vital ministry to mankind. That some change was necessary was clear to all religious men outside the immediate Papal environment ; the only question re- lated to the cliaracter and scope of the change. The truth was that all tlie complaints that had held their ground for above a century against the abuses inherent (as it seemed) in the Church system, had now more justification than ever. Kot merely was the Church suffering from a general demoralisation which was Religious Revival in Spain and Italy. 183 traced to an evil syotem, but most of all to the evil example of its head ; but it was now imperilled by a new influence, by the new devotion to the pagan classical world, which led in the minds of many to a frank avowal of disbelief in Christianity altogether. This temper of mind had its representatives, was even becoming fashionable, among high dignitaries of the Church. It became all the more important to keep the desire for reform separate in a marked way from those movements which had fallen under the censure of Christendom at Constance and Basle ; it was the more necessary to show that what was aimed at was the purifying of the Church from acknowledged abuses, not the introduction into it of modes of thought that HHght open the way to erroneous beliefs and practices. In one country alone of Europe w^as such a reform taken in hand officially and carried into complete exe- cution. This was in Spain, where the long crusade against the Moors had kept alive a burning Catholic zeal which entitled the Spaniards to an exceptionally indulgent treatment from the Holy See. A century earlier they had secured for them- selves privileges with regard to the taxation of the clergy and in restraint of their separate jurisdiction, which were sought in vain by other countries. Papal patronage and Papal interference in Spanish causes had also been curtailed, though not abolished. What England attempted to do by statutes of Pro visors and Praemunire was accomplished to its full extent in Spain ; and it was accomplished because there could be no doubt of the Catholic loyalty of the nation. For the same reason Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of 184 Movements for Reform. Castile, T\-licn they united the two crowns, were able to cany on the work to completion. Their religious character and hearty devotion to the interests of the Church were above suspicion ; and they were therefore the freer to exercise such a degree of control over Church matters as would scarcely have been tolerated in another country. Side by side with their measures of administrative reform, their great aim was to restore the Church, which laboured from the common vices of the age, to a state of effective useful- ness. They obtained the further limitation of the Pope's powers of patronage. Sixtus the Fourth engaged him- self to nominate to the higher benefices in Spain only such natives of the country as the Crown should ap- prove ; and the non-resident foreigner was gradually driven out from all benefices alike. Besides this, it was ordiiined that all Papal bulls relating to the legal rights of private persons should not acquire validity until they had passed through an oflBcial examination. The Church-courts also were brought into closer relation with the civil power ; and the Church subjected to taxa- tion for civil purposes even from its spiritual revenues. Of not less importance w^ere the measures taken for the reform of Church discipline. Among those who Cardinal wcrc chicfly active in this work Cardinal ximenez. Ximcuez was the most influential. His aim was that Church oflBces should be given only to men qualified by their religious and moral rectitude. Himself a friar of rigorous observance, he carried his code of duty into all his practical public life. He corrected the abuses of the monasteries by repeated visitations ; he removed worldly and profligate church- Religious Revival in Spain and Italy. 1S5 men from tlieir benefices, and made use of the royal patronage to appoint bishops whose learning and piety were beyond reproach. But the low standard of edu- cation among the clergy at large could not be advanced in a moment. Ximenez set himself in earnest to pro- mote this end by the foundation of new colleges and by the extension of old ones, with special theological advantages ; and the fruit of his labours was seen in the goodly band of Spanish divines who illustrated the Catholic Church in the following century. But if we have laid a stress upon the national character and religious spirit of the Spanish reforma- tion under Ferdinand and Isabella, we must not forget that Spanish Christianity was still of necessity