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THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
BEING AN OUTLINE OF
THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
FROM 1648 TO 181.5
BY THE REV.
WILLIAM HOLDEN HUTTON, B.D.
FELLOW AND TUTOR OF S. JOHN's COLLEGE, AND EXAMINER
IN THE HONOUR SCHOOL OF MODERN HISTORY, AT OXFORD ;
EXAMINING CHAPLAIN- TO THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER
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NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1908
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
575933 A
ASTOR, LENOX AND
TiLDEN FOUNDATIONS
R 19.32 L
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EDITORIAL NOTE
HILE there is a oeneral aoTeement anion 2; the writers as to principles, the greatest freedom as to treatment is allowed to writers in this series. The volumes, for example, will not be of the same length. Volume II., which deals with the formative period of the Church, is, not unnaturally, longer in proportion than the others. To Volume VI., which deals with the Reformation, is allotted a similar extension. The authors, again, use their own discretion in such matters as footnotes and list of authori- ties. But the aim of the series, which each writer sets before him, is to tell, clearly and accurately, the story of the Church, as a divine institution with a continuous life.
W. H. HUTTON 00
CO
PREFACE
TN this volume I have restricted my work to the history of those religious bodies which believe episcopacy to be of the esse of the Church and which claim to have, and aj^pear to me to have, preserved the succession of bishops according to the ancient rule. But the history is avowedly only a sketch, and there is much that is left out that might well be told in a history which dealt with the Church in another aspect as well as on another scale.
Two points, however, I may mention now. While the main currents of Church life have been chiefly the subject of study here, it has seemed possible to illustrate them with advan- tage at certain points by dealing with episodes, w^ith Churches and with persons, which have no claim to have deeply influenced the world and yet which afford examples of the importance of
PREFACE
certain tendencies, of certain principles, or of certain lesser persons, in the history of the Christian faith. It is in this regard that I have dealt with the Church in Holland (which repudiates the name of Jansenist), with the Orthodox Church in Transsilvania, and with individuals who illustrate some special feature of Church life at a given period : Lothar Franz von Schonborn, Andre Ly in China, Madame Louise de France, the nuns of the Visitation at Rouen, Gabriel Henry, and even the egregious Dr. Kerrich and Dr. Pyle. All these explain Church life by illustration as general statements cannot do.
I cannot send these chapters to the press without a word of gratitude for the kindness which I met with from the Lord Bishop of S. Asaph, the Dean and Chapter of his cathedral church, and the clergy who assembled in the picturesque little city set upon a hill crowned by that ancient fane when, in July, 1907, I delivered four lectures on Christ's Church in the Eighteenth Century, which
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
were the foundation for a part of this book. Nor must I forget to acknowledge the courtesy of the Editors of The Guardian, The Times (Literary Supplement), and The Church Quarterly Review, which allows the publica- tion here of some pages which first appeared in their columns.
It is generally believed that it is impossible to write on Church History with impartiality. I have at least tried to have charity towards all men, esjDecially to them that are of the household of faith. I have no sympathy for attempts to support one's own opinions, whether in books, sermons, or newspapers, by attacking
the religion of others.
W. H. H.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
The Papacy in the Later Seventeenth Century . 1
CHAPTER II The Ecclesiastical States of Germany
IN the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries . 10
CHAPTER III The Jesuits in Europe during the Seventeenth
Century . . . ... 23
CHAPTER IV Louis XIV., the Popes, and the Protestants . 29
CHAPTER V BossuET, Fenelon, and the Quietists . . . 41
CHAPTER VI Jansenism and Port Royal . . . . 59
CHAPTER VII The Eastern Church . . ... 70
CHAPTER VIII The Orthodox Church in Transsilvania
AND the Balkans . . ... 86
CHAPTER IX The Church in England . ... 95
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
CHAPTER X
pag:
The Church beyond Europe . . . . 131
CHAPTER XI Charles III. and the Suppression of the Jesuits . 161
CHAPTER XII The Church in Italy . . . . . 189
CHAPTER XIII Germany and Joseph IT. . . . . 214
CHAPTER XIV Holland and the Later Jansenists . . . 226
CHAPTER XV
The French Revolution . ... 238
CHAPTER XVI Napoleon and the Church . . ... 264
CHAPTER XVII The Restoration . . ... 284
APPENDIX I List of Emperors and Popes . . . . 292
APPENDIX II A Short Bibliography . . . 293
Index .... . 295
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
1648-1815
CHAPTER I
THE PAPACY IN THE LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
THE Peace of Westphalia (1648) was the end, not only of a great war of thirty years, but of a dis- tinct era in the history of the Church. The Peace of Pieformation had established itself in Cen- West- tral Europe and in the North. By religious P^^lia. zeal and by political and military action the different sects into which Protestantism was divided had won their way to recognition and secure establishment. The Catholic reaction also had come and passed, and Catholicism seemed safe in the lands it had held or recovered. But a new age was begun. Eeformation had sown seeds which must eventually produce vast changes. In the centre of Europe Revolution was, in the long run, inevitable. Autocracy had received blows from which it was impossible that it could permanently recover. In truth, the war itself had caused a revolu- tion in the history of Europe. What that revolution
B
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
was we cannot show better than by quoting the words of Dr. Moritz Brosch : — ^
''On November 20th, 1648, Innocent X. published the memorable Bull, Zelo donms Dei, in which he declared the Peace of Westphalia to be ' null and void, accursed and without any influence or result for the past, the present, or the future ' ; and he expressly added that no one, even if he had promised on oath to observe this peace, was bound to keep the oath. The Pope was filled with the deepest grief — cum intimo doloris sensu, says the Bull — because in the Treaty of Peace the free exercise of religion and right of admis- sion to offices was granted to the Protestants. By means of this Bull Eome maintained her standpoint of holding herself empowered to release men from oaths, especially such as had been sworn to heretics. The Powers which at Miinster and Osnabriick brought the Thirty Years' AVar to an end, when confronted with this pretended privilege, or rather this highly illegal pretension of the Koman Curia, simply disregarded it, and it was treated in just the same way by the nations, as subsequent history unfolded itself. The epilogue of Innocent X.'s protest against the peace, after the close of the war, was never anything more than a dead letter, and even the most zealous of Catholics will scarcely number it among the creditable documents of papal history."
The revolution was begun ; but re-establishment of peace in Europe for the time postponed the catastrophe. For a time aristocracy came forward to take the place of autocratic rule. To view best this epoch of tran-
1 Cambridge Modern Jlistorxj, vol. iv. (" The Thirty Years' War"), p. 688.
THE PAPACY IN THE LATER 17th CENTURY 3
sition we must turn first to the centre of Catholic
Europe.
With the Peace of Westphalia the Papacy seemed
to sink into the background of European politics and
almost of European religion. A war which j^g ^f^^^^
had had for one cause the religious difficul- on the
ties of Catholics and Protestants, which had Papacy.
cleared the air of religious disputes, and which had
ended the long period of ecclesiastical Pieformation in
Europe, was concluded without the pope being able to
exercise any influence on the terms of peace. This
was partly due to the predominance of political over
religious interests throughout Europe. It was also due
to the defeats which the Papacy had received in Italy.
Urban VIII. had turned against himself all the states
of Italy and had been utterly vanquished. His
successor Innocent X. (Barberini) was still
1 on ,' ^ \ 1 Innocent X.
less effective as a ruler, because he was (^a.^cc)
entirely under the influence of his sister-in- law, donna Olympia Maidalchina. " He loves Olympia more than Olympus," said the pasquinade of the day. Eome was in a state of disorder, and the houses had to be garrisoned as against a siege, when he was elected, and the papal government was utterly disregarded; but, a man of determined character and indefatigable labour, he succeeded in restoring the semblance of public order, and might at least have freed the Papacy from the reproach which had fallen on it during the period of nepotism, had it not been for the quarrels of the ladies of his family in which he was involved and by whose perpetual intrigues his personal reputa- tion (though undeservedly as regards his moral charac- ter) was sullied. The bitter, crafty, suffering face
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
wliicli looks out on us from the marvellous portrait of Velasquez tells the story of continual disappointment and distrust. The spiritual influence of the Papacy had practically ceased. The spiritual work of the Church was done by other men, in distant missions, in monasteries and in schools: Italy, and politics, had overpowered the religion of Eome.
" Tliis time we must seek an honest man," said one of the cardinals, wdien Innocent X. lay on his death- Alexander ^^^' T^^® election was to be a free one ; VII., there was no large party raised up, as had
1655-67. go long been the case, by the kindred of the last pope, to turn the scale : there was a large body of independent cardinals, whom the Spanish ambassador called " the flying squadron," in whose hands the election seemed to rest. The choice of Fabio Chigi, an active and energetic man, whom Spain supported but France opposed, w^as not made without long contest. He assumed the title of Alexander VII (1655). He was at first regarded almost as a saint, because he allowed none of his family to influence him, but it was not long before a brother and a nephew appeared in Kome, and things went on much as before. Still he was notably free from personal prejudice. He showed "great moderation and indifferency towards the several factions, always shunning, as much as he could, the adhering to any one of them, in prejudice of another." The records of his work read like those of popes in the Libei^ Pontificalis, seven or eight centuries before : he built streets and embellished palaces, having (says an English observer) "as little regard for the great expense required in the construction of those edifices as if he had mines of gold, or as if the security
THE PAPACY IN THE LATER 17th CENTURY 5
of the ecclesiastical state had consisted therein." He had, said those who reported his doings, " a soul truly royal," but he had a royal neglect for business. He wished to revive the literary interests as well as the magnificence of the Eenaissance popes : he avoided business, he lived amoncr men of letters, he soucrht — ■ they said — nothing " but repose of mind." The Venetian ambassador declared that " he had but the name of pope, not the exercise of papal power." Alexander VIL died on May 22nd, 1667. He made a most edifying end, with great simplicity, resignation, and devotion, and the accounts of his funeral almost surpass those of the Eenaissance magnificences.
The Squadrone remained powerful, and it was they who chose Clement IX. (Ptospigliosi), a good man who might begin to restore the reputation for clement unselfish devotion to duty which had long IX., departed. His work was to turn the Papacy ^^55-69- from a monarchy into an aristocracy. As all over Europe a period of aristocratic supremacy had set in : as the French parlement of lawyers tried to claim for themselves the powers of the English parliament of politicians : as Swedish nobles deprived the crown of power, and the imperial dignity was ineffectual against the princes of the Empire, so, Yon Eanke has shown, was it at Eome. " A numerous, powerful, and wealthy aristocracy surrounded the papal throne ; the families already established imposed restraints on those that were but newly rising; from the self-reliance and authoritative boldness of monarchy, the ecclesiastical sovereignty was passing to the deliberation, sobriety, and measured calmness of aristocratic government." Thus the temporal power of the Papacy became practi-
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
cally a means of supporting a number of rich families, of kin to different popes, for whom offices were found, and by whom the different governments were administered.
Eome itself was crowded with noble families, and through them the Eomagna was very badly governed. The The councils which met, acting on elaborate
condition systems, were clumsy and often corrupt, of Rome. rpj,^^ ecclesiastical states were oppressed with very heavy burdens, and the government had the reputation of being the most rapacious in Europe. Manufactures had decayed as taxes increased : the Venetian relation of 1663 says that not only Eome but all the cities of the Eomagna, of Umbria, and the whole territory of S. Peter, were miserable, Ferrara and Bologna alone retaining some freedom and there- fore some prosperity. The cardinals in charge of " the Legations " showed more consideration for their subjects and were often able and just administrators ; but the districts round Eome were oppressed for the sake of supporting papal families, and paying for those great works in the city itself, which destroyed so much of ancient Eome and replaced it by buildings of the last stage of the classical revival, without originality or interest. Eome had become, it seemed, the centre of idle and fashionable European society : the religious interest had, to foreign observers, almost died out. It survived only in the assertion of arbitrary power, as is shown by the pasquinade about the prosecution of Molinos — " If we speak, to the galleys ; if we write, to the gallows ; if we keep quiet, to tlie Inquisition " ; while the purely religious feeling had so utterly de- cayed that the Colosseum was granted in 1671 for
THE PAPACY IN THE LATER 17th CENTURY 7
bull-fights, till a powerful pamphlet denounced the outrage on the scene of so many martyrdoms, and the whole was consecrated in 1675 to their memory.
But a remarkable example was to show that the influence of Eome, as the central city of Catholicism, was not extinct. It was there that Chris- Christina tina, the romantic daughter of the Pro- of testant hero, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Sweden, came to end her days, as the converted daughter of the Holy See. Taught by Jesuits sent to her from Eome, the dissatisfaction which she had always felt with Lutheran theology developed into acceptance of the papal authority. Her heart was given to Cardinal Decio Azzolino, and to quit Eome became an impossi- bility to her. All Italy welcomed her as a convert, whose dramatic abdication of her throne and country seemed almost a new confirmation of the Catholic faith. Such an event as this, rendered the more striking by the eccentricities of the ex-queen's tem- pestuous character, broke in with freshness upon the monotony which had fallen upon the Church life of Italy. Eeligion was buried under officialism. The Papacy became a great financial system, which had its hands on all Europe. Cardinals protested in vain against the oppression which fell upon the Church's children, but the curia remained inexorable. Pre- ferment had to be paid for, and at so high a rate that some Italian bishoprics remained long vacant because no one could, or would, pay the heavy dues charged at institution. It was declared in 1667 that there were in Naples twenty-eight prelates wdio had been turned out of their sees because they did not pay the heavy sums demanded from them. The
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
inferior clergy were miserably poor: the monasteries had fallen into a recognised contempt. "Even a bankrupt shopkeeper thinks himself good enough to wear the cowl." At Eome the question of restrict- ing monastic establishments was considered. By bulls in 1649 and 1652 Innocent X. first checked the in- crease and tlien actually dissolved a number of the smaller monasteries on the ground of their immor- ality, and Alexander VII. proposed to the Venetians to suppress several orders in their territory, and accomplished his design with the declaration that they had served rather to the destruction than the edification of the faithful.
Catholic observers noted a general decay of religion : able men, it was said, were excluded from preferment in favour of rich men. Preaching and theological study were alike at a low ebb. The state of religion in Italy was indeed but the reflection of the general state of society. The age seemed stricken with an incurable frivolity. Literature was light, morals were relaxed, political interests were not national but per- sonal. The Eeformation had passed, and it might almost be said that it had left Italy as it had found it. A new ideal for the Papacy was still to seek, a return to the simplicity and devotion of the first days. The Eoman See seemed stifled by its riches and by the elaboration of its organisation.
Into the history of many of the popes at the end of the seventeenth century it is unnecessary to enter. Clement IX. set before himself the ideal of a belated crusade. He desired to turn all the forces of Europe against the Turks, to relieve Candia, and to check the advance of the East upon the West. But this was
THE PAPACY IN THE LATER 17th CENTURY 9
reserved for the great Polish king, John Sobieski, the saviour of Vienna, in 1G83. The pope died in 1669 when the news of the fall of Candia showed him that he had failed.
The conclave wdiich was to elect his successor lasted for four months. Papal factions, the heirs of the past, contended with the French and Election Spanish groups. The emperor, France, and of Cle- Spain still asserted the right of " formal ^^^^ X., exclusion," that is, of declaring through their ^ '^' "ambassadors that the election of a particular candidate would not be agreeable." This was no legal right, but a claim which the cardinals found it dangerous to disregard. And it added further complications to the intrigues of a conclave. The secret correspond- ence between Queen Christina and Azzolino shows how long and difficult were the negotiations, and what dangers, of poison as well as plot, were feared for the important cardinals. At length, on April 27th, 1670, the aged Cardinal Altieri, who was regarded as a nonentity, was chosen. France and Spain had joined to procure the choice. The result, says a modern diplomatist, "does not do much credit to human wisdom." 1 He took the title of Clement X. Six years later came a pope who should defy the French king himself.
1 Baron de Bildt, in Proceedinrjs 0) the British Academy, 1903-1, p. 1:35.
CHAPTER II
THE ECCLESIASTICAL STATES
OF GERMANY IN THE SEVENTEENTH
AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
FROM the Papacy we pass to Germany, which had been the centre of the long conflict which ended in 1648. The Peace of Westphalia was the conclusion of a long period of religious wars in which the greater part of Europe had been directly or indirectly involved, and which had really extended with very little break since the beginning of the Reformation. The treaties — for there were two concluded, one at Miinster, the other at Osnabrlick — were therefore largely concerned with ecclesiastical questions, and primarily with the
internal religious relations of the Empire. Qf ^jjg In order to indemnify the powers taking part
Peace of in the war a number of ecclesiastical states ^^s^- _ and foundations were secularised. Thus the p a la in bishoprics of Minden, Cammin, Halberstadt
and afterwards Magdeburg were given to Brandenburg. Alternate succession of a member of its house to the see of Osnabriick was given to Bruns- wick, so that this bishopric was to be alternately religious and Catholic and secular and Protestant ; a curious example of the inconsistent arrangements
lO
ECCLESIASTICAL STATES OF GERMANY ii
which the Reformation had made necessary in the divided condition of Germany.
But there were other than territorial changes due to ecclesiastical reasons. A new date, January, 1624, was fixed as the period from which the different terri- tories were to remain in the hands of the particular states which held them. After that date any holder of an ecclesiastical office who changed his religion was to lose his benefice. In its general terms the Peace of Augsburg (1555) was to be preserved, but the Cal- vinists now obtained equal rights with Lutherans and Catholics. A prince who retained within his domin- ions people of different creeds from his own was bound to give them freedom of worship. If they asked, through cause of religion, to leave his territory, he was bound to give them freedom to depart. The Jesuits were to be excluded from Protestant terri- tories unless they had licence from their sovereign (as that given in Prussia, a century later, by Frederick the Great).
Indirectly, the provision to Sweden of permission to establish a university in North Germany told in favour of Protestantism, and this treaty marked the end of the old Catholic and Imperial system in Ger- many. Toleration and exhaustion came to Germany together. Catholic influences continued visibly to decay. They were exercised almost entirely either from Austria and the Capuchins, or from France and the Jesuits. But the actual enthusiasm of the Catho- lic reaction which the Jesuits had led half a century before was at an end. The Papacy had fixed itself during the Thirty Years' AYar on political ends. For that policy it now suffered. The Peace of \Yestphalia
12 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
based future developments on politics alone. On the 20th of November, 1648, Innocent X. published his bull Zclo domus Dei, in which (as we have seen) the Papacy still declared itself empowered to over-ride the political decisions of great states. But Catholic and Protestant powers alike entirely disregarded its assertions as illegal and obsolete.
The Treaty of Westphalia did not completely destroy the ecclesiastical character which attached itself to one aspect of the Constitution of the Empire. The three chief officials were still the ecclesiastical electors of Mainz, who was chancellor of the Empire, of Trier, who was chancellor of Gaul, and of Koln, J.. who was chancellor of Italy. These last
ecclesias- two officers w^ere by now purely nominal, tical but some considerable authority still be-
electorates. Iq^-,^q^i ^q the first. The Chancellor of the Empire ranked next to the sovereign, was President of the Electoral College, Visitor of the Aulic Council, and of all the other courts of the Empire. Through him all official business relating to the Empire had to be transacted. The Archbishop Elector of Mainz was, as archbishop, nominally elected by the canons of his cathedral church, but really by the influence of the emperor or even of foreign powers : he w^as frequently himself of princely birth, but if not was at least noble, and the canons of the chapter of Mainz had to prove four descents of nobility. The territories which be- longed to the see were large, but were dispersed throughout many of the states of Germany. The revenues were largely derived from the tolls on tlie rivers Main and liliine, and the elector was able to maintain a force of over 8000 men. But this was not
p:cclesiastical states of Germany 13
counted enough for the dignity of the electorate. An English writer of the early eighteenth century says, " the Electors of Mainz are commonly Bishops of Wlirzburg and Bamberg at the same time, to enable them the better to support the electoral dignity." But the archbishop's household was suited rather to his spiritual than secular character.
The archbishop of Trier, whose territories were within the Circle of the Lower Ehine, also often held the see of Worms ; and the chapter of his cathedral had also to be of noble rank. By this time the only suffragan sees to Trier were in France, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and the policy of the elector, like that of Mainz, was usually under French influence.
The archbishopric of Koln was even more import- ant, partly on account of its position, partly on that of its greater riches ; and the revenues of the see, with some great benefices attached thereto, approached in the eighteenth century to nearly £300,000 a year. The see was held at times by princes of the House of Bavaria, as at the bes-innincr of the eighteenth century, sometimes, as at the end, by a brother of the emperor himself. Several of the suffragan sees were outside Germany, such as Utrecht, Miinster, Liege, and some had been secularised by the Treaty of Westphalia.
Below the greatest ecclesiastics were the eccle- siastical princes of the Empire, who were temporal sovereigns within their owm dominions. Theeccle- Among these were two archbishops, the siastical Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, P^'^^^^^- twenty-one bishops, eleven abbats and thirteen ab- besses. All tliese ranked as princes, and had seats in
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
the Diet. The Reformation introduced into Germany some strikino' anomahes with re^^ard to ecclesiastical power. In the north most of the sees were secular- ised, and in some cases the sees were alternated between Protestants and Catholics. Ecclesiastical princes were not absolute monarchs, for they were largely controlled by their chapters and by the in- fluence of the emperor and the other secular powers.
The great archbishopric of Salzburg, which had a territory of about eighty miles long and forty broad (and the archbishop was, like the archbishop of Canter- bury, a perpetual legate), was declared by the Treaty of Westphalia to be the Primate of Germany, and was by far the greatest, as generally the most arbitrary, of all the ecclesiastical princes after the electors. The Archbishop Firmian, who was elected in 1727, gained an unenviable notoriety by the expulsion of over 20,000 Protestant subjects, wdio were received by Brandenburg, and added greatly to the prosperity of Prussia.^
The importance of the great bishoprics of Bamberg, Wurzburg and Worms w^as somewhat lessened by their being frequently held with other sees, but they had each important political rights in their respective circles of the Empire. Several of the great abbats and abbesses played also important political parts, belonged to the Diets of their circles, had sovereign power and often led altogether secular lives, and this is said to have been specially true of the abbesses.
^ Great sympathy was felt for them, and money was collected in England, where, in 1732, was printed An Account of the Sufferings of the Persecuted Protestants in the Archhishoprick of Salzburg, etc.,
London
ECCLESIASTICAL STATES OF GERMANY 15
Of the abbat of Kempten, a contemporary writes that " he appears in the ecclesiastical habit only in the morning, for he has the privilege of dressing as a laic in the afternoon."
It will be seen that the religious position of the ecclesiastical princes was universally felt to be far less important than their political status, and yet they exercised very little influence on the politics of Germany. The point is worth further illustration.
The Keformation introduced into Germany some
striking anomalies in regard to ecclesiastical power
and the lands which had been devoted in „
1 „ ,. . Powers
ancient times to the support 01 religion, of the
In the north the bishoprics were, for the eccle- most part, secularised, and the lands passed siastical into the hands of temporal princes of the P"""^* Protestant faith. Sometimes there was the strancre arrangement of an alternate Catholic and Protestant appointment, and the title of bishop might be borne by one who had no sort of ecclesiastical function or ecclesiastical interest. But in the south the bishops for the most part held their own, and up to the time of Napoleon retained their secular powers and their large possessions. The ecclesiastical electors still had the rights of sovereignty within their territories, levied their own taxes, judged criminals, kept courts of the most lavish magnificence and led their own militia. It was in this last capacity that the weakness of their position was first apparent. While their profession led them to discourage military expeditions, their per- sonal interests were not concerned in the maintenance of an hereditary line, and thus they let their armies fall into neglect. Besides this the electors were not
1 6 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
absolute monarclis : the chapters of their cathedral churches had great powers, if not of action, at least of hindrance ; and where prelates would inaugurate re- forms canons often stepped in to prevent them.
But there were some of the great prelates wlio showed an original aim and determination, and who during their short rule achieved some success. Among these a notable example was that of Lothar Franz von Schonborn, bishop of Bamberg from 1693, and archbishop of Mainz from 1695 to his death in 1726.
Born in 1658, he came of an official family, and his father was able to place him very early on the ladder of ecclesiastical preferment. In 1681 he Franz von became a full canon of Bamberg, and he Schon- was a member of the chapter also at both born, Wiirzburg and Mainz. He had travelled,
^f^M^^ °^ ^^® collected objects of virtu, he was a good speaker and a skilful advocate: on November 16, 1693, he was unanimously elected bishop of Bam- berg. Bamberg retained its exclusive privilege of direct relation to the Holy See, and its independent position in the Holy Pioman Empire. It was in some respects the most important bishopric in Germany. The new bishop received his pallium, paid his fees and promptly asked Pope Innocent XII. to agree to his election as coadjutor to the archbishop of Mainz.
Anselm Franz von Ingelheim, archbishop and elector of Mainz, was a neglectful ruler, overwhelmed by debt. He had a dread of being kept permanently under the control of the temporal princes his neigh- bours, and he strenuously resisted the endeavours of Ludwig Franz Count Palatine to secure the position of his coadjutor with right of succession. He was
ECCLESIASTICAL STATES OF GERMANY 17
strongly in favour of von Schonborn, as was his chapter. In 1694 Lothar Franz was chosen, again unanimously. Within a few months the elector died and the coadjutor succeeded him.
At the age of forty he was one of the great princes of Germany. He became so at a time when the Empire was still at war with France ; and the terri- tories of the electorate had suffered severely in the strife. He at once set himself to reform the council of the electorate and to distribute to the necessities of the poor. But his main aim was to secure his own independence of the chapter of his cathedral church and the nobles of his electorate. In this he was more successful at Mainz than he was at Bamberg, where an oligarchy had established itself with which he had great difficulties. He was a masterful man and he acted in an arbitrary way: he dismissed officials, he issued sharp letters of direction to those who re- mained, he determinedly checked all attempts at peculation and jobbery. He endeavoured to secure his own position and the continuance of his policy by the appointment of one of his own kin as his coad- jutor, but the canons and the Count Palatine defeated him, though he had procured a brief from Piome. But he did not relax his efforts to set up an absolute government : a benevolent despotism it was, no doubt, which he contemplated ; it was an ideal of the sovereign as dispenser of justice which he set before him ; but the weakness of a despotism is never felt more strongly than when it is exercised by an ecclesi- astic. The principles of Christian law involve free- dom, development, individual liberty of action and individual responsibility, These are the principles
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
which the great German prelate persistently, in his many didactic proclamations, ignored. He sought a centralised state, an autocratic rule : thougli he were himself to exercise his power on the highest principles, there was no one who could answer for his successor. A minute investigation of his financial policy has shown to the full how disastrous was such action as he undertook. He stifled all freedom, he alienated all interests : nothing is more detestable to mankind than a meddling ecclesiastic when he thinks he can manage other people's business, and particularly their money matters, better than they can themselves. Though he did his best to keep w^hat the country pro- duced for the country itself, and to keep down the prices, his public stores proved unworkable, and his regulation of tariffs a failure. He was a stern pro- tectionist, and lie failed as others have failed. But his endeavours to open out the country deserve all praise : he made roads and canals, and thus he cheapened commodities. He really had some claims to be considered beneficent.
In his numerous other functions Lothar Franz stood forth as a characteristic expression of the political spirit of the great German Churchmen. He increased the garrison of Mainz during the Spanish Succession War from 2500 to 5000 men ; and in Bamberg he raised some 3000 troops. He claimed, on the strength of this military activity, his share in the settlement of the affairs of Europe. He joined the Franconian and Swabian princes in an attempt to vindicate the position of the southern states against the growing power of North Germany. The smallest states joined in this association, ecclesiastics as prominently as lay-
ECCLESIASTICAL STATES OF GERMANY 19
men, and even the abljess of Gutensell in Swabia was rated as responsible for three and one-third foot soldiers and one-third of a trooper : it took several convents to provide a whole horseman. In all the proceedings of the war which followed there was no one more active in orc^anisation of the com-
His
missariat and the financial arrangements politics than the archbishop of Mainz, no one more firm in asserting the independence of the Swabian and Franconian circles and the ris^hts re- cognised as belonging to the princes by the Treaty of Westphalia. But he failed in the attempt to set up a permanent association of the Swabian and Franconian circles, till the conclusion of the Spanish Succession War enabled him to establish it on a new basis. It was an attempt to bolster up the falling Empire by securing the independence of the states wdiich composed it ; and to some extent it helped to preserve the ill-assorted principalities of the south from the growing power of the north. Lothar Franz himself prevented the succession of the House of Brandenburg to Baireuth by uniting the princes in opposition to the treaty, and he was tlie determined opponent of F'riedrich Wilhelm I. As chancellor of the Empire, too, the elector of IMainz admitted the ninth electorate which had been created by the Thirty Years' AVar, but he won a number of counterbalancing concessions from the Protestants. On the death of Joseph I. (1711) he presided at the election of emperor and his influence was thrown on the side of Charles VI., who was at the moment fighting; his losing battle in Spain, and by real diplomatic skill, in spite of the opposition of Saxony and the secret
20 THE AGE OF RP:VOLUTION
intrigues of the Papacy, he succeeded in procuring a unanimous election. Tlie elector of Mainz was a thorough supporter of the Habsburg house, while at the same time he sought a revival of the imperial powers in Italy as well as in Germany itself. But it was the powers of the Empire, not those of the emperor, which he sought to restore, and here he frequently found himself in hostility to the Imperial House. In the exercise of his functions as chancellor he was not rarely in conflict with the Court at Vienna. No less was he in conflict with the Protestant states, which declared that his influence in the Diet and in the general management of imperial affairs was exercised unfairly and illegally against them. And behind this was felt to be his policy of uniting the states against France, a union upon which many of the Protestant princes were by no means anxious to enter. He wished to preserve his electorate in power and in prosperity : he was thus equally the foe of Protestantism in Germany and of France across the Ehine.
But he seemed at times to be little less hostile to the Papacy itself. He continually protested against the attitude of the Curia towards Germany. Foreigners were appointed to posts in the Church. The " foreign " cardinals, he said, were opposed to the Empire. There seemed even a chance that he would lead the move- ment for the foundation of an independent and national German Church, which Joseph I. had in mind — a scheme such as again and again between the Thirty Years' War and the Eevolution was entertained by the German Ciiesars and the more independent of the pre- lates. The proceedings were mixed up with a good
ECCLESIASTICAL STATES OF GERMANY 21
deal of intrigue on purely personal matters, and, as so often happened, the personal interests prevented the assertion of important principles which might have strengthened the Church in Germany against the dangers which were before long to beset it.
Within his own dioceses he was active in the main- tenance of episcopal authority, and he endeavoured to exercise similar powers in the Palatinate; and this led to a sharp dispute and almost !f . to war. Lothar Franz, however, does not seem to have been an uncharitable man, or even un- willincr to recognise the conscientious convictions of the Protestants. His own religion was the placid acquiescence of the better class of the clergy of his age in the doctrines of the Catholic faith ; he was not a pious man in any deep sense, but he was not — as some were — an enemy of piety in others. He was practical in his views of religion. He took strong measures to drive out the concubines of the parish clergy. He supported the Carthusians. He tried to increase the stipends of the poorer parish priests. He endowed chapels at the pilgrimage resorts.
But, to the men of his day and still more of ours, he might well seem rather a politician and a patron of art than a priest. He was, like the medieval prelates, a mighty builder. He was a skilled designer of gar- dens, formal like the artificial society in which he lived. He was a critic and collector of pictures : he employed bad native artists and bought the work of good Dutch ones. Strange to say, in that period, he even took an interest in the old German masters, and appreciated Ditrer and Cranach. He collected too a fine library, but it was one of rare rather than inter-
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
esting books. There was never far from his ideas the thought of display. He wished always to show him- self a prince.
On its good side this aim made liim care for his people, and he succeeded in restoring prosperity to his country. He attempted to restore the military im- portance of the ecclesiastical electorates : here he failed. But none the less it was his policy, and his deliberate choice of alliance with the Austrian House, which most helped to defer their secularisation till the reconstruction of Germany by Napoleon. And in his time undoubtedly the ecclesiastical princes were at the summit of their power.
But what is the result of all this ? And why has the story of a person of no importance, filling a high place, been told in a general history of the Church ? It is an illustration of a tendency of deep signifi- cance in Church life. One cannot fail to see in all this pomp and pride the desertion of the essen- tial Christian spirit, the loss of the beauty and simplicity of Christian life. If the Lord Himself would not be ruler and judge, should His ministers be secular princes ? The answer found expression in the general laxity of belief, rejection of Catholic truth, impotence of Church influence, which marked in Ger- many the last half of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER III
THE JESUITS IN EUROPE DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
AT the time when the aristocratic spirit was coming JL\- to control all the governments of Europe, the most famous of the modern relis^ious societies was not exempt from its influence.
Mutio Yitelleschi, general of the Jesuits from 1615 to 1645, was followed by others in whose days the original discipline was greatly relaxed. The distinction between those who were "pro- the spirit fessed " and the other members of the of the Society was practically withdrawn, and at Society of the same time a great increase of wealth J^^"^- led to ease among the higher and elder Jesuits. AVith the appointment of a vicar to the general in 1661 the Society asserted control over its chief officer, and departed entirely from its founder's rule of implicit obedience. Again, the Jesuits stood aloof from the interests of the Vatican : Jesuit books were not in- frequently condemned: Jesuit theories of politics became largely anti-monarchical: the Jesuits, follow- ing the political science of S. Thomas, became often revolutionary. The Society, which was at first so unworldly, came to belong thoroughly to the world.
As an illustration of this the commercial enterprise 23
24 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
of the Society may be noticed. As Benedictines had been farmers, Jesuits were merchants. In Italy manufactories sprang up : in the colonies large trading establishments were founded, which were generally not conducted directly in the name of the Society, but through some agent who was known to have the credit of the Society at his back. " The trading con- nections of the order extended, as it were, a network over both continents," says Von Eanke. In this lay the seed of the general hostility which the Jesuits evoked in the eighteenth century.
Again, organisation, which had been the strength of the Jesuit system, became one of the great obstacles to its permanent influence on the Catholic states. Organi- sation added to enthusiasm had enabled the Society to give to the Church a number of highly educated, pious and energetic priests, to produce controversialists of the first order, and preachers and confessors and missionaries. South America and China bore wonder- ful witness to their success. But all this organisation began to tend, as time went on, to the maintenance of established order and thus of despotism. Jesuits were the confessors of the Austrian and French absolutists : Jesuits were ultramontanes, in the sense of being advocates of authority and submission. Thus the French philosophers in the eighteenth century found in them the foes of progress, and in their organisation the great bulwark of the ancient system ; Helvetius said that the excellence of their government was their worst crime. Here, again, public feeling turned against the Jesuits, and their unpopularity grew.
But there were other causes for it, also gradually springing up. The Jesuit schools, which in the first
JESUITS IN EUROPE DURING 17th CENTURY 25
fifty years of the order had revolutionised the educa- tion of Europe, lost much of their vigour : they sought to gain influence rather than to give instruction, and the result, inevitable when teachers, as they so com- monly do, set before themselves such an aim, followed : the scholars came to distrust the principles on which they were taught and to dislike their instructors. The Society lost its commanding and beneficent power on behalf of the religion of Jesus Christ. This may partly be seen in the evolution of the political doctrine of the Jesuits after the Thirty Years' War. political From that date they became enlisted on teaching the side of royalism. They had been every- oi the where regarded as the chief supporters of ^^^"^ ^' the deposing power of the pope and opponents of the divine right of kings, but they had come to see that it was only by the royal power tliat their views could be established — as in England it was the only hope of Eomanism that the despotism of James 11. should set it up — and so they reached an entirely secular view of the civil power : —
"It is a purely human institution for the worldly ends of peace and riches. . . . The end of the State being purely external, it cannot be in the last resort worthy of high reverence ; and must be kept under tutelage if man is to reach his highest. They separate sharply the civic life of man, which is external and partial, from his religious, which is internal, and all-embracmg." ^
So they came, believing the Church to be a societas perfeda, to admit, though grudgingly, that the State
1 J. N. Figgis, Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414-1625, p. 179.
26 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
had a separate existence and separate rights, and must be dealt with separately. Hence, in later years of which we shall tell, the reaction again — from abso- lutism to resistance to royal authority. While in France the Jesuits supported the Crown so as to crush the Jansenists, in Spain they endeavoured to under- mine the royal power in order to establish their own.
But the interests of the Society were still more ecclesiastical than political. At the same time public attention began to be directed to the new theories which the Jesuits advanced in their necessary work as Casuistry casuists. The doctrine of Luis Molina (1588) of the was to come forward into prominence later
Jesuits. through the conflict with the pronounced Augustinianism of the Jansenists; but meanwhile, as moral teachers, the Jesuits were confronted with eternal problems as to sin and responsibility, and many of their writers elaborated principles for guid- ance in the confessional. While it has never been successfully shown that they taught that it was lawful to do evil to bring about good — though this has often been asserted — it is certain that several authors held views as to the lawfulness of tyrannicide which came not far from such a position ; and a more fundamental departure from recognised teaching arose in regard to what became known as " Probabilism." This was the doctrine which allowed a person in doubt as to whether an action was right, or who knows an action to be com- monly thought sinful, to do it nevertheless if a doctor jjrobahilis (a teacher of repute) has held a view con- trary to the common one. Under that name, said Lord Acton,^ " the majority adopted a theory of morals that
^ Lectures on Modern History, p. 117.
JESUITS IN EUROPE DURING 17th CENTURY 27
made salvation easy, partly as confessors of the great, that they might retain their penitents ; partly as sub- ject to superiors, that they might not scruple to obey in dubious cases ; and partly as defenders of the irre- vocable past, that they might be lenient judges. Any one may do what on probable grounds or
authority he thinks lawful, althoucrh to do . ^° ^ ^ "
•^ . . ism.
the contrary may be safer ; it will be enough
that there be the opinion of some weighty author." This was an enlargement of human liberty which followed on the view — in itself reasonable — that for mortal sin (that is, sin which definitely cut off the soul from the grace of God) full knowledge and inten- tion to an act or thought of serious wrong-doing were required. It was a step further to say that to incur guilt it is necessary to consciously commit sin as sin. Volumes were written on every nicety of the question. A school of casuists arose which was exposed to severe criticism from every part of the Church. The situation has been not unfairly summed up by a great historian:^ " In the directing manuals of the Jesuits all possible contingencies of life are treated of, much in the method usually adopted for systems of civil law, and appre- ciated according to the degrees of their veniality. A man has but to look out the cases supposed in these books, and, without any conviction on his own part, to regulate himself according to their directions, and he is then certain of absolution before God and the Church; a slight turn of the thoughts served to ex- onerate from all guilt. The Jesuits themselves, with a certain sort of honesty, sometimes express surprise
^ Yon Ranke, History of the Popes, ii. 396,
28 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
on perceiving how light and easy their tenets render the yoke of Christ."
The aim to enter into every side of life with the guiding hand of Christian influence was one which was undoubtedly misused by many able and conscien- tious writers; but the general judgment was strongly against them. While this eventually led to the dis- credit and suppression of the Society itself, it produced in the first place a movement of opposition, in a theology based on very different principles. A new party arose which found its basis in the sternest teach- ing of S. Augustine, the party of the Jansenists.
CHAPTER IV
LOUIS XIV., THE POPES, AND THE PROTESTANTS
IN the seventeenth century no Catholic sovereign could compare for importance, in the ecclesiastical as well as in the political history of Europe, with the king of France, the grand monarque who reigned from 1643 to 1715. The attitude of this great personage, whose influence over his contemporaries seemed so enormous, towards the centre of Catholic influence, at Eome, is significant of the change introduced by the Eeformation and the Thirty Years' War.
Louis XIY., persecutor in the cause of Catholicism though he was, was, like Philip II., far from being sub- servient in politics to the popes. A long Louis XIV. dispute between Trance and Piome was and the brought to a definite point of contest in "reg-ale." regard to the question of the regale. This was the right to the revenues of all vacant bishoprics, and to their patronage during a vacancy. Originally claimed only in the ancient domains of the Crown, this right had been extended to the whole kingdom. In 1655 it appeared a^ if the Crown had yielded to the clerical view which restricted the right; but in 1673 and 1675 Louis again asserted it for the whole realm, with a few exceptions. The bishops of Aleth (Pavilion) and Pamiers (Pe Caulet) resisted, and Innocent XI.
29
30 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
(Odescalchi),^ who was elected in 1676, in briefs issued in 1678 and the two following years, took the side of the bishops, and threatened tlie king himself with censure.
The deaths of the bishops gave occasion for the king to exercise his powers in their dioceses. A bitter dispute broke out between the Crown and the chapters supported by the popes. The Parlement of Paris supported the king, and a papal bull con- demned the Parlement. Innocent XL declared the " regalist " clergy to be irregular and their ministra- tions invalid. He believed himself to be fighting for ecclesiastical freedom, and he determined to resist the king to the last. The bishops met, with the king's permission, in March, 1681, to discuss the pope's action ; and they unanimously decided upon a report which practically accepted the regale and de- clared that the powers claimed by the pope in regard to bishoprics were unlawful, and his action with regard to the ministrations of the clergy was invalid and of the nature of sacrilege. The Jesuits in France accepted the view of the Court and the bishops, and, though pledged to a special obedience to the Papacy, refused to accept the papal brief.
^ The period of Innocent XL has a special interest. It appealed, Lord Acton tells us, especiall}^ to the great scholar Bollinger : " When he began to fix his mind on the constitutional history of the Church, he proposed to write first on the times of Innocent XL It was the age he knew best, in which there was most interest, most material, most ability, when divines were national classics^ and presented many distinct types of religious thought, when biblical and historical science was founded, and Catholicism was presented in its most winning guise. The character of Odeschalchi impressed him by hia earnestness in sustaining a strict morality," — History of Freedom, and Other Essays, p. 433.