ani- mated by a militant or crusading zeal. It was these sovereigns who, while they were carrying on the last war of extermination against the Moors, determined once for all to clear the land already theirs of unbelief by the expulsion of the Jews ; and in ten years the last Mussulman was driven from Spain. Before this a new weapon was placed in the hands of the Spanish rulers with the authorisation of Pope Sixtus the Fourth, by the institution of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. This was primarily an ecclesiastical court to examine doubtful or heretical opinions, and it punished offenders as a rule with spiritual penalties : if it condemned them to punishment in life or limb, its execution was remitted to the civil masfistrate. In this manner the connexion between Church and State was kept as close as pos- sible : both were united as the defenders of Catholic orthodoxv. 1 86 Movements for Reform. In Spain the new ardour for the study of ancient learning had not operated as an unsettling influence on men's minds ; the humanists there had turned themselves as though naturally to theological activity : it was Cardinal Ximenez himself who brought out the first polyglot Bible, the apt symbol of the union of the old studies with the new method. In Italy on the other hand the re-discovery of Greek had an effect upon cultivated men not un- like that of the revolution in natural science which marks the past century; only the modern ten- dency was to find in the concrete processes of nature that key to all the problems of human existence which the men of the fifteenth century found in the literature of ancient Greece : both alike led to the depreciation or denial of the Christian revelation. At Florence, the intellectual capital of Italy, — above all while Lorenzo de' Medici presided ' magnificently ' over the policy, tastes, fashions, and amusements of his fellow- citizens, — the excitement roused by humanism an- swered to a general indifference in matters of re- ligion. While open distaste for the forms of the Church was decently avoided, it was not the less clear that the faith which they represented had died out among the educated Florentines. A few curious tliinkers — honest Christians withal — sought to recon- cile the Greek and the Christian, the pagan and the mediaeval, by a philosophical system drawn from the Keo-Platonist school of Alexandria. Such were Mar- sigiio Ficino and his disciple Giovanni Pico della !Mirandola. They thought they were merely reestab- lishing Plato in his rank of the chief of philosophers Religious Revival ix Spain and Italy. 1S7 from which he had been ousted in the Middle Ages by Aristotle ; but when they had once admitted the principle of comprehension, the temptation to over- pass the bounds of sobriety was too exciting to bo resisted, and Pico extended the sphere of his specu- lation by absorbing elements from the Jewish cabba- listic tradition and from the mysterious regions of astrology and magic. Evidently, noble as was their desire of restoring the unity of human thought, these whole-hearted philosophers failed through lack of the critical gift. At most their views could appeal to a very select circle, and the risk they ran was shown by the narrowness with which Pico escaped the conse- quences of a Papal censure. To a religious churchman indeed these constructive efforts of the humanists might seem more objectionable than the evil which they were aimed to meet ; for indifference was after all a nega- tive fault, while these philosophers were supplanting the accredited beliefs of Christendom by a jiositive system of their own. The reaction is shown by the work and teaching of Girolamo Savonarola. A Do- minican friar of the convent of San IMarco in Florence, Savonarola preserved in the midst of that vain and worldly city a rigour of life, a purity of soul, and an unquenchable missionary zeal which forced him into action. But it cost him many years of hard striving before he found the power to make his voice heard. He thirsted to change the hearts and un- ruly lives of his fellow-men ; preached to them with an eloquence which was all the more startling to the Florentines because it gained nothing from the iSS Movements for Reform. literary arts that seemed to tliem a part of tlieir very being. He urged them to do penance for the sins of the city, and a multitude answered to the call. He warned them as a prophet of the doom hanging over them, and mastered them with the spell of his denunciations. To a large party among the Florentines he was at once guide, guardian, father-confessor. If he denounced the acts of the Popes, their manner of life, and the