LOUIS XIV., THE POPES, AND PROTESTANTS 31
A General Assembly of the clergy met on No- vember 9th, 1681, and Bossuet, as bishop of Meaux, was its most prominent member. His mag- General nificent sermon on the Unity of the Church Assembly gave a keynote to the proceedings. He ^" ^^^^• based the unity of the Church on the unity of the episcopate, and the unity of the episcopate on the authority of S. Peter. His claims for Galilean liberties he based on the Pragmatic Sanction of S. Louis (which is now known not to be authentic), and declared that to preserve the jurisdiction of ordinaries was not to separate from the Holy See, but rather to confirm the union by basing on the only true principles. When the regale came in question the Assembly agreed to the king's claims, and the king agreed that his nominees to benefices should require canonical institution. In January, 1682, appeared a royal edict laying down the exact limits of the regale. It declared the king's right to the patronage of bishops when sees were vacant, but left to the chapters their patronage ; it pronounced that the royal nominees should need institution ; and it based its claim on the usage and rights of S. Louis. On February 3rd the Assembly addressed a letter to the pope, in which they expressed- their fear lest the contest should seriously trouble the peace of the Church. The regale did not touch faith or morals : it belonged only to discipline, which could be modified in different ages ; charity and wisdom alike required that a king who had done so much for the Church should be treated with consideration. The letter, a lengthy and diplomatic production, was garnished with many quotations from canonists, and was signed by the archbishop of Paris as president of the Assembly. On
32 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
tlie same day the same assembly of archbishops, bishops and deputies, representing all the Gallican Church, accepted the rdgale in the form in which the king asserted it. Before a reply was received from Eome a declaration was put out by the clergy, which Bossuet had drawn up, and which represented the Gallican liberties asserted of old. In the preliminary dis- cussion, it is to be observed, Bossuet was emphatic in asserting that the Eoman See was indefectible, but not infallible : popes might err, carried away by a passing wind of vain doctrine, but the See could never become heretical.
The declaration of 1682 was founded on six articles drawn up by the Sorbonne (the theological faculty of the University of Paris), in 1663. Its four articles Gallican (-^) declared that the popes had received Declara- from God spiritual but not temporal power : tion of kings are not subject to any ecclesiastical
^ ^* power with regard to their temporal rule :
their subjects cannot be released from their allegiance.
(2) Affirmed the acceptance of the decrees of the Council of Constance in its fourth and fifth sessions on the plenitude of papal power in things spiritual.
(3) But added, " Hence the exercise of Apostolic power must be regulated by the canons made by the spirit of God and consecrated by the reverence of the whole world. The rules, customs, and institutions received by the kingdom and the Gallican Church shall be valid, and the bounds fixed by the Fathers remain unshaken ; and it belongs to the honour of the Apostolic See that such statutes and customs, confirmed by the consent of the said see, should have their own inviolability."
(4) Declared that the pope lias the chief part in
LOUIS XIV., THE POPES, AND PROTESTANTS 33
questions of faith, and that his decrees extend to the churches, all and singular, but, nevertheless, that his judgment is not irreversible unless it has the consent of the Church.
The declaration was signed by the whole Assembly and was then presented to the king, by whose order it was registered by the Parlement. It was to be taught in colleges and subscribed by ^ professors of theology. It is to be ob- served that the declaration was studiously moderate. It denied no power to the See of Rome which the Church had declared that it possessed : it asserted nothing but that opinion of the Galilean Church and the liberties which that Church and realm had always held. It so carefully avoided specific statements as to points of dispute that it might well be thought inoffensive to the papal curia, but this was far from being the case. On April 2nd Innocent XI. answered the bishops' letter of February as to the regale, de- claring that by its abuse not only the discipline but the faith of the Church was menaced, annulling all that had been done by the Assembly in regard to it, and demanding a retraction on the part of the bishops. On April 14th the Assembly of Clergy reiterated its views in a letter to all the Galilean episco- pate, emphasising the statement that the papal authority was limited by the canons of the Church, and in cases of questions of grave import by the General Councils, and declaring that Christian states were governed not only by the sacerdotal but the temporal power, and that to enforce this was necessary for the peace of the Church as well as the kingdom. On May 6th the Assembly formally pro-
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
tested against the papal brief which had condemned its acts, and appealed to the judgment of a pope wlio should be better informed, repeating its determination to maintain the canons of the Church Universal and the customs, rights and usages of the Gallican Church ; and in a letter to the pope complained of the unwisdom of attacking a king who "alone among all Christian princes is capable of putting impiety under the yoke, and submitting to the authority of the Church of Eome a heresy that has been overcome, so redoubtable is he in his power and incomparable in his religion." On the same day the Assembly addressed a circular letter to all the French bishops, vindicating its action as a needed protest on behalf of its undoubted privi- leges, not against the Papacy, but before the Papacy. This letter, by royal order, was not sent out, and the sessions of the Assembly ceased for three years.
With this, for a time, the documentary war ended. Innocent XL was well advised to pass no censure on the articles, but he refused his institution to all members of the Assembly whom the king preferred to other posts. Thus for several years no consecra- tions were held in France, and eventually thirty-five sees were without bishops appointed according to the full custom of the time. Those chosen administered their dioceses by commissions from the chapters, but could perform no directly spiritual functions. The literary warfare continued unabated, and Bossuet pre- pared his great Defensio dedarationis cleri Grdlicani, which was not published till after his death. This work has the claim to be regarded as irrefutable, that it has never been censured by the Papacy; but it establishes, in a manner at once moderate and deter-
LOUIS XIV., THE POPES, AND PROTESTANTS 35
mined, the rights of local churclies against the ultra- montane position.
For a time the attention of the French clergy was diverted from the controversy with the Eoman Curia
by the persecution which Louis XIV. now „
• 1 • 1 TT m Persecu-
maugurated against the Huguenots. These tion of
were in possession of a large number of privi- the Hugue- leges, legally secured to them by the Edict of "°^^- Nantes of Henri IV., but gradually reduced by succes- sive ordinances of recent years. Urgent efforts were being made by the French bishops, and by great preachers, Bossuet and Fenelon among them, to win converts, and the king authorised the payment of pensions for the maintenance of Protestant ministers w^ho might be impoverished by their change of faith. From this Louis proceeded to the terrible measures of the dragonnades, the forcible quartering of dragoons in Protestant districts, who compelled conversion by murder and rapine. Le Tellier, archbishop of Eheims, and Harlai, archbishop of Paris, have the undying shame of sanctioning violent measures to secure ex- ternal conformity to the Church. Politically the Huguenots had failed in their aim of decen- Revocation tralisation : it was now endeavoured to of the Edict enforce a centralised religion at the point °f Nantes, of the sword. On October 18th, 1685, '^^5' Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes.
The act was a crime and a blunder, politically, morally and religiously. Many of the best of the king's subjects sought refuge abroad, and brought wealth to Germany, England, and Holland. The appearance of conformity was secured by hypocrisy which was the result of terrorism. The outraged
36 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
rights of the liuman soul reasserted themselves in reaction against the Catholic Church in Erance, and infidelity and innnorality alike gained by the betrayal of Christian freedom. And the last years of the king's reign were disturbed by a formidable revolt, which made him totter on his throne.
The rising of the Camisards in 1702, the Protestant peasantry of the Cevennes, has been compared to that of the Scottish Covenanters of 1679. Fanatical The War preachers declared that they were inspired in the to lead the people to the extermination of
Cevennes. ^^iq priests of Moloch : those who were engaged in stirring up the war are said to have suffered from a sort of religious hysteria, a " pro- phetic malady," ^ wliich led to the most violent excesses ; and as the Scottish insurrection began by the murder of Archbishop Sharpe, so the revolt of the Camisards began with the murder of the archpriest Chayla, a bitter instrument of the re- pressive government. Seguier, " the Danton of the Cevennes," led the peasants to a general massacre of the priests, but he was captured and burnt. Laporte succeeded, and took to the mountains to train and drill his troops. The most distinguished of the generals of the revolt was Jean Cavalier, a baker's boy, who long kept the king's armies at bay, and who died a major-general in the English army and governor of Jersey. Two years of hard fighting ended in a peace which was signed by Cavalier and by Marshal Villars in May, 1704, and granted liberty of conscience to the Protestants. It was repudiated by the more
^ Smiles, Huguenots in France, p. 89,
LOUIS XIV., THE POPES, AND PROTESTANTS 37
extreme Protestants, and the war was carried to a conclusion, in which the royal troops were entirely successful. Protestantism seemed to have been stamped out. So at least Louis XIV. was able to announce by proclamation on March 8th, 1715, six months before his death. But the hardy shoots of Protestantism were not destroyed, and they lived to restore their organisations in the middle of the century, and to exercise influence on the great Eevolution at the end. The judicial murder of Galas at Toulouse, in which, no doubt, religious passions were concerned, led, through Voltaire's triumphant vindication of the man who had been sacrificed, to a new sympathy for the Huguenots.
Side by side with the general history of French Calvinistic Protestantism may be placed that of the Waldenses and Vaudois, whose position of antagonism to the Church goes back to the vaudois early Middle Age. Here, again, persecution was the weapon employed by the monarchs of the seventeenth century to bring about uniformity of faith.
The means by which the dukes of Savoy endeavoured to produce religious uniformity in their territories aroused the indignation of Europe. In 1655, when the society clc propaganda fide was established at Turin, they gave to it all the strength of the secular arm. The troops were let loose on the peaceful Waldenses in Holy Week of that year, and a general massacre ensued. Cromwell's protest, and perhaps even IVIilton's sonnet,
"Avenge, 0 Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,"
38 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
had some effect : the remnant was left in peace. They were joined by a number of refugees from France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and then Louis XIV. demanded that they should be expelled or converted. The amnesty which had been granted was withdrawn, and the privileges were abolished on January 31st, 1686. A massacre followed; and Victor Amadeus was congratulated by Innocent XL on the extirpation of heresy. It was not long, however, before the persistent courage of " the blameless sec- taries" was rewarded, and the Vaudois were re- established in their inaccessible valleys, where they remained, almost till the time of the emancipation of Italy, in the peaceful happiness which has no history.
While Catholic powers were thus damaging the cause of Catholicism by their violence, their relations Innocent with the Papacy were far from being har- XL and monious. Before the questions of the LouisXIV. ^^^g^iiQ Q^Yidi of Galilean privileges had been decided, there arose a dispute as to the privileges of ambassadors in the city of Eome. On May 12th, 1687, Innocent XL put out a bull abolishing the privileges of sanctuary and the like, which were claimed for the ambassadors' quarters. A few months later the new French ambassador entered the city with a strong military force, wdth his master's com- mands to maintain the ambassadorial franchises. The pope refused to receive liim, and when he was ad- mitted to communion on Christmas Eve in the Church of S. Louis, the cliurch and its clergy were placed under an interdict. A few weeks later the Parlement of Paris formally appealed on the matter to a future
LOUIS XIV., THE POPES, AND PROTESTANTS 39
General Council and declared all papal acts for the present to be invalid in France. The king in Septem- ber, 1688, himself wrote a letter, to be read to the pope, denouncing his conduct and threatening to seize Avignon and enter Italy. Added to the other griev- ances was now the fact that the pope had favoured a candidate as coadjutor to the archbishop of Koln who was objected to by France. It was rumoured that Louis XIV. intended to set up in France a separate patriarchate: his troops occupied Avignon.: the papal nuncio was kept in France by force. A year later Innocent XI. died ; and the English Eevolution told against the pretensions of Louis XIV. in Europe. The king sent a new ambassador, renounced the privileges and restored Avignon. On August 4th, 1690, Alex- ander VIII. declared the Gallican Declaration of 1682 to be null and void. He died soon after, and his successor, Innocent XII., was able to obtain j^etj-acta- a complete victory. On September 14th, tion of the 1693, Louis XIY. issued a retractation of Declara- the Declaration of 1682, and on making tionofi682. a similar retractation the elected bishops were ad- mitted to consecration. But the retractation was one of form, for Bossuet wrote, " The Declaration may go wherever it pleases, but the ancient doctrine of the Faculty of Paris remains unshaken."
In April, 1695, the echoes of the dispute died away in France by the issue of a Eoyal Edict defining the jurisdiction of the Church in France, in regard to the state, its courts, appeals, duties and the like.
There were many other points of high ecclesiastical importance in the reign of Louis XIV., but the relations of the Church and king with the Papacy have a very
40 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
special significance as among the last assertions of local independence against ultramontanism.^
^ In the Revue des questions historiques, January, 1907, is a valu- able account of the policy of Innocent XI. towards Louis XIV. in regard to the regale, as it is revealed by the letters of Cardinal Pio to the Emperor Leopold I. This puts more clearly than English books do exactly what was Louis's claim and where it won support in France, and it explains the interesting position taken up by Pavilion, bishop of Aleth, a veteran supporter of Port Royal, and the gradual growth of hostility between Odescalchi and the monarch to whom he owed his election. The cause of the quarrel is traced, in letters which had not previously been utilised, by M. Marc Dubruel.
CHAPTER V BOSSUET, FENELON, AND THE QUIETISTS
THE most commanding figure in the French Church of the da^^s of Louis XIV. is undoubtedly that of the great prelate, orator and scholar, Bossuet, the " eagle of Meaux." Bossuet had all the strength which comes from concentration. He had none of the interests of the layman. He wrote, as has been said of Gregory of Tours,^ " en eveque " : his thoughts ran all on theological, not merely on religious, lines. He was a constitutionalist in Church matters, but one whose views were strictly limited. He was in the fullest as well as the best sense of the word a sacerdotalist through and through.
Bossuet, like his great rival — if one may use the word — Fenelon, w^as a royal tutor ; but it is character- istic of his somewhat narrow outlook that he made no such impression on his pupil. During the earlier years of his priesthood he resided chiefly at Metz, whence his reputation as a preacher and a controver- sialist brought him to Paris. In 1670 his ministry at the tragic death-bed of Henrietta of Orleans, and his magnificent sermon at her funeral, raised him to the height of his fame. In the same year he became the Dauphin's tutor and a bishop. Ten years later he
1 See Tlic Church and the Barbarians, p. 52. 41
42 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
became bishop of Meaux, and he held the see till
his death in 1704. His grreatness as a
preacher impressed his own contemporaries sermons. \, , ^ . , . , . .
first ; but it is a greatness which it is not
easy to measure to-day when the scenes of splendour
which were its setting have passed away. Bossuet
was first of all a court preacher, a preacher of dignity
and declamation, but he was also a convincing preacher
of conversion who appealed directly to the hearts of
his hearers of whatever class. If his eloquence should
still be studied as we reclaim and study that of Pitt or
Burke, the best description of it in little is that of a
critic so acute as Madame de Sevigne, who said,
" Bossuet grapples in deadly earnest with his audience :
all his sermons are mortal combats." He was a
controversialist in the pulpit, and a preacher in con-
His troversy. His continual controversy with
controver- Protestantism need not here be described.
sial works, n^ YRdij suffice to say that all his arguments
were based on the doctrine of the permanence of the
Holy Catholic Church as the pillar and ground of the
truth, as, by the institution of Christ and the continual
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the infallible guardian
of truth. A visible authority, he would say, is the
necessary guarantee of the continuity of the Divine
Society; and the security for that authority is to be
found only in the See of Rome. Thus while he argued
in relation to the Bible that it comes to us from tlie
Church and is to be taken on her authority, and so
adopted the line of resistance to Protestantism which
was common to both East and West, and similarly
regarded the Church with its ministry as an essential
part of the Christian Creed no less than the Person-
BOSSUET, FENELON, AND THE QUIETISTS 43
ality of Christ Himself, he went beyond the universal consent of the continuous Church in relating his whole argument to the monarchical claims of the See of Eome. Yet though he believed that the Papacy was indefectible, he declared that he had no belief in the infallibility of the Ultramontanes. With new diffi- culties he would not deal : for him all questions were settled, and all arguments, Protestant and Eationalistic, could be answered from the patristic armoury. He was essentially a man of the past. Massillon truly called him " the Father of the Seventeenth Century," but when he went on to say that " he lacked nothing but to have been born in the primitive age, to have been the light of Councils and the soul of assembled Fathers, to have dictated canons and presided at Nicaea and Ephesus," he attributed to Bossuet a power of dealing with new difficulties as they arose in a manner which he never possessed : his success was that of one who appeals to the authority of Fathers and Councils. What he would have done had he had to create that authority it is difficult to say. Ste.-Beuve, most brilliant of critics, well compared him to " a majestic ship, sailing under a cloud of canvas over the surface of the waters, but which the fiercest storms, though they plunge it into the depths or toss it to the skies, can never drive into any unexplored ocean or enable to discover any new land." This, while it illuminates his general position, may serve also to explain at once the strength and the weakness of his conduct of the Quietist contro- versy.
The mysticism of S. Teresa, one of the most spiritual and yet most practical of saints, may be regarded as the origin of the Quietism of the seventeenth cen-
44 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
tuiy. A Spanish monk, Falconi. founded this new development. He died in 1632, but he left important
disciples. The most important was Miguel Q . ,. , de Molinos, a Spanish priest who became at
Home a famous preacher and director, and published in 1675 a treatise called The Sjnritual Guidc^ which advocated an extremity of passive recep- tiveness in the relation of the soul to God. Beside Molinos in his influence, but rather practical than
literary, was Frangois Malaval, born like
Molinos in 1627, a blind teacher of wide- spread influence, and a rich French lady,Madame Guyon, who ow^ed her opinions to the influence of a Barnabite monk named Lacombe. At first by far the most powerful agent of Quietism was Molinos. His system has some- what strangely been regarded as Protestant because the intimate nearness of the soul, in passive repose resting upon God, seemed to dispense with all need of priests and Sacraments ; but true mysticism was at home in the Catholic Church, and extrava- gance was not exclusively to be found outside it. But it was not its attitude towards the priesthood which condemned the doctrine. In the midst of much that is sublime the reader finds excesses which are unreconcilable with rational religion. A book of extracts from Molinos may show the beauty of his thought and its spiritual force, but the complete system is beyond all bounds. The soul in "a holy indolence and nothingness for a whole day, for a whole year, for a whole life," the faith above all dogma, tlie absolute quiescence under attacks of temptation, were ideas which destroyed all moral
^ See p. 169.
BOSSUET, FKNELON, AND THE QUIETISTS 45
exertion and all personal responsibility. The teaching of Molinos came very near that of the old Gnostics.^
"The Quietists thonght that God was to be loved, not for what He has done, bnt for what He is, and that perfection consists in an escape from all sub- ordinate cares, a state of mind in which the wor- shipper might be said to have entered the holy of holies, and to have merged all social and all selfish affections in the one overwhelming omnipresent emotion of love for the supreme source and object of every tender feeling. This was obviously an idle imagination."^
But the doctrine was a popular one. The Jesuit preacher Segueri, who attacked it, was discomfited, and found his treatise put upon the Index. Then Louis XIV. intervened. Aroused, it would seem, by his own confessor, he came forward as a champion of the faith, and instructed Cardinal d'Estrees, his am- bassador (who was himself an admirer of Malaval), to denounce Molinos to the Inquisition. He was seized, and he lay for nearly two years in prison. In the autumn of 1687 he was adjudged guilty by the Holy Office, and he made his submission ; a bull of Innocent XI. on November 20, 1687, condemned his doctrines : his personal life as well as his teaching was at fault. He was sent back to prison and there he died at last in 1696.
Meanwhile the religious world of France was being stirred by the enthusiasm and eccentricity of Madame Guyon. She claimed to teach ^^ ^^ and to preach, to perform miracles, to
^ See The Church of the Fathers, pp. 45-7. - Sir James Stephen, Letters, p. 7.
46 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
write by inspiration. Her companion Lacombe was removed from the headship of the home for con- verted Protestant w^omen which had been established ; they then travelled about in the south, teaching and preaching: in 1686 they have arrived in Paris. Before long Lacombe was arrested as a Quietist and im- prisoned first at Lourdes and afterwards in a lunatic asylum. Madame Guyon was herself for a while imprisoned, but the influence of great ladies pro- cured her release, and she soon became intimate in the religious circles which were surrounding the Court. Madame de Maintenon (whom Louis XIV. had secretly married) was much impressed by her: she served to make a religious diversion, which was what the religious ladies of French society, earnest though they were, most desired. Madame de Main- tenon, says the acute observer St. Simon, looked out on the world through a keyhole and so was easily deceived. At S. Cyr, her school, the mysticism of Madame Guyon was rapturously received, and her cousin, Mile, de la Maisonforte, who had by Fenelon's influence been professed as a nun, became the warmest of her disciples, and Madame Guyon became a sort of spiritual directress of the institution. Contemplation, absorption in the divine, the plenitude of divine grace and the revelations of the mystical lady, enchained the minds of the whole house.
Fenelon, perhaps the most attractive figure at once in French society and French religion, was almost Fenelon swept into the vortex. The whole Quietist and Mme. excitement throws an interesting light on Guyon. ^j^g influence of religion in France under Louis XIV. A formal Catholicism which had no effect
BOSSUET, FENELON, AND THE QUIETJSTS 47
on morals, and which the great preachers were able only too slightly to move into life, w^as stirred by the fantastic excesses of a hysterical woman. The inter- vention of a wise man removed the whole question on to a rational plane. Fenelon caused the ecstatic lady to appeal from those who accused her theology and her morals to Bossuet. Thus the Quietist controversy brought these two great Churchmen at first into association and then into disagreement.
Bossuet was not long in condemning the writings of Mnie. Guyon. For a time she submitted ; but further troubles led, at her request, to a series of theological conferences at Issy, in which Bossuet and F^enelon took part. The result was a series of articles which left many of the questions unsolved ; and soon after Fenelon was consecrated to the see of Cambrai and was for a time removed from the arena. Mme. Guyon submitted to suppress her writings and declared her " detestation of the abominations of Molinos." Then Bossuet issued an " Instruction sur roraison," which seemed to Fenelon to be a personal attack on the now submissive lady; but she instantly became no longer submissive. In an unhappy moment a treatise of Fenelon's, written no doubt as an eirenicon, was pub- lished in his absence and without his knowledge by his friend, and Mme. Guyon's, the due de ^, Chevreuse. This was the Maximes des <<Maximes Saints, and excited people said it was pure des Quietism. It was received with a chorus S^^"^- of amused disapproval. St. Simon says no one but theologians could understand it and they only after reading it several times. Mme. de Sevigne expressed herself as more mvstified than ever : " Do make
48 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
religion a little more solid : it will evaporate alto- gether by being made so subtle." Bossuet appealed to the king, Fenelon to the pope. In April, 1697, he submitted his book to the judgment of the Holy See.
In his letter of appeal he spoke of " the abominable doctrine of the Quietists" as having worked much secret evil, but of the just condemnation of certain books having led to the other extreme, and of himself as having made "a sort, of dictionary of mystical theology, to prevent righteous souls passing beyond the limits laid down by our fathers." While the Curia was examining the book a violent controversy broke out in France. Bossuet declared the book to be full of error, and still more full of contradictions, the false and true mingled together. Louis XIY. ordered Fenelon to retire to his diocese, and wrote to the pope to ask him to pronounce as soon as possible upon the Maximes des Saints. But the examiners appointed by the pope proved to be equally divided in opinion : the vehemence of controversy in France increased : Fene- lon accused Bossuet of personal malice, Bossuet re- torted with odious insinuations : the affair became at Eome almost a European question, for foreign ambassadors took sides in the dispute : new investi- gators were appointed, and that seemed simply an attempt at delay. Then Louis XIV. formally de- manded a condemnation of the book. A miserable dispute it was, and the most deplorable part of it was that two bishops so good as Bossuet and Fenelon should be in antagonism so direct and so bitter. Rightly has it been noticed as a sign of the degeneracy of the French Church.
On March 12th, 1699, Innocent XII. published a
BOSSUET, FENELON, AND THE QUIETISTS 49
brief. It was based upon the decision of the car- dinals appointed to examine the Maximes des Saints, that of thirty-eight propositions y^^ ^°"" submitted twenty were reprehensible. The pope now condemned the general spirit of the book and twenty-three propositions from it, but he refrained from declaring them heretical. The exaggeration of jmrus amor (disinterestedness) was condemned, not its simple exercise : it was the passive state of pure con- templation, without desire for any virtue or for heaven itself, which w^as rejected. The doctrine which was banned was practically a Buddhist not a Christian one.
Fenelon accepted the condemnation with dignity. Bossuet welcomed it with delight. Louis XIV. ex- pressed his satisfaction ; and the Galilean bishops, summoned according to the principles of the Declara- tion of 1682 to accept the papal brief, unanimously agreed. The embers of controversy smouldered awhile. Fenelon was compelled to sign the declaration of his own province for the suppression of all his writings in favour of the Maximes: then he spoke no more of the subject, and the Quietist controversy was at an end.
The space which it occupies in the literature of the time is a measure of the importance of the French Church, and the result is evidence of the strength of the Eoman See. But the interest of the dispute to- day belongs more than anything else to its association with Fenelon.
The important part which the French Church played in French life is seen perhaps best of all in connection with one whom the historian Michelet w^ell called £^ " multiple man."
50 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Francois de Feiieloii was born in Perigord in 1651. He died at the beginning of 1715. Thus his working Life of ^^^® coincided exactly with the disastrous
Fenelon, half of the reign of the Grand Monarque, 1651-1715. and he illustrated at many points the causes, as well as the history, of the terrible failure. Of an ancient noble family, he felt from his earliest years the vocation of the priesthood. He gave himself with all devotion to the great call. Sometimes he stumbled ; sometimes self was too strong ; pure disinterestedness was perhaps never entirely the motive of his acts. He was by character as by choice " all things to all men." He was the most brilliant conversationalist of his day, the most eloquent, the most classic, the most courtly in his style. He was, in the judgment of the great critics of his time, " wholly inimitable," and "unlike any one else." The eccentric Lord Peter- borough said of him, " He is a delightful creature, but I was forced to get away from him as soon as I possibly could, or he would have made me pious ! " For his was a beautiful, sympathetic, chastened character, and a life which gradually, through sorrows and disappointments, became attuned to the simplest message of the Church of Christ. A great man he never ceased to be, a great figure in a great world; and, indeed, from his youth he had always felt, and expressed, the Divine charity which overshadows all life — but at the end, in what the age considered an exile, he became more simple, more sincere, in a word a more entirely holy and devoted servant of Christ.
Fenelon's life is so full that it is difficult to sum- marise it with brevity. The prominent points are well known. The training of S. Sulpice made the young
BOSSUET, FENELON, AND THE QUIETISTS 51
noble the priest that he became. He determined to become a missionary in Canada, and later to preach in Syria to the Mohammedans, but in each endeavour he was prevented. It was in 1678, when lie was twenty- seven, that he finished the training that had been so fruitful and became Superior of the Xew Catholics in Paris. It was then that he first became intimate with the Beauvilliers and Chevreuses, whose portraits stand out so clearly before us in St. Simon, that he came in fact into the highest society of the Court, which preserved its Christianity untouched amid the vices of the age, and carried something of religious devotion into the public service. To that period belong his more philosophic works, his Refutation of Malehranclie and his treatise on the existence of God. From 1685 to 1687 he was a missionary, following the course of the clragonnacles, in Saintonge — and showing all the strange inconsistencies of ^jjg his character, sometimes passing the borders political of intrigue, it might seem, into dishonesty, philosophy but full of charity, and piety, and devotion, and beautiful sentiment. In 1689 he became preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy. How he fulfilled his task, and what influence his work might have had on the history of France and of Europe, are old subjects to us all. Every one professes to have read TMnaque^ and therefore we may say even in a Church History something about it. It was an attempt to instil good principles of character, and of government, into the young prince, who should some day be king of France. And it was based entirely on the idea of duty. To Fenelon the sovereign was he on whom the whole burden of the state rested, not for his own
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
profit but for the good of his people, through whose greatness and happmess he could alone be great or happy. Responsibility was the great lesson wdiicli he taught, and it was that which, for all its pagan dress and all its outworn political philosophy, makes T^Umcupic a great Christian book. Its glory lies in the fact that it aroused the fury of Louis XIV. against its author. " The man who wrote such a book," he said, " must have a bad heart." It was a heart wdiich bled for the people whom the grand monarque trod under foot. Fenelon meant no satire, for he regarded the king as his benefactor and saw few of his faults. But the facts of Louis's life and Louis's government made men see in the book the sternest satire and the keenest judgment,
A later writing, left in manuscript and incomplete, but breathing a deep passion for justice and righteous- ness, shows still more completely what Fenelon felt about politics. To 1693 belongs that terrible "letter to the King," not published till after his death, which is so plain and impressive a commentary on the TeUmaque. Then came the great fall. The appoint- ment to the see of Cambrai in 1695 was
His
,. really a disgrace. Louis XIV. was anxious
disgrace. -^ ^
to get the brilliant saint out of the way; and Cambrai, with all its distinction, was exile. Cambrai, though it fell within territory recently acquired by the French Crown, w^as no part of ancient France, and ecclesiastically it looked rather towards the Empire. The whole was still a fief of the Empire, and half was actually under the rule of Spain. The archbishop was one of the princes of the Holy Eoman Empire, and none of those with whom his duties
BOSSUET. FENELON, AND THE QUIETISTS 53
associated him took the slightest interest in the ancient glories of the Galilean Church.
But for some time the meaning of the appointment was not apparent. Eenelon remained as tutor to the young princes ; but his fall was at hand. The Quietist controversy had drawn him into its meshes : Madame Guyon had, though only for a time, thrown over him her strange spiritual fascination ; the Maxims of the Saints was published, and Fenelon was banished to his diocese. From 1697 to 1699 the intrigues in France and in Eome were incessant ; it was
TT!
the great struggle of Bossuet and Fenelon; . „ and at last came the papal condemnation and the submission. Then for fourteen years Fenelon turned to rehabilitate his orthodoxy by ceaseless attacks on the Jansenists, and lived peacefully and with dignity as a great Prince-Bishop — much more of the bishop than the prince— and devoted in answer to every call of his spiritual office. A scholar, an artist, a man of affairs, a theologian, it is yet as a spiritual director that he has exercised the greatest influence on subsequent generations, for example, on Eousseau. It is interesting to discover the relation which his letters on the education of girls bear to the Emile. It is instructive to compare his political writ- ings with the two Essays and with the Contrat Social. It is a valuable study in theology to trace his opinions in their relation to mysticism, to Jansenism, and to Cartesian philosophy. But the spiritual letters ta men and to women, with their abounding sympathy and their tender charity, remain the purest expression of Fenelon at his best. Much has been said of his work as a director, and some criticisms are not unjust;
54
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
but the fascination of the spiritual letters still lingers, and it is, on the whole, a healthy fascination. " En- dowed with rare gifts of social tact, and grace, and sympathy," Fenelon's real vocation may well seem to us, as at one time it seemed to him, to have been that of a minister to the necessities of individual souls.
As a prelate he set an example to all the bishops of his age. His life was simple and devoted and energetic. He made it his aim to know his clergy and his people, and with more than six hundred parishes in his diocese this was no slight task. His epitaph in his cathedral church well describes him as a perpetual glory of the episcopate and an example to the flock of Christ. He died in 1715, and with him the great age of the French Church passed aw^ay.
A word, however, must be said of the other great
ecclesiastics of the age. Some were great scholars
and preachers, some devoted in the discharge of
„ , , their duties ; some like d'Harlai, arch- Bourdaloue.
bishop of Paris, brought shame by their
lives upon the religion they professed. But real in- fluence was exercised on many by the great and sincere preachers who made the French Church famous. Beside Bossuet and Fenelon may be placed Massillon and Bourdaloue. The latter was the great argumenta- tive teacher of his time, who denounced heresy, be it Quietism or Protestantism, with serried battalions of proofs and explanations. Mme. de Sevigne, when he was sent, after the dragonnades, to the south, said, " He is going to preach at Montpelier, where so many have been converted without knowing why ; but the father will explain it all and will make good Catholics of them." But he w^as a great moralist, a great teacher
BOSSUET, FENELON, AND THE QUIETISTS 55
of the heart no less than of the head. The weakness of his method lay in its artificiality. It had not the intense reality of Bossuet or the naturalness of Fenelon. The austerity of Bourdaloue is contrasted with the persuasiveness of Massillon. Bourdaloue was a Jesuit, Massillon an Oratorian. The latter was perhaps the most popular, as he was the last, of all the great preachers. But if he was persuasive, if the strength of his preaching lay in the force of its moral appeal, he was also terrifying. No preacher of the time dwelt more constantly on death and judgment; none denounced vice more unsparingly. And at the same time none struck more skilfully the notes which vibrated in the hearts of kino's. Artificial, no doubt, he was in style, and there were those who pro- fessed to find his life unworthy of his sermons. But during his own and many a succeeding generation there were thousands who were aroused by his proclamation of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. His fame belongs to the beginning of the eighteenth century, and, perhaps through some suspicion of Jansenism, he spent the last years of Louis XIV. 's life in comparative disgrace. The Eegent Orleans, whose profligacy horrified him, gave him the bishopric of Clermont, and he retired to Auvergne, preaching no more, but visiting and ministering with apostolic love and simplicity.
No doubt quiet work in country districts is remem- bered even less than the patient labour of theological scholars : what Massillon and Bossuet and Fenelon did as pastors of the flock finds little record in history. But still the space whicli they filled in the great world impresses the reader with the thought that the
56 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Churcli which was busied with fashionable society had taken too much of its tone ; and while the Court received no serious or permanent influence, the people were being alienated from their pastors.
The record is true and sad. Yet it is also true that the reign of Louis XIV. saw a great revival in the Revival of spiritual life of the French clergy. Early spiritual in the seventeenth century Vincent de Paul life- inaugurated parochial missions and founded
the Order of the Sisters of Charity: in Paris de Berulle founded the Oratory for the training of priests : " conferences " of the clergy were begun to encourage and systematise devotion and practical godli- ness : " retreats " for the clergy and laity of all classes were held in Paris and spread throughout the country : during the last twenty-five years of his life it is said that nearly twenty thousand persons attended the retreats of S. Vincent de Paul at S. Lazare. The revival of religion profoundly affected the lives of the French clergy. Seminaries were instituted in Paris and in the country. Olier founded the seminary of S. Sulpice, and, with Condren, superior of the Oratory, trained some of the noblest leaders of the Churcli in the
next generation. Among them was Pere P^^^ Eudes, the founder of the Congregation of
the Eudistes, and the forerunner of Mar- guerite-Marie, the originator of the cult of the Sacred Heart. He was par excellence a man of the age of Louis XI 11. and Eichelieu. When king and minister were gone he lived to realise to a large extent the ideas which the great cardinal had approved. A Norman, the brother of Charles d'Houay and of the historian Mczeray, he had all the vigour and solidity of
BOSSUET, FENELON, AND THE QUIETISTS 57
his race, and he threw himself with all his energy into the task of restoring reverence and devotion among his countrymen. His sermons show how great was the need — they speak of churches dirty, neglected and ruinous, of the altar-linen repulsive in its uncleanli- ness, of torn vestments and maimed rites, of the people ignorant and degraded. Even priests, it is said, were sometimes so ignorant as to give benediction with the words ''Ave Maria.'' And the scandals of royal patronage in the promotion of unworthy men made the difficulty of reform even greater. When Eichelieu became bishop of Lu9on no prelate had visited there for sixty years. It was the state of things that the Oratory under M. Olier set itself to cure by training worthy priests and bishops. Like Olier, Eudes was the pupil of Charles de Condren, and well did he repay his instructor. The great missions from 1642 to 1672 in Brittany, which made the whole land Catholic and pious, were due to his initiation, as was also the work of M. Olier in Auvergne. Pere Eudes was no less successful as a dogmatic and spiritual writer. He embodied his ideas and gave a focus to his work in the new Congregation which he separated from the Oratory and the seminary which he established at Caen, and whence there radiated work most wonderful and most thorough, which won for Pere Eudes the title of the Apostle of Normandy. But the work was not without its assailants, and among them many bishops even were opposed to the establishment of seminaries. Yet the system won its way by the obvious benefits which sprang from it. As a writer Pere Eudes was famous for his opposition to the Calvinist tendencies of Jansenism and to the extra-
58 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
vagant inferences of the Cartesian metaphysic. On the other hand, it was he who began the Cult of dangerous cult of the Sacred Heart of Heart Jesus and of the Heart of Mary. He "cele-
brated the first Mass of the Sacred Heart of Mary" in 1648, says his biographer, and, after authorisations from the bishop of Bayeux and the archbishop of Kouen, the Confraternity of the Heart of Jesus and His Mother was approved by Alex- ander VII. in 1666. The Congregation of Jesus and Mary which he founded has resisted persecution and spoliation, and still survives in exile from Brittany and Normandy, the land of its birth. The cult which he inaugurated has also survived, with results most unfortunate and unedifying, as we cannot doubt.
CHAPTER VI JANSENISM AND PORT ROYAL
THE revival of the religious life in France was far from being confined to the parochial clergy. Early in the seventeenth century the congrega- tions of the Benedictines were reorganised : i^^j-^i^g. a spirit of reform, spreading from the abbey of St. Vanne in Lorraine, aftected all France : the new "Congregation of S. Maur," which revived the strict rule of S. Benedict, secured the adhesion of a hundred and eighty houses, which were divided into six provinces, and ruled by a superior-general, two assistants and six visitors. At S. Germain des Pres, in Paris, a school of learning sprang up under dAchery and afterwards under Mabillon which rendered enormous services to literature and religion. But the revival of learning could not progress without a revival of controversy. Questions which went far back into Christian history and had received only partial illumination at the Reformation came again to the front.
The great controversy of the French Church in the seventeenth century arose from one who was not a
Frenchman at all. Jansen was bishop of _
^ Jansenius.
Ypres, in the Netherlands. He devoted a
great part of his life to the study of S. Augustine.
59
6o THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
He died in 1638, and two years later his AngusHnus was published. It discussed the teaching of S. Augus- tine, mainly in relation to the Christian doctrine of Grace. It was a learned, serious and still more pon- derous theological work. It was strange that it should have appealed — of course, very indirectly — to the semi-pagan class that had grown up in France since the Eeformation, w^hich, like Montaigne, mockingly turned away from the excesses of both the League and the Jesuits. This class in the next generation, instead of being semi-pagan, like Montaigne, became semi-Pro- testant or Jansenist. Philosophy as well as theology
attracted it in a new guise. Descartes died
in 1650, and if he had supplied the world with arguments for the existence of God, he had left the knowledge of Him and of religion to the province of faith. His influence was wide, and it was criticised in diverse fashion. The followers of Jansen consciously or unconsciously were set on bringing the influence of" philosophy to bear on practical religion.
The fame of Jansenism is chiefly attached to the memory of Port Eoyal, and the fame which w^ill ever
cling to the memory of Port Eoyal belongs Royal ^^ *^° episodes in its history, distinct and
separate, yet connected. The Cistercian nunnery which had been built by a Crusader in the valley of Port Eoyal was, in the seventeenth century, the scene of a remarkable change, from the luxury and even licence into which it had fallen, to the simplicity and purity of its original purpose, as the result of the energy, the self-sacrifice and the holiness of Mere Angelique. Mere Angelique was one of the daughters of Antoine Arnauld, wliom he, by liis influence with
JANSENISM AND PORT ROYAL 6i
the CTOvernnient, liad got made abbesses when they were respectively eight and nine. Yet it was not many years before Angelique herself, touched in heart, became the reformer of the house over which she was placed — a girl abbess of seventeen. It would be unnecessary to recount all the vicissitudes through which it passed or the details of the reformation which Mere Angelique produced in the neighbouring founda- tions— her work at Maubisson, or the foundation of the sister institution at Paris. The House
passed through many vicissitudes, and . ^^^,,. Vr> A 'T i- 1 ^v. -1 Angehque.
Mere Angelique reformed other neigh- bouring convents, and laid the foundation of another institution in Paris. While she stayed in Paris the deserted convent was occupied by that remarkable body of men to whom the literary glory of Port Koyal is due, and who, when the nuns returned, moved but a short distance off to the farm-houses and cottages of the valley. The connection between Port Eoyal and the Paris House was formed first by the kinship between Angelique and her nieces and her nephews who gathered round her in various capacities, and Du Verger, Abbe de S. Cyran, a man of strong intellect, and of childlike charm, who was admitted by Eichelieu to be the most learned man in Europe, and to whom is due the influence on both societies of the work of Jansen. To him submitted with implicit trust men of intellect so acute and powers so rare as Pascal, Le Maitre (who gave up the most brilliant legal reputation of any Frenchman of his day to devote himself to a quiet and ascetic contem- plation of futurity), de Saci, de Sericourt, Arnauld (the controversialist whose voluminous works it may now
62 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
be permitted to agree with Voltaire that nobody reads), the ecclesiastical liistorian de Tillemont, Nicole, and many more.
The first disturbance that broke the quiet of this monastic seclusion was caused by an attack, led by the Jesuits, on Arnauld's opinions on the doctrine of Divine Grace. To pass quickly over the events of this almost interminable contention— five propositions were extracted from the writino;s of Arnauld. These were condemned by Innocent X. Arnauld yielded. Condemna- ^^ ^^^^ then further declared that the pro- tion of positions were extracted from the Augus- Jansen. tinus of Jansen, who had been the friend of S. Cyran. This Arnauld denied, and, though Vol- taire persists that it is so, it is certain that it was not submitted to the simple test of fact — a point brilliantly handled by Pascal in the first of the famous Provincial Letters. A papal bull now ordered that the religious communities of France should subscribe their assent to the declaration that the propositions were those of Jansen. This was the work of Alex- ander VIL, who had been instrumental in procuring the previous decision from Innocent X., which he now declared definitely to condemn the Augustinus, It was determined that the Society at Port Eoyal, which still continued to protest against his high-handed treatment of truth, should be dissolved, and the order went forth from Mazarin that they should be cast out. But the dissolution was averted by two phenomena which in the present century affect us perhaps in- versely to their effects on Anne of Austria and her Court — a miracle by which Mademoiselle Perrier, one of the nuns and a niece of Pascal, recovered from a
JANSENISM AND PORT ROYAL 63
disease of the eyes, and the publication of the Provincial Letters which have immortalised her uncle. Port Eoyal was, however, saved only till the death of Mazarin. Louis XIY., when he assumed his authority, revived the persecution. All religious communities were required to sign a declaration that the five propositions in their heretical sense were to be found in the Augustinus — "nor was there any exception in favour of those who had never seen the book or of those who could not read Latin." The schools from which so many eminent men and women had learned virtue as well as knowledge were dispersed. Arnauld and the other recluses were banished from the valley, and the convent was threatened with suppres- sion as heretical. Mere Angelique, old, infirm, dying, went at once to the convent of Port Pioyal at Paris, to endeavour to avert the destruction, and addressed from her death- bed to Anne of Austria a touching letter of defence. But her efforts were unavailing, and the suppression of the convent would have followed the dispersion of its inmates had it not been for the intervention of the celebrated Duchesse de Longueville.
This remarkable woman, after a life full of brilliant success in politics and pleasure, had become a devout and earnest penitent; but her talents for -p^j^ooj. intrigue had not deserted her, and she now ary pad- employed them in the best cause to which fication, they were ever devoted. She procured from ^^^^' Clement IX. in 1668 the pacification which accepted as satisfactory a condemnation of the five propositions in general without the admission that they were taught by the Jansenists, Ten years of peace now ensued
64 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
for Port Eoyal ; De Tilleniont built a hermitage in the valley and Eacine gave up the stage, only writing Esther and Athalie. Many of the students who liad lived near the convent returned to the valley wdiere they had been educated.
Port Eoyal remained in peace until the end of the reign, when the Jesuit party, under the influence of Madame de Maintenon, became supreme at Court. This was the end of a series of disputes and con- fusions in which Cardinal de Noailles, archbishop of Paris, had taken away from all the Jesuits in France, except Le Tellier, the king's confessor, and one or two more, their licences to preach and hear confessions. The cardinal had declared in a letter to Madame de Maintenon that Le Tellier was quite unworthy of his trust, and perhaps it was as a diversion from the French quarrels that Le Tellier made such strenuous efforts to have the Jansenist con- troversy re-opened at Eome. One hundred and three propositions were sent, and one hundred and one were found to be heretical. The bull of Clement XL, " Unigenitus," September, 1713, was directed against a harmless book of Pere Quesnel, who was now the " director " of Port Eoyal. Assent to it was required The Bull from the nuns. They modified their agree- Unig-eni- ment by declaring that they were not to be tus, 1713. understood as derogating from the pacifica- tion of Clement IX. This sealed their fate. Their con- vent was dissolved with much cruelty. Jansenists of all classes were imprisoned, and the party, as such, ceased to exist. Still Cardinal de Noailles and seven bishops refused to accept the bull. Only by arbitrary proceedings — banishment and prison — was its accept-
JANSENISM AND PORT ROYAL 65
ance procured at the Sorboniie. It was registered l)y the Parlement, but with a reservation of the rights of the Crown and the privileges of the Gallican Church. Voltaire declares that Le Tellier even proposed that de Noailles should be deposed in a National Council. So for a time the Jansenist controversy was stilled, but the opinions of the Jansenists were largely diffused on the Continent. Jansenists were to be found in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and even in Vienna and Brussels ; and this, no doubt, contributed to their revival later. AVhen the Duke of Orleans became Eegent a temporary pacification was made and Noailles withdrew his appeal to Eome, and in 1720 recanted his opposition to the Papacy.
The attitude of the Jansenists, regarded historically, seems to be one of protest against the spirit of the age as it appeared in France in three forms — The absolutism, civil and religious, worldliness, Jansenist and the great system connected with both, position, the Company of the Jesuits. In the first place the Jansenist attitude was a practical protest against and resistance to the half-formulated dogma of Papal In- fallibility, through their assertion of the rights of General Councils, and with that against some at least of the doctrines of the medieval Church, and in the State to some extent against the policy of Eichelieu and Louis XIV. The party of the Jansenists was the party of the Old Catholics and the old nobility. But the reason of their great influence was, no doubt, their powerful protest against the frivolity and sensuality of the age. To this they owed the company, without rules except that of self-denial, which gathered round them at Port Pioyal and in Paris. Their opposition to
66 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
the Jesuits shows both these phases. They opposed their absolutism and what they believed to be their immorality. It is a remark of Ste.-Beuve that Pascal directed his Provincial Letters against political, not religious Jesuits, but it is a slightly superficial remark. Perhaps Voltaire is right in saying that the Jesuits in The "Pro- the Provincial Letters suffered from the vincial vices of the few. But there was a real
Letters.' danger in the Jesuit position, and the Jansenists took the best way to combat it. They became the best teachers of children in the world. Their educational books had a circulation over all Europe and an indirect influence in favour of free- dom long after they were suppressed. They won their monopoly from the Jesuits by producing works of permanent value. Even more striking was the in- fluence of their polemical position. Perhaps the effect of the Provincial Letters w^as not wholly good. Pascal made his adversaries appear not only silly, inconsistent, and ignorant, but mean and dishonest. Perhaps he furnished shafts to be used against the truth of that faith which was the anchor of his own soul. But for the time his success was complete. His object was to expose the subtleties of theologi- cal chicanery : it belonged, he said, quoting Ter- tullian, to Truth to laugh because Truth is assured of victory : there is a fundamental difference between laughing at religion and laughing at those who pro- fane it by their extravagances. Thus he overwhelmed the Jesuits by exposing to ridicule the weakness of their moral principles and the hollowness of their theo- logical arguments. The Provincial Letters, said Voltaire, contained more wit than all the comedies of Moliere.
JANSENISM AND PORT ROYAL 67
But after Pascal's death he was revealed in a new light by the publication, at first carefully edited by the Port Eoyalists, of his most intimate Pens^es. In these he shows himself deeply, ,, pgngees " tragically, in earnest, rebuking the scepti- cism of the age, recognising the difficulties of belief, but arguing from the weakness and imperfection of humanity, from doubt itself, to faith. The Pens4cs were nothing more than notes for a treatise on Chris- tian apologetics, but they show the methods by w^hich Pascal's own security had been attained. Descartes, whose philosophy was much studied at Port Eoyal, seemed to him strangely inadequate. Behind his onto- logical argument for the existence of God, he suspected a real scepticism and a practicable " deism " which withdrew God from His own Universe. He based his own argument rather on experience : the true proof of the existence of God is our experience of Him — " Jesus Christ felt in the heart." Critic though he was to the very depth of his soul, he could not deny what he liimself had felt: " C'est le coeur qui sent Dieu et non la raison," lie said, and yet he ranked the reason as high as did any of his opponents ; ^ but he passed from systems of thought to a system of life, a thing still higher because it took count of everything which belonged to the complex nature and the age- long history of humanity.
The work of Pascal is the great monument of the
^ Cf. Flint, Agnosticism, p. 114. "He rendered, by the way in which he applied . . . the psychological or experimental method, the method of spiritual verification, to the probation of the Christian faith, an inestimable service, one which fully justifies his being regarded as one of the most original and profound of Christian apologists."
68 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Jansenists. The wonderful clearness and power of his language and the bright transparency of his method make the discussion of questions, in themselves vague and almost incomprehensible, as easy as the style in which he treats them. The Provincial Letters are witty, learned, indignantly honest, deeply religious. Pascal founded apologetics, it has been said, upon the moral sense and the needs of man. Here his Pensks stands side by side with his Provincial Letters. The Pens4es is, in spite of many changes of thought, still a modern book : much of what he wrote was indeed suppressed at first by an age which could not understand it. While it is a very deep defence of the ultimate ground
of belief, as based upon personal experience General ^nd the necessities of the human soul, it of Pascal ^^^^ stood, in many respects, between the
Eomanism and Protestantism of the day in a way which perhaps only the present age can fully appreciate. His personal appeal was to the experience of the grace of Christ, felt in the heart, and yet never in conflict with reason, because truth in the last issue is something which appeals to the whole man. Pascal always fought for individual freedom, as he fought for individual experience. He remained a devout son of the Church, but he resisted the idea of an absolute supremacy of the pope, whether in doctrine or discipline. He tells how Athanasius was con- demned in Councils, with the assent of all the bishops and the pope. " Those who have both zeal and know- ledge are excommunicated by the Church and yet save the Church." When Eome has spoken, and men think of popes as condemning the truth which they have written and for which they have been unjustly
JANSENISM AND PORT ROYAL 69
censured, and the more violently speech is limited by the Church and the Society of Jesus — the two scourges of the truth — "the louder you must cry until there comes a pope who hears both sides and who consults antiquity so as to do justice." It was thought like this which both the French Monarchy and the Eoman Papacy were determined to resist. They dreaded the influence of freedom, w^iether it came from Protestant- ism or from a Catholicism which claimed within the Church's bounds to think for itself. Lecky truly says : —
"The destruction of the most solid, the most modest, the most virtuous, the most generally en- lightened element in the French nation prepared the way for the inevitable degradation of the national character, and the last bulwark was removed that might have broken the force of that torrent of scep- ticism and vice which a century later laid prostrate in merited ruin both the altar and the throne."
CHAPTER VII THE EASTERN CHURCH
WHILE the effects of the Reformation were being worked out in the West and the Church was learning, with many mistakes, to adapt herself to the different circumstances of the age, there stood apart from the general life of Europe the primitive and conservative Christianity of the East.
The Eastern Church in Europe during our period is divided, geographically rather than spiritually, into The two parts — that which still existed in the
Church in Turkish dominions and did its best to follow Turkey. ^|-^g direction of the Patriarch of Constanti- nople, and that which was separate from Constanti- nople geographically, being within the Russian Empire, but which still acknowledged the supremacy of the Patriarch. In Turkey the Church still enjoyed certain rights under the sultans, who preserved the Patri- archate in the Phanar at Constantinople, and them- selves claimed royal rights in nomination or sanction of the election of patriarch. In 1638 the famous Patriarch Cyril Lucar, who liad studied in England with the sympathy of Archbisliop Laud, and who had adopted in some respects Protestant opinions, was strangled on a political charge by the sultan's orders. Some of his successors suffered in the same way.
70
THE EASTERN CHURCH 71
Latin influence was spreading in the Eastern Church. The Church of Constantinople, after the murder of Cyril Lucar,^ condemned his Calvinistic doctrine, and a Synod at Jassy confirmed the condemnation among the Balkan provinces. But the Church was in the utmost disorder. Constantinople itself was little better than a shambles. The tragedies of the Seraglio succeeded each other with fearful rapidity ; between 1649 and 1656 six viziers were deposed or strangled; then a long military despotism, tempered by defeats, set in ; it ended in the Treaty of Carlowitz, 1699, by which Hungary and Transsilvania were abandoned by the Turks. The Church meanwhile led a disturbed life. AYithin fifteen years of the death of Cyril Lucar, fourteen patriarchs sat on his throne : the Latin party and the Calvinist party fought around their seats. Suleiman XL (1687-91) allowed some of the churches in Constantinople to be rebuilt. But the toleration was fitful at best.
Other churches of the East meanwhile took measures against the growth of heresy. Calvinism was con- demned at Nicosia by the Church of Cyprus rouncil of in 1668. In 1672 Dositheos, patriarch of Bethlehem Jerusalem, summoned a general council of or Jerusa- the churches of the East. A preliminary ^^"^ ^^^^2). letter reasserted the fundamental doctrines : the Seven Sacraments, the Eeal Presence in the Eucharist, the change (not transubstantiation) of the elements to be really and truly the Very Body of the Lord, and the offering of the Holy Sacrifice for all Christians, quick and dead; the necessity of infant baptism and of Episcopacy ; the invocation of saints and the venera-
^ See The Reformation, by J. P. Wliituey, p. 417.
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
tion of icons — the ancient teaching, in fact, of the Greek Church. When the Council met it repeated the assertion of the Church's doctrines and emphatically declared its belief in transubstantiation, and it asserted that the confession of Cyril Lucar did not truly state the doctrines of the Churcli. The Catholic Church of Alexandria joined with Constantinople and Jerusalem in this synod ; but it has never been taken as repre- senting the real judgment of the Eastern Church, which it contradicts in many points, and notably in regard to the doctrine of the Eucharist and of the state of the departed. Church life, however, had no free expression ; under the severe rule of the sultans, the Church in Turkey, Greece, and the Holy Land could do little more than exist.
In Eussia it was almost supreme. The Eussian Church had, as it has still, an immense power on the The national life. Just as in Byzantium, it
Church was the real ruler of men, and the pious in Russia. ^^^ docile Slavs regulated their lives in the minutest particulars by the orders of the Church, almost on monastic lines. " The day was divided according to the canonical hours," ^ and the strictest view of secular amusements was common. A Eussian chronicler says, "wlien dancing and the strife of fifes and fiddles begins, tlie good angels flee away, as bees before smoke."
This is the period of the great Patriarch Nikon
(1605-81), who became a monk in 1625
(i6oc;-8i) ^^^^ ^'^^^ adviser of the Tsar Alexis in
1646. In 1649 he became archbishop of
Novgorod, and patriarch of Moscow in 1652. He re-
^ Bain, Pupils of Peter the Great, p. 18.
THE EASTERN CHURCH 73
fused to be patriarch till the Tsar Alexis had promised to leave all the rule of the Church in his hands, for his heart was set on bringing the Church to purity of worship, orthodox conformity to the Greek Mother Church, and dignified ceremonial. His reforms were very similar to those of Archbishop Laud in England, and were, like his, mixed up with the predominant power of the state, and suffered in consequence. He was strongly anti-Roman, strongly national, and at the same time determined to confirm the unity of the great patriarchates of the East. He reformed the Liturgical Books in use in Russia after conference with the patriarch of Constantinople. Himself a political agent of the Crown, even more active than Laud in England, he aroused, like him, the jealousy of the great nobles. Like Laud, he insisted upon the decent conduct of public service and the order and cleanliness of churches, and he acted, whether as patriarch or as statesman, in a very high-handed manner, for example, when he deposed Paul, bishop of Kolomna, without a synodical trial. So far he was almost too closely in alliance with the State. He now became the leader of the Church against its claims. " The Tsar," he said, "has charge of the things of earth, but I have charge of the things of heaven." His aim was to protect the Church and restore its canonical rights as against the encroachments of the nobility. He has thus many points of contact with Becket and Laud in England, and, like them, he was definitely a Church reformer. His dealing with the text of the Liturgies, though with the support of a synod at Moscow, was the cause of a charge of introducing " new books," and turned aganist him the Tsar, the bishops, and the
74 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
ultra-conservative instincts of the Kiissian Church. He gave up his offices and afterwards, in 1666, he was formally deposed and degraded. But the e . • work of the Moscow synod was sanctioned.
A synod of patriarchs at Moscow, in 1668, confirmed it. But a large part of the people, with many priests, broke off from the Church, adhering to the old customs. The Raskolniks, as they were called, continue to this day, in spite of considerable legal restrictions, and some active persecution under Peter the Great and Nicolas I.
The work which Nikon designed lived after him. Three new metropolitanates were formed and several new^ bishoprics. During the reign of the Tsar Eeodor (1676-82) as many as fifty new sees were designed. The Monastery Court, to whose jurisdiction Nikon had objected, was abolished for the time, and the inde- pendence of the Church was formally recognised.
During this period Eussia was not isolated from the rest of the East. It was an important event in the history of the Church when, in 1667, the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch came to Moscow and took part in the great synod, to which came representatives from all Eussia and from the churches of the Balkan States. It was this synod which degraded Nikon from his office and allowed him to remain only a simple monk. Important changes in the organisation of the Church were made, new bishops and metropolitan sees being created ; and, says Mouravieff,^ " for the last time the Greek Church showed by the personal presence of her higliest dignitaries the kindly interest she took in the Eussian Church, which had originally
^ History of the Church of Kasda, Eng. trans., p. 234.
THE EASTERN CHURCH 75
derived from her blessing of spiiitual illumination." The Eastern patriarchs remained for several months in Eussia, but the connection thus formed was not strong or productive of result.
A new epoch dawned when Peter the Crreat (1672- 1725) came to the throne. A man of superhuman strength and unscrupulousness,he yet deeply Peter loved his country, and was truly the ha- the Great, ^?02/c/?/c-a (little father) of his people. A man 1672-1725. of unbridled passions, he yet had a keen sense of duty, and his cruel and licentious life was closed by an apparent repentance, with confession, reception of the sacraments, and the pathetic words, " I believe, and I hope." It was this man who determined to reform the Church.
The power of the Church in Eussia was very great. The Church property was enormous. The monasteries alone owned more than 900,000 serfs. The position convent of S. Sergius had a population of of the 92,000 souls and vast possessions. " Its Church archimandrites wore diamond buckles in *" ussia. their shoes." The Eussian priests were for the most part very ignorant, and though Nikon had taken great pains with the education of the clergy, there were only 150 pupils in the Moscow Theological School. The Church naturally was inert and blind to the awakening which was coming from the AVest. The monks had disproportionate power, and took no part in the moral teaching of the people. In 1589 the Eussian Church had given up its formal subjection to the patriarch at Constantinople. The patriarch of Moscow was the head of the autonomous Church in Eussia, but it was clear that so soon as there came a strong Tsar he
76 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
would be able to treat the Paissian Church as Henry VIIT. had treated the Church in England.
Peter the Great found the clergy hostile to his re- forms, and believed some of them to be implicated in plots against his life. In October, 1700, on the death of the patriarch, he appointed Stephen Yavorski, who had been trained abroad. In doing so he took away his rule over the monasteries and placed them under a layman. A census of all monks and nuns was at once taken, and the revenues of the monasteries were ordered to be paid direct to an official department, which was to allow the monasteries just what was sufficient for them and to give the rest to charity. The cause of the monks was taken up by the Easkolniks, the body which had separated from the Church as a protest against the reforms of Nikon. They were the extreme Conservatives of the Kussian Church, and set them- selves to thwart Peter's measures in every way. He ordered a census of them and doubled their taxes. Then even the new patriarch turned against Peter, and the Tsar was obliged to submit for the time. He took measures very quickly to establish his authority over the Church.
He was confronted by opposition from a Church which seemed almost in danger from disruption. He looked, as in his political reforms, for counsel from the West, but in both he used Eussian agents. Stephen Yavorski, who was to be the first Procurator of his new Synod, wrote a book called The Rock of Faith to establish the Church against Lutheran and Calvinist influences, and Theophanes, archbishop of Pskof (who was far from orthodox), wrote a catecliism which was sanctioned by the Synod in 1721.
THE EASTERN CHURCH 77
While the schism of the Easkohiiks grew to laro-e proportions in many parts of Eussia, in the forests of Nijgorod and on the frontiers of Poland, the visit of the Tsar Peter to Paris led to an attempt Attempts at on the part of the College of the Sorbonne reunion (i) , to bring about a union between the Kussian ^" France, and the Gallican Churches. The document drawn up by the Parisian doctors and laid before the Kussian bishops showed that in the Eastern churches recently united to Rome the Eastern form of the Creed was allowed to be recited. It explicitly denied the in- fallibility of the pope, and allowed him only a primacy of honour such as was admitted by the ancient fathers. The reply of the Russian bishops was that approaches towards union could only be made between the whole of the West and the whole of the East, and that they could not by entering into premature negotiation imperil their union with the four CEcumenical thrones which remained apart from the Roman communion.
In Poland religious disunion was at its height, and presented an obvious illustration of the soundness of the Russian bishops' position. There Romanists, Easterns, from 1595, in communion with Rome, Orthodox and Lutherans, continued to strive with every degree of violence, and Peter the Great's endeavours to procure universal toleration were a failure. Attempts towards union with the Non- jurors and with the English Church were /2)in broached. When he was in London Peter England had long talks with Bishop Burnet, who ^"^ found him well instructed in theology, and he attended the celebration of the Eucharist in an English church. The Synod in 1723, by the wish of
7S THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
the Tsar Peter, requested the English Xonjiiring bishops to send two representatives to Eussia for friendly conference, but the Eussian emissary was delayed, and though polite messages were exchanged after Peter's death, under Catherine I. nothing was actually done.
At the conclusion of his travels, and when he had established himself securely on his throne by the ex- tinction of the great military force of the Streltsi, Pet€r turned to make himself supreme also in the Church.
He limited the powers of the patriarch by the establishment of an Episcopal Council, and when the Reforms Senate was created in 1719, he placed of Peter Church affairs under its jurisdiction. Step the Great, ^^y g^^p ^j^g jg^j. assumed supreme authority over the clergy. In 1719 he drew up, with the assist- ance of the bishops, a code of regulations for the government of the Church, suppressing the patriarch- ate and placing at the head of the Church the Holy Synod, which sat under the emperor's own president- ship, if he were present, or, in his absence, under that of one of the metropolitans, but the proceedings were practically controlled, and the results reported to the The Holy Tsar, by the chief procurator, a layman. Synod, This body was formally established on
1721. January 25th, 1721. The whole of the
civil and religious, legislative, judicial and adminis- trative powers of the Church were placed in its hands. It was a body in which priests as well as bishops might sit, and its organisation is both an extreme assertion of the Byzantine opposition to the despotism of a Papacy and an example of the force
THE EASTERN CHURCH 79
of the aristocratic i'lea, which all over Europe, notably in France and in Eome itself, was endeavouring to sub- stitute Committees for a single rule. The Tsar sought the sanction of the patriarch of Constantinople to this new creation, and also that of the other patriarchs of the East. It was given after a decent interval for consideration; and Eussia remained in communion with the whole orthodox Church.
Peter's recjulations of 1719 entered into everv side of the Church's life. They reformed the episcopal schools, insisted upon the learning and Reform in morals of those to be ordained, regulated the monas- oratories and places of pilgrimage, and 'enes. utterly forbade special payment for the prayers for the dead. Xew and strict rules were passed for the monasteries. No one was to be admitted a nun before thirty, or a monk before fifty. Manual work was made a necessity for religious houses, and strict rules were passed for the religious life of the monas- teries.
Eegulations such as these show that Peter had a serious aim of impro^-ing the whole tone of his people, but still more was he influenced by Nature of the determination to exert the absolute Peter's power of the Tsar, for the Holy Synod reforms, was really his creature and under his control. But it is to be observed that he never attempted in the slightest degree to interfere with doctrine, or the purely religious work of the Church. The period of religious excitement which his measures caused was followed by a reaction and a time of religious indiflerence, as over the rest of Europe. The Rus- sian Church under tiie power of the Crown sufl'ered
8o THE AGE OF REV^OLUTION
like the English Church, tliough it still continued
to represent the feelings of the people, and to enter
more closely than perhaps the Church m any other
part of Europe, in any other part of Christendom, into
the life of the peasants.
And the influence was not confined to Europe. The
mission of the Eussian Church spread widely during
the reign of Peter the Great. Southwards
ussian ^^^ Siberia and towards the distant Irkutsk missions.
the missionaries went and achieved striking
success. In China, a settlement of Cossacks, conquered by the Chinese in 1684 was allowed to have its own church, and a mission at Peking was founded early in the eighteenth century which had a great success.^ Missions throughout the centuries that followed be- came the glory of the Eussian Church.
From Eussia we may return to the Mother Church of the East. The position of the Christians in the heart of the Mohammedan Empire was at once a -pj^g danger to that power and to themselves.
Church in In spite of the tribute of Christian children Constanti- barbarously exacted, the Christian popula- nople. |.-Qj^ ^^^ ^^^ diminish and the Christians
were devoted in their attachment to their faith. Pro- jects were actually entertained of exterminating all the Christians. In 1646 the Sultan proposed it, but the Sheik-ul-Islam refused his consent, for the Koran for- bade the forced conversion of Christians or Jews ; but so late as 1722 it was declared that if their lives were spared they ought at least to be kept in slavery. Yet still the Church survived, and it preserved the nation- ality of the Greeks. It preserved also the orthodoxy of
^ G. M. Parker, China, p. 93.
THE EASTERN CHURCH 8i
the people, beset on every side by infidels and heretics : a hostile witness has declared that "the Church of Con- stantinople was always more orthodox than it was Greek." i
But at the same time the Church did not escape corruption. High offices, including the patriarchate of Constantinople, were bought and sold, and a heavy tribute was paid by the Church to the Muslim State. The monasteries were still rich, and preserved many refugees of the Greek nobility. But the monks were often idle and intriguing. The parochial clergy, on tiie other hand, were poor and ignorant, but by their simple lives and the intluence of their households (for they were all married men) did much to confirm the poor in their attachment to the faith.
AVliile this was the condition of the Greeks under Turkish sway, tlie recognition of the Venetian rule in the Morea in 1699 was followed by an The attempt to establish a clergy in obedience Church to the pope. Four bishoprics were set up, ^" Greece. under an archbishop of Corinth, and Italian priests and monks hastened to settle in the land. But the Greek Church still endured, and its bishops were nominated by the patriarch of Constantinople ; and the educa- tional system of the Orthodox Church was developed, through rivalry to the Eomans. The disputes were repeated throughout the Greek islands, where also the national Church found itself opposed by Eoman missionaries. France came forward as the defender of the Komanists and endeavoured to secure for them special concessions throughout the Turkish Empire and notably in the Holy Land, while Eussia during the
^ Finlay, History of Greece, vol. v. p. 135. Q
82 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
eighteenth century gradually stepped into the posi- tion of champion of the Orthodox. In 1800 all the Venetian possessions were ceded to the Porte, pro- vision being made for the safety of the Orthodox popu- lation. But how was this to be enforced? Before long Greece was to be freed by a revolution.
The Eastern Churches at the close of the eighteenth century paid great attention to learning. Eugenios Bulgares of Corfu, who eventually became bishop of Slavonia and Khenon (1775), was a great teacher in the monasteries and at Constantinople ; and Anthimus, patriarch of Jerusalem (1798), endeavoured to direct the tendencies of the time in favour of the Orthodox, under Turkish protection, against the Church of Eome. The end of the century, and the beginning of the reign of Mahmud IL, the "Eeformer" (1808), found the Chris- tian peoples still under Turkish rule, eager to be free, and preserving their nationality and their faith with indomitable tenacity.
The successors of Peter the Great paid more atten- tion to politics than to religion, as, indeed, was natural Later his- ^° their characters. But they retained the tory of the hold which he had acquired over the Church Russian in its material aspect, and were sometimes
" near interference with its purely spiritual
powers. Yet the Church was still a great, if not the greatest, power in Eussia. Catherine II., abandoned in morals and infected with the scepticism of the French philosophes, with whom she delighted to correspond, was yet outwardly subservient to the Church. The most important ecclesiastical interest of her reign was concerned with her relations with the Papacy and with Poland. There, under the Saxon kings, Eomanism had
THE EASTERN CHURCH 83
been triumphant, but as soon as the first partition, 1772, gave a part of the land to Kussia, the people returned to the Orthodox Church. In that country many of the Jesuits, expelled from Catholic xhe lands, had taken refuge, as also in Silesia, Jesuits in Polish Eussia and White Eussia. The bishop Poland. of Mallo in jxirtihus, residing as apostolic vicar at Mohilow, formally permitted them in White Eussia, in agreement, he said, " with the intentions of Clement XIV. and Pius VI." Catherine II. supported him, and the pope was placed in the greatest embarrass- ment. Stanislaus Poniatowski, king of Poland, inter- vened ; but the empress replied that she would protect the bishop of Mohilow (as he now called himself) against the pope, and would allow no change in the establishment of the Jesuits in White Eussia.
Pius VI. entered into a polite correspondence with the empress and requested that the vacant arch- bishopric of Poloczko should be given to a Uniat. He dreaded a refusal which would lose to the Holy See some five hundred thousand Uniats. Catherine required in return the definite establishment of an archbishopric at Mohilow and the appointment of the bishop of Mallo. When Pius delayed she threatened to expel all Eoman Catholics from her dominions. The pope dreaded to ofTend the Catholic powers who had secured the suppression of the Jesuits : he declared that everything done in White Eussia or elsewhere against the will of Clement XIV. was illegal and null. Catherine, on the other hand, assisted in the choice of Benilawski, an ex- Jesuit, as coadjutor to the archbishop whom she had created. She seemed to delight in making mis-
84 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
chief, while in the background no doubt she desired that the Orthodox Church should profit by the con- fusion ; but she went so far in conciliation as to assure the pope that she constantly prayed for reunion between the Eastern and Western Churches. The negotiation dragged. A nuncio w^as sent to S. Peters- burg, and he confirmed the bishops whom Catherine had nominated. In 1785 the Jesuits announced pub- licly that their society continued within the Tsarina's dominions, and that the bull of suppression had no effect where it had not been published ; they eulogised the empress as if she had been a model of virtue ; and they were allowed by her to elect a general, and thus formally to declare that their society still existed. The pope was powerless. The addition of these dis- tractions to the already confused condition of Poland no doubt helped the religious disunion which pre- vented all chance of resisting the final partitions. Poland, torn by different " confessions " as well as by political anarchy, fell an easy prey to the neighbour- ing powers.
At the end of the age with which we are dealing an interesting illustration of the importance of the Church yi^g in the history of the period which suc-
Russian ceeded the Eevolution is afforded by the Church history of Eussia. " More than two- thirds in 1815. ^£ ^i^g population of Eussia at this period," says Professor Askenazy, "belonged to the Orthodox confession." 1 The secular clergy were 110,000, the monks some 5,700, the nuns 5,300, in 377 monasteries. In the vast territory of the Tsar were 27,000 churches, of which 450 were of cathedral rank (sohors). In the
^ Cambridge Modem History, vol. x. (•'The Restoration"), p. 422.
THE EASTERN CHURCH 85
missions of the Orthodox at Peking, among the Siberians, in the Caucasus and in the province of Archangel, lay the glory of the Church. At home the secular clergy were not able to maintain a high stan- dard. Drunkenness is said to have been common, and the corporal punishment of priests was only abolished in 1801, and of their wives in 1808. The strength of the Church lay in the " black " (monastic) clergy, from whom the bishops were almost always chosen. The Holy Synod, to all appearance the creature of the Government, retained some real freedom, and under the Patriarch Seraphim (who from 1814 to 1819 was Archbishop of Tver) it made considerable assertions of independence. Alexander I. (1801-25) was earnest in his endeavours to advance the cause of religion through- out his dominions. He gave salaries to the parish clergy according to their intellectual status. He founded a Bible society (on the model of the British and Foreign one). He settled the difficulties between the Eoman- ists and the Orthodox in Poland by a concordat with Pius VII. He seemed to be able to combine his religion with his Liberalism in a remarkable way ; but a reaction followed. The Church in Eussia was not permanently affected by the storm which had swept over the rest of Europe.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN TRANSSILVANIA AND THE BALKANS
THE course of European religion is important not only in the great States ; we shall judge more truly of its influence in ages such as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries if we look also into less known lands. There is much that is of very great interest, during the eighteenth century, in the ecclesiastical history of the outlying States, of those that do not enter into Central European politics, or which lie on the borders of two great re- ligious confessions. Ireland is one of these lands, Hungary with the adjacent principalities is another.
In Hungary the Church was very powerful. In- cluding Croatia and Transsilvania, it contained seven- -p, teen bishoprics, of which three were
Church created in 1777, whose income was about in £90,000 a year. The monasteries were very
Hungary, numerous. The clergy were very powerful in the Diet. Joseph the Second (1765-90), the great reforming emperor, acted from principle, not as an opportunist. He knew that the claims of the Roman See were excessive : he determined to secure national freedom within the Catholic Cliurch : he wished to set an example of the Catholic virtues of self-sacrifice
86
TRANSSILVAiSriA AND THE BALKANS 87
and toleration. In 1780 Joseph became sole ruler of Hungary. He at once gave toleration to Protestants, he took away some of the churches from the clergy and applied them to secular uses, he remodelled semi- naries, he suppressed over a hundred monasteries. But he was not able to go so far in Hungary as in Austria. Hungarian conservatism, no less than Hungarian political loyalty, triumphed in the end.
But there was in Hungary a special difficulty. It was the presence of a Eoumanian Church, in communion, since the eleventh century, not with Kome but with Constantinople. Political troubles swept over this ancient body : it had continual difficulties between Unitarianism (which became strong, after the Eeform- ation, in Hungary) and Eoman Catholicism. An important development dates from the middle of the seventeenth century.
George Ptakoczy I., of Transsilvania, was strongly inclined towards Protestantism : in 1643 he caused the deposition of the Archbishop Elias of Weis- senburg (Karlsburg), who had done his best orthodox to combat the growth of Calvinism in the Church in Church. The Synod elected in his stead Trans- Stephen Simonowicz, who in 1643 put forth s^^^^^^- an " instruction " by order of the sovereign, which en- forced the use of the Reformed Catechism, condemned the veneration of icons, and submitted many questions to the decision of the general Superintendent of the Protestant Church. A Synod of Roumanian bishops re- pudiated the act with indignation : the metropolitan of Moldavia issued a letter refuting the Catechism. But the weak Stephen yielded in yet another direction, by consecrating as bishop of Mimkacs a notorious
88 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
" Eomaniser." The attempt of the Transsilvanian dukes to separate the Koumanian Church from Con- stantinople seemed destmed to success.
But then there arose a great archbishop of Weissen- burg, Sabbas Brankorich (1656-80), who made a
vicrorous and determined struggle for the Its trou- ®
bles during privileges and independence of his Church.
the seven- Turkish invaders overran his diocese and teenth burnt his cathedral church : he suffered
cen ury. shameful persecution at the instigation of the dukes ; but he preserved the spirit and the ortho- doxy of his people until he died, within a few years of the union (1686) of Transsilvania with Austria.
Eoman Catholicism was now the ruling religion in Hungary, and the Eoumanian Church, isolated in Transsilvania, was sorely tempted to accept its claims; while on the other hand Protestant bodies had a secured position in the country to which the law did not admit the Orthodox Church. There was therefore great reason to suppose that when Cardinal Kollonicz, archbishop of the metropolitan see of Gran, offered terms to the Roumanians, by which their special cus- toms should be retained, the marriage of clergy allowed, and the vernacular liturgy continued, they would accept the Papal supremacy, the Double Procession, the lawfulness of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and the Roman doctrine of Purgatory. Theophilus, the Roumanian metropolitan, in 1697 induced a Synod at Karlsburg to accept the Roman claims. But the mass of the clergy and people refused to yield. Every possible pressure and bribe were employed, the efforts of the Hungarian primate being warmly seconded by the Emperor- King Leopold I. The year 1698 was a
TRANSSILVANIA AND THE BALKANS 89
critical one. A new archbishop, Athanasius, was con- secrated by the metropolitan of Wallachia at Bucha- rest, to the See of Weissenburg (Karlsburg). The patriarch of Jerusalem, who was present, warned him of the solemn obligation he incurred, of maintaining the Orthodox Faith and adhering to the Seven (Ecumenical Councils and the rules of the Fathers. The document of instruction issued by this prelate is of the greatest interest, as showing the Orthodox doctrine of that date. It allows the Liturgy to be said only in Greek or Slavonic, not in Pioumanian (pro- bably because tliere was then no authorised translation of it, though there was of the New Testament). It refers all difficult questions, through the Wallachian metro- politan, to the patriarch of Constantinople.
But the new prelate Athanasius paid no heed to it, and set himself seriously to procure a union with the Eoman Catholic Church with privileges for the Koumanian Cliurch as a Uniat body. ^P!°" At last a great synod met at Karlsburg, at ^^^^ '
which a formal Act of Union was signed, September 5th, 1700; by which the "bishop, arch- priests and clergy of the Eoumanian Church in Trans- silvania " entered into union with the Eoman Catholic Church.
The Union was extremely unpopular among the laity, and many of the clergy also stood aloof, and remained, as they still do, loyal to the faith and the obedience of Constantinople, qugnces Though Athanasius was consecrated anew according to the Eoman ritual, and received striking marks of imperial and papal favour, he found himself subordinated to the primate of Hungary, and his
90 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
clergy and people suffered from a refusal of the equal rights which had been promised them.
The subsequent history of the Orthodox Eoumanian Church is full of interest. Its members found them- selves liable to persecution as schismatics, and were forbidden to send their children to Orthodox schools ; and many of its churches were given to the Uniats. But still its members held on : the monasteries gener- ally retained the Orthodox faith, and it received sup- port from the Serbian clergy who came to serve in the re-established Metropolitan See of Karlsburg. In the middle of the eighteenth century political animosity was directed against the monasteries, which were regarded as fostering a national spirit hostile to the Austrian rule, and many of them were destroyed. At last Maria Teresa forbade the persecution, and allowed (1761) the Serbian bishop of Ofen to have oversight of Later his- ^^® large Orthodox congregations. It was tory of the not till 1783 that Joseph II., wise and Orthodox tolerant as he generally was, allowed the
"^^ * consecration of an Orthodox bishop of Her- mannstadt, to have control of the non-Uniat Church of Transsilvania. The bishop, Gideon Nillitics, set to work to educate his people, to refound schools, build churches, and reorganise religious communities. He died in 1788, but was succeeded by a bishop as ener- getic, Gerasius Hamowicz, who lived till 1796. Then the see was vacant for fourteen years. Since its foundation its work had been accomplished by Serbs, who had political freedom since 1691, which was denied to the Eoumanians. But education had now done its work, and the next bishop, who was however not con- secrated till 1811, was a Eoumanian, Basilius Moga.
TRANSSILVANIA AND THE BALKANS 91
He lived till 1845 and restored the Orthodox Eou- manian Church to a position at least of independence and of growing strength. An " instruction " in 1816 secured the privileges which had so long been fought for, and the Orthodox Church, after centuries of struggle, secured its position in the heart of a Eoman Catholic State. It may be that, like the Balkan Churches, there will be found in it special opportuni- ties of work for the reunion of the Universal Church. For the border lands of the Balkans as they were freed from Turkey re-established the Church. Piussia aided in the work. By the Treaty of Kianardji, 1774, Paissia was allowed to build a church for her subjects in Con- stantinople, and the Sultan promised toleration and defence to the Christians of the Orthodox Church. The security for the maintenance of Eastern Christians in tlie provinces won from the Turk, and for its sur- vival also within the Mussulman territories, came to be in the power of Eussia. This was to lead later to political struggles which have altered the face of South- Eastern Europe.
Throughout their history the Balkan lands have been loyal to the Eastern Church, from which they obtained their conversion in the dim past and to which they were linked by ties of common persecutions at the hands of the Mohammedan conqueror. To Serbia the patriarch of Constantinople had granted the privi- lege, jealously guarded, of selecting its own -pj^g metropolitan from the ranks of its own Church priesthood. In the fifteenth century the i" Serbia. Serbians and the Bosnians accepted Turkish rule rather than submit to the Eoman Church. Up till the seventeenth century the position of the Serbian
t)2 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
patriarchate and that of the bishops were respected by the Turks; but in 1689 Arseni Czernovich, the patri- arch, during the great Turkish war, threw himself on the side of the Emperor Leopold L, and joined the Austrian forces with several thousand men. It was the signal for a new attitude towards the Church. The Turks appointed a new patriarch in his place; they took captive the metropolitan of Montenegro and only released him on the payment of a large ransom. This was followed by the massacre of many Muslims in Montenegro and by the decisive supremacy of the national Church. But Serbia suffered. The Sultan deposed the hierarchy, placed the country under the patriarchate of Constantinople, and caused the Church to be ruled henceforth by Greek bishops.
The Greek bishops — creatures often, or generally, of the Turkish government — were not in close touch with their clergy or people. Their pecuniary obliga- tions, to the patriarch at Constantinople and to the Turks, involved them in great difficulties. They Rival in- exacted sums, by way of a sort of Peter's fluences Pence, from each household, to pay their in Serbia, expenses, and they even required pay- ment for ordination to the priesthood. But in spite of troubles such as these, the Christians held to- gether : they were always oppressed, often perse- cuted : they were not allowed to bear arms or ride horses, and their churches were not allowed to have bells. But the people, dwelling in villages, were able to retain their ancient reliojious customs, which were entwined with every action of their lives. Above all, the large number of monasteries which the Serbian kings had founded preserved both their nationality and
TRANSSILVANIA AND THE BALKANS 93
their religion : there some learning was still preserved and fostered; and when the kingdom was subjugated and the people was persecuted, and the parish priests were scattered, still, through the influence of the monks, the Christianity of the nation was passionately maintained. During the eighteenth century Austrian influence found entrance into Serbia. Austria had often helped Serbian insurrections, and many Serbians had served in the armies of Joseph II. But the tie of common orthodoxy was stronger with Eussia, and as the Tsar during the fifteenth century, in every successful struggle, stipulated for freedom of religion for the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, it was natural that in their great war of Liberation, 1806-10, they should rely upon Kussian support. Kara George, their great leader, won freedom for the religion of his people. But the Turks were able to take advantage of liussia's danger from Napoleon and to re-establish their rule in Serbia, and it was not till more than a decade after the war of 1812 that religious liberty was fully secured.
While other and more southern provinces of Turkey in Europe were less faithful to their creed or were more steadily depriv^ed of their Christian The population, Bosnia retained both Orthodox Church and Eomanist bishops and people. When ^" Bosnia. Marino Bizzi, Eoman archbishop of Antivari, travelled in Albania and Serbia in 1610, he declared that if Christianity did not receive help it would be extinct in ten years ; yet ten years later there were still a hundred Christians there to one Turk. But within forty years the number had enormously decreased, and by 1704 niost grievous losses were
94
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
reported. Two points, however, must be remembered : that these losses were much more among the Eoman- ists than among the Orthodox, and that tliey were due to the continuous pressure of political tyranny.
The history of Montenegro is more glorious if more mythical. But even there, sometimes there occurred And in apostasy to Islam. The alliance of one of
Monte- the princes with Venice introduced a negro. Eoman influence, but it was never strong.