sensual surroundings of their court, he could do it with the greater freedom because in matters of faith he was not only blameless but a pattern to all other churchmen. If he attacked the house of the Medici, it was because in his simple-minded way he traced to their preeminence the vices into which Florentine society had fallen. But unhappily his hostility to the Medici made him a party-leader and placed him in a position for which his unworldliness and apocalyptic spirit wholly unfitted him. Believing himself to be the chosen in- strument of a vast moral and religious quickening of Italian society, political aims became to him revealed truth^ policy was directed by prophecy. When the French under Charles the Eighth entered the land, they were the divinely appointed scourge to chastise and purify it. Savonarola himself was one of the embassy that went forth to meet Charles ; and when almost immediately afterwards the Medici were driven forth from Florence, it was the party of Savo- narola that rose to power. After a year the French ingloriously retired ; but Savonarola and the party that followed him still held with France, and thus in- vited the censure of Pope Alexander the Sixth, whose Religious Revival in Spain and Italy. 1S9 cliief aim at tlie time was to consolidate a league against tliat country. Florence was isolated, and must be brouglit back to common action with the rest of Italy ; and Florence could be best attacked through the all-powerful preacher. Savonarola was first inhibited from preaching, then permitted to preach with a caution as to how he preached. But secure in the consciousness of divine cfuidino^, and thinkinii: nothing of his own safety, Savonarola advanced to a tone of reproach and threatening towards the Roman See which could only be answered by an excommunication. It was not so much that Pope Alexander cared for the friar's criticism as that this criticism reflected the Floren- tine opposition to his policy. Savonarola was excom- municated on the 13th May 1497 ; the magistrates of Florence laboured for his release, but findingr their efforts fruitless they at last determined to brave the excommunication by inviting Savonarola to resume his preaching in the cathedral. The step was no doubt imprudent, for so public a disregard of Papal authority could not but weaken his following. Yet on the other hand, the Pope was looked askance at by a large party at Florence, and his private reputation was so scandalous as to provoke a new desire for a general council to reform the Roman Court. That Charles the Eighth favoured such a proposal was natural on poli- tical grounds ; Savonarola's support of it was simply the last form in which his ardent wish for the purifica- tion of the Church cast itself, but this support was fatal to any hope of mercy from the Pope. Alexander urged the Florentines to restrain the obnoxious preacher, and, whether through his influ- 100 Movements for Reform. ence or not, a change of feeling soon gradually took place. The preaching was put a stop to ; and though his friends still preached for him the re- March 1498. . • 771 .• action in iMorentme opinion grew apace. On the 8th April 1498 his enemies took him prisoner, and he was brought to trial. A confession was drawn from him under torture, which acknowledged that he was a false prophet : how much of it was due to the weakness of the sufferer, and how much to the malice of his examiners, it is hard now to say. The Pope sent down commissioners, and Savonarola and two of his dis- ciples were found guilty of heresy on the 2 2nd May. On the following day they were hanged on a gallows set up in the space before the Old I'alace at Florence, and a fire then kindled beneath their bodies. The death of Sav^onarola was a judicial murder; but the charge of heresy was no essential part of his trial ; it was, as it were, an after-thought, a convenient mode of introduc- ing the Pope's authority at the conclusion. Savonarola was a victim of political expediency, while he believed — and in one sense believed rightly — that he was a martyr to religion. He has been truly described as ' a great moral reformer, who was driven at the last to take up the position of an ecclesiastical reformer also ; but he followed the lines of Gerson and Ailli, and wished to take up the work which the Council of Constance had failed to accomplish. His conception of moral reform led him into politics, and his political position brought him into collision with the Papacy. Rather than abandon his work he was prepared to face a conflict with the Papacy, but his enemies were too numerous and too watchful, and he fell before their combined force.' ^ ^ Crcighton, nUtor>j of the Pa^acij, 3. 