Peter the Great endeavoured to win the friendship of the Montenegrins. Then they long sheltered a pre- tender to the name of Peter III. ; but at length when one of their political leaders was consecrated as metropolitan and admitted to the Holy Synod in Eussia, Montenegro became firmly associated with the Orthodox Church.
Peter the vladika and archbishop, who first prac- tically exemplified this union, died after a chequered career in 1830 at the age of eighty.
CHAPTER IX THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND
THE causes which had divided the Church in Eng- land from the rest of Christendom have been told in an earlier volume.^ When the period with which we are now dealing opens she had sunk to the depth of ill-fortune. Her bishops were deprived, -,, ^ , her clergy in many cases extruded from of the their livings, her public services suppressed. Great In her stead Presbyterianism, on the model Rebellion, of that which was established in Switzerland and in Scotland, was set up by law ; but in fact it had not taken root among the people, who were opposed to its system of Church government, and the leaders of Parliament were for the most part Independents (who gave a separate existence and power to each congrega- tion) or Erastian (and therefore desired to place all religious observance under the absolute control of the State). To the religious changes, and above all to the practical disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England, the king had never consented. Shifty and inconsistent, in spite of much personal charm and goodness, though he was, in one matter Charles I. had stood firm ; and his firmness showed exactly what English churchmen regarded as the
^ TIlc Reformation, by J. P. ^^'llituey. 95
96 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
essentials of the Cliurcli. He would consent to the restriction of the powers of the bishops, even to a temporary establishment of Presbyterian forms ; but he would not consent to the abolition of episcopacy, which was the historic link which bound England, in spite of her reformation, to the Church in East and West, and to the past of the Undivided Body of Christ. On January 30th, 1649, Charles was executed by the order of a court set up by the remains of Parliament, but really through the decision of the army which had conquered him. His death was believed to be to a large extent due to his adherence to the English Church as reformed under Elizabeth. On the scaffold he asserted his unalterable devotion to the Church, and his unalterable Protestantism. So, four years before, had asserted Archbishop Laud, when he met the hke fate. A medal struck not lon^ after the kind's death linked them together by bearing the motto, round the por- trait of the archbishop, " Sancti Caroli praecursor." They both were believed to have died for the Church, and Charles was regarded as a martyr. Nothing did more than this belief to restore, a decade later, both Church and king.
The period of suppression of the Church's worship lasted till 1659, and many clergy suffered great hard- Period of sliips during those years. But the bishops Suppres- continued in secret to replenish the ministry, sion. and at the darkest hour, English churchmen,
and churchmen in Scotland who obeyed the bishops set up again in 1610, still continued to pray and to communicate as their fathers had done before them. Many clergy, though they were not allow^ed to read the Prayer Book in church, recited its offices from
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 97
memory : notable among them in Scotland was Gilbert Burnet, minister of Saltoim, who was to live to exercise great influence on the restored Church of England.
In 1660 religious as well as political causes brought the " Interregnum " to an end. Charles II. was brought back and crowned in Westminster Abbey xhe Re- w^ith the acclamations of England. The storation Church at once had her own again. All °^ ^^^°- the bishops w^ho were still alive returned to their sees, and the archbishopric of Canterbury was filled by Juxon, Laud's closest friend and disciple, the bishop who had ministered to Charles I. in his last hours. The bishops of the Restoration were men thoroughly imbued with the historic claims of the English Church. They were quite clear about the obligation of episcopacy and sacraments, and at the same time they were strongly opposed to Rome. Both these positions were soon seen. A conference held at the Savoy, in London, showed that the Presby- terian demands could not be met without surrendering the principles of the Church,, for they desired the withdrawal from the Prayer Book of many statements of historic teaching (such as the regeneration of bap- tised infants, forms of confirmation, ordination, and the like), and of ceremonies (such as kneeling at the Holy Communion, and the sign of the cross) connected with that teaching, and of the vestments ordered by the " Ornaments rubric " since the time of Queen Elizabeth. The Prayer Book, as revised, adhered to the old rules, and Parliament passed an Act of Uniformity, making it binding on the people. The immediate result was the separation from the Church
98 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
of all those who could not loyally use the Prayer Book. The insistence on its rules, and on ordina- tion to the ministry by bishops, caused the definite recognition of what had long been actually in existence, namely, various bodies of organised dissent from the national Church.
The system established at the Eestoration has re- mained ever since. The Church has still the same
position and the same formularies, and
Church ^^®^ adherence to her historic position and
System claims is unaltered. This needs to be em-
of the phasised, in order to understand the atti-
es ora- |.^^|g ^£ ^^^q Church, consistently maintained
from that day. During the reigns of the earlier Stewarts there had been many endeavours to arrive at agreement with foreign Protestantism or reunion with Eome. Eoman ecclesiastics had joined the English Church, foreign states and sovereigns had endeavoured to negotiate with kings and primates. But gradually it was seen that the nature of Protestantism abroad made union impossible, for the Protestants, whether Lutheran or Calvinist, had entirely abandoned the ancient ministry which the English Church regarded as essential. The principle due to the Eeformation, which allowed each State to dictate the religion of its subjects, whether or not it admitted exceptions to it, was in possession of the field. On the other hand. Attempts both under James I. and Charles I. earnest at efforts had been made from Eome to
reunion. negotiate a reunion, but Archbishop Laud had declared this impossible till " Eome were other than she is." These efforts w^ere renewed under Charles IL, and the king was strongly sympathetic
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 99
towards Eome, and eventually died a declared Eoman- ist. The Papacy was willing to agree to the com- munion in both kinds, the marriage of the clergy, and (apparently) the recognition of English orders as valid; but the claim of papal supremacy was not abandoned. The negotiations, whicli were secret and probably never reached the responsible heads of the English Church, were futile from the first. How futile was shown by the passion which spread over the whole nation at a popish plot that was believed to have been discovered in 1678.
The reign of Charles 11. (1660-85) was marked then by many definite characteristics. It shut off the Church of Eno;land by natural distinction of belief
/"*!-. 1 T T
followed by severe and even persecuting Y ^ ^^ . ' legislation which the Parliament, strongly averse to religious independence or political disunion, insisted on, in spite of the king. It was the age of security for the Church, based not only on her political position and her immense popularity, but on the theo- logical eminence of her chief divines. George Bull (1634-1710), who wrote a defence of the Nicene Creed, was publicly thanked by Bossuet on behalf of the French bishops. There were indeed many signs that the French Church was not widely divided from tlie English. Jeremy Taylor and John Pearson were also great writers and bishops, whose fame extended beyond their own land. The Scots Church, re-established in power but ill- served by the persecuting ardour of the king's ministers, was in cordial union with the English. It is noteworthy that English and Scots clergy alike- Sheldon and Burnet, for example — reproved the king for his evil life, and the former appears to have
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excommunicated him. It was impossible to regard the English Church as the creation of the State or the slave of the monarch}^
This was even more plainly evident under James II. (1685-8), who endeavoured to restore Koman Catholi- The cism. He illegally placed Eomanists in
failure of offices which belonged to the Church, and James II. j-^g surrounded himself by ministers pledged to grant the Roman claims. The English clergy resisted him to a man, and seven bishops went to prison rather than obey his orders contrary to law. When charged with the offence they were triumphantly acquitted.
James's endeavour to restore Romanism lost him his crown. In the Revolution which displaced him, -,, Mary, his daughter, and William of Orange,
Revolu- her husband, were placed on the throne, tion Settle- Scotland won the disestablishment of ment, 1689. episcopacy and the legal settlement of Presbyterian government. Proscribed and persecuted, the Episcopalians, strong in many parts of Scotland, gradually sank to be " the shadow^ of a shade." Bril- liant Scots began to take refuge and seek preferment in England. Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), who had been chaplain to the new queen, w^as the first of a long line of distinguished men wdio found bishoprics not in the Church of their own country, but in Southern Britain. The Revolution settlement placed the Church in England under the control of the Crown, for a time, more clearly perhaps than it had ever been. Parliament granted to WilHam III. a toleration for Dissenters, which it had refused to Charles II. and James II. The policy was begun, on the part of the State, of nominating bishops who
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND loi
would be its political servants. A large number of devoted men, including Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, retired from communion with the Church rather than take the oath to the new Sovereign. A schism was created like that of the Easkolniks in Eussia, but it passed away within half a century. Queen Anne (1702-14) was a strong churchwoman. Under her the Church received considerable pecuniary help by the creation of Queen Anne's Bounty (from dues which had long been paid to the Sovereign). But the alienation of the Dissenters was increased by the legislators of a Tory Parliament. " The Church in danger " was a cry which rallied the people ; but the Church was really in danger from the general tendency of the age rather than from special aggres- sion or neglect.
AVith the eighteenth century, in fact, begins a new era in the history of the English Church which must be more fully explained. The eighteenth ^^^ century was a cosmopolitan period. The elgh- interests of churches no more than the teenth interests of states could remain wholly ^^"^"^y- national. Thus we find the English Xon-jurors ap- proaching the eastern churches, and the Scots bishops in sympathy with the movement, which, however, proved futile. The correspondence of a number of learned French clergy with Wake, Archbishop of Canter- bury (1715-26), was important. The Galilean clergy — among them the learned Du Pin, whose works were much read in England — inquired concern- Thoug-hts ing the terms on v.'hieh union on Catholic of reunion, lines was possible between the two National '^^^^• Churches. Wake thus asserted the position of the
I02 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
English Church : " She is free ; she is orthodox. She
has a plenary authority within herself, and has no
need to recur to any other Church to direct her what
to retain and what to do." He advised the Galileans
to "go one step further than they have yet done in their
opinion of [the pope's] authority, so as to leave him
merely a primacy of place and honour, and that merely
by ecclesiastical authority, as he was once bishop of
the imperial city." Eome intervened, and the French
clergy were not strong enough to persevere. But
Archbishop Wake had put forward a declaration of
the lines upon which reunion would be possible — the
independence of National Churches, with a doctrinal
agreement in "all doctrines of any moment," and
" for other matters, to allow a difference till God shall
bring us to union in these also."
Though attempts at formal union failed, the essential
agreement as the fundamentals of faith was evident.
It is well to emphasise this, for nothing is so much
needed to-day as to emphasise the fact of the essential
unity of the Church, the Body of Christ, in different
countries and among different races. In the eighteenth
century it is not hard for the historian to see this unity.
Over the whole Western Church there swept the
same wind of philosophic movement, here drying up,
Common ^^ it seemed, all the springs in spiritual life,
features here stirring into activity schools of Chris-
of Church ^^g^j^ defence, sometimes imperfect, some-
• ^\u^^ times erroneous, but all witnessing to the m the °
eigh- intense importance of the problems with
teenth which men were brought face to face. It
century. -g ^^^^ ^^ j^^ forgotten that the century of Berkeley and Butler is also the century of S. Alphonso
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 103
Liguori, of the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay as well as of Wesley and Whitefield. The century was marked by a very deep interest in religious philosophy, more widespread perhaps than ever before or since. It was marked by a genuine outburst of missionary zeal, seen in India and America, in Germany among the Moravians, in England among the disciples of Wliite- field. But it was marked also by a conspicuous de- cline in spiritual life, by an air of complacency in regard to moral problems which sliowed itself in strange and different ways. The torpor of the begin- ning of the century gave place to a genuine zeal for reform, which was by no means — as we are inclined to imagine — confined to England. Italy felt the zeal conspicuously, from Naples to Turin, and prelates so different as Benedict XIV., Eicci, S. Alphonso, and Henry Cardinal of York, were stirred by it to action. There was a real attempt to organise parochial work as well as charity. In Germany it was the beginning of the age of Pietism. In Spain there was ecclesi- astical reform. In France the reform was postponed till it became revolution. But the movement which affected all European countries was not really distinct in England. English life was differently constituted, and the enthusiasm came, just at the right moment, as one of religion and humanity, apart from political change. There can, indeed, to the serious thinker be no century of Church life more interesting or import- ant than the eighteenth, because it affords so remark- able a study of cause and of effect. All this we shall see as we proceed further.
In England, the condition of the Church is not to be described as " evil both in faith and practice " ;
104 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
nor can we take without considerable exceptions that statement of Mark Pattison that it was " an f th ^S® destitute of depth and earnestness ; an
eigh- age whose poetry was without romance,
teenth whose philosophy was without insight, and
century in ^j-jQgg public men were without character ; Eng-Iand. ,.,.-, • , i , i
an age of 'light without love, whose very
merits were of the earth, earthy." There is not a little that is true in that severe judgment ; yet beside it may well be placed the judgment of a historian, who was certainly not unduly prejudiced in favour of the Church and the religious life, the late John Eichard Green. "Estimates of this kind," he says,^ " always omit from the religion of the eighteenth century the one essential factor of the problem, the religious element itself. It is only by the exclusion of Nelson and Newton, of Wesley and Komaine, from its religion that we can pronounce it ' an evil time in faith and practice,' as it is only by the exclusion of Hume and Berkeley that we can pronounce its philo- sophy to be without insight." Mr. Green omitted the greatest name of all, Bishop Butler; but he remem bered the saintly Bishop Wilson, in whom Matthew Arnold found the most exquisite combination of "light" and " love." He remembered too that the eighteentli century was largely what it was through reaction from the centuries before it.
"The eighteenth century followed two centuries during which the world's mind had been wholly set on religious subjects and theological strife. Against this entire absorption of liuman energy into a single cliannel there was, no doubt, a strong and
1 nistoHcal studies, pp. 327, 328,
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 105
healthy reaction. Literature, science, mechanical enter- prise, commercial activity, all claimed their part in human effort. "Within the religious pale itself there was, no doubt a great change, and above all a vigorous reaction against the narrowness of theological systems. But it would be hard to count this reaction irreligious, as the Jacobite parsons counted it, from whom our modern censures are mostly taken, unless we count justice and mercy so. The Latitudinarian School practically gave the tone to English religion during the eighteenth century, and in truth and fairness of theology the Latitudinarians stood far beyond any who had preceded them. That it was the age of Evidences simply proves that, unlike later divines, scholars of the Paley stamp cheerfully accep- ted the test of free enquiry, the ultimate appeal to reason, and the task, possible or impossible, of recon- ciling its conclusions with faith." ^
The statement cannot be accepted entirely without demur. To say that the English Latitudinarians " in truth and fairness of theology stood far beyond any who had preceded them" — to compare them in this way not only with the Fathers, with Athanasius or Augustine, or with Thomas Aquinas, but with Hooker and Andrewes, is ridiculous ; and the greatest English eighteenth-century theologian and philosopher, Joseph Butler, was not a Latitudinarian at all. But still, it is right to emphasise the natural and inevitable re- action in theology.
But tlie reaction took also another side. AVhat this was we see clearly when we compare Church life in England with Church life abroad. There the guiding
Ihid.
io6 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
influence is largely that of the State, of kings and ministers. In England the period of lay influence was at an end. It ended with the death of William III., or at latest with that of Anne.
The seventeenth century had tried lay influence ad nauseam. James I. and Charles I. had tried to make Decline of ^^^^ union between Church and State a State working reality by enforcing the Church's
influence. decisions on the people, and their own decisions on Church and people alike. The spiritual nature of the aims of Archbishop Laud had not been fully seen till after his death, because he had been enveloped in the political struggles of his own age, and they had seemed to some even more im- portant than the terrible danger to the pure faith of Christ which came from the supremacy of Calvinism, which he devoted his life to break down. The Long Parliament was purely Erastian : Falkland predicted that bishops should not be able to teach or even to ordain save as it willed : Cromwell enforced a suppres- sion of the worship which was dear to the hearts of the vast majority of Englishmen. The ministries of Charles II., of James II., of William III., of Anne, differing from each other in every possible way, were alike in this, that they were willing, even eager, to lay down what position the Church should hold, what ministers should not be allowed to teach, and what people should be obliged to believe and to do.
On one side or the other this had been a total Theologi- failure. A change came with the reign of cal con- George I. Not that theological conflicts at troversy. ^^^^ ^:^^^ away. Far from it. There was the Bangorian controversy, which established — against
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 107
Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor, one of the most worldly of the prelates under whom Wales (and afterwards England) groaned — the true doctrine of the Visible Church and her Apostolic Ministry. And there was the Trinitarian controversy, which made it plain that there was no place for an honest man in the Church of England unless he believed in the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And there was the controversy against the Deists, who disbelieved in God as Christ revealed Him and denied any true revelation at all. That theological controversy ceased at once with the accession of the Hanoverians is far, then, from being the case. But a new era began, largely through the fact that the State, after a few years of agitated fussiness, sharply cut itself off from ecclesiastical controversy, and refused to let Closing of Convocation meet for business any more, Convoca- That was the last action (1717) of the ^^°"' ^^i?. Erastian spirit. From that time for several genera- tions the Church of England, for good or ill, managed her own affairs as best she could. Not with full constitutional right, for the Convocations, her lawful assemblies, were silenced, but still through her own bishops and her own clergy did she act ; and the State left her well (or severely) alone.
The State washed its hands of theological contro- versy— of Bangorianism and Unitarianism and Deism.
And then the Church found her own, in
The s^rcat the creation of that splendid series of great ^jj^jnes
writers, every one of whom is worthy of
study to-day, which includes x4rchbishop Wake (1657-
1737), who did as much as one man could do to
reunite England, on truly Catholic and Anglican lines.
To8 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
with the Church of France (1717-19), and who also was most friendly to the foreign Protestants ; Bishop Berkeley, the saintly philosopher and missionary (1685-1753); William Law, the mystic and preacher of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come (1686-1761); and, lastly, the great thinker, the great philosopher, the great Christian, Joseph Butler (1692- 1752), Bishop of Durham, and author of the Analogy and the immortal Sermons.
Now two facts which are not usually stated in histories strike us at once as we look at these dates. The first is that the period of most important intel- lectual activity in the Church dates from the very year when the State withdrew its interference and silenced Convocation. The second is that this great period of intellectual w^ork was come to an end when the Evangelical revival of Wesley and Whitefield reached its climax of success about 1750. These two facts may lead us to give our attention especially to three points: (1) The nature of the work of the Christian apologists, of whom Bishop Butler is the greatest; (2) the causes which led to the revival of spiritual religion in the middle of the century; (3) the results of that revival and the nature of the work of John Wesley.
The nature of the work of the Christian apologists was, as it always is in every age, to state the eternal The truth of God, as man's limited capacity can
Christian comprehend it, in relation to the needs of apologists, g^ j^g^y ^-^^-^g gj^^l -j^ answer to the attacks
of a new school of unbelief. Those who doubted or denied at the beginning of the eighteenth century either attacked the Divinitv of our Saviour and the
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 109
Divine Mission of His Church, or denied that the Christian revelation was compatible witli the reason of man. The answer was first to prove that the Christian revelation really did include the Nicene doctrine as to the Person of Christ and the divine origin of the Society which had endured since He lived on earth and had preached, written, and treasured the teaching which He gave and His apostles followed. The arguments for the Divinity of our Lord need restating from time to time, but they are, in the last resort, essentially the same arguments. But it is not quite the same with regard to the general argument for theistic belief. This involves a phi- losophy, and philosophy is in a perpetual state of flux. Berkeley denied the exist- gg^j-ke^e ence of matter, replacing it in the universe by Mind, '' our only experience of ultimate reality being our own self-consciousness " : the world is sustained by Divine Eeason and Will. Everything, to him, came from God, and depended on God; and so he said, "What deserves the first place in our studies is the consideration of God and our duty ; which to promote, as it was the main drift and design of my labours, so shall I esteem them alto- gether useless and ineffectual if, by what I have said, I cannot inspire my readers with a pious sense of the presence of God." ^ But theories such as his wera open to distorted conclusions, such as Hume drew from their premisses. And a great but forgotten apologist. Bishop Conybeare, in his Defence of Revealed Religion, was himself a follower of Locke, from whom — though so contrary to his own beliefs — the Deists drew
^ Theory of Vision, § 156.
no THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
not a little of their argument. Gradually the lines of attack concentrated themselves on the miraculous element in Christianity.
Three lines of defence were found. First, to marshal the evidence for the greatest of miracles, the Replies Eesurrection. This is done in Sherlock's to the Tryal of the Witnesses (1729). Second, to
Deists. ^^]^Q ^|-^g ground of the general soundness of the record as a whole ; this is the line of Lardner's Credilility of the Gospels (1727). Thirdly, it was attempted to view revelation and nature as part of one whole. This is the work of Butler's Analogy (1736).
The earlier two of these books, and the class of books of which they are representative, have been subjected to very severe criticism. It has been argued that when theists rely on the authority of " experts " in religion, they are relying on an authority which can only be taken subject to conditions which are not fulfilled. But the fact is that religious experience, on which Pascal ultimately based belief, is unanimous in declaring that there is a God, that He does reveal Himself to man, and that man can have personal relation to Him as a Person. On this " religious experts" are entirely at one, and the "varieties of religious experience " do not in the slightest degree militate against the reality of the experience itself. A great deal of the destructive criticism of the eighteenth century is, as a matter of fact, brought up against the impregnable position of the normal Christian character based on the universal Christian experience. This foundation cannot be shaken so long as human nature remains ; for, to the wise,
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND in
human experience can never cease to be a conclusive
argument.
Butler's Analogy has been asserted "to be largely
responsible for the more complete unbelief which took
the place of Deism among the higher in- character-
tellects after its publication." In truth, istics of
writers of a certain school of Eationalism eighteenth
bitterly resent the assertion of the unity f^"^"^
'' *' theology,
of knowledge, the homogeneity of mental
process. They are eager to discredit religious evidences
because they are not of the same nature as evidences
scientific or mathematical ; but, on the other hand, the
moment it is pointed out what is the nature of our
general knowledge, and what are the limits within
which finite beings obtain knowledge at all, they seek
refuge in accusing theists of scepticism. In regard to the
eighteenth century, to be brief, there is a view which
represents its moral philosophy as an endeavour to
find a substitute for religion as a guide of conduct.
More truly the period was one in which moral
phenomena were investigated from the specifically
moral point of view, and formed a necessary stage in
the evolution of theology.^
^ Much of this criticism (e.g. A. W. Benn, History of English Ration- alism) is purely arbitrary and captious. "What are we to thiuk of an argument against the Butlerian view of human life on earth as a proba- tion which says : " Unfortunately, this pedagogic theory of our present life comes into violent collision Avith the admitted fact that most people grow woi'se with increasing years, and become less and less fitted for a purely spiritual existence " ? Here again the answer is supplied by Christian experience. It is a not dissimilar shortsighted- ness which makes the writer say, when he is writing of Kant, that, while the only argument for the existence of God which seems adequate is the autological one, "it is mere sophistry. Ideas are complete in themselves, whether they have or have not a counterpart in reality. My conception of a hundred dollars remains the same whether I am
112 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
]^)ishup Butler's whole work was dominated by the
thouiiht of God as the Moral Governor of the universe.
He steadily refuses to look at religion
arguments ^^' ^^^®' ^^ ^^^ or at man, from a limited or one-sided point of view. He will see the whole truth, or at least he will leave room in his argument for it. He asserts with fullest candour that reason is " the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself " ; and as for motives for religion, he says '' the proper motives to religion are the proper proofs of it from our moral nature and from the confirmation of the dictates of reason by revelation." And again, " Ee- ligion is true, or it is not. If it be not, there is no reason for any concern about it ; but if it be true, it requires real fairness of mind and honesty of heart." There are two great aims of Butler's apologetic. They are, first, to show the greatness of the problem with wdiich we have to deal — in other w^ords, to show the greatness of God; and, secondly, to base all con- clusions on experience. The difficulties which we find in religion have their exact analogy in difficulties which we find in everyday life. There, probability is the guide; in other words, experience is the best help to the practical issue in regard to religious difficulty. It is here that Butler differs so widely from other apologists of his time and proves himself the one who
or am not in possession of that sum." He does not add the obvious answer that the conception of a hundred dollars is impossible if there are not, nor ever have been, any such things as dollars at all. Critics of this school, whether they wrote in the eighteenth or the twentieth century, find their strongest argument in the ignorance which enables them to identify Christianity with Calvinism. When this is done it is possible to declare that the theology of Kant, which bases moral effort on ideal which originates iu God, is " preposterous."
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 113
most clearly saw the whole problem, as a problem both of thought and of conduct.^ Many of the eighteenth- century Christians, as well as their opponents, thought of God as if He were merely the artificer of the w^orld-machine. "Tillotson and Paley are names to be remembered with gratitude for the services they rendered, in their several capacities, to the English Church ; but it would not be difficult to exhibit the inadequacy of their metaphysical theology. For the Creator of the inanimate universe is also the source and spring of life, in Whom ' we live and move and have our being.' He transcends the Creation, and yet is everywdiere immanent in it." It was this which Butler proclaimed so powerfully ; and to that he adds the absolute authority of the instructed conscience. It is conscience which answers to revelation and shows the truth of the duties and the facts which are revealed. This view brings us to the causes which led to the revival of spiritual religion.
Mr. Lecky summarised them something after this fashion. The purely moral teaching of the Church ; the decay of religious feeling among both Churchmen and dissenters ; the insufficiency of the pro- Religious vision of clergy for tlie population ; the condition decadence of religion among the upper ofEng-land. classes, and the result of the writings of the Deists and the grow^th of physical science, seen not so much in active scepticism as in indifference and want of zeal ; the ignorance and neglect in wdiich the lower classes lived ; the intellectual and moral decrepitude of the universities ; the non-observance of Sunday. But these are obviously not reasons for the revival but
1 Butler, I., Introd., p. 26, by the Dean of S. Patrick's.
I
114 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
reasons for the need of it. Perhaps the strongest of all is the lowness of the ideal which was found in many of the clergy of the time. It was the age when a bishop of Bangor could hold his see for five years without ever setting foot in his diocese.
The eighteenth-century bishops stand by themselves in the history of the Church of England. But if the ^jj majority of the clergy of their age were
example unlike them in opinions and, perhaps, in of the low conduct, there were a number of persons ^ ^" ^^ ■ who were on the way — though they sometimes lost it — to be bishops, who lived among bishops and wealthy dignitaries, and whose talk was of preferments, just as the talk of Dr. Johnson's friend was of bullocks. We will descend from " the dignity of history," for an illustration of the weakness of religion in the eighteenth century, to an example of ordinary clerical life in England. Into the lives and thoughts of these men we are introduced by a volume which contains the letters of Edmund Pyle, d.d., Chaplain-in-Ordinary to George II., to Samuel Kerrich, D.D., vicar of Dersingham, rector of Wolferton, and rector of West Newton, Norfolk. Edmund Pyle, though he had plenty of preferments, and benefices among them, was above all a dependent of Bishop Hoadly, with whom he lived at Chelsea between 1752 and 1761. That influence dominated his life. It is true that he was also Archdeacon of York, chaplain to the king, and incumbent of two Lincolnshire parishes. At last he secured a prebend at Winchester. There he lived, and died, still Archdeacon and Pre- bendary, in 1776, aged seventy-four. Dr. Kerrich, his tutor at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 115
fortunate in a rich bequest from a lady to whom he was engaged, and in two marriages. He held several livings, and he resided in Norfolk as a rich country clergyman. He died in 1768, aged seventy-two. The two men wrote continually on matters that interested them.
What were they ? It w^ould, perhaps, be hard to judge the character of the men by the subject of their letters. Do many clergymen to-day write private letters on the detail of their parochial work, on their sermons, or on their ministrations to individual souls ? Certainly on such matters Dr. Pyle and Dr. Kerrich were almost uniformly silent. Their interests, if we may judge from their letters, w^ere the very things which Carteret, in an oft-quoted sentence, despised — they cared especially who was made a judge or a bishop. Their letters are full of preferment, intrigue, money, *' interest." They are, indeed, a succession of trivial- ities, which have a certain interest, partly from their mere age, partly from their concern, now and then, w^ith persons who have played a part in history, and partly as illustrations, of indubitable accuracy, of the social life of the time. Archbishop Potter (1674- 1747) is described by Dr. Pyle as " the poor-spirited old man of Lambeth," and is blamed for not support- ing the Court more strongly against " Prince Fred." And then — "He had twice asked audience of his Sovereign, and been twice refused admittance. At length he obtained it, but had been better without it, for the interview w^as closed with the king's telling him, ' He was a man of a little dirty heart.' Whatever the heart was, this saying was said to have broken it." In the same letter, which tells of Potter's death, there
THE A(tE of revolution
is a good deal about Bi.sliop Butler and his cliance of the Primacy, which he declined, " because it was too late to save a fallino- Church." It is strangle to find even Bishop Butler charged with the passion for pre- ferment-hunting ; strange, that is, till we remember the value of the gossip of such a man as Pyle, who could see no harm in what he practised unblushingly, but which the austere, incorruptible Butler scorned.
Hoadly was the antithesis of Butler. One of the dioceses he had held he never visited. In his Bishop later years he lived comfortably at Win- Hoadly Chester House, Chelsea, republishing old as a type, sermons (and earning plenty of money by it, though not so much as was made by the sermons of Tillotson), and making merry with his friends.^
Less eminent, but a better bishop, was Sir Thomas
^ Dr. Pyle thus paints the life he came to in 1758 : — •' I have been an inhabitant of this sweet place five weeks and better, and know as much of the manner of life in such a family as this as I can know in as many years. And all I shall or need say of it is, that (having eight hours in each day to myself, for exercise or study, and the privilege of going to London for a day or two, as often as I please), could I make my Lord's life and my own commensurate, I would not leave this house for any preferment in England. Such easiness, such plenty, and treatment so liberal was never my lot before, and, if God gives me health, you can't think of a happier man. The danger I apprehend most is from the table, which is both plentiful and elegant. But I think I shall, by use, not be in more peril from my Lord's ten dishes than I was formerly from my own two ; for I begin already to find that a fine dinner every day is not such a perpetual temi)tation as I thought it would be. "
What a scene from clerical life ! So Bishop Hoadly lived, studying to make Pyle's "way clear to a stall," and getting his confirmations discharged by another bishop, who, by the way, was conspicuous for visiting his own diocese annually. "Of an evening," on the rare occasions when Mrs. Hoadly had not ladies with her, Pyle would read Burnet, "or some such book," to the bishop — "his observations on which are worth more than my pains."
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 117
Gooch (1674-1754), bishop in turn of Bristol, Norwich, and Ely — though his thoughts, to the very last, seem to have been of arranging preferments. He was described as " a man of as great art, craft, and cunning as any in the age he lived in, as he was as much of a gentleman in his outward appearance, carriage, and behaviour." Mrs. Kerrich, his niece, wrote of him when he had been but six months at Ely : "Y® Bishop do barrter and bargain away things strangely." We find the same lady, by the way, though a bishop's niece, calling on the mistress of the third Lord Orford, who returned the call " in a landau and six horses, and one Mr. Paxton, a young clergy- man, with her." His successor, Mawson, followed in his steps, full of oddities and improprieties. "The right reverend blunderer," his old pupil called him, and the stories of his stupidities are not the most unedifying tliat are told of him. Up and down the book there are many curious bits of gossip. In 1754 Pyle mentions that he was presenting for Ordi- nation— to the Bishop of London, for the Bishop of Winchester seems never to have performed any of his episcopal duties himself — "a Scotch lord and an English justice of the peace, who are now both presbyters of the Church of England and officiate in the diocese of Winton." Dean Clarke of Salisbury is said to have " died of an ague, caught by living in that vile, damp Close of Salisbury, which is a mere sink ; and going to a church daily that is as wet as any vault, and which has destroyed more, perhaps, than ever it saved 1 "
How trivial this all is, and how discreditable. But the story is not told in vain if it shows how low the
ii8 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
ministers of tlie Church could sink ; and it points the contrast to Butler, grand in his moral integrity, and Wesley, splendid in his spiritual enthusiasm.
How did the reaction come ? There was the standing contrast of the English Prayer Book, with Causes its lofty ideal set in lofty language, its pure of the devotion, its unfeigned love of God. But
Revival. ^-^^^^ seemed to be unheeded; and the re- action came rather from the growing fervour with which moral principles were preached, for men like Butler believed in Christian morals with all their heart and soul, and what they expressed with the coldness of marble others came to preach with fire that was no longer hidden. For, indeed, a still more powerful influence was that of the long series of books of Literature devotion on which generation after genera- of tion had been reared — the Whole Duty of
devotion. j/^^^^ i-i-^Q Ladies' Calling, the Sacra Privata of Bishop Wilson, Law's Serious Call, the beautiful prayers and liturgies of the Non-jurors, and the manual for worthy communicants which is bound up in so many eighteenth -century Prayer Books. These made their way into men's hearts, and at last were shown forth in the new vigour, the converting holi- ness, of their lives. Prayer, experience, argument, all converged on the one point — the truth of God, the responsibility of man.
It was this which Whitefield (1714-70), the greatest
of English preachers, with all his theological errors
and all his personal weakness, proclaimed.
field " ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^ ^^^^^ greater man preached
with all his lieart and soul. No longer was
truth the possession only of men in their studies, or of
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 119
pietists at their desks of prayer. At last she had found a voice which could reach the ears of rich and poor alike.
When we turn from the confused medley of eighteenth -century opinions, the words of Wesley come irresistibly to mind : " If all outward John establishments are Babel, so is this estab- Wesley, lishment. Let it stand for me. I neither set it up nor pull it down. But let you and I build the city of God." So wrote John A^^esley to his brother Charles — a characteristic utterance that might well stand as a motto for his life. In a sentence the dates of that life can be summed up. He was a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1726 to his marriage in 1751. He founded the Methodist Society in Oxford in 1729. He went to Georgia in 1735, and was much influenced by the Moravians. He began field preaching in 1739, and continued it till his death in 1791. In 1740 he shook himself clear from Calvinism : the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists left him three years later, and the "Connection" of Lady Huntingdon in 1756. In 1784: he "ordained" presbyters to confer orders and minister the sacraments. So he strove to " build the city of God." Devoted though he was in his attach- ment to the Church of England to the very end of his days, extraordinarily strong though the statements were which he made about separation — statements too familiar to need repetition here — yet for consistent obedience to the Church's laws he had only a tepid sympathy. To him " the City of God " was wider than the Church he knew, and holier, and more free ; and when he felt the thrill of the inspiration which the idea gave him, he thought no more of rules and
I20 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
ordinances, hardly of theologies. He passed the bounds that separated Churchmanship from Dissent without a tremor; and yet it must be remembered that he passed them only by an act which he did secretly and when he was over eighty years of age. Did he His act appreciate the significance of his act in of separa- " consecrating " a " superintendent " ? His ^^°"' subsequent acts and utterances make it
difficult to believe that he did. His theory certainly conflicted with his action. "By his theory," as Pro- fessor Winchester well says in his Life of Wesley, *' both Coke and himself were of the same order, and if there be no difference in order between presbyter and bishop, neither one of these two presbyters could confer upon the other any authority beyond what both already possessed." Still, whatever may have been his theoretical opinions as to the nature of the epis- copal office, it is hard to believe that so clear a thinker as Wesley could have been blind to the practical con- clusion that might logically have been drawn from his action. " If any presbyter of the Church of England, for what seemed to him good and sufficient reasons, could invite into his back parlour another presbyter and there solemnly set him apart for the w^ork — if not for the office — of a bishop, then ecclesiastical discipline within the Church of England was plainly at an end." In these words Professor Winchester has seized upon the critical point of Wesley's career. He was not a consistent thinker, not a man loyal to his intellectual convictions throughout his whole career. But then, is it justifiable to lay stress on actions and opinions of a man over eighty which conflict with the whole tenor of his life, and the consequences of which
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 121
he vehemently repudiated to the end of his days ? "Ordination means separation," said Lord Mansfield, and so Charles Wesley told his brother many a time ; and yet John to the last declared that it was the glory of Methodism not to separate, and prophesied that when the Methodists left the Church God would leave them.
A strange confusion, indeed; but we turn from Wesley with a feeling of affection such as we often give to truly lovable but most illogical men. Wesley was a saint and a hero, and character. to read his life to-day stimulates every fine feeling of a man's heart. His splendid achievements in philanthropy and religion lift us to a liigher realm. Truly, while the century quarrelled and prabbled, Wesley was building the City of God. It is pitiful to think how he was treated, not so much by bishops judicious as Butler, or parish priests suspicious of his metliods, as by those who should have been his warmest supporters. It is the lasting disgrace of some of the leaders of Evangelicalism that he was called "the most rancorous hater of the gospel system that ever appeared in this land," "an old fox tarred and feathered," a "venal profligate," a man "as unprin- cipled as a rook and as silly as a jackdaw." Wesley himself was a controversialist, but his language was never unworthy of a Christian. His religion, indeed, was pre-eminently a religion of love. Vivid though he was in his presentation of the tremendous doctrines of human responsibility and Divine judgment, it is restraint which is more conspicuous in his sermons than vehemence. It is not true " that the preaching of Wesley and his followers owed its effect to the
122 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
crude but vivid presentation, before ignorant and vicious men, of the tortures of future punishment." Of Wesley, at least, nothing could be more false. He rarely, if ever, appealed to terror. His favourite texts, and the sermons which follow them, almost all dwell on the love and mercy of God. It is this dominant feeling of the great preacher, as well as his theology, which explains his position as an Arminian. John Wesley, like William Laud before him, dealt Calvinism a deadly blow.
There are many significant points in the life history of the great evangelist ; one only, because it is the most jj. critical of all, must here be emphasised. It
attitude has been asserted that the meaning of towards Wesley's career lies in the fact that he was "conyer- " g^ prim High Churchman with a purely mechanical religion," that he learned "an added flavour of sacerdotalism " from Jeremy Taylor, whose " High Churchmanship was so extreme that, like other and more modern Churchmanship of the same altitude, it is almost indistinguishable from popery," that he lived in "a plodding heavy-footed ritualism," till the night of May 24th, 1738, when he was converted and passed at once from formalism to a vital religious faith. But this is plainly contrary to the facts. Wesley had long before this given up every- thing for his religion. In Georgia, months before, he "was certainly a Christian, if any man ever was." And seven months after this critical date we find him writing, " My friends affirm I am mad, because I said I was not a Christian a year ago. I affirm I am not a Christian now. . . . For a Christian is one who has the fruits of the spirit of Christ, which (to mention
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 123
no more) are love, peace, joy. But these I have not." So long did self-distrust continue after what he called his conversion. Wesley's soul was " saved " when he passed out from the Moravian influence and found his work. And again, when the necessity of " assur- ance " is emphasised, it must be remembered that Wesley wrote in his old age, " When, fifty years ago, my brother Charles and I, in the simplicity of our hearts, taught the people that unless they knew their sins were forgiven, they were under the wrath and curse of God, I wonder that they did not stone us. The Methodists know better now."
If Wesley before the night of May 24th, 1738, was not a good man, a Christian, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no meaning in words at all, and to show faith by works cannot be done. He himself had no such dream of repudiating the past workings of God in his soul. Forty years after his visit to Georgia he could still say " ' Vitae me redde priori ' : let me again be an Oxford Methodist." He would never have said this if he thought that he was then " uncon- verted," or had no " saving faith."
In truth Wesley's life cannot be explained by any theory of sudden conversion or assurance, or his teaching by any attempt to harmonise it with his actions. He was in theory a High Churchman all his life. But when it came to practical needs, and to a severe strain upon theory; and when the difficulties pressed upon a man of over fourscore years, it is no wonder that resolutions were broken, or that theology went to the wall. Wesley, in fact, had so long been a pope that there is no wonder he became in action a schismatic. And yet there can be little doubt that he
124 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
never really saw what he was doing. But Lord Mans- field did, and so did the quiet, thorough, saintly clear- headed brother, who yet clung to him to the last.
One of those who have most deeply studied the Wesleyan movement (the late Dr. Overton), had a The great admiration for Wesley's goodness, and,
tendency perhaps, still more for that of other Evan- Weslevan g^lical leaders — Newton, Romaine, and the move- i^est. But he considered the tendency of
ment. the movement as a whole to be from the
first antagonistic to the Church. Wesley anism in his eyes could only have been a Dissenting movement ; therefore he does not blame the Bishops and the Church generally for the schism which ultimately occurred. The real tendency of the movement, he says, from the beginning, is what we have to inquire into : — " Where did the followers of Wesley find their religion ? Where was the true motive power ? Surely not in the Church system, but in their own separate organi- sations. It is fully admitted that they were often re- pelled where they should have been welcomed, and that John Wesley especially was misunderstood both as to his motives and his measures. But is it possible that almost everybody outside the select circle — which was at first a very small one — should have been utterly misled as to the meaning of it all ? It is purely a modern notion that the Wesleyan movement ever was, or ever was intended to be, except by Wesley, a Church movement. Contemporary writers of all classes seem to be agreed on this point, the excellent Walker, of Truro (an Evangelical before Evangelical- ism), and John Berridge (the eccentric Vicar of Everton in Bedfordshire), whose churcli Vv^as the scene
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 125
of many of Wesley's labours, not less than Butler and Sherlock and Warburton and Butler/' ^
If this is true, we need not be surprised at its effects in Wales. These are well known. The leaders of the revival in Wales in the eighteenth -phe century were all Churchmen. Wales, early Church in the eighteenth century, had been sym- i" Wales, pathetic to the spiritual and educational movement of the day. But more was needed. " The land was ripe for a religious and social awakening ; and it is no small comfort, in the face of the subsequent story of neglect and misgovernment, to dwell upon the fact that the revival, both of education and religion, came to AYales through the exertions of a clergyman of her established Church, who had for his chief supporters and sympathisers two members of the Welsh aristocracy — a class too often ignorantly and unfairly abused." Gruffydd Jones (1684:-1761) is a name that should be honoured wherever the name of Christ is adored. Daniel Rowlands (1713-90) and Howell Harris (1714-73), in spite of his grievous errors, too will never be forgotten; and their followers to the end of the century belonged to the Church. That the English Government, with its blind abuse of patronage, was largely to blame for what happened no one doubts ; but perhaps the inherent motive power of Wesleyanism made it inevitable.