247. ( 191 ) CHAPTER XIII. REFORM IN GERMANY: THE LATERAN COUNCIL. The same neecls and hopes which led to the purifi- cation of the Spanish Church and to the attempted Early Pietism reformation of Savonarola operated widely, in Germany, though for a time in a confused way, in Germany. It was once usual to trace back the move- ment carried into effect by Luther to a long line of forerunners — Mystics, Friends of God, Brethren of Common Life. But in truth these earlier reformers had little in common with their successors of the six- teenth century, or rather had nothing to separate them from the corporate life of Christendom. They sought but to realise in practice what all Christians professed. They opposed nothing in the system of the Church, only protested against admitted abuses. If they laid peculiar stress upon the mystical elements in theology, upon the . emotional side of religion, they formed but a school of thought and a religious order within the Church. Now and then the mystic might be led into extravagant speculations, but such was also the case wherever metaphysicd studies were pursued. Master Eckehart in the fourteenth century has been held by virtue of his German sermons to have occupied a 192 Movements for Reform. position analogous to that of WycliiTe, in so far as Le gave himself up to spreading the gospel in the lower ranges of society by earnest popular preaching ; but his Latin works which liave lately been brought to light show him to have been a correct, if not a servile, disciple of Saint Thomas Aquinas. That his moral teaching and that of men like Tauler had the effect of heightening the current dissatisfaction at the evil state of the Church, need not be controverted ; but the German Mystics led men in no sense into a mental attitude which could have adapted itself to the theological atmosphere of the reformers of the sixteenth century. To quicken the sense of religion, to enforce the duty of personal holiness, this was the aim of the early German reformers. Side b\^ side with them The Brethren ^.^ n ny t ' c i of Common workcd the Jorethren 01 Common Lire, who took their origin in the house founded by Gerard Groot at Deventer. They left the larger ques- tions of reform in the Church system to be debated fruit- lessly by councils, and occupied themselves with the task of teaching the reality of religion in their own circle. And the secret of their success lay just in the simplicity of their view and in their loyalty to the Church tra- dition. Not only did they draw numerous bands of followers into their bod}", but if the book Of the Imita- tion of Christ, attributed to Thomas of Kempen, be truly a production of one of their society, — the fact is not cer- tain, but the work is known to have been widely circu- lated among them, — they may claim to have given to Christendom a manual of devotion which from the day it was produced until now has exercised an influence with- out rival among devout believers of every Church and Reform in Germany. 193 sect. Xor were such endeavours confined to particular local communities. In different parts of Germany there were vigorous steps taken, by means of visitations and by the personal efforts of single men, to bring the life and discipline of the monasteries more into accord with the principles of their foundation. Among those who laboured to this end no man was more strenuous than Nicolas Krebs of Cues, best known as Cusanus, who was made Papal legate in 145 1 ; and he had been brought up in the community at Deventer. The spirit of the Brethren of Common Life thus worked in a wider sphere and became the motive force for the re- formation of Church life in Germany. Cusanus, who had attended the Council of Basle and had followed the varying policy of his friend ^neas Sylvius, represents also the new Spread of r> • i r^ humanistic curreut 01 mtcrcourse between Germany and Italy. All through the fifteenth cen- tury there was a constant passage of young Germans into Italy, eager to learn the classical erudition which was only to be acquired there. The reflexion upon their country is seen in the rapid growth of univer- sities. In the fourteenth century Germany had but five universities, — Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg, Cologne, and Erfurt ; — by the first years of the following cen- tury the number had increased to seventeen. And though these foundations were directed according to the old traditions of school-learning, the influence of Italian humanism could not be shut out, and it quickly flowed by means of the younger men throughout the German lands from Louvain to Vienna, and from Basle to Rostock. But in Germany the spread of humanism c.H. N 194 Movements for Reform. did not mean, as in Italy, tlie neglect or disparage- ment of theological learning. The great names of German humanism are the names of men such as Acrricola and Eeuchlin, who studied ancient litera- ture with the purpose of bringing its resources to bear upon the knowledge and illustration of the Bible ; if they formed the minority among the teachers of the age, they still worked in harmony with their older- fashioned colleagues, and in this way succeeded in infusing the modern method of study with the less friction among their scholars. Xor must we forget in this connexion the revolution caused in the vehicle of literature by the Teutonic invention — whether it came from Haarlem or Mentz — of the printing-press, which in Germany particularly was made available for the purpose of that diffusion of religious knowledge which is characteristic of the earlier German reform- movement, as well as in the interest of general culture. That the various streams of renewed religious acti- vity and their spread among the people of Germany flowed by a natural course into the whirlpool of revolt against the Catholicism of Rome in the sixteenth cen- tury, can only be maintained subject to important re- serves. The very age in which this activity manifested itself is conspicuous for its attachment to all the elements of popular worship and ceremonial against which the protestant reformers contended with greatest zeal, — the special reverence in which images and reliques were held, the devotion paid to the Blessed Virgin, the belief in current miracles : — at no time was the use of indulgences more common. Reforma- Reform in Germany. 195 tion as yet meant nothing else than the reestablish- ment of Catholic piety in its fulness. Yet it was more and more felt that the reforms and advances in religious life were rather the result of individual effort than of any consciousness in the Church itself, in a corporate sense, of its spiritual obligations. The Church as an organisation did not gain in general re- spect. Increased intercourse with Italy brought back stories of the condition of the Papal Court which were not likely to make men more ready to contribute towards its support or more loyal to it as the centre of Christianity. From criticism it was doubtless easy to pass on to express opposition. The examples however which occur of such opposition show by their very ineffectiveness that the temper of the time was not yet ripe for decided action. When John of Wesel, a theological teacher of Erfurt University, frankly attacked the principle of indulgences, a threat of prosecution soon moved him to recant. John Wessel of Groningen, himself brought up in the circle of the Brethren of Common Life, taught an exclusive dependence upon the Bible in matters of faith that reminds us of Wycliffe, and a doctrine of justification that closely approaches Luther's; while, as for the constitution of the Church, he would restore it to the ideal of Christian community as he believed he found this in the first ages of Christi- anity. But his own life was so simple and inoffensive that he never provoked open hostility ; he spoke what he believed, but had no ambition to lead a rebellion. Beside these isolated appearances, there was doubtless a continuous effort made bv the Bohemian Brethen 196 Movements for Reform. to carry on a missionary work in Germany, and the extreme character of the doctrines of many of them with regard to society and to Church government made them doubtless acceptable to people of unsettled minds ; but partly owing to the antagonism of Czech and Teuton the extent of their influence was circum- scribed, and it is hazardous to attribute great signifi- cance to their operation. The general impression left on the mind by a study of the religious state of Germany in the fifteenth century is that there were elements tending towards reform active in a wide area, but the reform aimed at was that about which there was no controversy ; there were also elements wrought up through discontent at the evils in the existing Church system and impatience of ecclesiastical exactions, through the literal study of the Bible, and through the restlessness of spirit excited by the new humanism, which clearly pointed in the direction of a more penetrating change in the order things. But it is probably true that these latter forces had not acquired sufficient potency to work the change, but for the energy of a single man who reflected so accurately the temper of his countrymen that he was able to carry them with him a stage, or many stages, further than they would have desired to go but for such impulse.