Not, however, till the nineteenth century did the separation really occur. In Wales it was, no doubt, caused very largely by the fact that the Church had never recovered from the robbery of the Eeformation,
1 Overton and Relton, History of ilic English Church, 1714-1800, p. 75.
126 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
and at the same time the valuable posts had long been
given to Englishmen.
But if the work of the Wesleys and John Whitefield
led to the creation of sects, it must not be forgotten
,^ «. . that it did an enormous deal for spiritual
Its effects _ . ^ . , -- \.
on the religion, it is hardly too strong a thing to
Church say that it taught the Church of England °^ as a whole to minister to the very poor.
" ■ Since the Keformation it cannot be said that in that direction her work had been conspicuous. Now she applied herself with all her energy to the task; and the beginnings of a national system of edu- cation were also due to her efforts.
We have not dwelt on the general history of the Church of England in the eighteenth century, for this General ^^ easily to be read in books specially de- history voted to the history of the English Church.^ of the i^ ^yas an age of al)le writers who dealt Church ^^^^^^ ^^^® political position of the Church, in the such as Atterbury, Bishop of Eochester, eighteenth whose attachment to the Stewarts made him century. ^^^ ^^^ exile; or Warburton, a typical scholar- bishop, who held critical views on the Old Testament, and edited Pope. But when the age is summed up it is seen that its character at different stages is determined, first, by the revival of Christian phil- osophy, and, secondly, by the revival of Christian en- thusiasm. The archbishops were good men, replete with dignity and court favour, of whom, perhaps, the best that can be said is that they prevented an}^ conflict between Church and State. The bishops were fre-
^ Cf. W. H. Hutton, SJiort History of the Church in Gre.at Britain, pp. 238-259.
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 127
quently scholars, and not rarely gentlemen, living for the most part peaceably in their habitations, but not always in their dioceses. It has been observed by an eminent modern historian that the study of philosophy often accompanies the decay of civic virtue."^ England in the eighteenth century is an illustration of this fact, for then was a period of unexampled political corruption, which, till the time of Pitt and Wesley, statesmen and clergymen hardly attempted to stop. But corruption in politics and in morals received a severe blow at the end of the century, when English leaders awoke from the study of abstractions to the grim realities of life as the French Eevolution revealed them.
The w^ork of the religious societies founded early in the century, for the cultivation of devotion, the main- tenance of daily public worship, and the suppression of vice, was a true preparation for that of Wesley ; and his preaching received its complement in the labours for social improvement which marked the beginning of the nineteenth century. If the age seems cold, the religion mechanical, the ideals commonplace, we must not forget the best work of the century which was spanned but for twelve years by the life of John Wesley. The nature of the Church's task, as well as the inadequacy of its fulfilment, the social and philan- thropic labours as well as the dogmatic and philosophic controversies of the time — none of these must be ignored in a just survey. In that survey the land- marks are familiar : Atterbury, Warburton, Butler, and the early Evangelicals. Justice is at length being done to the good work which, if it was not " enthusiastic,"
1 Oman, History of Greece, p. 120.
128 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
was often solid and sincere. The character of ' Parson Adams' could not have been drawn in an age when there was no ideal of clerical work ; or, to look at the matter from a very difterent point of view, the poems and novels of Pdchard Graves (1715-1804) could not have been written at a time when, with all tlieir failings, the clergy did not remember that their "duty" was to teach men to live good lives.
With the beginning of the nineteenth century, though in some respects religion was at a low ebb — Religion Bishop Tomline recorded that at S. Paul's at t.he cathedral church on Easter Day, 1800, "no
of the more than six persons were found at the
nineteenth table of the Lord," and this after the Wes- century. ley an movement might have been supposed to have had its effect — there were distinct sio-ns of the growth of charity and of philanthropic effort. There was no bitterness towards dissent: toleration was uni- versal and almost complete. The exception was the treatment of Eoman Catholics, who were under politi- cal disabilities in Enodand and in Ireland under still more gravely unjust suppression. But the English people were gradually learning to control the sense of resentment which was the enduring legacy of the papal excommunication of 1570, the Jesuit mission, the Gunpowder Plot, and the illegal aggressions of the reign of James 11. Something was done to remove this feeling by the English Piomanists themselves. Growth of They had long been allowed, in spite of the tolera- laws, to carry on their worship and to obey
t^°"' the authority of apostolic vicars sent from
Eome. In 1737 some relief was given to Irish Eoman Catholics, in 1771 much earlier repressive legislation
THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 129
was repealed. Ifc is worth noticing, moreover, that in the long negotiations with regard to the position of the Eomanists in Ireland there was a proposal, very widely accepted in Ireland, that the Crow^n should exercise a veto on the nomination of Eoman Catholic bishops. The religious settlement, however, proceeded on quite other lines, and so Ireland as well as England stands apart from the development of the next thirty years.
Later in the century a number of English Eoman Catholics consulted the Universities of the Sorbonne, of Louvain, Douai, Alcala, and Salamanca, and obtained answer that the pope had no civil authority in England. They then drew up a Protestation, which was signed by all the vicars-apostolic acting in England and by almost all the important Eomanists, in which they asseverated their loyalty to the Englisli Crown, denied any power in their Church to absolve them from it, and declared that " we acknowledge no infallibility in the pope." This w^as in 1789. The good feeling which was en- £^^^^,^3 q£ couraged in England by this decisive action, the French and which was illustrated by the strong Revolu- desire of Pitt, the prime minister, to secure ^^°^' entire political emancipation for Eomanists, was greatly aided by the deep sympathy which was felt for the victims of the French Eevolution. A great number of French clergy took refuge in England, where they were warmly welcomed. The popular feeling may well be illustrated from a sermon before Parliament on 30th January, 1793, by Bishop Samuel Horsley, of S. David's. He said : " Nice scruples about external forms and differences of opinion upon controvertible points cannot but take place among the best Chris- tians, and dissolve not the fraternal tie. None, indeed.
I30 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
at this season are more entitled to our offices of love than those with whom the difterence is wide, in points of doctrine, discipline, and external rites ; those vener- able exiles, the prelates and clergy of the fallen Church of France, endeared to us by the edifying spectacle they exhibit of patient suffering for conscience sake." Sentiments such as these tended to soften traditional feelings of opposition : they led eventually, on the death of George III., who had bitterly opposed it, to emancipa- tion ; and if justice was long delayed to the Eomanists who formed a large majority of the population of Ire- land, the delay was due, no doubt, to the rebellions which had taken place in that country.
Side by side with this movement was that for the abolition of slavery, which w^as at last carried through by the energy of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), a politician of great eminence and one of the party in the Church of England which owed not a little of its enthusiasm and its theology to the influence of the Wesleyan movement. In 1815 the dominant influence in the English Church was that which was known as "Evangelical." Its leaders had a great hold on the vital truths of personal religion, and if the corporate responsibilities of the Church were not always under- stood with equal clearness, the formularies and author- ised devotions of the Church were a security for the historic faith and government which she had retained.
CHAPTER X THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE
THE period with which we have been dealing is one in which, at least to European eyes, the religious interest seems to be concentrated in Europe. But it must not be forgotten that the Cliurch never aban- doned her claim to be Universal. To study the Church in Asia and Africa, as seen by the native Christians themselves, is a task for which the materials are inadequate and partial. We must be content to look at the East and the West from the point of view of the Church in Europe, and thus to deal with the subject primarily as a history of missionary work.
We turn, then, first to the organisation of missions at Rome, whence great victories had already Roman been achieved by the work of saints such as Catholic Francis Xavier. The Congregation f/cj;ro/M- "Missions. ganda fide, founded by Gregory XV. in 1622, received several additions and endow^ments under later popes. It was, among other things, a great missionary agency, and a training school for missionaries. Its influence was very wide. In 1663 the Congregation of priests for foreign missions was founded in France, with a special seminary for the training of missionaries. Before long, apostolic vicars were sent out from the latter to Siam, Tonquin, Cochin China, to Persia and to the East
131
132 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
generally. This body stood aloof from the Jesuits, who did mission work as great or even greater.
From the time of S. Francis Xavier the missionary energy of the Jesuits was their most glorious heritage. The North and South, East and West, they
Jesuits spread with intense fervour and energy,
in China. Their methods before long provoked much criticism. It was said that their method of preaching involved none of the antagonism between Christ and heathenism which the Apostles had proclaimed. They explained the doctrines of the pagans to have in themselves the germs of Christian truth : in China they accepted the precepts of Confucius, and it was said that they allow^ed the ancient ancestor-worship. They suffered not only old national customs but old semi-religious rites to continue. They tried by many concessions to win over the priests and the secular hierarchy. The most critical questions arose in China. Yoltaire is extremely satirical upon the Jesuit attitude, which he professes to consider reasonable, and very unlike the Christianity of Europe. He says that "it was not enough at the end of seventeen hundred years that w^e still disputed upon the articles of our own religion. We must likewise introduce into our own system the quarrels of the Chinese." The great mis- sionary was Eicci, who found the conservatism of China an almost insurmountable obstacle. His successors among the Jesuits devoted themselves to education. Their missionaries were men of learning, skilled in science and mathematics, and they made so good a settlement in the country that they were followed by Dominicans, Franciscans and Capuchins, who were received with cordiality by the Emperor Yung-Chi.
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 133
The Dominicans brought the Chinese Question before the Inquisition at Eome in 1645, and the Inquisition decided against the ceremonies, until a formal judgment should be given by the pope. The Jesuits continued to defend the adaptation of pagan usages, which they said must be allowed or the Christian religion could not enter into a country so conservative. The Inquisition decided that xhe the Chinese might venerate Confucius, and ancestral that children might venerate their ancestors, "^^^• protesting at the same time against a superstitious use of this permission. So matters remained while Yung-Chi lived. On his death, however, a persecu- tion followed, in which the Jesuits were banished (1664). They were allowed to return in 1669 by Chang-Hio, who admitted many of them to high positions about his court as his teachers and friends. In 1692 Christianity was formally sanctioned in China. In 1700 the Jesuits were even allowed a church in the imperial palace. But the disagreement between the French missionaries under Maigrot, who was given a bishopric, and the Jesuits, continued. Pere Lecomte, a Jesuit wdio wrote a history of China, warmly praised the national religion. He was bitterly attacked, and at length the Sorbonne pro- nounced the praise of the Chinese to be false, impious and heretical. The Jesuits w^ere charged by other missionaries with dilutincr the faith till it ceased to have any real force, with living in state and luxury, and with paying more attention to trade than to teaching. Eicci allowed converts still to keep up many ceremonies of Confucianism : and the dispute between his Jesuits and the Dominicans was laid
134 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
before Innocent X., who decided in favour of the latter. Alexander VII. in 1656 practically reversed the decision, and allowed many of the pagan customs to be retained. The Dominicans again appealed, in Papal IQQl and 1674. The questions as to the
condem- application of the Chinese name for God nation to God Almighty and as to the main-
tenance of the so-called ancestor-worship were agitated again and again. At last in 1704 Clement XL decided against the Jesuits and declared it sinful to practise the ancestral rites. In 1715 the edict was again relaxed, and so the matter went back and forward, contradictory decisions being made again and again, till at last, amid the mirth of unbelievers in Europe and the din of controversial pamphlets, the interest in the whole subject died away.
But the missions of the French Society survived. Among the Jesuit missionaries in China were great Mission- scholars and diligent investigators, such as aries in Antoine Gaubil, who was a missionary in China. Peking from 1723 to 1759,^ and wrote a
remarkable series of works on subjects from history to astronomy, showing the most intimate knowledge of China, and entered into correspondence with learned societies in Eussia and England. This was but the recreation of his leisure time. He was an indefatigable missionary and teacher. He accepted the papal decisions in regard to the Chinese rites, but it seems that he regarded them as dictated by ignorance. The general work of Christian missions
^ " La Chine et I'extreme Orient" in Revue dcs quedioiu historiques, April, 1885, by Jos. Brucker, s.j.
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 135
in China can, however, best be illustrated by another concrete example, from the journal of the Chinese priest, missionary, and notary Apostolic, Andre Ly.^ This extraordinary work extends from 1746 to 1763, and is written in excellent Latin. No other such minute and exhaustive account of missionary work in the eighteenth century exists.
Andre Ly was born in the last decade of the seven- teenth century at Tching-Kou in the province of
Chen-si. His family had been amonc^ the . , , ,
, . ^, . . "^ , , ® Andre Ly.
earliest Christian converts, and each genera- tion had retained its faith. He was taken to Macao by two priests of the French mission, Soci6U dcs Missions Etrangbxs'^ by whom he was taught Latin, and he was given the tonsure in 1709 or 1710, and sent to the college at Juthia, the capital of Siam. He remained there for fifteen years, learning and teaching, mingling in the Jansenist controversy, doubt- ful of the capacity of the Chinese for the work and self-sacrifice of the priesthood. At length, in 1725, he was ordained priest, and he was sent by the Society to preach the Gospel in his native land. In 1743 he received from the Propaganda the definite title of an apostolic missionary. He went first to Canton, thence to the province of Fuh-Kien, working for some time with a European priest, and obliged to fly with him when persecution broke out in 1729. He soon re- turned, then was sent to the province of Sutchuen, assisting the Spanish missionaries, who were working with splendid zeal, yet not without conflict of juris- diction, till at last he was given formal charge of five towns and districts in 1737. He wTote a manual for
^ Edited by Adrien Launay, Paris, 1906. - See above, p. 131.
136 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Chinese Christians explaining the sacraments and the moral laws of the Church. He paid many missionary- visits, he suffered arrest and imprisonment, and preached Christ to his captors. When the mandarins read his book they declared that they regretted having given pain to the preacher of so noble a religion. So year by year his work went on, sometimes with remarkable success, always with quietness and confidence. But in . 1746 the officials of the province of Fuh-
of Chinese ^^^^^^ complained to the Emperor Kien- officials Lung of the growth of Christianity, and he towards issued an edict by which he ordered that
. . ^i^" all foreign missionaries — with every sort of
tianity. ° "^
expression of polite regard for the religion of AYestern men — should be collected, sent to Macao, and thence shipped off to their respective countries. The edict threatens that punishment may fall on Chinese converts. In 1747 a further decree forbade the Chinese traders at Euh-Kien to adopt the religion of "The Lord of Heaven." In 1757 the British factory at Ningpo was closed, as a measure of precaution against the introduction of Christianity. The sup- pression, however, does not seem to have been harsh. The Chinese priests were subjected to much petty tyranny but were not seriously persecuted, and we find in 1753 an embassy from the King of Portugal thanking the emperor for his kindness to Portuguese subjects in China.
From 1746 Andre Ly remained alone at Sy Ch'wan, alone the representative of the Christian priesthood in one of tlie vast provinces of the Celestial Empire, with little news from the Christian world and no support save an annual letter from the directors of the seminary of his
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 137
mission, from the religious at Macao, and from the missionary bishop who had returned to Europe. Daily he said Mass, taught the children, visited the sick, ministered the Sacraments, and at least every year he visited the many parishes which were placed under his care. Work over so large an area could make little progress. But the good priest managed to retain the greater part of his flock in the faith, and each year to baptise several new converts. From 1750 he had a coadjutor, also of Chinese race. In 1754 a French priest also arrived to share his work, but his coming only brought new persecution, and Ly was denounced to the viceroy of the province and again suffered im- prisonment, and the French priest was deported to Canton, and thence to France, where he lived to be murdered in the Revolution nearly forty years later. Ly was released on having made a declaration of the truth and purity of Christianity. A year later he received another French missionary, Francois Peltier, for whom in forty years of missionary work and twenty-four of episcopacy much greater" success was reserved, and who remained with him as a faithful helper and son in the faith. First the one was imprisoned, then the other, but the work was carried on with unflagging zeal till the infirmities of age at last reduced the activity of the ardent missionary. Andre Ly died in 1774, aged eighty-two or eighty-three. " Non est inventus similis ei — he was adorned with the finest talents, he wrote many books, suffered many persecutions and torments : the other Chinese were far his inferiors." Such was the judgment of a European missionary.
The vigour and the minuteness of his journal show the power of this remarkal)le man. He was simple,
138 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
like all good missionaries, and like them full of abound- ing charity, gentle, long-suffering, imswervingly con- stant. His life is a powerful argument— strange that such argument should be needed — for the wisdom of training native missionaries, founding a native priest- hood— and, above all, fully trusting it when founded — wherever the Gospel of Christ is to be spread.
The English missions of later days have prospered where they have followed this course, failed where they have not.
A few words only can be given to missions less well known. In Japan many conversions were made, and here again the Christian missionaries contended with each The other. The successes of S. Francis Xavier
Church and his followers for a time were marvellous, in Japan. ;g^^|- political complications pursued the Jesuit mission throughout its course. Accusations of treason were bandied about, and at last in 1637 an imperial proclamation ordered that " the whole race of the Portuguese, with their mothers, nurses, and whatsoever belongs to them, shall be banished for ever." Any person teaching Christianity was to be seized, and rewards were offered for the capture of native Christians. Christians were entirely excluded from the country, and the policy of Japan for three centuries was exclusively anti-Christian even more than anti-foreign ; the very name for a foreigner was hateren (padre). ^ Thirty thousand Christian peasants in 1637 held out against persecution, but were at last all massacred. Dr. Engelbert Kaempfer"^ tells how a few Christians continued to exist, in great misery,
^ Brinkley's Japan, ii. 130.
^ Historia Imperii Japonici, 1727, p. 262.
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 139
and in 1688 three were arrested. They were, he says, " very ignorant of the Christian religion, knowing little more than the name of our Saviour and His mother, and yet so zealously attached to it that they chose rather to die miserably in gaol than by re- nouncing their faith, which they are often compelled to do, to procure their liberty." Though the out- ward profession of Christianity ceased, many were still believers in secret, and edicts were issued against it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Church was practically destroyed, and the country was closed for more than two centuries to foreigners.
In Ceylon and Java and other places the Dutch founded missions. In Africa the Portuguese and some heroic Capuchins carried the Gospel to Benin and the Congo, and the Queen of Matamba with many of her people was baptised in 1652. But the con- versions did not spread far beyond the sea coasts, or at all outside the Portuguese settlements.
So far we have seen success marred, as it so often is, by disputes among the preachers. But, in what- ever way, Christ was preached and con- verts were won, not only by the Jesuits ^^ j^^^-^ but by the Theatines and Augustinians, the Franciscans and Dominicans and the Capuchins. India was the most famous field of success. In Goa a splendid city grew up with magnificent cathedrals and monasteries, and the successors of S. Francis Xavier trained a native ministry and made the whole land Christian. Unfortunately, with Christianity was established the Inquisition, which had ^ power in Goa over every one except the viceroy and archbishop. In 1688 was published a
I40 THE AGE OF REVOLLTIOX
remarkable book by a French physician, Le Iklatioii de V Inquisition dc Goa, in which was described a visit which he paid to the capital of Portuguese India. For disputing on religious subjects, he was thrown into a dungeon and kept there until the triennial auto-da-fe had taken place. He was brought up before the tribunal, but only to be again remanded, and it was only in 1676 that he was sentenced to the loss of his goods and to five years in the galleys of Portugal. He was released in 1677, and so strongr was his feelincr that he broke his oaths of secrecy and revealed his sufferings.
There was no such secular aid in Southern India. In Madura Eobert de' Nobili first made his way by simulating the style of a Brahmin, and won a great Madura multitude. He was succeeded by Portu- and guese Jesuits, whose life was austere and
Robert de' ascetic like that of Hindu saints, and who Nobili. ],gp|- ^jjgjj. jjg^y converts apart from the
Europeans whose life too often was unworthy of their faith. In Southern India generally the Jesuit missions spread. Eobert de' Xobili, whose motto was "I will make myself an Indian that I may save the Indians," adapted the caste system to Christianity, lived till 1656, and left a community which was perhaps not much more than semi-Christian. But the Jesuits after him had won, it was said, 150,000 Christians in 1710.
The famous Portuguese missionary John de Britto did a great work between 1673 and his martyrdom in 1693. But there was much dissension, largely caused by the antagonism between the Portuguese Jesuits and the French Capuchins : the former approximating as
THE CHURCH BEYOND ELROPE 141
closely as they dared to Hinduism, the latter standing opposed to it in abhorrence. A\Tiile the image of the Blessed Virgin was carried by the one in the way that heathen idols were carried in procession and accom- panied by heathen musicians, the others were severe and restrained in all their ceremonies, and admitted catechumens only to the services of the Chm-ch, In 1702 a papal legate was sent to supervise the Jesuit missions. His jurisdiction was disputed. In 171-4 a Jesuit was appointed TOar-apostolic with power to purge the Church from idolatrous rites. Pondicherry was the scene of continual strife between Capuchins and Jesuits. At last the pope interfered and pro- nounced strongly against the Jesuits. Benedict XIV. disapproved of their methods and condemned all re- course to artifice or deceit (1744). After tliis the missions decayed : the Jesuit mission itself was form- ally suppressed.
Meanwhile the Syrian Christians who were Xestorian still lingered in Malabar. They had been conquered, it seemed, by the Jesuits and submitted to Eome at the Synod of Diamper in 1599. s. Thomas Attempts were made to suppress the Syrian Christians liturgy and ritual. The invasion of the ^ Dutch, who in 1656 captured Ceylon, seemed to promise a new hope to the Christians of Malabar. They applied to the Xestorian patriarch of Mosul, the Coptic patriarch of Cairo, and the Jacobite patriarch in Syria, to send them bishops. The first who was sent was captured by the Jesuits and is said (though the fact is disputed) to have been made a victim by the Inquisition in Cxoa. A new CarmeHte mission from Eome, arriving' at Caunanore in 1657, had everv
142 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
obstacle put in its way by the Jesuits, and intrigues were redoubled. But still at last a Carmelite was chosen bishop, was consecrated at Eome as Bishop of Hierapolis, reached Cochin in 1661 and was successful in establishing the Eoman obedience. But not for long. Cranganore was captured by the Dutch in 1662, Cochin in 1663 ; and the Jesuits and Carmelites had to fly, leaving a native Indian as bishop and vicar- apostolic till 1676, when he died. So the Syrian Eomanists continued.
But in 1665 Gregorius, bishop of Jerusalem, had con- secrated in India a Jacobite to be metropolitan of the Syrian Church. Mar-Thomas ruled till 1678, Mar- Andrew till 1685. But the church was split up between ISTestorians and Monophysites ; and the Eoman succession seems to have died out. About 1720 it is said that there were about 50,000 native Christians who belonged to Eome, about 50,000 who adhered to the Syrian body. The Danish Lutherans endeavoured, but in vain, to form a union with the Syrians and then founded independent missions. The Syrians would not join them because they lacked three things — "fasting days, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the adoration of the Blessed Virgin." But in the eighteenth century they made great advance, through the energy and devotion of the famous Danish missionary Swartz.
When the English made settlements in India they began sporadically to work for the Gospel, but the earliest provision both at Madras and Bom- Missions ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^® colonists. Active work for the heathen was, largely owing to the cir- cumstances of the East India Company, discouraged.
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 143
In 1806, when the English first began to take a real
interest in missionary work in Southern India, a report
distinguishes three classes of native Christians, the
Jacobites of S. Thomas, the Syrian Romanists who
had a Syrian rite, and the pure Eomanists who followed
the Latin use. Among the last worked the famous
Abbe Dubois, whose wonderful book on Hindu life and
customs, first published in 1817, shows the value to
learning of the labours of intelligent missionaries. Dr.
Claudius Buchanan, with the support of the Marquess
Wellesley, paid a visit of inspection, attended the Syrian
services, and did his best to prepare for a union
with the English Church. He visited also the Roman
missions and found the Portuguese influence very
strong, but he believed that three thousand Goanese
priests would gladly accept copies of the Latin and
Portuguese Vulgate. His efforts at last led to the
mission of the Church Missionary Society in 1816,
which declared its aim to be to teach the ^,
The clergy and people of the ancient Syrian church
Church and to counteract the Roman in- Missionary
fluence. "What charity and tender sym- Society,
pathy we should cultivate towards these
and similar relics of Apostolic Churches. How readily
should we acknowledge what is good in them, without
requiring of them conformity to our Protestant models
of liturgical worship or our Western notions," wrote
Bishop AVilson of Calcutta.
So far of Southern India; now farther East let us
turn. In 1627 Alexandre de Rhodes went cochin
to Tonquin, and is said in three years to China
have converted 5,000, and in 1634 to have and Siam.
had 30,000 Christians. Thence he went to Cochin
144 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
China, where he had also much success, but he was turned out. Alexander VII. appointed bishops to the mission, which still flourished, in 1658 ; and he sent priests of the French congregation for foreign missions. The Jesuits who followed Alexandre de Ehodes resented their presence, and the dispute was laid before the pope : the Jesuits triumphed. In 1684 Louis XIV. sent an embassy to the king of Siam, asking him to accept Christianity ; and the king allowed a mission to be begun. His chief minister at the time was a Greek named Constantine, who seems to have played a double part. A second French mission in 1688 caused a revolu- tion in which the king and his minister were killed. But the mission was not utterly extinguished, for at the end of the century it still had a vicar-apostolic in charge of it and a seminary for native priests.
In America the colonists — Spanish, Portuguese, French — spread the Gospel. In the north their success
was great in Canada, the Jesuits again . ° . leading the way and planting missions in
Maryland, and, followed by Dominicans,
Augustinians, Carmelites, and Capuchins, spreading
far and wide, and, assisted at times by the secular and
Protestant arm, preaching to the Indians, from 1642.
In Canada the success of the Eoman Catholics was
great and continuous, and the English con- C^ ^ d ^^est did not disturb the religion of the
people. In the rest of North America, on the whole, during the period of which we speak, they were a failure, and the failure was due to the following causes : (1) dependence on Eoyal patronage ; (2) im- plication in Indian feuds ; (3) instability of Jesuit effort ; and (4) scantiness of the French population.
THE CHURCH BEYOXD EUROPE 145
But the English missions, in which we are more interested, received their first great stimulus from the foundation of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1698, and of the Society for the Propa- gation of the Gospel in 1701, both having in their minds the British " plantations abroad," and the " con- version of the negroes and the native Indians." To see what was done we must look backwards.^
At the beginning of the seventeenth century Dutch traders established themselves in the New Netherlands of North America. New Amsterdam was founded, conquered and recovered, and afterwards started its famous history as New York. From the first the province lacked both the unity which gave strength to New England and a comprehensive machinery of self-government. The religion of the colony was Calvinistic : the clergy were responsible to the classis of Amsterdam. The English colonists were The for the most part Dissenters from the English Church of England. When the land became colonies. the property of the Duke of York the utmost that was required of them was prayer for the Eoyal Family and observance of Gunpowder Plot Day and the Martyrdom of Charles I. The Dissent was not re- stricted— the "polypiety" which the Massachusetts Puritan abhorred found a home in New England. In 1675, it would appear, came the first ordained priest of the English Church — Nicholas van Eenssalaer, a Dutch- man, who had been ordained by Bishop Seth "Ward, but
^ ^Yith the aid of ^Ir. J. A. Doyle's English in America. See also T. Hughes, S.J., History of the Society of Jesus in North America (only vol. i. published as yet, which ends in 1645, with a volume of docu- ments which illustrates the history down to the nineteenth century).
146 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
who conducted liis ministry " conformably to the Re- formed Church of Holland." In 1686, James, as king, ordered that every minister and schoolmaster should have a certificate from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and something like an Anglican Church system was established. Among the Indians of the Five Nations French Jesuits were at work. jSTot very much was done, but it is said that the Hurons were "converted in platoons and baptised in battalions." After the Eevolu- tion of 1688 a more definite establishment was made — licences were to be required from the Bishop of London, and stipends and glebes were to be provided, and toleration of all sects, except Papists, was guaranteed. When Lord Cornbury came into office at the beginning of the eighteenth century, political partisanship gave impetus to Anglicanism, and before long the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel undertook missions to the Indians. Disputes in New York were fostered by the intolerance of the governor. In New Jersey he acted in much the same way, and founded a Church of England ministry, by the direction of the Crown. In Pennsylvania, on the other hand, Penn's tolerance allowed any twenty inhabitants to procure a minister by petition to the Bishop of London. Penn himself saw the elements of truth in the beliefs of the Indians, and appealed to them on common ground. " The great God that made thee and me and all the world," he said, " incline our hearts to love justice." The whole doctrine of toleration is summed up when Penn writes of liberty of conscience — "I ever understood that to be the natural right of all men, and that he that had a religion without it his religion were none of his own." One of the ablest of the early Quaker settlers, Keith,
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 147
took Holy Orders in 1700 and became missionary of S.P.G-. We will quote one admirable passage from our latest authority on the fascinating personality of Penn.i Penn, says Mr. Doyle : —
" Out-Quakered those who were recognised as the founders of his sect. Fox admitted formally and in theory that the divine spirit dwelt within every man. In practice he would have found it hard to recognise its presence in the squire who committed Quakers to gaol or the priest who served in a steeplehouse. In Penn the formal principles of his creed worked in harmony with a kindly and sympathetic pgnn. temper. He was by nature the friend of all men, be their condition what it might, and his in- nate simplicity and independence saved him alike from servility in dealing with the rich or patronage towards the poor. Penn may, indeed, justly claim that praise which is often claimed with no truth for earlier Non- conformists, of being in the true sense of the word tolerant. He is the follower of Jeremy Taylor, the forerunner of John Mill. As fully as either does he recognise that a dogmatic creed, has no value in it un- less it be the root of active morality; that human tests can measure only the morality, and that a mere formal compliance with any particular creed, such as can be exacted by tests, is valueless. ' That man cannot be said to have any religion that takes it by another man's choice, not his own.' ' The way of force makes instead of an honest dissenter but a hypocritical con- formist, than whom nothing is more detestable to God and man.' It is clear that his attitude was made easy to him by the fact that he himself was indifferent to
^ English in America, vol. iv. (1907) pp. 481-3.
148 THE AGE OF RP:V()LUTION
dogma, that religion was for him not a philosophy but a moral code. He protests against the attempt to overlay religious teaching with metaphysical proposi- tions ; it is quite clear that he could not in the least enter into the feelings of those with whom the differ- ence between Athanasius and Arius, between Armin- ian and Calvinist, is vital. Penn, indeed, fully antici- pates the eighteenth - century doctrine : ' He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.' It is hardly needful to point out how that view overlooks the fact that dogma may be itself an influence towards the for- mation of character. And it also overlooks this, that the spiritual life of the individual and of the society do not stand on precisely the same footing. Dogmatic articles of faith, embodying the convictions of some, and outraging those of none, may be valuable as a basis for outward agreement."
An interesting commentary on the principles of Penn is to be found in the words of a French abbe whose book, of travels and history mingled, was one of the most famous literary successes of the eighteenth century. " It is partly to the discovery of the New World that we shall owe that religious toleration which ought to be, and certainly will be, introduced in the Old." ^
We pass from the study of the origin of separate communities to the history of the American Colonies as a whole, to a richer ecclesiastical interest and a closer connection with the Church of England. But it was long before there was any proper spiritual provision for the colonists on the frontier. In 1729 we find a political Commission accompanied by a
^ Raynal, History of the Indies, vi. 259.
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 149
chaplain who was continually called on to baptise as well as to preach the Gospel. The theological eccen- tricities of governors such as Burnet hardly served to advance the cause of Christ, and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers were too often occupied chiefly with theological squabbles.
The revival of Church life in England which marked the reign of Queen Anne had its influence in the colonies. Toleration was, happily, spreading Qj-owth in the Northern Colonies, where Connecticut of the set a bright example to Massachusetts, and English Yale was founded, under Anglican influ- ^^^ ' ences, as a counterpoise to the rigid Puritanism of Harvard. In the middle of the eighteenth century the Anglicans in Massachusetts were vigorous in prosely- tising, and at last won freedom from payment for the support of Nonconformist ministers and worship ; and it seems also to have gained by reaction from the stern Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards and the mechani- cal enthusiasm of Whitefield. The denunciation of the writings of Tillotson by the latter brought about a vigorous conflict. He too often denounced the hard- working clergy and the missionaries of the S.P.G., but his own missionary work was not without its value.
In the Southern Colonies the difficulties were much greater. " The Church had neither sympathy nor op- position to help her." And here especially Need the al)sence of a bishop was deeply felt, of episco- Even Nonconformists deplored it, and looked P^^^' for the foundation of episcopacy with none of the animosity of the Puritan New Englander, but as a boon for true religion. To the want of such an inspiring force may, perhaps, be attributed the long
ISO THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
slackness as regards negro conversion. In 1727 Gibson, Bishop of London, put out a powerful letter on the subject. Some of the earlier missionaries of the S.P.G. were even stopped in their work by the planters, and to allay the fears of slaveowners Acts were passed declaring that baptism did not confer emancipation. The conversion of the Indians, too, was not pushed forward. A pathetic petition of the Mohegan Indians, in the middle of the eighteenth century, for the services of a Christian minister is sig- nificant of English neglect, and it was the Moravians who first did any large work of conversion.
The New England religious bodies, indeed, did an important religious work, but their influence told for division, not for iinity ; the missionary efforts were those of individuals and sections, not of a homogeneous body. And the story of John Wesley in Georgia illustrates this. Ardent but tactless, he spoiled his best efforts by his resolute individualism. Wesley was a failure as a missionary. It is an illuminative fact.
There is little in this record of missionary effort of which we can be proud ; but, on the other hand, we are far too much inclined to forget that in most cases, all through history, the beginnings of missions have been slow and extraordinarily difficult. Yet it must be allowed that England had not risen to the height of the appeal to her Church. We must judge this from without as well as within.
So much may be said of the work of the Church in the American Colonies. But it is well also to note how this work was regarded at home. It does not appear that any diocesan control was exercised over the Church in America till after the Restoration. It
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 151
is true that in 1638 Laud planned to send a bishop to America, but, the troubles coming on, the project was never carried out. After 1660 it seems to -pj^g have been taken for granted that the English jurisdiction over America belonged to the Church Bishop of London; but it was not till Henry ^ °"^^' Compton became bishop in 1675 that any serious steps were taken to exercise it. Churches were built, grants were made to clergy and schoolmasters, and the diocesan powers of the see of London were ad- mitted. Individual enterprise was stimulated, and after a while the great Missionary Society for Pro- pagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts was founded by the influence of Archbishop Tenison and Bishop Compton in 1701, which set itself ^^^ °[*qjj heartily to work in teaching, preaching, and endeavouring to procure the creation of an American episcopate. A Eoyal Commission w^as granted m 1728 by King George II. to the Bishop of London to exercise spiritual and ecclesiastical juris- diction in the American Plantations, but Bishop Sher- lock pointed out in 1759 how futile this was, and how impossible it was to exercise such jurisdiction so far away. Pitt was teaching Englishmen to think, and act, imperially ; and the Church did not desire to lag behind. Sherlock, failing in other ways, " was the in- augurator of a new policy, which consisted in with- holding the ministrations of English bishops from the episcopalians in the colonies for the purpose of forcing them to demand an episcopate of their own." ^ Many thought that there would be political as well as
^ Ci-oss, The Anglican Ei)iscopate and the American Colonies, p. 113.
152 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
religious gain from the step ; but English statesmen, destitute of political as well as religious foresight, put endless obstacles in the way. Plan after plan was suggested, advocated by such men as Bishop Butler Endeavours ^^^^ Archbishop Seeker, but in vain. In to found America the Church was growing ; in New bishoprics. England it won a new strength by the accession of several eminent Presbyterians ; but at the same time, as political independence made strides, there grew up a fear that the establishment of bishops by Act of Parliament would emphasise the political subjection of America. " So certain," wrote Dr. Eichard Price, " do the Bishops in particular think the speedy conquest of America that they have formed a committee for taking into consideration measures for settling Bishops in America, agreeably to an in- timation at the conclusion of the Archbishop of York's sermon in February last to the Society for pro- pagating the Gospel." ^ The war, in truth, made the difficulty insuperable : a statement so distorted as this shows it plainly enough. Controversy waxed warm in America. In England religious effort was not relaxed. But the Ee volution had given a new aspect to the question. When in 1783 the severance was made, it be- came possible for the American Church to stand alone, and to take its own steps to secure an episcopate. Americans applied to Benjamin Franklin tion of (o^ ^^^ persons) to aid them, and he in his
Bishop ignorance asked the French bishops and Seabury, j^i^q papal nuncio at Paris. At length ^^ ^' Samuel Seabury, sent from America by the
missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the
^ Sir G. 0. Trevelyaii, The American Revolution, Part III., pp. 70, 71.
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 153
Gospel, having failed to secure consecration in Eng- land, was consecrated on November 14th, 1784, by the primus of the Scots Church. The objection to bishops had been based, there is no doubt, mainly on political grounds, and it is an instance of how gravely the Church's work was crippled in the eighteenth century by its association with the State. This was due in no way to the English "establishment" of the Church ; the difficulty was found all over Europe and throughout the field of European missionary energy. Establishment — still more endowment — had nothing to do with it. It was due to the Erastian tendencies of the statesmanship of the age. The ideal of a free Church in a free State is quite compatible with Establishment, as is that of free Science, Medicine, Law ; for it means merely that the State, while it gives legal sanction to the position of the Church, should leave it untrammelled in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical. But freedom may perhaps go too far ; certainly it may, if it is to be arbitrarily revoked, and if religious work is suddenly broken down by the intervention of political factors. The greatest examples of the dangers which beset political intervention in religious work, of the cruelty and shame which may be caused by statecraft, are afforded by the history of the Jesuit settlements in South America.
The South American mission began in 1580, when the Jesuits were invited to settle in the basin of the Parana and Paraguay. The original Spanish Missions settlers had brought but twenty clergy, who in South could obviously do nothing towards the America. conversion of the vast masses of heathen. The Jesuits came. They settled on the left bank of the river
154 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Parana. They were well received by the gentle Indians, who from the first threw themselves on their pro- tection. They soon showed their strength by sup- pressing evil customs of slavery and vice which the Spaniards had introduced. The early history of the mission was a chequered one. But in 1648 the Com- pany received permission from Madrid to arm the population which they had converted,and thus to protect themselves against the mamelucos (offspring of colonists and negresses) and the barbarous Tupis. From that The moment they developed in peace, and by
Jesuits in the beginning of the eighteenth century Paraguay, ^vledi over thirty-three garden cities in a territory surrounded by mountain, rivers, and sea of about the size of Great Britain. There they discovered india-rubber and cultivated quinine in a sort of des- potic Utopia. It was a very fertile land, inhabited by a variety of Indian tribes. Marvellously the natives fell into the system of their Jesuit teachers, the scheme of this Platonic republic. The priests and brothers of the Society settled down among the natives, and set to work to turn them into a kingdom of Churchmen and vassals. The land was divided into " reductions," each of which had at least two Jesuits in command, ruling like Plato's philosopher-king, and also its own officers of health and of " decorum." Of the towns the largest had 8,000, the smallest about 2,000 inhabitants. The land was divided out as each family needed it, and none had permanent or absolute possession. Save the Jesuits, all Europeans were excluded from dwell- ing in this ideal State, and were only admitted on rare occasions and under strict supervision. The civilisation of Europe was shut out. No money was
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 155
allowed; all went by exchange; the money used in the sacrament of marriage was kept by the priests and lent at the moment for its ceremonial use. Education up to a certain standard was fostered : a language was formed out of the five local dialects, and was imposed on the people, but neither dictionary nor grammar was allowed. Though an army was formed, and drilled, and proved itself efficient later, yet the outlook for a century was all peace and happiness, won, so it seemed, simply by the preaching of the Truth, and by lives that conformed to it. It was a life of strict rule, without and within. Everywhere the villages were regularly built, with walls, and well-kept roads leading to the central church and school. Goa reproduced itself in miniature on the South American plains.
Nominally chosen by the governor of Buenos Ayres, the Jesuit rulers were really nominated by their pro- vincial, and they permitted no interference j^^^ from the royal officers. They ruled over Power the Indians with uncontrolled power. No of the liberty was allowed. The Indians, said their Jesuits. masters, were not capable of using it rightly. They were made to work; but their tasks were introduced with music and minstrelsy as well as with prayer and consecration to God. Their teachers lived among them, in houses like their own, with no luxury, no pleasure but their religious duties and their gardens which they planted on the rich soil. They became rich ; it was impossible that it could be otherwise, for all that they needed was made for them in the work- shops, and they sold much but never bought. They had no expense save to feed and clothe their people. They had a monopoly of the trade and the means of
156 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
transit, which carried their goods to Buenos Ayres, to Santa Fe, Peru, Chile, Brazil. It is not to be wondered at that their annual revenue has been com- puted as high as a quarter of a million pounds sterling, and that Cardinal Saldanha,-^ entrusted with an in- vestigation by Benedict XIV., declared that the Portu- guese Jesuits were engaged in traffic forbidden by the canons. But they seemed to have concealed their riches so that even at Eome they were unknown to Eicci, the general of the company. The government officials in South America became their submissive assistants; and in ecclesiastical affairs they held tliem- selves exempt from the control of the bishops. They seemed to rule over a kingdom, well organised and armed, and recognising only a sovereignty in the king of Spain. The great commercial company to which the whole society seemed transformed in the eighteenth century appeared supreme in South America. Then the Jesuit State of Paraguay became an object of greed to Spain and Portugal alike. The time came
when the greed could no longer be sup- troubles, pressed. In 1750 a treaty between Spain
and Portugal transferred to the latter a large part of the territory on the east bank of the Uruguay river, from which the Jesuits were ordered at once to withdraw. The king of Portugal ordered that from the Amazon to the Paraguay no Jesuit should have power. The treaty was universally re- garded as unfavourable to Spain, and this fact seemed to justify the Spanish officials in America in at first giving their aid to the Jesuits who refused to submit, and in suffering the natives to chase from their lands ^ See below, pp. 175-6.