^ In England, where the Church was labouring under an accumulation of disorders not dissimilar to those of Germany, humanism and theolo- gical study likewise moved together and inspired a few ^ The history of the German Reformation is reserved for another volume in the present series. Reform in Germany : Late ran Council. 197 teachers in the endeavour to give a new life and reality to Christianity by a faithful following of the Bible. Among these John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, stood foremost, beside his disciple Erasmus. But the state of England was not favourable to the silent movement of reform, and many as were those who passed from such teachers at Oxford and Cambridge, eager to impress their spirit upon England in the loyalty of Catholic conviction, they were easily overpowered when the great rupture came by the noisy multitude who looked for favour from the new Head of the Church and for profit from the institutions which he pillaged. For the reality of the protestantism of the first age of the English Eeformation is not of indigenous growth, but transplanted from the protestantism of Germany. It was after the change was made that the English Ee- formers discovered their parentage in Wycliffe. Ever since the end of the Council of Basle the notion of summoning another general council was The Council Constantly kept alive, whether in the hope of Lateral!. q£ finding an effective instrument for the correction of disorders in the Church, or for the purpose of bringing pressure upon the Papacy, whose experience of recent councils was not likely to make it view the assembly of another with favour. At last in the pon- tificate of Julius the Second, who followed Alexander sept.-oct. ^^^ Sixth (if we omit the four weeks' rule 15-3- of Pius III.), the crisis was brought about by the action of some of the cardinals who were opposed to the Pope. They summoned and held a 1511. council at Pisa, afterwards removed to Milan, and Pope Julius thought it politic to answer the 198 Movements for Reform. rebellious cardinals by calling a council to meet at the Lateran Palace in 15 12. The Council of Milan had cited the Pope, and on his non-appearance had declared him suspended for contumacy : the Council of the Lateran replied by pronouncing all the acts of its rival null and void, and its supporters guilty of schism. The political state of Italy at the time, apart from the prestige inherent in a council held and pre- sided over by the Pope, decided the victory, though Julius himself did not live through the whole of its sessions. His successor, Leo the Tenth, Giovanni de' Medici, continued his Church policy, and the council reassembled. The schismatic cardinals, who had long since removed their council from Milan to a safer distance at Lyons, made their submission, and the Lateran Council set itself to its proper work. What this work was is highly significant of the intellectual results of the Penaissance in Italy. First the council enforced the belief in the immortality and individuality of the soul, and forbade clergymen to spend more than five years in secular studies unless they added to these the study of theology or canon law. The question of reform in Church discipline, especially with respect to the Curia, was next discussed, adjourned, and again discussed and adjourned. The bishops then proceeded to require a limitation of the privileges of the monastic orders : the decision of this controversy was also deferred. Decrees on certain minor points were passed in 1 5 1 5 , but it was not until, after a tedious delay, the council reassembled a year later that Pope Leo felt strong enough in his general political position to lead it to some sort of Reform in Germany: Later an Council. 199 effective action. Difficult matters were left on one side, and the council in its eleventh session issued a decree warning unlearned preachers to avoid subjects which might provoke scandal or involve danger. A cjuestion of political importance of the first magnitude was next dealt with, when the council annulled the Pragmatic Sanction which established the liberties of the Gallican Church. A concordat took its place by which the king Francis the First gained what the national Church lost. Finally the dispute concerning the exemption of monastic foundations was conciliated by a decree which enlarged the powers of the bishops and parish priests. Then on the 1 6th March I 5 1 7 the council was dissolved. Except in the political victory over the French Church and the recalcitrant cardinals, the results of the council were insignificant. So little was