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 157
the boundary commission sent to fix the limits assigned in the treaty to each Power. But before long the governments were compelled to have recourse to arms. They sustained several defeats, and the Indians de- fended the mountain entrances to their territories with vigour which made even the most primitive weapons formidable. For years they defied the armies of two European Powers. The Jesuits in encouraging their resistance were inspired no doubt by a genuine grief for the threatened destruction of flourishing Christian communities ; if they themselves were with- drawn, the natives would have no teacher; and the Portuguese showed no willingness to undertake a national missionary campaign. But there can be no doubt also that their resistance was inspired by other and more material motives. Such was the view of the secular clergy of South America.
The resistance which the Indians, led by the Jesuits, maintained against the armies of Spain and Portugal lasted till 1756. It was overcome only by vast expenditure of blood and treasure. P^^^''"^" Hardly more than ten years later it was missions, followed by the expulsion of the Com- pany of Jesus from the whole of the Spanish terri- tories. The expulsion was accomplished with difficulty and contemplated by Christians with mixed feelings. Already when the fathers had left the communities they had so long guided the natives relapsed into bar- barism. But the Spanish secular clergy appeared to view the result with calmness. The bishop of Buenos Ayres, who had deprived the Jesuits of the sacraments till they yielded to the earlier commands of the king, now repeated his declaration that their rule was tyran-
158 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
nous, that they were rich and aggressive and insupport- able. The expulsion was accomplished without serious contest, often amid the tears of the natives, sometimes with their delight at the promised freedom and pos- session of their lands.
From Chile, Mexico, Peru, California, Cuba, San Domingo, the Philippines, came the same tale. From Brazil the Jesuits were expelled with great cruelty in 1760. But if the Jesuits were banished the influ- ence of the Church was never destroyed. For example, the " largest landowner in Mexico was the Church ; and as there was no religious toleration, it was The tlie Church of the whole nation, the only
Church teacher of the moral law to the natives, in Mexico, ^j^^ ^^^e channel through which the ma- jority of the people had access to the civilisation of Christendom. Therefore the clergy enjoyed an in- fluence of which there has been no example in Europe for the last five hundred years, and formed a strong basis of aristocracy and the most serious barrier to the realisation of the democratic principle that nominally prevailed." ^ But influence such as this, bad or good, was lost throughout a great part of South America. On Paraguay, which had seemed so fair a Christian land, darkness descended. The settlements were deserted, the churches fell to ruin, the tropical forest overwhelmed the Christian villages : few of the Christian natives stood firm, almost all relapsed into barbarism. It is one of the most piteous tragedies of missionary history.
What conclusion can be drawn from the sad tale ? Amid the conflict of evidence it is difficult to decide.
^ Lord Acton, Historical Essays and Studies, p. 145.
THE CHURCH BEYOND EUROPE 159
Charity hesitates to condemn a society which had seemed to bring to earth a golden age of Christian peace. But freedom it had not brouglit, and freedom, sooner or later, will always avenge herself. Chris- tianity involves freedom, and that was what the English missions with all their failures remembered, and the missions of the Eoman Church too often forgot.
Eeligion continued to play an important part in the history of the South American States. Eeligion, in education, in political office, and through the Jesuit missions, had important place. But the clergy were inferior men, some of them outcasts from Spain, and the regulars, in whose hands was most power, were often scandalously immoral. Among the secular clergy the rule of celibacy was often disregarded. The In- quisition, which had already a long history behind it in Mexico, Lima, and Cartagena, had a great deal of power. The principle of the Spaniards was to treat the natives like Europeans : this had its good and bad sides ; but it was by no means always observed. The Peruvian Indians decreased greatly through ill-treatment. It was the Jesuits who had preserved the principle, when the greed of traders and politicians had forgotten it.
It is not a little significant that the representatives
of America in the Spanish Cortes of 1810 demanded
the restoration of the Society in America.
Their expulsion was, indeed, a grievous blow ^:^^:^„„^„ ^ . missionary
to religion and civilisation. In the Orinoco work at region, where Humboldt travelled in 1799- the begin- 1800, the great scientific traveller recog- ningofthe nised the good work, in spite of many "^"^^^^""^ defects, of the "great and useful establish- ments of the American missions," controlling countries
i6o THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
four or five times as large as France and forming a vast zone round the European dominions ; and this estimate does not include the extensive missions of California and of the northern provinces of New Spain. " It may safely be alleged that so vast a region of savagery has never elsewhere been pacified with so much patience and so little violence, and that an immense inde- fensible frontier has never won comparative security at so little cost of life and treasure."^ The strength of the Spanish rule, in spite of failures and defects, it is well said, lay " more in the region of ideas than in that of facts." This remained true after the provinces had won their independence.
1 Cambridge Modern History, "The Restoration," p. 271.
CHAPTER XI
CHARLES HI. AiND THE SUPPRESSION OF THE JESUITS
IN the eighteenth century Spain, the country in Europe on which the religious movements of the sixteenth century had had least effect, at last under- went some changes in its ecclesiastical constitution. This was chiefly due to the energy of a reforming monarch, the beneficent and laborious Charles III.
The Spanish Bourbons had found the Church in their new land much more securely established than it was in France. Not only in wealth and dignity was it untouched, but its influence Spanish over the people had never been lost. The Bourbons militant character of Spanish Christianity, ^^ ^^® a relic of the long Crusade, was illustrated by the enthusiasm with which in 1720 and 1732 cam- paigns were undertaken against the Moors. Orri, the adviser whom Louis XIV. sent to his grandson Philip v., produced a plan for the reduction of the enormous privileges of the Church ; and Macanas, a jurist, laid another plan before the Council of Castile. Then the Inquisition took up the matter, denouncing the schemes and their authors. Philip took advantage of the absence of the chief inquisitor. Cardinal Giudice, on a mission to Paris, to depose him. A fierce conflict ensued; but in the end the Crown had entirely to submit, and the power of the Church was untouched. M i6i
i62 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
During the long period of the ascendancy of Eliza- beth Farnese, the second wife of Philip V., Church
questions were quiescent. The clergy were of iv^-^ ^^^^^ stirred by the proposal of Eipperda to
take the uninvested capital of the ecclesias- tical foundations for the purpose of founding a Bank of Spain. Under Carvajal a concordat in 1753 settled some disputed questions. By this arrangement the pope gave up the right of appointment to the smaller benefices in Spain which had been claimed and at times exercised by the Curia, reserving fifty-two which he should himself present to distinguished Spanish clergy and those who had rendered services to the Eoman see. The king became patron of all those benefices which for eight months in the year had been filled up by the pope, and his nominees needed no papal confirmation. The pope was compensated for the_ benefices he surrendered by a payment producing an income equal to that which the Curia had received for institution to them. The document in which the Concorclato was found, the "Apostolic constitution" and " brief " were published, the Italian and Spanish in parallel columns, and the Latin of the pope's ratifica- tion, also with its Spanish rendering, by the order of Ferdinand VL, at Madrid, in 1754. So happy was the conclusion believed to be that the document in its printed form ends with a sonnet " Con el motivo del nuevo concordato," by Don Joseph Benegasi y Luxan, promising eternal fame to the minister —
"Reflexivo, capaz, cauto y jDrudente,"
by whom it had been carried out, and a " glossa, en octavas, del soneto antecedente," eulogising the
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 163
" amado Eey " and his minister. The praise was still more deserved by Benedict XIV., a wise and conciliatory pontiff who read the signs of the times. But Benedict died in 1758, Ferdinand in 1759.
With the accession of Charles III. a new era began. Spain was the country at once most medieval and most modern in its Catholicism; It was the country of the Inquisition and of the '^^^.^"' Jesuits. Not that either of these bodies j^g orig-in was confined to Spain, but that there they seemed to be most at home, least controlled by the power of the State.
The object 1 of the Inquisition can hardly be better expressed than in the words of the learned historian and severe critic, Dr. Henry Charles Lea.-
" The Inquisition was organised for the eradication of heresy and the enforcement of unity of belief. We shall have occasion to see how elastic became the
^ As to its origin, a recent view demands our attention. The bishop of Beauvais, Mgr. Doiiais, has written an extremely interesting book, in which he discusses the motive of the Papacy in instituting a per- manent jurisdiction in cases of heresy, and discusses the procedure, basing his investigations chiefly on the writings of the canonists and on the manuals of inquisitors. The Papacy established the Inquisi- tion^ and Mgr. Douais agrees with Dr. Lea that there was no feeling of opposition to the institution of the Holy Office. The original jurisdiction, however^ he regards as residing in the pope, and he thinks that the creation of a permanent index delegatus was due to the impossibility of the Papacy dealing with the vast and growing heresies of the Middle Age. He discusses various cases which might suggest an earlier origin, but decides that the institution was really due to Gregory IX. , and that the Inquisition was in full working over a large part of Europe by 1235. He believes that the motive was to take out of the hands of the State, which under Frederick II. was arbitrary, unjust, and itself "suspect," a jurisdiction which it was likely to exercise unfairly, and which was in no sense a part of its proper functions.
2 History of the Spanish Inquisition^ vol. ii. p. 1.
i64 THE AGE OF REVOLUTIOX
definition of heresy, and we liave seen how far afield its extinction led the operations of the Holy Office ; but, to the last, the suppression of unorthodox belief remained the ostensible object of its existence. It is not easy, at the present day, for those accustomed to universal toleration to realise the importance attached by statesmen in the past to unity of belief or the popular abhorrence for any deviation from the standard of dogma. These convictions were part of the mental and moral fibre of the community, and were the outcome of the assiduous teachings of the Church for centuries."
On the other hand, it seems that before the thir- teenth century the cognisance of heresy was a natural attribute of the episcopal office, and that the pope then called up to himself all such cases and gave them to the Inquisition. But the bishops occasionally claimed their original rights. This is found as late as the period of which we are now speaking. In 1666 the Barcelona tribunal obliged the bishop of Solsona to give up the papers which he had received in testimony against some heretics, and even began to persecute him till the " Suprema " stopped the affair.
So far as to origin and object. The proceedings in general were severe, and deserved the epithet of in- quisitorial, but Dr. Lea gives cases, such as one in 1754, wdiich show the Inquisition in a favour- in the ^^^^ light. It claimed and obtained juris- eighteenth diction over all the religious Orders; the century Jesuits chiefly struggled against this, and in Spain. ^^^^ struggle (which an edict of 1732 shows to have continued for a long time) was proba-
CHAHLES III. AND THE JESUITS 165
biy never ended in favour of the office. The ques- tion of appeals to Konie is illustrated by the long case of Villanueva, compromised in some pretended visions and prophecies, who was first acquitted and then again arrested and sentenced. An appeal was made to the pope, whose decision for the rehearing of the case the Spanish Inquisition refused to re- ceive. The case dragged on for thirty- two years, the pope winning in the end ; but the Suprema always refused to accept it as a precedent, and the Bourbons forbade all appeals to Eome from the Inquisition. The number of tribunals and officials continually increased, in spite of repeated efforts throughout the seventeenth century to check the increase, and the offices were often transmitted hereditarily. Thus a class was created which was extremely dangerous to the public weal. A parallel instance of how deeply rooted was the persecuting canker is the history of limjncza (the de- mand for old Christians of the purest lineage, as opposed to descendants of Moriscos or Jews, for public offices). In Majorca actual persecution seems to have resulted, and much disturbance in consequence, till quite the end of the eighteenth century.
Secondly, we must remember that the Inquisition, instituted originally by the Catholic kings, was a source of profit to the Crown, which refused to share the fines and confiscations with any one, and late in the seventeenth century a considerable sum came to the treasury from this source. Pecuniary punishment was common in Spain, in contrast to Italy, where (except in the Spanish possessions) such fines were rare, and when exacted were always given to charit- able uses. The treatment of prisoners was not always
1 66 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
bad. There were cases where prisoners declared they were better off than at home; but no doubt more com- monly the prisons were worthy of all Quevedo says about them. Also we may note that, though perjury was not uncommon, there was usually laudable care as to the evidence required for conviction. To its jurisdiction in cases of heresy the Spanish Inquisition added after the Lutheran Eeformation the censorship of the Press. In the eighteenth century this was more and more felt to be irksome and oppressive.
The penalties inflicted by the Inquisition are what Its ^^^s given it the odious name it bears, lead-
punish- ing up by gradations of torture to the auto- ments. fj^.f^ itself. With regard to torture, Dr.
Lea^ points out that torture was adopted by the In- quisition as a matter of course from the secular law, but adopted reluctantly in Spain, and that —
"The popular impression that the inquisitorial torture-chamber was the scene of exceptional refine- ment in cruelty, of specially ingenious modes of in- flicting agony, and of peculiar persistence in extorting confessions is an error due to sensational writers who have exploited credulity. The system was evil in con- ception and in execution, but the Spanish Inquisition, at least, was not responsible for its introduction, and, as a rule, was less cruel than the secular courts in its application, and confined itself more strictly to a few well-known methods."
The Spanish branch, then, must be admitted to have compared favourably with the Eoman Inquisition, and with the procedure of secular courts in Spain itself, and in the Netherlands so late as 1792. But still the
^ Op. cit., vol. iii. p. 2.
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 167
story of torture, lasting on well into the eighteenth century, is terrible indeed, and ghastly are the details which Dr. Lea has collected and tells in a most matter-of-fact way. It was not till 1798 that the scope of torture was seriously re- stricted, or till after the restoration of the Bourbons that it was entirely abolished by Pius VIL It is probable that much depended on individual tribunals, for we find complaints in 1654 that many crimes re- mained unpunished because of the carelessness of the preliminary investigations.
As might be expected, some of the worst cases of cruelty are recorded from America, from Lima and from Mexico. Much depended on the temper of the inquisitors, " who might be stern or humane," but the genuine and obstinate heretic w^as never spared, and the case of Francisco Marco, tried at Barcelona in 1718 for bigamy, illustrates both the reluctance of the courts to pronounce an acquittal and the serious de- termination of the Suprema to punish inquisitors who neglected to do so when it w^as just. The custom of wearing, and then hanging up, the penitential garment called the san henito seems to have become slack in the seventeenth century and practically extinct in the eighteenth. It was regarded as a relaxation of the penalty that the condemned should be throttled before the auto-de-fe culminated in burning. Till well on in the eighteenth century the whole auto was celebrated with great pomp and publicity, and wdth immense ceremonial and display : from 1680 the secular officials received the condemned only outside the church, when the religious act was over. jSTo doubt towards the end the burnings in effigy, instead of actually, became more
i68 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
common; but this probably meant very often only that the accused was kept in prison till he died. Jurisdiction was claimed over heretics of whatever nation, and over Jews, Moriscos, Protestants, and foreigners. It was actually not till 1797 that the Inquisition was forbidden to investigate the religion of those who were not Spanish subjects.
Side by side with this history may be named, very briefly, that of the Inquisition in Portugal. In that The country there was a long conflict with Eome,
Inquisition and at one time every see but one was i" vacant. The persecutions of the New Chris-
or uga. . ^i^jjg^ against which Antonio Yieira, the Apostle of Brazil, protested, led to a conflict between the Inquisition and the Company of Jesus, of which he was a distinguished member, for he was himself incarcerated in the prisons of the Holy Office. Ptome seems to have acted better than Portugal in this regard.
When the Marquis of Pombal came into power in 1750, he at once proceeded to deal with the difficulty which had arisen. The position of the Inquisition was clearly dangerous to the State, and, no less, contrary to all the ideas of public welfare and scientific progress to which the new minister was devoted. In 1751 an edict was issued which ordered that no auto-da-fe should take place without the approval of the Government, and that the Crown should act as Court of Appeal in all cases originally brought before the Inquisition.
But, to return to Spain, it was not only with definite heresy tliat the Inquisition dealt ; or, at least, that offence was capable of a very wide interpretation. Spain was one of the homes of mysticism. S. Teresa,
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 169
most famous and most human of Spanish saints, had many successors. But they did not always -^ .■ ^^ remain within the bounds of the faith, for Maria de Agreda, the confidante and spiritual adviser of Philip IV., who died in 1665, wrote books which were condemned at Eome as early as 1681, and by the Sorbonne in 1696. Yet the Spanish Inquisition form- ally permitted her works to be read, and they eventually disappeared from the Index Uxjmrgatorius. Efforts, however, to procure the canonisation of the author have always failed. Then Spanish mysticism became closely associated with some remarkable developments in Italy. A mystical Society was founded in Milan, and was suppressed by the Inquisition, but its teaching spread over Italy, and was revived by the influence of the great Spanish mystic, Miguel de Molinos. He was a great preacher and teacher at Eome, and his Guida Spirituale (1675), approved by distinguished theologians of many religious orders, had an enormous success. So wide was his influence, and so capable of misinter- pretation were his doctrines, that the greatest alarm was aroused, and the Jesuits, assisted before long by the Dominicans and Franciscans, took up the task of procuring his condemnation.^ His ecstatic teaching had led to acts of immorality, and he had j^Qj^j^Qg come almost unconsciously to cast away all serious obedience to the rules of religion. He was condemned in 1687, and remained in prison till his death in 1696. The crowd which heard the details of his enormities interrupted the tale with repeated cries of " Burn liim ! " The Spanish Inquisition waited
^ See above, p, 44. Dr. H. C. Lea has proved (vol. iv. p. 57) that they were fully justified.
lyo THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
for his condemnation, and then pronounced a similar act and forbade the circulation of his great book. "Molinists" survived for some time in Spain, and they are believed ^ to have shown generally "a strange intermixture of sensuality and spirituality." The case of Joseph Fernandez de Toro, bishop of Oviedo, who was condemned in 1719 to perpetual suspension from sacerdotal functions and imprisonment for life, is a striking example. This corruption of true mysticism continued for a long time, passing often into deliberate imposture, and cases of its condemnation are found well into the nineteenth century.
Much curious light is thrown upon the history of sorcery and occult arts by the records of black art ^^^^ Inquisition, and the careful investiga- tion which was insisted on led gradually to a rational view of the whole subject. In 1774 the Portuguese Inquisition, under the influence of Pombal, practically declared the whole matter, as well as the alleged compact with the devil, to be an imposture and superstition, but the Spanish Suprema seems to have retained some sort of belief in it even to 1818, and books of imaginary devil-worship were reprinted and actually believed.
Whatever may have been the origin of the Inquisi- p ,... tion its political activity was, from the time
of the reyes catolicos, very considerable. As late as the War of Spanish Succession the Inquisition was used by the kings as a political agent, and through- out the eighteenth century there were cases of ex- tension of the sphere of the Suprema for suppression of political opinion. When the Cortes at Cadiz con- ^ Dr. Lea (iv. 71).
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 171
sidered the question of the final suppression, this prostitution of an ecclesiastical tribunal was one of the causes given. It is curious to find that exporting horses to France fell under the cognisance of this universal investigator.
Such was the position of the Inquisition in the Spanish Peninsula. That of the Jesuits The was even more outwardly impressive. They Jesuits formed four provinces, and their numbers *" Spain, were great. But their power rested, not as in America largely on their commerce, but upon their control of learning and their spiritual direction. The ancient uni- versities, so long the glory of Spain, had sunk in the eigliteenth century into decay. The Inquisition, with its perpetual hunt for heresy — a fruitful sport in universities always — had checked their intellectual progress and prevented the study of modern sciences. Even after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1768, the professors at Salamanca contemned the discoveries of Newton. When Charles came to the throne there was not a single chair of public law, of experimental physics, of anatomy or of botany in the whole king- dom, and so little was known of geography that all the maps in use came from France or Holland. Beside the decadent universities the Jesuits had set up flourish- ing schools, which, although the subjects of their study wero limited, produced many scholars famous in the renaissance of literature, science and criticism, which marked the reign of Charles III. The cleverness of the Jesuit teachers, the position and splendour of their colleges, and the greater skill of their organisation, gave them an easy predominance over the universities. It was not for nothing also that from their ranks had
172 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
been chosen, since the time of Philip V., most of the confessors of the royal family and the nobility.
The power of the religious orders in Spain was -phg immense. Even at the end of the eigh-
religious teenth century there were more than 62,000 orders. professed monks, belonging to forty orders : more than 24,000 nuns, in 1122 convents — all lived upon their property or upon what they could beg : upon the charity, that is, of the past or the present. And these figures do not include the Jesuits, the largest body of them all.
In Charles III., says his latest biographer,^ two different men co-existed: the first of irreproachable
orthodoxy, little inclined to new ideas ; the ' second yielding willingly to counsellors of the most modern school. With him, in 1759, a new era began. Already in Naples he had striven to curtail the influence of the clergy, and, while himself a firm believer, he was not a little under the
influence of ministers who were affected in Nries ^y ^^^® teaching of the French philosophes.
Bernardo Tanucci, who had been his most trusted adviser in Naples, and by whose advice his disputes with Benedict XIV. had been carried through, continued to advise him by letter in Spain, and when his wife, Amalia of Saxony, died, in 1760, he leant more than ever on one whom she had so thoroughly trusted. A few months before her death she had written to Tanucci that she fully approved the King's firmness in dealing with Pvome, since that was the only attitude to assume towards the Curia. Charles indeed was full of reverence for the Holy See, and full of
^ Francois Rousseau, Regne de Charles 111.^ vol. i. p. 110.
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 173
Christian zeal and love, but he was determined to pre- serve his regalia and to correct the abuses of the Church in his dominions. Tanucci encouraged him to resist aggression and to press forward education. The Eomans, he said, would rather the people were ignorant than believing, so determined were they to exercise power. The clergy ought to learn that the times had changed, and that the only result of popular ignorance was brutal abuse of ecclesiastical power. The lines on which Charles determined to proceed were similar to those on which the Galilean liberties were asserted eighty years before.
Difficulties arose very soon after his accession, in regard to the publication of papal bulls. Wall, Charles's Irish minister, had "regalist" sympathies to , g . the full. Cardinal Torregiano, the papal nuncio, was a warm friend of Eicci, the general of the Jesuits. A dispute was inevitable. When it came it involved the Inquisition also. A papal bull condemning the work of a French theologian, Dispute Mesenguy (published thirteen years before), with the was issued in 1761 and sent to Spain for pub- Papacy lication. The head of the Inquisition " Suprema " was forbidden to publish it : he refused to obey. Charles, through the Council of Castile, promptly ordered him to be banished to twelve leagues from the Court and from all royal residences. The inquisitor, and the Don Manuel Quintano y Bonifaz, submitted Inquisi- at once. The Inquisition humbly thanked ^^°"- the king. It received the following reply : " The In- quisitor-General has asked pardon of me, and I have granted it. I accept your thanks, and I will always protect you, but forget not this threat from my anger,
174 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
provoked by your disobedience." The nuncio also sought pardon for transmitting the brief, explaining that he believed the inquisitor would lay it before the Government before publication. Charles paid no heed to the explanation. In 1761 he issued an edict, which he made into a "pragmatic sanction" in 1762, declar- ing that all papal bulls, briefs, etc., should be subject to his sanction before being valid in Spain, and that he was determined to preserve the respect and obedi- ence due to the Crown by the inquisitors, the prelates and the Church courts. Clement XIII. protested, but in vain. The Inquisition also was forbidden to issue any bull or brief without the express order of the sovereign, nor any edict or index expurgatorius without the king's consent and after hearing the defence of the accused.
The conflicts in which Charles was concerned were chiefly on matters of jurisdiction, and on the papal claims of control, which were exercised of Spain chiefly through the Jesuits. Thus the feel- and Portu- ing of the king against the Society was gal to the already strong, when other circumstances jesui s. Yq^ to its being much increased, and to results which affected all Europe. He had given way for a while, and in 1762 withdrawn the pragmatic sanc- tion, and dismissed Wall. Thus his attitude towards the Papacy had become more friendly. Such it might have remained had it not been for the new conflict with the Jesuits, beginning in South America, which has been already described.
In the great movement of opposition to the Society, Pombal, the Portuguese minister, had been the pioneer. The influence of the Jesuits in the first half of the eighteenth century did not seem to have declined.
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 175
They were still great educationists, confessors, preach- ers, commercial agents. But intellectual opposition to them was steadily rising. The Jansenists, though they were finally suppressed, had dealt some deadly blows at their characteristic doctrines in theology and morals, and the influence of Pascal's Provincial Letters could not be overestimated. They made practically no effective reply. Thus when there arose a class of re- forming ministers, in a period of benevolent despotism, they were unable to offer effective resistance to the attacks which, beginning in literature and science, now came to the front in politics. Benedict XIV. too was a severe critic of many of their methods, and that notably in regard to their missions.
Three causes especially led to the reconsideration of the position of the Society, namely — the criticisms of their missionary methods, the nature of their commercial operations, and the suspicions regarding their political principles and their intervention in practical politics. The first of these has been already dealt with. Some- thing must now be added to what has been said in regard to the second.
Commercial considerations were strongly felt in
Portugal and France. Pombal found the mercantile
enterprise of the Jesuits continually in the way of his
economic schemes. He complained to Eome. Benedict
XIV. had no sympathy with the secular p .
pursuits of the Society, and he ordered an investiga-
investigation of the points complained of, tion of
appointing Cardinal Saldanha, a Portu- J^f^^^t
... rrn, . .-1 missions,
guese, as visitor. The report was entirely
hostile to this side of the Society's activity, and
authorised the confiscation of its merchandise.
176 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
' Similarly in France the greatest indignation was aroused by the failure of a large business house at yjjg Martinique, for which the Society was
failure at known to be responsible, but for which it Martin- repudiated all concern. The Parlement of ^^"®- Paris (May, 1761) decided that the Society
must bear the responsibility, and it further severely criticised its constitution. To these causes of distrust in France was added the ultramontane attitude of the French Jesuits (in opposition to the Declaration of 1682) and the absolute power of the general. The king ordered the superiors of all the Society's houses in France to send up the titles of all their establish- ments. The Parlements of Paris and the provinces forbade the Jesuits to give any public or private instruction in theology, and any French subject to enter their Society, and, further, placed their goods in sequestration.
In November, 1761, a special assembly of the clergy was summoned to deliberate on four questions : (1) the usefulness or reverse of the Jesuits in France ; (2) their conduct in education, and their opinions in regard to the sacredness of the sovereign's person, and the De- claration of 1682 ; (3) their relations to the bishops and the parish clergy ; (4) the extent of the general's power in France. On the first two points the decision was favourable to the Society, and on the others not unfavourable. The Crown accepted this view ; but the Parlement of Paris, in August, 1762, published an edict summing up all the accusations against the Society. This is a remarkable document of sixty octavo pages, reciting a great number of legal decisions against the Jesuits and other principles, condemning them
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 177
in regard to philosophic and theological opinions — prob-
abilism, invincible ignorance and the views
The exposed by Pascal — astrology, irreligion, pariement
idolatry (in relation to missions), disloyalty, of Paris and every sort of moral crime ; accusing and them of every kind of error in regard to ejesuits, schism and heresy, referring to the censures of them by priests, bishops, archbishops, universities and faculties, and declaring that their obedience to the general was incompatible with their duty to the State or the Church. It ordered that no more novices should be admitted in France, and that the " self-styled Jesuits" should hold no communication with the general or the superior and should leave the houses of the Society, being forbidden to live in common, but granted, on application, a pension sufficient for sub- sistence.
The edict was received with indignation in Eome. The pope, on June 3, 1762, declared it to be "vain, frivo- lous, null and void." He wrote to the king expressing his distress. He requested the clergy to protest against the treatment of the Jesuits, and accordingly the Assembly, then sitting in Paris, addressed Louis XV. in a vigorous defence of the Society. To this the king gave an evasive reply. But Choiseul, on " philosophic " and on political grounds, was a bitter enemy of the Jesuits, and in November, Qf^^e 1764, a royal edict was issued formally Jesuits expelling them, as a Society, from France, ^^om Choiseul was not satisfied even with this : J?"^^' he set to work to procure their expulsion from all other countries, and the dissolution of the Society.
1 78 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Already in Portugal politics had come in with com- mercial considerations to cause the fall of the Society. Pombal, having dealt with the Inquisition, proceeded to deal with the Jesuits. First he caused the dismissal of the king's confessor, a Jesuit : then he ordered the Portuguese ambassador at the Vatican to Pombal Y^j before the pope a series of the gravest Jesuits charges against the Society, largely in regard to their conduct of trade. It was this com- plaint which led to the appointment of Cardinal Sal- danha as visitor, and to the deprivation of the Jesuits of all spiritual power within the Portuguese territories. But more was needed to satisfy Pombal. An oppor- tunity soon occurred.
In a political plot, and an attempt to assassinate the king (which probably originated in the viciousness of his life) in September, 1758, they were believed to be implicated : Malagrida, their superior in the country, was imprisoned, and the most odious charges were brought against him, so that his name became a by- word throughout Europe. He was charged with heresy by the Inquisition and burnt at an auto-da-fi. It was asserted that a Jesuit had declared that a man who should murder the king would not be guilty of even a venial sin. The trial which resulted was hurried, and the prisoners were tortured. On January 12, 1759, a sen- tence was given against " the perverse regular clergy of the Company of Jesus," which denounced their political aims and declared them to be concerned in the attempt on the king's life. The Society w^as expelled from the country. The Portuguese bishops had throughout sided with the Government.
But the pope, who had borne the expulsion of the
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 179
Society, was soon embroiled with Portugal in regard to the right of institution of bishops by the Portuguese Government. A long and con- oAhe^^°" fused contention ensued; and eventually Jesuits all relations between Eome and Portugal from were broken off.^ Throughout the whole Portugal,
1759. of his ecclesiastical policy Pombal no doubt
acted with remarkable craft. But the measures he carried through were not rescinded even when peace was made with Eome after Dom Joao's death by his pious and imbecile daughter.
Thus from the countries whose connection with Spain was closest Charles III. found the Company, which he had come to regard as the great rival of his power, expelled. The publication by Clement XIII. of the constitution Ajwstolicum Pasccndi in 1765 only added fuel to the flame. It defended the Jesuits, whom all the Catliolic powers of Europe were ready to condemn.
In Spain the other religious bodies had already taken sides against the Company of Jesus. Cardinal Noris, an Augustinian, had been fiercely attacked by Jesuit writers for his works on '^^^ ^^f^ the Doctrine of Grace, which they accused jj^j-jg of Jansenism. Through their influence the works of Noris were placed on the Index by the In- quisition at Eome, in which the Jesuits were predomi- nant. The Spanish Inquisition concurred. The wise and learned Benedict XIY. at once intervened. Long before, in 1745, he had described ISToris as " Eomanae ecclesiae splendidis simum lumen." But he was resisted.
^ The case of the Portuguese may be seen at length in the Life of Fo/nbal, l.y the Conde da Carnota,. p. 131 sqq.
i8o THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
A lengthy and complicated correspondence ensued : the Jesuits threw themselves into the conflict with ardour. The pope appeared by his defence of Noris to have abandoned the bull Unigcnitus and thus fur- nished an argument^ against papal infallibility.
The Spanish Inquisition declared that it had no need to know if Noris was acquitted in Eome. It was independent, and in Spain he was condemned. In all that concerned discipline and government the Church in Spain was independent of Eome, and the king would suffer no infringement of her and his rights. The dispute passed into silence in the Con- cordat of 1753 : but it had served to show that the Jesuits stood together in defence of the most discredit- able of their writers, and that they were willing to defy the pope, and even to become advocates of " regalism."
A new cause of disturbance was found in the satiri- cal romance of Padre Jose Francisco Isla, a Jesuit, published in 1758, called The History of the
^^"^ , . Famous Preacli er Fra y Gerundio.-vfhioh poured Gerund 10. n^ -, ^ ^ ■, ^
scorn on the anected style ot the preachers
of the day. It had an enormous sale. Benedict XIV. roared with laughter over it, and declared that its only fault was that it was too short. But on May 10, 1760, the Suprema of the Inquisition condemned it as con- taining doctrines perilous, scandalous, and impious. Here the Inquisition had turned against its allies. A famous writer from among their number had made the Jesuits another enemy.
And now came the war in America, the resistance of the Indians and the Jesuits to the armies of Portu- gal and Spain. The whole influence of Charles's ad-
^ Cf. Rousseau, oj). cit., i. 148.
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS i8i
visers, and notably that of his trusted friend Tanucci,
was thrown into the scale against the Company. Don
Manuel de Eoda y Arrieta, who succeeded Eusenada
as Secretary of State, was equally bitter against the
Jesuits : to him wrote the general of the influences
Angus tinians : " I consider the Society of on
Jesus to be a hydra. Each time the head Charles
III
of the monster is struck off, another grows
in its place." Charles himself was influenced not only by these men, but by the Franciscans. He was himself a tertiary of S. Francis, and he was a great admirer of the famous South American missionary, Palafox, who had suffered severely from the Jesuits and had de- nounced their treachery, pride, and political intrigues. If not already an enemy of the Jesuits, he knew what their enemies said : he had seen what his allies in Portugal and France had done, and he was ready to be convinced. The result was not long in coming.
In March, 1766, an insurrection (motin) occurred in Madrid. It was largely due to social causes and the reforms of Charles III. But it was believed -^^^ that the Church, and notably the Company "Motin" of the Jesuits, was concerned in its origin, at Madrid, Tanucci, who had such great influence over ^^ ' the king, wrote to him : " I have never doubted that the Spanish sedition has arisen through the clergy, who are full of vices, and to whom weak human nature is subject." The Conde de Aranda, now presi- dent of the Consejo, was a disciple of Voltaire, and was everywhere regarded as the representative of the new ideas, the proselyte of the Encyclopaedists. He urged the king to further measures ; Charles became con- vinced that the Jesuits were always instigating revolt,
162
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
that they had in France always been opposed to the Government, and that they were the irreconcilable foes of the Bourbon family. They were believed to have intended to murder the minister Esquilace during the motiii, and were suspected of a design on the king himself : it became an essential safeguard to the mon- archy in his eyes that they should be dismissed from his country. There is little doubt that several of the Jesuits had compromised themselves by grave impru- dence during the period of opposition and insurrec- tion : the superiors had indeed been anxious to disclaim responsibility. Charles did not publicly declare his opinion of their guilt, but he drew his own inferences. Though no proof of their complicity in the insurrection was discovered, he regarded their general political theory as incompatible with the main- tenance of the royal power. The doctrines of tyranni- cide and regicide, advocated by some and attributed to
all the Jesuits, most influenced him. In
of the 1767 he finally determined on their expul-
Jesuits sion, and on a fixed day every house of the
from Company m Spain was closed and the mem-
767^"' ^-^^^'^ were deported to Civita Vecchia. Each
was allowed to take simply his breviary, his linen, his money, and a little chocolate and snuff. In Italy they were not received, and eventually they found refuge in Corsica. The king justified his action in a letter to the pope as " an indispensable civil pre- caution, adopted after mature examination and pro- found reflection."
In Naples and Sicily the Society was also suppressed. In Parma the same course was followed, and the Duke Ferdinand, nephew of the Spanish king, forbade his
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 183
subjects — following the earlier Edict of Charles III. — to receive papal letters without his licence. He was excommunicated at once ; but the whole Bourbon family joined in his support and ordered the bull not to be received. The Jesuits were expelled from Venice and Modena also : Bavaria refused to shelter them : Avignon was occupied by French troops. Demands Austria — unkindest cut of all — declared for sup- that the whole matter belonged to politics Pj^^^^^°" and not to religion. At this point the Company kingdoms of Spain, France and Naples for- of Jesus, mally demanded of the pope the suppression of the Society.
Tanucci had designed this from the first. He re- garded the quarrel as an irreconcilable one between the Society and every civil State. A paper in this sense w^as drawn up by Compomanes and Mofiino which declared that their suppression was necessary, since their continued existence rendered every State insecure. This declaration was accepted by France and Portugal : the Spanish prelates supported it. At Eome the demands of the governments were formu- lated through the Spanish ambassador, Don Thomas Azpuru, archbishop of Valencia. Austria, on the marriac^e of the Archduchess Maria Amalia to Prince
o
Philip of Parma, came into the agreement. The Catholic powers presented a united front against the Jesuits, at the beginning of 1769, in a united demand for the suppression of the Society.
Clement XIII. (1758-69) was a pious and unworldly man, who suffered acutely from the disputes in which he was involved : he died on the day when the consis- tory should have considered the demand.
1 84 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
The election of Lorenzo Ganganelli, a Franciscan friar and cardinal, a man of great piety and gentleness, was at the last unanimous, after many in- Clement trigues. It has been asserted that he had jyg *' made a compact with France and Spain,
before his election, to agree to the suppres- sion of the Jesuits, but no conclusive evidence of this has appeared.^ He seems to have given some general assurance to Bernis, the representative of France, while he had told others that the Jesuits would not be destroyed. It may be that he left both sides to infer as they liked the meaning of his ambiguous speeches and his silences. At least the election was a great surprise to Charles III. and Tanucci. They believed that the new pope was a supporter of the Jesuits. It is true that he took long to consider the question, but he finally yielded.
He took the title of Clement XIV. (1769-74). He began first by a reconciliation with Sardinia, Portugal, and Parma ; then he instituted a commission of in- quiry. Cardinal Bernis, the minister of Louis XV., and Monino in Spain, urged on the Bourbon demands. Spain for some time continued hostile : the new pope issued a brief, Codestiiwi, in which he appeared to be favourable to the Jesuits. In July, 1769, the ambas- sadors of France, Spain and Naples presented a joint note demanding the total abolition of the Order of Jesus. A third joint demand was presented by Bernis, on November 13. On the 30th the pope promised the absolute extinction of the order ; but still he delayed.
The Spanish bishops were then asked by the king
^ Tlie matter is discussed at leiigtli by Danvila y Collado and Francois Rousseau. Nielsen has not full information.
CHARLES lir. AND THE JESUITS 185
whether they would approve of the expulsion and extinction : forty-six were favourable, eight unfavour- able, and six refused a reply. But still the pope would not act. Intrigues in France, in which every aid, reputable and disreputable, was invoked to influence the king, efforts to induce the Empress Maria Teresa to intervene, every possible . °"^ endeavour to gain time, were used. But when Don Jose Monino came to Eome as Charles's envoy, delay could not be much prolonged. He was a determined man, and he himself drew up a plan for the suppression, which he submitted to the pope. Time was spent in negotiations about the canonisation of Maria of Agreda and of Juan de Palafox, but Charles was not thus to be temporised with. A pre- limmary step was the closing of the seminary at Frascati. At last Charles was able to assure Louis XV. and Maria Teresa that the decree was certain but that it must be kept secret till the last moment, and to write to Tanucci : " I send you the news, very happy and important for our holy religion and for all our family (the Bourbons), that the pope has assured me of the issue of a bull in forma hrevis for the extinction of the Jesuits. . . . Let us return thanks to God, for this measure brings peace to our kingdoms and security to our persons which without it could not exist."
Finally, on August 13, 1773, the pope issued the brief Dominus ac Reclemptor noster. In this Suppres- he declared the rights of the sovereign pon- ^lon by the tiffs over all the religious orders, their power .^^^ ^^ to create them and to destroy : precedents Redemptor for such destruction were stated. Then noster,iyy3. he examined the charges against the Society, and
i86 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
declared that its intervention in politics was an abuse of which sovereigns had complained and which popes tried to remedy in vain. The total suppres- sion of the order was the only means of remedying the e^-ils of the Church and of restoring peace to the souls of men.
Louis XV. and Charles IIL welcomed the bull ; the French king declared that he rejoiced in this sign of amity to the Bourbon kings, for the order had been a continual source of trouble in every Catholic state. Austria willingly acquiesced. Only in Protestant Prussia could the Jesuits find refuge. Pdcci, their general, had said, " Sint ut sunt, aut non sint," and he had been taken at his word. A medal struck at Eome showed Clement XIV. on one side, and on the other our Lord, with S. Peter and S. Paul, dri^'ing out the Jesuits with the words, " I never knew you. Depart from Me all ye." The significance of the words that conclude the sentence, though they were omitted, could not be forgotten. It was, in truth, as a religious measure that the suppression was regarded. The pope had declared to Moiino, two months before the brief was issued, that he could no longer protect the men "abandoned of God: they must suffer the lot their obstinacy merited."
The suppression was carried out firmly but gently. The general, Pdcci, was for a time a prisoner, deserted even by the lay brother who had waited upon him. The sup- Clement XIV. did not long survive the pression decree. He died on September 22, hardly earned more than a month after the extinction of the Company. There were suspicions of poison, which might well have been disregarded, had
CHARLES III. AND THE JESUITS 187
not the custom of the age and the country ren- dered them plausible. His enemies rejoiced in his death, and Mouino, now Count of Floridablanea, wrote to the Spanish minister, Grimaldi, that the basest libels were published in Eome on the pope's death. '* Such," he said, " is this people. They are humble and base towards those who are in power, cruol and revengeful to them when thev are fallen or dead."
Secretly the Society continued to exist. It was allowed to establish itself in Eussia (by a papal brief) in 1801, and in Xaples in 1804. In 1814 Pius YIL, when the Kevolution was over, ^^^xet re-established it in all its rights by the bull existence ; SoIIi€itudi> onuiium Fcdesiarum. But the and re- suppression in 1773 was a very significant s^°'"^^°°» sign of the times- Intervention of the clergy in politics was becoming more and more bitterly resented : CathoHc states refused to be ruled by a papal militia. It was the result of the revo- lution again to place them under the power of the Papacy.
The reign of Charles III. ended in peace. The clergy heartily supported his economic reforms and threw themselves warmly into his agricultural and colonising projects. The Inquisition, it is true, still lifted up its heel against some who were high in royal favour. Olavide, one of the chief agents of the colonisation of the Sierra Morena, was accused of heresy, and was condemned to eight years' seclu- sion in a monastery and to the loss of his property and his rank. He took part in an autillo, wearing the san hcnko and abjuring his errors. Then he
188 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
escaped to France, where he was received as a martyr.^
It is perhaps not the historian's province to draw a moral. But the history of Spain speaks for itself. It shows the attitude which a humble Christian and a faithful Catholic, such as was Charles III., whom Bishop Stubbs called " the greatest king that Spain ever had," might be compelled to assume in regard to ecclesias- tical power. And the history of the Jesuits witnesses to the facts that prosperity is not the best guardian of religion, that the institutions which meet the needs of one age may be quite unsuited to another, that there is eternal truth in the adage, " Corruptio optimi pessima."