thought of it that it passed unrecognised by the sovereigns of Europe, almost unnoticed in the diplomatic correspond- ence of the time. The really pressing matters of reform were left out of account, not merely because the members of the council were divided but because they felt that they were not suflaciently representative of the opinion of Christendom to give judgement upon them. The smallness, almost triviality, of the council's work might even be claimed as a justification for the inter- vention of some one outside the circle of ecclesiastical authority to take upon himself the duty which, however much admitted, that authority failed to accept. And the support which Luther won as the vindicator of that claim may be viewed as evidence of the popular recog- nition of the duty. 200 Movements for Reform. With tlie issues that followed we are not here con- cerned. It is enough if the present sketch has at all succeeded in making plain the process of history by which the impulse given to religious enquiry by Wycliffe passed, through Hus, into the consciousness of reformers in a wider field. Thus the reforming tradition into which both Wycliffe and Hus entered and which they helped to mature, came to form the essential element in the aims of those who were their chief opponents at the Council of Constance. Through the public opinion aroused by their efforts the conception of a council acquired a vitality which outlived the conciliar movement itself, and pfrew stronof, in defiance of the failure of the last council before the great rupture, until it became transmuted into the conception of the Church not as a universal monarchy with the Pope as sovereign, but as a body coincident with and refle;;ting the religious conscience of each separate nation. INDEX. AiLLr, Cardinal Pierre d', 132 f., 139 f., 146. Albert II., Duke of Austria, 45. Albonioz, Cardinal, 48 f. Alexander IV., 59. v., 141 f.. 155. VI., 188-190. Alfonso X. of Castile, his legislation, 6, 13. Anagni, outrage on Boniface VIII. at, 8. Anglican Church, taxation of, 5, 13, 56 f. ; parties in, S7-60. Annates, 11, 175. Anne of Bohemia, Queen of Richard II., 118. Appeals to Rome, 11 f., 54 f. Arnold of Brescia, 48. Arundel, Tliomas, Archbishop of Canter- bury, 109. Augustinian Canons, 16 note. Augustinian Friars, 16. Authority, traditional, meaning of, 2, 38. Avignon, removal of the Papacy to, 9 f. ; residence at, 43-60 ; renewed by the Anti- pope Clement VII., 101. Ball, John, 106. Basle, Council of, 170, 175-177. Beaufort, Cardinal Henry, 168. Benedict XII., 44. XIII., Autipope, 131-137, 141 f., 144, 167 ; repudiated by France, 133 ; deposed, 141, 168. • XIV., Antipope, 171. Berton, William, Chancellor of Oxford, 105. Blaclifriars, LondoD, Council of, 1382, 107- 109, 124. Bois, Pierre du, 29 note. Boniface VIII., 3-9; his additions to the Canon Law, 14, 23. IX., 130-134. Bohemia, state of the Cliurcli in, 120, 124, 153. 158; influence of Wyclitfe in, 119 f., 123, 124 f., 152-154, 158 f. ; religious wars in, 171-173. Bohemian Brethren, 173, 195 f. students in England, 119 f. Boucicault, Marshal, 133. Brethren of Common Life, 191-193. Bridget, St., of Sweden, 52. Bulls:— Clericis laicos, 5, 7 f. ExiU qui seminal, 23. Exivi, 23 f. Gloriosam ecclesiam, 24. Viiam sanctam, 7 f. Calixtixs, 172. Callixtus III., 180. Canon Law, 13 f., 23. Capistrano, St. Jolm, i8a Carmelites, 16. Castile, 6, 13, 129. Catharine, St., of Siena, 52. Celestine V., 23. Cesarini, Cardinal Giuliano, 172 f., 180. Cesena, Michael of, 24-27. Charles IV., Emperor, 48, 120 f., 128. VI. of France, 131-134. VII.. 175. VIIL. 188 f. Church preferments. Papal interference with, II. reformation of the, in the eleventh century, 19 flf. 2o: Index. Church preferments, Marsi?rlio of Padua's conception of the, 31-36 ; Wycliffe's, 94-98 Ailly's, 139 f. See also Councils. Clement V., 9, 23 f.. 43 ; Lis additions to the Canon Law, 14. VI.. 28, 44 f., 47. 49, 53. VII., Antipope, loi, i2(>-i3i. VIII., Antipope, 171. Colet, Jolin, Dean of St. Paul's, 197. Cologne, Universiry of, 155. Colonna, Cardinal Oddo, 157. See Mar- tin V. Constance, Council of, 144-150, 160-170. Cossa, Baldassare, 140-143. See John XXIII. Councils, General, 11 ; powers of, discussed, 34 f., 138-140, 145 f., 176 f. See Basle, CO.NSTANCE, PeKHARA, FLORENCE, J.ATERAN, PaVLA, PISA, ROilE, SlENA, ViENNE. Ccurtenay, William, Bishop of London, 77 f., 79; Archbishop of Cauterbury, 102, 107, 109. Cu.sauus, Nicolas, 193. Dante, 29. Despenser, Henry, Bishop of Norwich, his crusade, no, 129; activity against Lol- lards, 116. Dominic, St., 16. ECKEHART, Master, 191 f. EUvard I., his attitude towards the Papacy, 4; his legislation, 6. E