^ Of " Philosoplnsm " Dr. Lea strangely asserts (iv. 307) that "from a temporal point of view it was less dangerous" than Pro- testantism, "and the denial of God was an offence less than the denial of papal supremacy," a statement which he shows to be in- correct on the following page by the case of Castellanos, an agnostic, who was treated with " a severity which emphasises the dread inspired by this negation of opinion." The case of Olavide, who did so much for the colonisation of the Sierra Morena, shows how strongly the Inquisition could act against atheistic opinions.
CHAPTER XII THE CHURCH IN ITALY
THE history of the Church during the eighteenth century as we have told it has involved constant reference to the two centres of European power and interest, France and Italy. The history of the Church in the former country may still be reserved, inasmuch as it is now concerned chiefly with the Eevolution and its causes. To some extent the history of France must be regarded as exceptional; but Italy, the centre of Eoman Catholicism, must naturally be regarded as characteristic of the work of the body to which the larger part of Christian Europe belonged. Here, again, we find ourselves in the tangle of politics.
The Spanish Succession War proved a severe blow to the political power of the Papacy. Under stress of threatened invasion Clement XL (1700-20) found himself obliged to recognise the Archduke Charles as king of Spain. It was a striking event in Church history when the French ambas- ., sador left Lome declaring that it was no Spanish longer the centre of the Church. A clear Succession distinction was being drawn in the minds of Y^Y °" the Catholic powers between the religious and the civil position of the Papacy. The long dispute with the republic of Venice, increasing rather than
TOO Tin: Acu" ov Rr\()i I rioN
living away, is an instance of \\\c liiiU> ro>j>iH i iliat was paid to any bin tlio 8]>iritual powors i>l" tlio |h\|h\ AVIion the war was imuU\1. kingdoms ovor wliioli ilio popes liad once been sn]>renio woro translVirod from prince to prinoo witlioni ilio sligliiesl roforonco to I ho papal enria. Again, in tlio long eontosts which finally won Italian lands for Pon Carlos and l^on Philip o( Spain I ho Papacy was a negligible qnantiiy. Few- popes had gone so far as Clement XI. in attempting superiority, wrote a Venetian ambassador with some exaggeratioii. but few had failed so entirely to establish it. The condition of the papal states was an \inhappy one: in Kome itself the great institutions, such as the Inquisition and the Pro^^aganda. languished. In the Italian states the papal intluence sank low indeed : in Xaples and Sicily the pope's claims were treated with contempt, and on one occasion all the clergy favourable to them were deported to the states of the Church.
Yet there were moment s o( re\ival in which i^apal power was felt, through appeal or by direct interven- tion, in Spain and Poland, in Savoy and Porraine. Innocent XIII. (1720-4) can hardly be said to have done more than " mark time," and that in regard to the complaints which were arising in every European state about ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
P.enedict Xlll. (1724-30) was more determined in
^. his adherence to papal claims; but at the
The popes i i •
of the same time it was under his pout ideate that
early the meaning of the change which was
eighteenth cQn^jug over Italy was first perceived. The
" House of Savoy was clearly destined to be
the leading power in the peninsula: wise statesmen
THE CHURCH I\ ITALY 191
saw this with hope, and now the papal curia was beginning to recognise it with apprehension. Clement XII. (1730-40) left no impression on the religious history of Italy : he bore the character of a magnificent prelate, a politician, a sovereign who needed great wealth to satisfy him, and who had recourse to the disastrous and immoral expedient of lotteries to re- plenish his coffers and those of the Government. The condition of the papal states was becoming recognised as deplorable. In the more distant districts, „ , the legations ruled by cardinals according g-ovem- to their own ideas, much depended on the ment of particular governor, and some were excel- ^^^ P^P^^ lently ruled. But in Eome and the Cam- pagna things looked ill. Pope after pope endeavoured to change the methods of his predecessor. It was observed that there was no improvement in the Cam- pagna because every new pope upset what had been done before him. It was said in 1740 that the papal government, if it was the most defective, was the mildest in Europe, yet before the end of the century it was said to be the worst after that of Turkey. There was great political corruption, there were many more officials, military and civil, than were necessary. The mark of Ancona was practically ruined by the restrictions on the importation of corn : repressive economic measures, well intended, everywhere bore disastrous fruit. Socially the people were in a state of lethargy. The arts were highly bepraised and lavishly rewarded, but were in a state of decrepitude. A torpor hung over the land; men were contented to do nothing and think nothing. In such an atmosphere religion could not flourish. Yet there were attempts
192 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
to revive it. Learning too was at a low ebb, but efforts were made to stir up a new interest in theology and Church history. We may find our examples of these two efforts in the names of two famous Italians, Alfonso de' Liguori and Prospero Lambertini, who became Benedict XIV. (1740-58). With the first we are in a region of spiritual effort, of reform, similar to the work of Wesley and Whitefield in England : with the latter we pass into the study, but yet a study which shows that students are often able to deal wisely, and with foresight, in regard to practical affairs. A third figure, though in its way unique, may serve to show how the Church still exercised a wide influence on the life of the higher classes, even in an age of decay. To Englishmen wdio are not well acquainted with Eoman Catholic literature, S. Alfonso de' Liguori is best known by the long discussion about
S. Alfonso j-^-^ ^j^ Newman's Apologia, in which, it will de Liguori. ± o ^ j
be remembered, the author expresses his
disagreement with the Italian saint in such points as those in which he may differ from him without dis- agreeing also with the Church. But in any history of the Church his life must always be considered, not only because of the intellectual and spiritual influence which he exercised, but because his career throws much light upon the history of the Church in Italy in the eighteenth century.
Alfonso de' Liguori was a scion of the lesser nobility of Naples, born in 1696, brought up by a pious mother and a stern but religious father, who was captain of the royal galleys. He was trained for the Bar, but he received also a good general education, and became an accomplished musician and composer. He did not
THE CHURCH IN ITALY 193
receive the sacrament of confirmation till he was twenty-six, for the corrupt custom had grown up in Naples, among all classes, not to seek confirmation till maturity, and even sometimes till old age. In the following year, 1723, Alfonso determined to renounce the world and live a celibate life. It was not till a few months later that he abandoned for ever his work as an advocate, at a dramatic moment when he sud- denly discovered in court that in an argument he had entirely omitted to notice a critical document which completely confuted his line of reasoning. He was ordained priest in 1726, and was for several years employed by the Propaganda at Naples and in the surrounding country as a mission-preacher. His work From the first he set himself against the as a pompous eloquence of his day, and preached "iissioner. simply Christ crucified, and by the pious gentleness of his methods as a confessor is said to have won the most hardened sinners to righteousness. His work affords a remarkable parallel to the Wesleyan move- ment. The same charges of secret teaching, of " en- thusiasm," and of revolutionary aims were levelled against it ; but it vindicated itself completely by the holiness of its work. He founded at Naples an " Association of Chapels," which greatly resembled the religious societies in England, and which by the end of the century had thirty thousand associates and sixty- five chapels. Influenced by the holiness of Falcoia, bishop of Castellamare, and by a series of visions which a nun of Scala was believed to have received, he gave a new rule to a small order of nuns, and eventually became the founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Kedeemer.
194 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
This order, long opposed by the secular clergy, and having only the sanction of the bishop, was at last confirmed by Benedict XIV. on February 23, 1749. It consisted of priests living together, under the super- vision of the bishop, in the poorest neighbourhoods, and working among the most neglected people, taking missions, administering the sacraments. " Christus Eedemptor" was to give them their name, and they
_ ^. became known as Eedemptorists. Alfonso
Creation ^
of the was offered the archbishopric of Palermo
Redemp- but refused it: in 1762 he accepted the see torists. Qf Sant' Agata dei Goti, by the pope's
orders. He resigned it in 1775, crippled by rheuma- tism, deaf and almost blind. It was not till 1779 that the first step towards civil recognition of the order in Naples was taken, and then it was followed by a schism in the ranks. Nowhere was reform more pressing than in the kingdom of Naples. Alfonso de' Liguori was a born reformer.
The importance of his work for Italy lay in its revival of the strict ideal of the priestly life. When he began his work the great majority of the clergy had no active ministry. While priests engaged in parish work were few, it is said that there were in Naples 50,000 secular and 31,000 regular clergy, and in Sicily 63,000 of both, very few of whom did any work of a pastoral nature. There were 22 archbishops, 116 bishops, and 56,500 priests. Two-thirds of the landed Cond'ti n pi^op^rty belonged to the Church, and the of the clergy paid no taxes. They claimed also,
Church in it seems, to carry on trades without paying Naples. ^Yie impost levied on sales. Their revenues were almost half a million ducats: the whole revenue
THE CHURCH IN ITALY
195
of the kingdom was not above seven millions. The number of clerics, it is said, had risen as high as four per cent of the whole population. And it is not to be wondered at that the standard of their life was low. There is much evidence to show that among the in- ferior clergy the obligations of the Christian life were very lightly regarded. In 1750 the bishop of Capaccio wrote to the Marchese Brancone deploring the con- dition of his diocese, the clergy stained with dis- honesty, the demands of exorbitant payment for the exercise of their ministry ; and other offences were commonly alleged against them : they were if not the authors yet the instigators of assassination, smugglers, traders for gain, acting as lawyers illegally, and shame- fully procuring bequests from the sick to whom they ministered.
Equally grave was the fact that offences against sexual morality were not rare. A friar killed a woman in a Neapolitan church in 1784 for re- fusing his addresses, but no steps were ?^ , ^
1 ■ 1 1 ■ 11- 1 ' °' morals,
taken to punish him ; and this was thirty
years after strenuous efforts had been made for
reform. By some the compulsory celibacy of the
clergy was regarded as a cause of evil. The clergy
of Naples, in the early years of Ferdinand IV.,
petitioned him for leave to marry, and there seems to
have been some reason for thinking that this would
have been granted had not the quarrel between the
king and the pope been made up. It may be worth
while here to notice some further illustrations of this
effort towards reform. Joseph 11. seemed also inclined
to take up the question, and a good deal was written
on the subject in Q-ermany. Leopold II. took great
196 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
pains to enforce the sacredness of tlie monastic vows, and to check the profanation of the confessional During Eicci's investigations at Pistoia and Prato some terrible facts were revealed as to the immorality of monks and nuns, and S. Alfonso de' Liguori was most urgent in entreating the Conclave in 1774 to choose a pope who would carry out a drastic reform.
Charles of Bourbon, son of Philip V. of Spain, be- came king of Naples in 1735. Among the inferior officials in the ministry he found a man of genius and determination, Bernardo Tanucci,^ from whom he re- ceived, there can be no doubt, constant advice quite early in his reign, and who grew to be his firm friend Charles III. ^^^^ continual counsellor. Charles was a and firm Christian. Tanucci has been accused
Tanucci. of atheism, but the letters of his master to him show that he always looked for sympathy from his minister in his aims for the Church's good.
The best way to reform the Church is always to train up a clergy worthy of their sacred task. The Neapolitan clergy were such as has been described. It was natural that Charles III. and Tanucci should regard such men with disgust, and that the king's reforms should be deemed anti-clerical. Alfonso de' Liguori, himself a reformer to the bottom of his heart, yet found himself opposed to the "regalists," who thought the State bound to interfere, and who were believed to be not a little touched by French secularism. And indeed the measures adopted by the king were severe. Tanucci believed that the root of the evil lay in the rule of Ptome. "The Court of Eome," he said, "is the cause of Italian servitude."
^ See above, p. 172.
THE CHURCH IN ITALY 197
Charles demanded the right of presentation to bish- oprics and livings, the fixing of the number of clergy who should be exempt from taxation, the en- forcement of mortmain laws. A concordat concordat was reached in 1741, by which ecclesiastical with property was made subject to taxation, the Rome, right of sanctuary was restricted, and a ^'^^^' mixed tribunal was founded to settle all disputes arising from the arrangement. The number of ordina- tions was limited ; only ten men in every thousand of the population were allowed to be ordained. The scope of ecclesiastical censure was restricted. It seemed to Liguori that here was interference with the spiritual power of the Church. So necessary reforms have often seemed to churchmen. But no perfect harmony of the relations between State and Church, established or disestablished, has ever been
obtained. Alfonso de' Liguori was certainly _ ...
, ^ ^^. . . -^ S. Alfonso
not the man to suggest one. His work lay ^jg- Liguori
on other lines. He became a controversial and writer as well as a preacher, and in liis Probabil- Moral Theology (1748-55), originally de- signed against Jansenist teaching, he became the parent of a school whose " Probabilism " exposed it to the severest criticism, and in its extreme form to actual condemnation by the popes. He was primarily a minister to souls, and largely to souls w^iom it was his one aim to arouse from deadly sin. He knew, as every one must know who learns the weakness of human nature, the difficulty of always arriving at a just decision. Originally trained in the view of Pugorisrn, or Tudorism, which held that in any ease of doubt a thing must be left undone if its rightfulness
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
is not certain, he gradually came to hold something like the Jesuits' opinion that in certain cases any de- gree of probability authorised the rightfulness of an act. This was Probabilism, to which we have already referred.
It was a view not so lax as that of Probabilism that Alfonso adopted. He called it Equiprobabilism, and declared that a less safe opinion may be held when it is equally probable (or provable) with the safer one. He declared to the last that he did not follow the Jesuit doctrine, that he was not their pupil and was contrary to their system and the greater part of their particular decisions. But it was difficult then, and still is, to draw the distinction.
The Moral Theology was a sort of encyclopaedia of moral questions, answered according to the teaching of Fathers and Councils and the philosophy of the The ^§® ^^ which Alfonso lived. While not
"Moral going to the extremes of some of his pre- Theolo^," decessors, the author undoubtedly showed ^^4 * sympathy with the view which would
allow a course to be followed, without penalty of mortal sin, which had anything of probability to be alleged in its favour as not certainly sinful. His aim unquestionably was to secure a true reformation of morals, and it was as designed to this end the lioman See accepted and approved his book. But taken in combination with the political and moral views of the Jesuits, it served at the time, no doubt, to raise the greatest distrust of ecclesiastical morals and to add fuel to the flame of anti-clerical revolt.
Whatever doubts there may be as to his moral theology there can be none about his Mariolatry. " Mary," he said, " may claim to co-operate in our
THE CHURCH IN ITALY ^99
justification ; for to her God has committed all graces to us." As the Son is Almighty by Nature, so is the Mother by Grace. She is the mediatrix of grace. She saves from hell and brings to Paradise.
It is not as a theologian that we can admire the great Neapolitan bishop and missioner. But Alfonso de' Liguori, as ruler of his Congregation and as bishop, left a fragrant memory for personal holiness and devotion. Most notable of all his works 5, Alfonso was his struggle with the vice and laxity de' of the Italian clergy of the day. He was Li&uori's eventually cut off from the Congregation of ^ ^ " his own rule, and died in 1787, at the age of ninety, almost rejected by those for whom he had done so much, his order shattered, and himself in poverty and retirement. Meanwhile he had not only kept alive the Jesuits by admitting many of them, or of those who would have belonged to them, to his order, but also he advanced by his writings the belief in the infallibility of the pope. No less than five of his treatises on this subject were quoted with approval in the Vatican Council of 1871, though their quotations from the fathers, Dollinger declared, were " for the most part spurious, forged, or garbled." He was beatified in 1816, canonised in 1839, declared a doctor of the Church by Pius IX. in 1871. The order of the Eedemptorists has spread over the New World as well as the Old, and may be truly said to follow in the pious and self-denying ways of its founder. But the system of his theology, a casuistry which is open to the gravest criticism, may be thought to contain the seeds of moral disaster by which other branches of the Church are happily unaffected.
200 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
We turn from the theologian and pietist to the statesman and historian. Benedict XIV. was a man Benedict ^^ ^ different stamp. A keen scholar, de- XIV., voted to learning, he was also a kindly,
1740. genial, humorous man. The Venetian am-
bassador thus described him to his Government : " Endowed with sincerity and openness of heart, he ever despised and avoided all those arts that have been called Eomanesque." As archbishop of Bologna he had won fame not only as a diligent pastor but as a scholar of the first rank. His great work on the Beatification and Canonisation of Saints is still the only complete and systematic book on the subject. It is a mine of learning such as could only have been amassed by a most diligent, or compressed by a most sagacious, student. The first edition of the book was printed at Bologna between 1734 and 1738,
but later editions (1767, 1792) were much . ^^ . increased. While upholding to the full the
privileges which had been asserted by the popes, the writer treats the general questions of miracles, qualifications for saintly honour, the charac- teristics of male and female saints, and the like. For his time and his position he shows himself to be sane, tolerant, and modern ; and a reader of his great work is not surprised to find the Venetian ambassador saying that " he was exalted rather by his own rare virtues, by the peculiar events of tliat conclave, and by its well-known protraction, than by any actual desire on the part of the cardinals who elected him. It was the work of the Holy Spirit alone."
As pope, Benedict XIV. was a leader in research. The Italians during his age were studying the history
THE CHURCH IN ITALY 201
of their own country with great diligence. " The best of all this national and municipal patriotism was given to the cause of religion. Popes and cardinals, dioceses and parish churches, became the theme of untiring enthusiasts. There too were the stupendous records of the religious orders, their bulls and charters, their biography and their bibliography."^ The learned pope became a centre of literary interests, a patron as well as an example of solid and enlightened scholar- ship. He once said to the learned French Benedictine Montfaucon : " If there were rather less of Galilean liberties on your side, and fewer ultramontane de- mands on ours, things would soon right themselves."
It was not to be expected that such a man should stand out for precarious claims. He was a learned lawyer and canonist : he knew what the assertions that had been made were worth. ^swise He had been an active prelate, at Ancona and at Bologna ; and he had a wide knowledge of public affairs. He would not go too far ; but he went, as it seemed, far enough. To Spain under Charles HI. he made many concessions : to Portugal he gave new privileges, more patronage, and the title of " most faithful." With the House of Savoy he made two con- cordats, in 17-41 and 1750, much reducing papal authority. Concessions were made to Naples and to Austria. He made peace, where there had long been conflict, between the Papacy and all the Catholic powers. Had he lived longer it is probable that by judicious concessions he would have saved the Com- pany of Jesus by reforming it. He was certainly not
^ Lord Acton, E>>says on Lihertij, p. 387. Benedict's Opera incdita were published in 1904.
202 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
its warm defender, and among his closest friends were those who criticised it most sharply. '' It is an article of faith," he once said to the general of the Jesuits, " that / must have a successor ; but no general of an order can say the same of himself." Before his death he appointed Saldanha (as has already been mentioned) to visit and reform the Jesuits in the East and West Indies and in Portugal. It was not for nothing that his enemies nicknamed him " the Protestant Pope."
Side by side with this wise man we may place another typical figure, that of the prince of an ancient house, who became a priest from conviction and who linked the Eoman See to one of the lost causes of Europe. Henry Benedict, son of James Edward, the son of James II. and " legitimist " king of England, was born
in 1725 and died in 1807; and his life Car ma affords a valuable illustration of the mingled of York. political and ecclesiastical interests of that
long period. His early years were spent in happy companionship with his brother Charles Edward; they played, danced, hunted, did their lessons together. Only gradually were more serious interests seen to come to the front in the younger brother. His mother, Clementina Sobieska, was a saintly woman, and her lessons sank into his heart, to be revived after her death in a determination to offer himself seriously to the work of the priesthood. So late as 1745 the intention was not revealed : Henry did not come witli Charles to France on the eve of the great expedition, but soon after the elder had gone to Scotland the younger followed him to France and did his utmost to organise assistance for his brother. The most charm- ing of all the portraits of him represents him at this
THE CHURCH IN ITALY 203
time, in armour, as if watching his troops from a tower of vantage. His warm heart welcomed his brother back after his " wanderings " : — " I defy the whole world to show another brother so kind and loving as he is to me." Only a few weeks afterwards, his father yielded to his earnest wish, and he received the ton- sure and was made a cardinal by Benedict XIV. He had regarded the vices of Louis XY.'s Court with horror, and the horror had deepened his genuine piety ; but he was always sincerely religious, and he made an almost ideal bishop, according to the ideal of the eighteenth century. As bishop of Frascati (he had been archbishop of Corinth in par- ^^^ ^"^ ,
3.S sn GCClC-
tibus, and became at the end of his life — by siastic right of seniority — bishop of Ostia) he was devoted to the poor, to the duties of his diocese, as an organiser of education, missions, pastoral care, but he was also very dignified, very magnificent, very osten- tatious of his royal and ecclesiastical rank. " He fasts and prays as much as his mother used to do, and, they say, has ruined his constitution already," wrote Mann in 1748, when the prince was twenty-three ; but fast- ing and prayer do not ruin a constitution, and he lived for sixty years after this. It was many years before Charles forgave his brother for this definite acceptance of office in the Eoman Church, which seemed to inflict a last deadly blow on the Stewart cause. Henry was, indeed, an object-lesson in the Eomanism of the later Stewarts. He was not only a priest, a bishop, a cardinal, he was a high papal official, and as such prominent on all great occasions— such as elections — in papal history. Charles, on the other hand, definitely professed himself an Anglican in 1750,
204 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
and there is doubt as to when, if ever, he was " recon- ciled " to Eome, though he suffered much attendance on him in later years by Eoman clergy.
It was in 1761 that Henry became bishop of Fras- cati. In 1770 he was one of the first to show that the tide had definitely turned against the Jesuits. He seized the college and church at Frascati which had belonged to them, and turned the college into a diocesan seminary : built the episcopal palace, in which the chapel is in much the same condition as wdien he used it ; and pulled down one of the most famous of all classic ruins. He was, w^e should say, a practical bishop. AVhen he became " king," on his brother's death, he asserted his claim so far as dignity was con- cerned, but recognised his true position in the famous medal JVon desidcriis Jiomimcrn, seel volitntatc Dei, and was content with "harmless and trifling exercises of sovereignty," such as touching for the king's evil. His later years found him overwdielmed in the Napoleonic flood, obliged to seek refuge first in Sicily, then in further travel, almost a beggar, and at last a pensioner of George III. But he maintained always a certain touching dignity mingled with simplicity. He was, one feels, always a gentleman. He links in a remark- able way the period of the one great romance of the eighteenth century to the era of reconstruction in the early nineteenth. He showed how a prince of royal blood, trained in chivalrous if antiquated loyalties, could give himself to the practical life of an ecclesias- tic, praying, ministering, meditating, teaching, ruling, as many a simple bishop did. In that life he was happy. Artificial though the eighteenth-century Church was, tliere always remained a certain naturalness in the
THE CHURCH IN ITALY
205
piety of its best priests, a piety so simple, so tender, so innocent of wide outlook, so sincere in its limitations. Henry, the last of the most beloved of all royal houses, was one of these good priests. His ostentations and fripperies belonged to his age, his virtues to himself.
The life of Henry Benedict, no less than the career of Benedict XIY. and the concessions which he made to the "modern spirit," shows liow the pontics Papacy was still suffering from its political and claims and entanglements. As the revolu- religion tionary era drew nigh it was difficult for ^^ ^^^" the popes to withdraw with sufficient rapidity from an obsolete position. They suffered in Italy itself be- cause their power had not yet become wholly spiritual.
In the eighteenth century all over Italy politics and religion were closely linked. It has been well said that under the successors of Charles III. " the Neapolitan Bourbon State was in fact a partnership of the Crown, the Church, and the mob, for the ex- ploitation of the intellectual and commercial sections of the community. Add to this a rigorous suppression of all progressive thought and action throughout all classes, and the system is complete."^
But even there so long as Tanucci was in power there was real reform : the spiritual work of S. Alfonso found its complement — strange though it may sound to assert it — in the political efforts of the government. Maria Caroline, daughter of the Empress Maria Teresa, had not a little of the modern spirit which animated her brothers. The kings of the two Sicilies had long struggled to be free from
^ Xelsoii and the Xcapolilan Jacob inn (Xavy Records Society,
vol. XX.).
2o6 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
the ancient custom of investiture by the pope, and the Neapolitan lawyers were keenly arguing the in- dependence of their kingdom in all temporal matters. Under Maria Caroline and her feeble husband the last links were severed; and the Napoleonic period prevented their being renew^ed. But the actual posi- tion of the clerical order within the states was practic- ally untouched.
Maria Caroline had felt that she would never be queen (so she wrote) so long as Tanucci was minister, and he was politely dismissed in 1776. Yet there was still some trace of his influence ; for in 1782 the In- quisition was abolished within the kingdom of the two Sicilies.
In Corsica patriotism was closely linked to religion.
Paoli, in 1765, opened a national university at Corte
, ^ . of which the teachers were all Corsicans
In Corsica, ^ . „ . i • • - t j^i ^
and almost all priests, and it is said that
their teaching declared that to slay a Genoese was a meritorious act and to die in behalf of Corsican free- dom a martyrdom. Throughout his rule the clergy w^ere Paoli's chief allies, and the monks were no less eager in the cause of political liberty. But here as elsewhere the bishops were a separate class and of different interests. They were all pledged to the Genoese, and when Paoli came into power had long been absent from their sees. They refused to return when he summoned them, and Paoli appealed to the pope, who sent the bishop of Segni as apostolic visitor. The Genoese opposed his entrance, but he escaped the ships sent to seize him, and he was admitted to spirit- ual jurisdiction in the island, while at the same time the revenues of the absent bishop were confiscated.
THE CHURCH IN ITALY 207
Political interests everywhere jostled those of re- ligion. At Milan in 1786 many convents were de- molished, processions were forbidden, the calendar was reformed by the omission of many saints' days, but all was done hastily and vio- lently. Mrs. Piozzi, two years before, saw a "little odd kind of play " acted by " the monks of S. Victor," in which the intolerable grossness most struck her, yet she found the friars full of intelligent shrewdness and arch penetration. Milan swarmed with ecclesias- tics, though there were continual complaints of en- croachments on the power and property of the Church. At Venice, on the other hand — the republic still proud of its freedom — she was surprised to see "so very few clergymen, and none hardly .
who have much the look or air of a man of fashion " ; yet no city was more eminent for the de- corousness of its worship. A spirit of independence was visible in the ecclesiastical position of the re- public : the patriarch retained exceptional powers : the Jesuits had been expelled from the Venetian territory two hundred years before any other state had dis- missed them. But, on the verge of the revolution, the great republic was in a state of moral decay : " On y joue, on y danse, on y festoie, on s'y aime, on y noue mille intrigues romanesques, mais on n'y connait guere le labeur et le travail. Le dolce fariiiente est roi." ^ Even the monasteries, and notably the convents, par- took of the contagion, and those pledged to a life of religion mingled freely in the movement and even the vices of the world. There were still monasteries which
^ M. A. Bonnefons on " Les nioeurs et le gouvernement de Venise en 1789," iu Revue des questions historiques, October, 1907.
2o8 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
retained an austere standard, but they remained apart and had no influence. Outwardly the republic re- mained orthodox and ostentatious in its fidelity to S. Mark, but its religion was formal and conventional, and Christian life w^as at a low ebb.
But Venice was an exception to the general interest in Church reform which spread over Northern Italy. Of this the great champion and example was Scipio de' Eicci, bishop of Pistoia and Prato. Brought up among the Jesuits, he was one of many whom their education taught to distrust their theology; he was ordained priest in 1766, and belonging as he did to a w^ell-known Florentine family he secured the favour
of Leopold II., duke of Tuscany, the son of Tuscany Maria Teresa and brother of Joseph II.
Already Tuscany was on strained terms with Kome, on matters of jurisdiction, mortmain laws, and the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and Bishop Piccolomini of Pienza had been expelled from Tuscany on account of his excommunication of several members of the Tuscan Government. Eucellai, Leopold's adviser, and Torregiani, the papal secretary of state, engaged in a contest of skill. Eucellai protested against the famous bull In Coena Domini as assuming for the Papacy powers to which it had no right, and declared that bishops were bound by their oaths to Eome " not only to be unfaithful to their lawful sovereign but even to betray him, so often as the interests of the papal court might render it necessary." The bull was accordingly suppressed entirely in Tuscany. But there were practical evils greater than the constitutional difficulties. The large number of monasteries and con- vents within the duchy were very laxly conducted, and
THE CHURCH IN ITALY 209
many instances of the gravest sin were discovered. The privilege of sanctuary was grossly abused. The number of professed religious was excessive. Such evils Paicellai proceeded to deal with in Tuscany as Joseph II. dealt with them in Germany. There were at the time 7,957 secular priests, 2,433 regular priests, 1,627 lay brothers, 2,581 in minor orders, 7,670 nuns. No wonder Leopold was determined on reform. He proposed to prohibit the reception of the novitiate before the age of sixteen, of profession before twenty-five. But for direct spiritual reformation a priest was necessary, and Eicci, consecrated bishop of Pistoia ^icd and Prato in 1780, was the man to under- bishop of take it. His first work was to reform the Pistoia. convent of the Dominican nuns at Pistoia. Here and at Prato he was successful, being supported by the pope. But his misfortunes began when he opposed the Jesuit devotion of the Sacred Heart ; and as his reforms in the Dominican convents proceeded, and were found to be grievously needed, they were opposed by every art and intrigue. But he perse- vered. He encouraged the education of priests, then sadly neglected : he endeavoured to make the worship of the people more intelligent by ordering that the gospel should be explained at Mass and by circulating the New Testament and forms of prayer in Italian. The synod of the diocese of Pistoia, under
his direction, adopted in 1786 measures of f y^°!^ °^
1-1 T (. j^T Pistoia,
reform which were startlmg tor the age. ^^3^^
Kicci himself declared that it was an age of
corruption "when the majority of Christians profess
quite another gospel from that which Christ taught."
With every solemnity of Catholic usage, and with the
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
presence of 240 priests, the synod accepted the grand duke's orders as to reform, afiftrmed the Gallican Articles of 1682,^ and drew up articles on faith, grace and the sacraments, which showed sympathy with Galilean teaching. They followed, in fact, the ideas in which the preacher of the sermon at the opening of the synod advocated reform.
" The world expects from you something great and extraordinary." " Beware of the new Pharisees, the pernicious casuists, the neglect of Holy Scripture, the doctrine that man can rely on his own strength, the multitude of puerile and superstitious practices which have found their way into the Church." " Let us claim," said the preacher, " our ancient right as a diocesan synod to examine the canons and decrees which are sent down to us ; let us take care not to make Christ's kingdom a kingdom of this world. We are inviolably attached to the Koman See as the centre of unity, but we abhor the maxims of Gregory VII. and those popes who have had the same spirit. They dared to dispose of thrones, dissolve the obliga- tions of subjects, confound the temporal with the spiritual."
The actual decrees of the synod were kept secret till a general synod of the Tuscan bishops should meet
at Florence in the following year. This was Synod at attended by three archbishops and fourteen j^3„ * bishops. It was not prepared to go so far
as Leopold, or Eicci, wished ; but it placed the regular clergy under the direction of the bishops (or ordinaries) : it forbade luxury and frivolity among the clergy : it declared that the clergy should follow
1 See p. 32.
THE CHURCH IN ITALY 211
the theology of S. Augustine as interpreted by S. Thomas Aquinas : it decreed the abolition of priests who were not attached to any church : it declared that the decency of conduct required of the priesthood necessarily forbade priests to hunt or to attend the licentious theatres of the day : it condemned the abuses of indulgences and of privileged altars. But it did not go nearly far enough for the Grand Duke, and it gravely misinterpreted his desired reforms. The arch- bishops of Siena, Pisa and Florence were strongly opposed to any restriction of the powers of Eome, and though the local decrees of Pistoia were now published, the decisions of the Council of Florence were not radical enough to be of any assistance to Pdcci. Meanwhile he continued his practical reforms. Inspired only by the deepest devotion and by horror of sin, he continued to visit and reform convents, to found new parishes, to remedy the evils of the ecclesiastical courts, to issue acts of episcopal authority without fee, and to reform abuses on every side. But the fatal charge of Jansen- ism was brought against him. He had approved the decisions of the Council of the Church of Holland of 1763. Excitement was stirred up against him. He was denounced as a heretic. The people were taught to avoid him, to refuse to attend his masses, Resig-na- to take their children to Florence to be tion of baptised. When Leopold was called to the Ricci. Empire on the death of Joseph II. in 1790, Eicci was unprotected, and in 1791 he resigned his bishopric. The rest of his life he passed in seclusion, and he lived through the Eevolution, protected at times by the French, and died in 1810. It was perhaps his gravest offence that he had procured from the synod of Pistoia
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
a declaration that the infallibiUty of the Church rested on its faithfulness to Holy Scripture and primitive tradition. The inference denied the infallibility of Eome. The idea was no new one to medieval councils, to Galilean doctors, or to German Catholic reformers.
The hopes of the best men of Italy in the eighteenth century all pointed the same way. In 1796 Eicci wrote : " The triumph of the faith will not come about so long as the successor of the poor fisherman, S. Peter, is also the successor of the great Cffisars." Eeformers saw the hope for Italy in the decay of the papal power. But Eome is implacable, and opinions move slowly in Italy. The waves of reform seemed to dash in vain against the Alps.
But the movement had begun in other districts too. Over the greater part of Northern Italy, if the papal states be excluded from the survey, little power was J. J , left in the hands of the clergy at the end the end oi the eighteenth century. In Piedmont of the the Church still retained much of its im-
eighteenth portance in political life. In the South it was practically unchecked. The depar- ture of Charles III. for Spain left Naples and Sicily to fall under clericalist dominance. When the storm of French conquest reached Southern Italy its force was exhausted. The kingdom of Murat was forced to leave the clerical power alone. The wealth of the Church was immense and scarcely less was its power. It was exempt from secular jurisdiction, and to this there was a good side, for the clergy were often enabled to become protectors of the poor against the tyranny of nobles or municipalities. The Church was, as in so many other countries, served by two classes
THE CHURCH IN ITALY 213
who were somewhat sharply divided. The chief offices were held by the sons of the nobility, who became bishops, canons, members of collegiate chapters : the parish clergy were for the most part drawn from the peasant and the trading classes. And the clergy re- mained the centre of the people's social life as well as of their religion. In the south of Italy the revolution and Napoleon left the Church very much as they found it.
We cannot conclude our brief sketch without observ- ing how material has been its tone. That in truth is the mark of Italian history in the period before us. Before the Kevolution there was little life in Italy, and what spiritual life there was, though it was earnest and sincere, was as much in the background as it was in England before Wesley and AVhitefield, or again before Keble and Newman and Pusey.
CHAPTER XIII GERMANY AND JOSEPH II.
THE fashion of decrying the eighteenth century has passed away, and we have set to work to find fault
with the century in which we were born. In The char- England it is not the early Georgian but eig-hteenth ^^^® early Victorian age which we now find century. deficient in ideals, in practical morals, in
sound learning, even in common sense. No doubt the tendency to make the best of the eighteenth century is partly due to the materialism of our own age, but it is due also to a juster historical view than that which obtained a few years ago. The eighteenth century seems an age of low ideals because Wesley's inspiring appeal rings out so sharply above its placid theology ; but yet it was an age when men thought philanthropically as well as imperially, and when, if there was no strong sense of corporate life in religion, there was not a little individual effort after things
high in thought and of good report in life.
^ In Germany this is as true as in England.
Vjrernicinv.
There great political change, the final victory
of the new Protestant power of Prussia over the discon- nected political elements of Catholicism, and eventu- ally the rise of important schools of philosophy, showed the power of idealism in German life. And the power
214
GERMANY AND JOSEPH II. 215
of individual effort was illustrated by the gallant intre- pidity with which the penultimate predecessor of the last Eoman emperor, Joseph II., Caesar and Augustus, en- deavoured to set right the time which no one perceived more clearly than he to be out of joint. But Joseph, of whom we have now to speak, was not the only, or the most original, influence on the German Church of his day. Already Gallicanism, Jansenism and Pro- testantism had long been at work, and had spread among Catholics a distrust of some of the dogmas, and a violent dislike of the political principles, which were instilled from Kome.
But there were other influences at work, mainly in Germany. Johann von Hontheim, coadjutor to the archbishop -elector of Treves, writing under the name of Justinius Febronius, in 1763, published a work on the power of the Eoman pontiff, j^g, in which he expressed Galilean principles, as it were, in German dress, vindicating the independ- ence of the Episcopate and the rights of the state. The chief importance of his work, indeed, lay in its assertion of the separate jurisdiction, not derived from the Papacy, but from the apostles of the Episco- pate : —
" At the beginning the Church was by no means a monarchy; the Apostles were equal; St. Peter was only the first among equals. The Bishops have their rights directly from Christ, but the Pope has only received the primacy in commission from the Church. It is false doctrine to say that the Pope represents the Church, for the Church is represented by the General Council. Bishops have the right of self-government as heirs of the authority given to the Apostles to rule
2i6 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
the Church. This former state of things must be brought back. The question is, How ? Priests and people must be instructed in the origin and justifica- tion of the Pope's claims. Councils must be called together — a General Council, if possible ; at all events, National Councils — and the Catholic princes must meet and set bounds once for all to the power of the Papacy."^
The book was placed on the Index in 1764, but the bishop held his position for many years and was sup- ported by the confidence of the electors. At last the pressure from Eome was too strong for him. He recanted in 1778 — he had already discreditably denied that he wrote the book. But in 1781 he published a Latin commentary, in which he practically reinforced his original statements. His principles were those of Joseph IL, and they triumphed through the fall of
Jesuitism. Febronianism continued to grow Its effects .
in Germany. It was supported not only by
the reforming sovereigns, but by all enemies of the Jesuits, such as the secret order of the " Illuminati " founded in 1776, which was influenced by Eousseau and the French 'p^'^^osophes, and drew very near to revolution in religion and politics alike.
The principles had spread among the German clergy. The elector of Mainz in 1769 gathered the represen- tatives of the three ecclesiastical electorates at Coblenz, and there drew up thirty articles designed for the re- storation of the " original episcopal power." Joseph IL, before whom they were laid with a request that he would secure the freedom of the German Church, laid them aside only that he might
^ Nielsen, History of the Papacy, vol. i. p. 113,
GERMANY AND JOSEPH II. 217
undertake reforms still more complete. In 1777 he visited his sister, Marie Antoinette, and from that time became a determined advocate of religious tolera- tion. The Count von Falkenstein (as he called himself in France) won golden opinions everywhere by his modesty and sincerity, men spoke to him almost as freely as he spoke to them, and he learnt how much France had lost by the expulsion of the Huguenots. As soon as he became sole sovereign, in 1780, he pro- ceeded to put his ideas into execution. There is no reason to suppose that he was animated in his ecclesiastical policy by a spirit other than that which directed the whole of his reforms — a desire for the abolition of abuses and a certain ^^^ impatience of the deliberation by which ^^^ ^^^^^ alone great changes can be successful. Though he may have imbibed some of the views on toleration advocated by the school that exercised so powerful an influence over other countries at that tiine — for he was polite to the j^^^^^osophes of Paris and professed regret that death had prevented his meeting Helvetius — it is evident that his sympathies went no further with the liberal writers, for the toleration he granted was only extended to Christian societies.
He had then no hostility to the Church as such, and his measures, if sometimes harsh in appearance and even in effect, were always designed for some practically beneficial purpose. And this was seen by the eminent prelates who gave him their support. In ecclesiastical reforms his way had, in some measure, been prepared by Maria Teresa, who, particularly during the last years of her life, had abolished many of the abuses
2i8 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
that had continued from a different state of society. The empress had aided in the suppression of the His Jesuits and had put an end to the Inqui-
ecclesias- sition in her dominions. She had ordered, tical as early as 1767, that papal bulls should
re orms. ^^^ -^^ published in Austria without her consent. She had taken away the much-abused right of sanctuary from convents and churches, and had done something to check the increase of monastic idleness by ordering that no one should be permitted to take the vows who had not attained the age of twenty-five. This was the age that her son, Leopold IL, had fixed, with the advice of Eicci, in Tuscany. But Joseph II. went far beyond such small measures. The position of the Eoman Catholic Church in his dominions was such that, having formed the plans he had for the consolidation of the State, he could not have left it untouched. The clergy stood by the side of the
nobility in possession of the antiquated ^f°T^^ constitutional rights of which he intended
clerg-y. ^^ deprive them for tlie benefit of the
peasantry. He was determined to reduce the power while he increased the usefulness of the Church. Thus at first he required a strict political subordination : he obliged all bishops to take an oath to the emperor promising fidelity and service, and " not to take part in any meetings, projects or con- sultations, which might be injurious to the State, but, on the contrary, when such things came to tlieir know- ledge, to inform the emperor without delay." And thus while he lessened the revenues of some of the bishop- rics he founded new sees where supervision was wanted. He created and provided for more than four hundred
GERMANY AND JOSEPH II. 219
new parishes. At the same time he suppressed many monasteries which seemed to him g^p. to fulfil no useful end; but he pen- pression sioned all those whom he ejected. Of the ^^ "^°""
3.stGriGS
2,163 religious houses in existence in 17/0, 783 had been dissolved by 1782 — a measure which has been declared to have saved Austria from a revolution, and which was before long followed by the Catholic states of Germany.
The most famous of Joseph's reforms are those which seemed especially hostile to the narrow spirit of the Papacy and which caused the in- dignant but ineffectual visit of Pius VI. to ^^y^^^ Vienna. He forbade obedience to the bulls In Ccena Domini and Unigcnitus. He prohibited the constant pilgrimages, and introduced greater simplicity into the adornment of churches. By an edict of tolera- tion issued a year after his mother's death _ ,
T „..,.. Toleration,
he granted free exercise of their religion to
all Protestants, and opened to all every office in every department of the state service (1781). He took from the priests the censorship of the Press and he ordered a new translation of the Bible into German. In all this Joseph was animated, not only by "Febronian- ism," but by military interest. He was a soldier at heart, a keen imitator of Frederick the Great. The mass of idle clergy and monks seemed to him to interfere with the military power of the Empire. He was determined to be supreme over Church as well as State, that he might bend both to his aim of strength- ening the decaying majesty of the Holy Roman Empire. It was to stay if possible the reforms which threat- ened so nearly the connection between the Church in
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Austria and the supreme representative of Catholicism that Pius VI. paid his memorable visit to Vienna in 1782. He was received with immense enthusiasm and devotion by the people ; with studied discourtesy by Count Kaunitz, the emperor's chief minister. The be- haviour of Joseph himself to the pope seems to have
been admirable : he treated him with the p!^^* ^ greatest respect and attention, but carefully 1782. ' avoided all reference to matters on which he
was determined to be firm and the discussion of which could only be as unpleasant as useless. It may be that the character of the pope was not without its influence on the emperor and did something to prevent all unnecessary change, but it certainly had no effect on his opinions on what he considered essential. " It was the ruling principle of Joseph II. to combine and unite all the powers of the State in his own hand," and he saw no reason why ecclesiastical encroachments should be any more sacred than the pretensions of the lay nobles. At Christmas, 1783, the emperor visited Eome, and from that time he grew more moderate in reform : it is clear that he foresaw political danger; but when he died, in 1790, he handed on his schemes to his brother.
Besides the direct results of the measures under- taken within his hereditary dominions an influence . both direct and indirect was exercised on Germany ^^^® German Church. Joseph's brother
Maximilian was first coadjutor, and then archbishop and elector, of Koln. His opinions, which agreed with those of his brother as to the power of the pope, became tainted with the rationalism of the day : it is said that he made a practice of hearing
GERMANY AND JOSEPH II.
Mass in his carriage through the open doors of a church ; but he was, in his earlier years at least, an honest advocate of independence for Catholic Ger- many. Under the emperor's influence the ecclesiasti- cal electors took steps to free themselves from Roman authority. A convention of German bishops at Ems in 1786 agreed to the Articles of Conven- Coblenz, denounced the false decretals and ^^^ ^^g^ seemed at first to be in favour of the emperor's desire to found a national German Church free from papal supremacy. But eventually they turned back. The rights that they claimed they would not claim together with their emperor : they feared to pass from the pope's hands into those of the despotic state. Eebronianism gave way to a reaction. But the state of the German Church was dangerous. The bishops were at war with their clergy and with their metro- politans ; the archbishops, like the emperor, were anxious to be free from the pope. The German monks, Benedictine and Cistercian, the friars, Augus- tinian and Franciscan, declared themselves in favour of the doctrine of the Council of Constance, which subordinated the pope to a General Council. But in truth the power of the Catholic Church in Germany was at the lowest ebb. Its divisions weakened it. The hurricane of the Eevolution alone could uproot it from its old moorings, and after a time make new life possible.
But Joseph's work was not confined to his German dominions. In the duchy of Milan he secured from the pope the recognition of his right to nominate bishops throughout his dominions. In the Nether- lands he had very difi'erent fortune, for he managed
2 22 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
to array against himself every religious as well as political feeling of the country. The poHcy ^ Austrian (once Spanish) Netherlands, in the where episcopal sees were numerous, had
Nether- resisted the Reformation, which had been ^" ^' successful in Holland where bishops were
few. The Church, the Episcopate, the Jesuits, were ex- tremely strong. Joseph treated them as he treated Aus- tria. He dissolved monasteries, granted toleration and deprived the Jesuits of their control of education in the university of Louvain, by transferring the university to Brussels and replacing it by a theological seminary conducted on non- ultramontane principles. Those who protested w^ere coerced ; and the papal nuncio was expelled from the country. A rebellion broke out in which the ancient conservatism of the hierarchy was strangely supported by a modern Liberal and re- publican party. A pacification in 1788 was but tem- porary. The bishops protested against the new semin- ary : Joseph forcibly closed some of the old ones : Cardinal Frankenberg, archbishop of Malines, was a leader of revolt side by side with constitutionalists and followers of the French revolutionary ideas. Leopold II. secured peace ; but it was not long before the Austrian Netherlands passed under the control of the French republic.
In Germany, as in the Netherlands, the country was ripe for change ; and it is to be noticed that the ecclesi- astical states, badly though they were governed, were yet as forward as other provinces in measures of re- form. With all their faults the ecclesiastical electors of the last half of the eighteenth century were humane and reasonable men, in favour of toleration and op-
GERMANY AND JOSEPH II. 223
posed to ultramontanism. " At no period of the eighteenth century had those ecclesiastical territories possessed such remarkable and estimable princes as during the last ten years before the French Eevo- lution."
Meanwhile the religion of Germany was being pro- foundly affected by a great movement of philosophic thought. Deriving, like the French philo- p, .. soplies, their first impulse towards rational- sophic ism from the English Deists, the German movement thinkers soon bettered their instruction. "? Lutheran orthodoxy was everywhere visibly in decay : and the practice of religion among the Pro- testants, as Goethe shows in the earlier chapters of his illuminative autobiography, was frigid and ineffec- tive. Then a school of theologians, at once critics and poets, arose, who with Lessing at their head trans- formed the whole attitude of Germany towards reli- gion. Toleration, the supremacy of Christian ethic, the comparatively unimportant nature of Christian theology, were the principles of the new school, which combined pietism with an absence of dogma and " began that ill-famed preaching of a Christianity which dispensed with Christ."^
To many it seemed that Catholicism in Germany was dead. The centre of political power after the Seven Years' War (1756-63) passed deci- sively from Catholic Austria to Protestant Effects of
Prussia. Frederick the Great told Voltaire H!^ ^f^"
Years
that he thought he would live to see the war.
end of Catholicism. Yet when the Catholic
States excluded the Jesuits Frederick received them.
^ H, von Schubert, Church History, p. 299 (Eiig. trans.).
224 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
He would have men save their souls in their own way. His position was the very antithesis to that of the Eeformation, which had made the state the judge, the teacher, the protector of rehgion, and the persecu- tor of heresy. The last expression of the Eeformation principle of "cujus regio ejus religio " was the expul- sion of the Protestant Salzburgers.^ A new age had begun before the revolution.
The vague humanitarianism of Herder was based on the same studies which made Berlin a school of ration- alistic unbelief and yet made Leopold von Stolberg a Catholic because he saw that "this rational Chris- tianity, so called, cannot stand." The aim of the school was to find a basis of ethics apart from revela- tion ; but many of them came to admit that they had failed. Kant (1724-1804), in the Critik of Pure Reason (1781), began a new age of metaphysics. He came to base all theoretical results of thought, and all the exact sciences, upon the evi- dence of the senses, while moral (and religious) ideas had a different, a higher and yet a practical origin. Our moral conscience, he argued, demanded a belief in the existence of God. Yet he entirely rejected the view of the schoolmen, and of Descartes, that the existence of God is proved by our thought of Him. It is not the intellect, he would say, but the conscience, which proves that there is a God : he even went so far as to admit that the actual moral condition of man required the existence of the Church, founded by God. And that Church must be visible, not merely the in- visible and unknown company of the saints. Thus was
^ See above, p. 14. Von Schubert, op. ciL, p. 302, strangel}^ thinks that this was "the last wave of the Counter-Reformation."
GERxMANY AND JOSEPH II. 225
a new basis supplied, even in the philosophy which was distinctly not Christian, for the CathoUcism whicH was on its trial throughout the Europe of the revolu- tionary age. But Kant would separate Christian morals from Christianity : would believe that the ethics can be accepted without the creed. The separation is im- possible. Hegel was to come after him and declare that religion was the necessary basis of morality. Fichte (1762-1814), who was one of those ^ndFichte great writers whose enthusiastic patriotism aroused the Germans to resist Napoleon, came to see that above the materialistic view of the world there was the higher view which found its origin in God. In religion he found the soul of morality. He came to see in the kingdom of God not a metaphysical ideal but a historical fact and a practical idea, which should grow in action till " the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ." He led the way to the historical school which at the period of the Eestoration should look at Christianity from a new point of view, and base some of its claims to belief on its age-long history and influence. The period of the Eevolution, an age of moral upheaval, found Germany at work to reconstruct the theories of religion and morals which had been stereotyped by the Eeforma- tion. The new theories of life, the new defences of faith, were based on wider knowledge and wider philosophy.
CHAPTER XIV HOLLAND AND THE LATER JANSENISTS
THE Dutch War of Independence had freed the country from Spain, and William the Silent, after hesitating for some time and claiming now to be Cal- vinist, now Catholic, had settled in Protestantism, and under his successors the country had definitely ex- cluded Catholicism from toleration. Those who re- mained Catholics had to find ministers and Cathoh- sacraments as best they could : vicars apos- Holland. ^^^^^ were sent from time to time; but when one of them, James de la Torre, gave confirmation in North Holland, in 1647, he was ban- ished and his property was confiscated. Meanwhile the Jesuits were endeavouring to secure control of the mission, and great difficulties ensued. The bishops had now dropped the title of Utrecht to which they were entitled by succession ; but the canons of that Church still endeavoured to retain the right of election and to choose successors formally to the ancient bishops of the see. The popes on the other hand preferred to appoint vicars apostolic who should exercise jurisdic- tion in their name. On the death of de la Torre, Alexander YII. appointed Bartholomew Catz to suc- ceed him, and he, like his predecessor, was given a title in partibus. His coadjutor and successor, van
226
HOLLA XD AXD THE LATER JANSENISTS 227
Neercassel, though elected to the archbishopric of Utrecht, bore the title from the pope of bishop of Cas- toria. He was treated with less rigour by the political authorities and was able to reinvigorate the remnant of Catholics in the country, to recognise the rights of the chapter of Haarlem as well as those of Utrecht, and to make approaches towards friendly relations with the Protestants by recognising that all marriages celebrated according to the laws of the country were valid, a doctrine established for the whole Eoman Church by Benedict XIV. in 1741.
But Neercassel was a friend of Arnauld and of Quesnel, and very soon fell under suspicion of Jan- senism, which was deserved in so far as he Bishop was, like the Dutch Catholics, of whom he Neer- was the leader, greatly opposed to the tassel, power of ultramontanism and the doctrine of papal infallibility. The Jesuits had founded many houses in Holland, and it was with great difficulty that they w^ere induced to obey the ordinary, decree after decree being issued to require their obedience to the bishop. It was found necessary for van Neercassel to go to Kome and lay his complaints before Clement IX. Judgment was given in his favour, and he returned to Holland. When during the war of 1672 the French occupied Utrecht, he was able to take pos- session of his cathedral church ; and when at last the French were driven out and the Peace of Nimw^egen was signed in 1678, it was stipulated that the Catholics should be allowed to worship freely, and that there should be indemnity for all the proceedings during the war. The cathedral was given back to the Eeformed Church. Van Xeercassel now lived in re-
228 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
tirement, writing tlieological works and corresponding with the Jansenists, and in his Amor Poenitens ex- posing the lax morality of the Jesuits. This book caused the greatest excitement, and was delated to Eome, where it was after a considerable time for- Charges bidden to be circulated until it had been of corrected in certain respects. The Augus-
Jansenism. tinianism always strong in Holland was too prominent for the party in power at Eome. In spite of persecution, which was the natural return on the part of the Protestants for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the Catholics flourished under the rule of van Neercassel : in the United Provinces there were five hundred thousand, with three hundred secular and a hundred and twenty regular priests, including eighty Jesuits.
In the spring of 1686 van Neercassel undertook his last visitation : it was too much for his strength, and he died at Zwolle on June 6, a faithful servant to the Church of the remnant. The chapters of Haarlem and Utrecht elected Hugh van Heussen, canon of Utrecht, to the vacant see. But at that demnation "^^^T ^^^^ certain of his writings were of van under consideration at Eome, being charged
Heussen, ^yith heresy, and on May 15, 1687, they
^' were condemned. The Dutch clergy hesi-
tated to offend the pope, and the canons now sub- mitted three other names without withdrawing that of van Heussen, and after further discussion sent a representative, de Cock, to Eome. On February 6, 1689, Peter Codde, one of those named, was con- secrated at Brussels as archbishop of Sebaste in 2Ktrtihus. For ten years he lived a harassed life.
HOLLAND AND THE LATER JANSENISTS 229
constantly accused of Jansenism, and ministering among great difficulties to his little flock. He was summoned to the jubilee of 1700 at Eome, and he thought it wise to provide for his absence by appoint- ing four pro-vicars to represent him in his absence. He was followed to Eome by formal accusations from the Jesuits in Holland. He was able to oppose to them a protest signed by three hundred priests, which declared that no new thing was taught in their churches, but the faith of S. Eeter as taught of old by S. Boniface and S. Willebrod, and intact and entire was upheld " the doctrine of S. Augustine and S. Thomas, and that not for the state of party but for edification, and to endeavour to carry out the discipline of S. Charles Borromeo which has been received with such applause by the whole Church." In spite of this, the com- mission was divided in opinion, and a brief was issued suspending Codde from the office of vicar apostolic and appointing Theodore de Cock in his stead.
The chapters declined to recognise the authority of de Cock, and sent a memorial to Eome in support of their archbishop. Even the Erotestant Government intervened : the States demanded his return within three months under pain of the banishment of all Jesuits from the country. He returned, but only to find a schism, with de Cock denouncing the chapters and declaring that that of Haarlem had no real existence or rights at all. De Cock was 'exiled by the States, and the chapters procured from -^he the learned canonist van Espen, the glory of canonist the great school of theology at Louvain, a ^^" complete vindication of their position, in ^^ "' the Motivum Juris 'pro Capitulo Haarkmemi. But
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
the strength of Kome was able to wear out resist- ance. Codde, in 1704, resigned his office, and the chapter of Haarlem agreed not to exercise its rights. Utrecht alone stood out, and Gerard Potcamp was elected and was admitted to the rights of vicar apostolic. But he died in 1705, and when the nuncio at Koln appointed in his stead Adam Daemen, and consecrated him on Christmas Day, 1707, the chapter of Utrecht refused to receive him as they had not elected him, and the States, which insisted upon the right of assent to a nomination, declared that he could not be allowed in the land unless he abdicated his functions. In 1710 he resigned. In the same year Codde, who had resigned his office six years before, died, protesting to the last that he con- demned the Five Propositions,^ "and tliat in the same sense in which the see of Eome and the Catholic Church have condemned them, and that without any explanation, distinction, or restriction, in whatever book they may be found — even in the Angustinus of Jansen, if they are really contained in that work." Within a few days of his death he was again con- demned by the Inquisition at Kome.
At the same time the most distinguished theologian of the Dutch Church, van Erkel, was cited by the papal nuncio Bussi to appear at Koln and answer a charge of heresy. When he did not come he was excommunicated. The nuncio also issued directions against the clergy of the National Church, and flooded the country with Jesuits. For a long time no con- secration took place and no ordination was possible: the bull Unigcnitus increased the difficulty of arrange-
^ See above, p. 62.
HOLLAND AND THE LATER JANSENLSTS 231
ment with those priests who remained. In 1715 and 1716 several persons were ordained priests by Fagan, Eoman Catholic bishop of Meath, acting on the authority of van Heussen as vicar-general of the chapter of Utrecht. In 1719 van Heussen died.
At this point the Church in Holland came into con- nection with the opponents of Ultramontanism in
France. In 1717 four French bishops had ^
. 7 „ Connec-
made the appeal, so common m crises of ^[q^ q^ ^he
Church history and so rarely eftective in Dutch practice, to a General Council, against the Church bull Unigenitus, and with them the Sor- p^ench bonne had protested also ; in 1719 the protests canons of Utrecht followed the example, against It was a genuine protest. The Dutch Old ^^^.*'^"^" Catholics (as they may fairly be called) were firm in their belief that they obeyed in every- thing the doctrine of the Church Universal. It was to her that they appealed against what seemed a tem- porary misinterpretation of her teaching. In the same year a bishop in imrtihus, Dominique Varlet, bishop of Ascalon, who was to work in Babylon, passing through Amsterdam, gave confirmation to over six hundred Dutch Catholics. News of this was not long in reach- ing Eome, and when the bishop arrived at the scene of his labours, at Khamache in Shirwan, he found him- self preceded by a letter of suspension. He deter- mined at once to return and plead his own case. But his refusal to accept the bull Unigenitus prevented his doing so ; and the accession of Innocent XIII. made matters no better for him, or for the Church of Utrecht, whicli implored the pope to give them a bishop. At last, fortified by the decision of van Espen
232 THE AGE OF REVOLUnON
and other canonists of Louvain, that if the Eoman See refused bulls the canons might themselves elect and authorise a consecration, on April 27, 1723, they elected Cornelius Steenoven as archbishop of Consecra- Utrecht, and on October 15, 1724, he was e?" ° consecrated by the bishop of Babylon. Con-
1724. gratulations from many French bishops
showed that the bold act was approved by those who resisted Ultramontanism ; but Benedict XIIL declared the act null and void, and denounced all concerned in it. Steenoven died in 1725, appealing on his death-bed to a G-eneral Council. A long con- troversy now took place as to the validity of consecra- tion by a single bishop, and van Espen was able to quote numerous cases where this had happened, and had afterwards by Eoman authority been allowed to be valid. Barchman Wuytiers was elected to succeed Steen- oven : the pope declared the election void : he was consecrated by the bishop of Babylon ; and Bene- dict XIIL promptly excommunicated him and all his supporters. He proceeded to act as bishop, and the Church was reinforced by a number of Carthusians and Cistercians, who fled from France rather than accept the bull Unigcnitus. He took part also in the negotiations, which began at the Sorbonne, for the reunion of East and West. He lived till 1733, and five years before he had attended the death-bed of van Espen, who had left Louvain rather than desert the Church of Utrecht, which he believed to be persecuted for the truth. Theodore A^an der Croon was elected to succeed him : still the possibility of consecration de- pended on the bishop of Babylon, and many efforts were made to prevent his action. But the consecra-
HOLLAND AND THE LATER JANSENISTS 233
tion took place, and again on van der Croon's death a successor, Peter Meindaerts, was consecrated in 1739 ; and in 1742 he consecrated a bishop for Haarlem, and another in 1745. During this period the Church proceeded to state explicitly its position as regards doctrine, adopting several of the documents „ ,. which had been sent from France and had xiV. never been condemned. Benedict XIV., and the wise and tolerant as ever, expressed his ^JJ^^^, satisfaction, and there seemed a real pros- pect of reunion, when the good pope died. A third bishop, for De venter, was consecrated in 1758. In 1760 a Council was held at Utrecht, which affirmed its adherence to the Catholic creeds, adopted Bossuet's exposition of the faith, and declared that it held all doctrine which the Eoman Church held, condemned all she condemned, and tolerated all that she tolerated. It declared that it accepted the Five Propositions and the teaching of S. Augustine and S. Thomas. I^ denounced certain Jesuit teaching, notably the errors of Probabilism.
The Congregation at Eome declared the Council er- roneous and void, and an assembly of the French Church condemned it. On the death of the archbishop of Utrecht, in 1768, a successor was elected and con- secrated who lived till 1797. During his time the suppression of the Jesuits, and the definite approval of the Church of Holland by a council of Spanish bishops, made it seem probable that reunion would be achieved under Clement XIV. This was pre- vented by the pope's early death, as well as by the demand for the withdrawal of the appeal to a General Council. From 1797 to 1808 John Jacob van Pihijn
2 34 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
was archbishop, and he, like Eicci in Italy, deeply , , sympathised with the constitutional bishops
history 0^ the French Church. On his death, when of the Louis Bonaparte was king of Holland, the
TT^"^*? ^^ Government forbade any election to the vacant see ; and though Napoleon, when he visited Utrecht, declared that he would bring about a reunion with Eome, the Church remained "a shadow of a shade," and not till 1814, when the Dutch monarchy was restored, was a new archbishop elected. By this time the Church had dwindled down to no more than five thousand members ; but its theological position remained unaltered. It declared that it was perfectly orthodox : it used all the Eoman rites : it denied that it was Jansenist. And so it remains to- day. It stands isolated, like the small Orthodox bodies between East and West, but there may be reserved for it a special work in the reunion of the future.
The connection with Jansenism, stoutly denied by the Dutch theologians as an agreement in dogmatic teaching, was undoubted in so far as it meant a re- sistance to Ultramontanism. But the Dutch Church stood rather in the ways of the French bishops who supported Port Eoyal and refused the Unigenitus, than in those of the men who in later years brought Jansen- ism into discredit.
The death of Louis XIV. had caused a reaction Reaction against the Jesuits, and before long the re- against sistance of Cardinal de Noailles, archbishop J ^ .. of Paris, to Ultramontanism, caused a dead-
in France, lock with the Papacy. The cardinal even 1715- appealed to a General Council. Not till
1720 was an aQ;reement arrived at, through the in-
HOLLAND AND THE LATER JANSENISTS 235
trigues of Dubois, chief minister of the Eegent Orleans, who received for his action a cardinal's hat. But the bull was still far from being universally accepted in France. Seven prominent bishops pro- tested against it to Innocent XIII. in 1721. Year after year the dispute went on, in inconceivable barren- ness : propositions, explanations followed each other : a Council at Embrun, 1727, condemned the good Bishop Soanen of Senez : the aged Cardinal de Noailles accepted the bull Unigenitus "pure and simple," and then died. The Church of France remained in a divided, inconsistent, disturbed condition. Gradual The Jansenists had many supporters, and defeat
even when outwardly suppressed had great ° ^^ ^ ' n 1 1- 11 liC opponents
mtiuence on the education and thought or ^f ^^e bull
France. They were, however, gravely dis- " Unigeni- credited by a series of pretended miracles *"s." which were worked at the tomb of a deacon named Paris in the cemetery of S. Medard. Other miracles were declared to have happened on behalf of those wlio rejected the bull Unigenitus : to an affirmation of one of them the name of Voltaire is attached. But the excitement and imposture became scandalous : " Jansenist emulated Jesuit in dragging men and women into the deepest sloughs of super- stition." The tale of years of disorder is . ^ complicated by the position assumed by the Jansenism. Parlement of Paris, the great law court of France, which at every point opposed the king and opposed the pope, even in matters so entirely non- controversial as the publication of the canonisation of S. Vincent de Paul.^
' See the Rrformation in this series, pp. 270-72.
236 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
The history of the time may be traced most clearly in its constitutional documents, for the personal -., interest is concerned only with the contests
Parlement of small men, many of whom were far from of Paris conscientious in their actions or moral in and the ^|^g-^, conduct. In 1730 Louis XV. issued a declaration ordering that the bull (or con- stitution) Unigenitus should be observed, and prohibit- ing all resistance to it by way of appeal or in the Press. In September, 1731, the Parlement put out an arret, after the manner of the Declaration of 1682, reinforcing the royal right to jurisdiction and the responsibility of the ministers of the Church to the Crown. The Eoyal Council, while affirming the royal power in terms of studied and religious politeness, quashed the Parlement's edict. In 1732 and 1733 the king issued edicts ordering the closing of the cemetery of S. Medard, and forbidding all public shows of "persons who pretend to be suffering from con- vulsions," and whose actions were in some strange way supposed to represent divine revelations. In 1733, again, the Parlement protested against certain restrictions on the freedom of the religious Press : the king declined to agree. In 1752, when a cure refused the last sacraments to a lawyer who would not abjure Jansenism, the Parlement had him arrested, and the king had him released. The Parlement ordered the archbishop of Paris (Cardinal de Beaumont) to give the sacraments : he refused. King and Parlement engaged in the most undignified exchange of protesting litera- ture. The banishment of the Parlement to Pontoise, the protest of the clergy against the lawyers' attempts to dictate to the Church in the matter of the sacra-
HOLLAND AND THE LATER JANSENISTS 237
ments, were further incidents in the strife. The king tried to please both parties, and actually banished the archbishop of Paris to counterbalance the Disputes disgrace of the law court. The Church between naturally protested, and a general assembly Church of the clergy in 1755 put forth a series of articles of protest against the extension of the secular power, and declared that refusal of assent to the Vnigenitus merited refusal of the sacraments. Bene- dict XIV. in 1756 made a declaration to the same effect. Again, in 1760 the general assembly of the French clergy reiterated the condemnation of the ex- cesses of the secular power, and protested that all secular decrees with regard to the sacraments were null and void. So long as the Jesuits remained active, until, in fact, the question of their suppression came within the range of practical politics, did this tedious and unedifying contest continue. The whole record is one of cruel futility. It goes far to explain one side of the Eevolution that was to come.
CHAPTER XV
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
rpHE unhappy confusion into which religion in
-^ France had fallen was evidenced by the disputes
in which clergy and king, lawyers, Jansen-
Religion ^g^g ^^^ Jesuits, were involved. But there m France.
were even deeper causes ot dismay to those
who observed the condition of the Church. In the first place there was the contrast between the life of the court and the nobility and the religion which they professed. Louis XV., the most degraded of the monarchs of the eighteenth century, passed from the height of popularity to the depth of popular con- tempt, because his vices, if not in all their horror, were known to all. Yet from the king's own family came the latest saint of the French Bourbon House, Madame Louise de France. It was a strange contrast. There was a degraded civilisation, culminating in a court of abandoned profligacy, in which the voice of religion was heard only as in a dream. Versailles in all its glory revived from the later austerities of Louis XIV. to form a setting for the frivolity and shame of the most idle and careless society of France. The daughters of Louis XV. were there in the hey-day of their youth, after a childhood spent in humble retirement at Fontevrault, where Fleury
238
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 239
had induced the king to send them to save expense, the expense which he lavished so freely on Madame his vices. They had been trained quietly, Louise de religiously and strictly by the abbess of the ^^^"ce. greatest house of female Benedictines in France, and they returned to Court filled with pious zeal. It was natural that they should be revolted by what they found. Yet they retained a sort of innocent idolatry for their father. They entered into the simpler amusements — hunting, dancing, music — with the spirit of young Frenchwomen, but their hearts never varied from a strict religious devotion, and they spent hours in the corporal works of mercy and love. Gradually the true character of her father appears to have become understood by Madame Louise, and she formed the idea of winning his salvation by the offer of herself to the cloistered life. She began to practise severe austerities. She prepared her con- fessors for her determination, and at last she besought the intercession of Mgr. de Beaumont, archbishop of Paris, and obtained the king's consent to enter the Order of the Carmelites. On April 11th, 1770, she quitted Versailles for ever and entered the house of Mount Carmel at Saint-Denis. There she remained till her death, in 1787. She made a saintly nun, add- ing to the charm of her natural simplicity and good breeding a practical common sense which showed her to be a true daughter of S. Teresa, whose name she took on her profession. As prioress of Saint-Denis, an office which she held, and continued to hold, much against her will, she showed herself a rigid economist, a wise ruler, a skilful educator, a devoted mother. She was universally honoured, by popes and by the
240 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
poor alike, and the honour was due mucli more to the beauty of her character than to the dignity of her birth, " Let us be what we ought to be and we shall never fear to seem what we are " w^as a saying of hers which might be motto for her life. Its dominant characteristic was its extreme naturalness ; when she abandoned the style and title of a princess no change was visible— she had always been simple, unaffected, humble. But it was impossible for her to escape all political influence — Church and state were too closely linked together. That her influence was always wise need not be asserted ; but it can at least be said that it was always exercised on purely religious grounds. Her appeals to Joseph 11. against the secularisation of the Carmelite convents in the Netherlands were in vain; but she received the refugees into her own house. "When Joseph himself came to see her, and wondered at the austerity of her life, she assured him that she was far happier in her cell than she had ever been at Versailles. Prince Henry of Prussia, when he had seen her, said, " Neither France nor Italy has anything so grand as the wonder that is cloistered in the convent of Saint-Denis." As she lived, so she died, simply and with exultant faith. Her life had shown that even in the darkest days the living power of the Christ could find its examples among the highest as well as among the sick and the poor.
Very different was the life around her. It was penetrated by a spirit of active disbelief and revolt. Christianity was openly flouted : it was believed that the "Age of Eeason" had succeeded the Age of Faith. The disputes between France and the Papacy had added force to the movement of antagonism to
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 241
religion in general. There had been two attempts to modify the supremacy of Eome in Church attitude government and doctrine, Jansenism and of revolt Gallicanism, leading up to the conclusion against that the Jansenist controversy " weakened ^^^^S^®"- the power of resistance to the anti-ecclesiastical and anti-Christian spirit, which in the course of the eigh- teenth century worked its way more and more into prominence, and the eager battle against the bull Unigenitus drove many hesitating prelates over into the arms of Eome. From defending a papal bull, not a few passed on to defending the pope's infallibility, which was the pith and marrow of the whole conten- tion/' But behind the Jansenist opposition appeared a deep philosophic divergence. Voltaire and Montes- quieu began to write, and to insinuate contempt of the whole Christian life. Statesmen like d'Argenson began to look for a new reformation in which "all priests, all revelation, all mysteries, will be put under the ban ; and men will henceforth only see God in His great beneficent works." The Esprit clcs Lois was followed by the Encyclopcedia , in which, while reti- cence was observed in articles directly dealing with religion, the whole spirit was definitely opposed to the Church and to the Christian revelation. The feeling against the Jesuits rose continually, till at last the esprit yliilosopliique saw its victory in the sup- pression of the whole society. A French bishop said, "At the rate at which everything is going now, re- ligion cannot have fifty years to live." Something like it was felt by Bishop Butler in England not many years before.
The origin of French philosophism lay indeed in
R
242 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
English Deism. Voltaire dated his opposition to the -pjjg religion of his day from his visit to England
French in 1726 ; and Condorcet, his biographer, •'philo- says that "the example of England showed sop es. YiiiTQ^ that truth is not made to remain a secret in the hands of a few philosophers. . . . From the moment of his return he felt himself called on to destroy the prejudices of every kind, of which his country was the slave." It was not only the philo- sophy of England which attracted him, though he talked with the chief Deists and was struck with the freedom in which they lived and wrote ; it was the appearance of general neglect of religion which power- fully influenced his thought. As in France an anti- religious reaction followed the death of Louis XIV., so in England the enthusiasm of Anne's reign was succeeded by a striking coldness of feeling. Addison, indeed, who had travelled, declared that there was less appearance of religion in England than in any neigh- bouring state, while Montesquieu said that he who was thought in France to have too little religion was thought in England to have too much. Voltaire re- turned to criticise Pascal, to mock foully at the heroine-saint of France, and to adopt in his own country the Deism of England.
Voltaire's attack was directed both against the Christian creed and the Christian Church. The faith of Christ, at least as it was taught by the Church, seemed to him incredible, and the system by which it was presented before men in the eighteenth century in France seemed infamous. The Eoman form of Christianity seemed to him in- herently mischievous : he hated monasticism, celibacy,
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 243
religious education. He had a passionate enthusiasm for tolerance. Protestantism was intolerable to him when it was intolerant, but more tolerable than Catholicism because he thought it less superstitious. And, above all, he hated the Jesuits, the teachers of the generation among whom he lived, w^hose "Molinism," laxity as opposed to the severity of Jansenism, and powerful organisation were to him a perpetual and hideous nightmare. And when the Parlement joined in attacking the Jesuits, but attacked the Encyclopcedia also, he began to see that hope for his views did not lie in the middle classes, and least of all in the Jansenist oiohlesse de la robe. The system of the Church was to him "the Infamous," and he did not wish to destroy the lax religion of Jesuitism for the benefit of a sterner Augustinian faith. He looked to the upper classes, whom he believed to have lost all faith, to help him. "The great protect one on occasion," he wrote to d'Alembert, another of the philosoplies, " they despise the Infamous and they will not persecute philosophers; but as for your pedants of Paris, who have bought their office, or for those insolent lour- geoiSy half -fanatic, half -imbecile, they can do nothing but harm." The method of Voltaire's attack was purely critical. He was not a philosopher, and he was not a student of comparative religions — he was merely a very witty, very bitter, and rather childish rationalist, who could find difficulty and inconsistency in the world he lived in and in the solutions of its problems which were offered by the past, but could not see widely or think bravely or strongly. His passion for justice, his splendid denunciation of the persecutions which still stained France in his time, were features
2 44 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
of his character wliich showed that he had still a real
affinity to Christian truth ; but it is difficult to believe
that his pretended submission to the Church in 1768,
or his assumption of the post of temporal father of
the Capuchins at Gex, were more than a hypocrisy of
which he may not liave realised the odiousness.
Beside Voltaire stands Eousseau, his contrast in
every respect, a vicious sentimentalist who dissolved
„ reliction into emotionalism. His reliction
Rousseau.
was Deism, expressed in a morality which
was extremely full of noble sentiments but destitute of practical goodness. In his endless schemes for simple life, revival of a golden age, and return to primitive virtue, he would exclude from society all who disbelieved in God ; but, with at least as much sincerity, he disbelieved in any historical expression of His will. If Voltaire's hard dialectic led to some of the most relentless excesses of the Eevolution, Eousseau's sentimentality caused crime as wicked and more hypocritical. Beside these great writers were a crowd of others in whom the anti-Christian tenden- cies of the age ranged from a vague unreal affectation of feeling to a hard atheism. Montesquieu, with his genius for historical synthesis and critical disquisition, was the first of the band, and his Esprit des Lois brought new ideas into the worn-out literature of France. The writers in the Encyclopccdia, d'Alembert and his assistants, philosophers and critics and prac- -pj^g tical statesmen, such as Helvetius and
" Encyclo- d'Holbach and Piaynal and Diderot and paedia." Turgot, spread the new ideas over the world. The Encycloiocedia, suppressed by the Parle- ment, concentrated in itself the whole of the teaching
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 245
of those who were, secretly as well as openly, the foes of Christianity. All over Europe the influence spread. Catherine II. in Russia, whose life was among the most vicious of all the lives of contemporary sovereigns, warmly welcomed its authors and made Diderot one of her chief advisers. Frederick the Great of Prussia was a cynical admirer of the movement. The ministers of Joseph II. and Charles III. were among its disciples. Its practical effect was immense. Joined to political absolutism, and in temporary alli- ance with a Christian revolt against political and commercial intrigues, it procured the dismissal of the Jesuits from the chief countries of Europe. Then came its more startling results in France itself. French Deism had a result very different from that in England, and for several reasons. In the between first place, in England the Church was in- French tellectually active and was able to beat a-nd the philosophers at their own weapons, j^"-^^^ Secondly, the period of literary dispute was followed by a great spiritual revival. Thirdly, the Church was not in England a support to social evil and political tyranny. In France the reverse of all these things was true. "What, then, was the in- fluence of the French philosoplics on the Revolution which overthrew the Church ? They did not create the revolutionary spirit, but they gave it strength by supplying it with a body of doctrine, derived on the one side from Voltaire, on the other from Rous- seau. They did not create the confusion which ended in revolt, but they exploited it. Yet they never foresaw that revolution would come so quickly or take so violent a form. When they desired to over-
246 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
turn the altar they did not see that it would carry the throne in its fall, and when they wished to confiscate the property of the clergy they did not see that all other property would go too. Voltaire himself would certainly have viewed the progress of the Eevolution with horror and disgust.^ In fact, the hostility be- tween the ijhilosophes and the established Government was much more apparent than real. The philosophes seemed to be martyrs, but were really encouraged by the higher officers of state. It was strange to see the administration of an absolute monarchy protecting the foes of social order and oppressing its defenders. Perhaps the wise course for the French Government w^ould have been to undertake a reform of the Church in conjunction with the Papacy : better still a reform on Galilean lines and . . the theories of Louis XIV. and Bossuet. of Louis However that may be, the difficulties were XVI., far beyond the capacity of Louis XVI., who
^774- ^vas called to deal with them when his
grandfather, hastily repentant on his death-bed for a life of hideous vice and rejection of God, passed away on May 10, 1774.
The French Church, as the history of her disputes may have shown us, w^as ill-fitted to meet the vehem- ence of philosophic attack or the genuine needs of a period of social distress. In numbers the Church was strong, but yet the dangerous sign had long been evident of a falling off in the number of candidates for holy orders. In 1762 it is said that there were 194,000 clergy, under Louis XVI. 130,000. The chief decay
1 See Marius Roiistan, Les philosophes et la socUte francaise cm XVIII' Steele.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 247
was in the monasteries, where many houses had been closed by royal decree since 1765 for lack Condition of religious to inhabit them : the colliers of the (statements of complaints, etc., prepared for French the States-general of 1789) mention many ^^^^^h. that were deserted : and the suppression of the Jesuits had undoubtedly diminished the number of clergy. The wealth of the Church was considerable; but it would not have seemed so great, or even been more than was needed for active work of charity, if it had been evenly distributed. Some of the great sees had large revenues, and they were increased by a scanda- lous abuse of pluralities. From the point of view of the reformers, and of the people also, the position of the Church in politics was its gravest danger. Whatever the 2:)hilosoplies might think, or pretend to think, about the clergy and their spiritual claims, it was not the spiritual position of the Church which caused its fall. It was because the clergy were land- owners, tithe-owners, feudal lords, that they were un- popular. They had played a great part in civil life. Their courts and assemblies were the only ones which had preserved independence in the triumph of abso- lute monarchy : they only had any pretensions to govern themselves. Their actions in civil life were often beneficent. It has been observed that some of the best of the country priests and bishops had taken great part in the economic developments of their time, in agriculture, road-making, bridge-building, the abolition of internal custom-houses and the like. And when it came to the period of constitutional move- ment, no one more clearly asserted the rights of the States-general and of the people than they. But the
248 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Church stood opposed in principle to the leaders of revolt. She relied upon history, tradition, custom, law. They cast all these to the winds, and looked for Church salvation to a fancied state of nature and to and theoretical rights of man. The institutions
State. Qf ^jjQ State seemed to the revolutionaries
to be based on the institutions of the Church : the Church, then, must go, for she had mixed herself up with the State and tried to ^ive a sacred sanction to the settled order of public life, which was to be de- stroyed. And the landed property of the Church was important in every district. Monasteries often held the lordship of villages : bishops and canons had serfs, labour rents, market dues, like other feudal lords : they were exempt from taxation, they claimed to be exempt from dues ; and the clergy still held the tithes. Here were points of irritation at every side of rural life ; and it was, when once revolution began, of little advantage to the Church that often the clergy had been the foremost advocates of reform. The very simplicity and openness of mind of the priests laid them open to attack. When the States-general met, and before, they advocated the popular liberties, which, in evil hands, were to be the means- of their undoing. But the position of the clerical estate as judged from within may be expressed somewhat differently. The condition of the French Church on the eve of
_. . . the Eevolution is best illustrated by the
Division n , 1 , 1 '
between cahiers presented by the clergy at the time
higher and of the elections to the States-general. The
lower same complaints, and those going back a
century or more to a time when, during
the wars of Louis XI Y., the evils were perhaps
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 249
even worse, are echoed from all the provinces. The real grievance was the separation between the higher and lower clergy. The clergy were but slightly affected by the work of the philosophes or by the severe theology of Jansenism. It was neither of these currents of thought which affected them ; for, in truth, they were hardly sufficiently educated to ap- preciate their force ; and the great majority of them were absorbed — after the performance of their duties — in the material struggle for existence. The economic causes which pressed heavily on the France of the ancien regime pressed very heavily on the clergy : most of the priests in country parishes were not far removed from actual want. On the other hand, the higher clergy w^ere extremely rich, and the abbes, canons, and prebendaries especially so, and that with the very smallest obligations of residence or work. There was a deep gulf between the two classes. The son of the noble or the rich official had often but the slightest training for the ministry, and won preferment entirely by interest, without ever doing any parochial work or preaching a single sermon of his own com- position. No wonder that so many parish clergy were returned to the States-general. The higher clergy were not leaders even of their own order. The able men in the higher ranks were often men of low moral character, of uncertain or infidel opinions, and of personal ambition unrestrained by scruple.
Example after example showed the character of the higher clergy. The state of Cardinal de The Kohan, archbishop of Strasburg, was regal, bishops but he ruined himself by a discreditable in- ^"^ abbes, trigue about a diamond necklace whicli he fancied the
250 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
queen wished for and even received at his hands. When Lonienie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse, one of the ministers who, on the approach of the Eevolution, made matters worse, was suggested for tJie archbishopric of Paris, Louis XVI. is said to have protested that in that see there ought to be a prelate who believed in God. When Maurice de Talleyrand- Perigord, destined by his parents to win great prefer- ments in tlie Church, was being trained at a seminary, he kept a mistress, and the authorities did not inter- fere with him. He was trained at Saint Sulpice and studied at the Sorbonne, yet he took orders without a vocation, without moral fitness, without belief in Christ. Even before he was ordained he was made agent-general of the clergy. He was talked of for the archbishopric of Bourges. The pope was ready in 1784 to make him a cardinal, but Marie Antoinette caused her faithful adviser, the Austrian minister (" who calls him a scoundrel "), to prevent it. It was some time before Louis XVI. would give him the bishopric of Autun, and then only just before the meet- ing of the States-general, the beginning of the Eevo- lution in which he was to play so important a part.
To the lower clergy, on the other hand, high testi- mony is borne by those who can best judge, and their The ^ives and deaths during the Eevolution
parish prove the truth of the witness. " Upon the
priests. whole, and notwithstanding the notorious vices of some of its members," says de Tocqueville,^ " I question if there ever existed in the world a clergy more remarkable than the Catholic clergy of France at the moment when it was overtaken ])y the
^ Ancieii Rtgime, lib. ii. cap. 11.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTIOX 251
Eevolution — a clergy more enlightened, more national, less circumscribed within the narrow bounds of private duty, and more alive to public obligations, and at the same time more zealous for the faith : persecution proved it. I entered on the study of these forgotten institutions full of prejudice against the clergy of that day ; I conclude that study full of respect for them."
When the cahiers were presented before the sitting of the States-general, it might be noticed that the nobles and the third estate were eager for toleration, that the monastic clergy were de- ^ ^ ^^' nounced in unsparing language, and that 1^89. the bishops and archbishops were noted as receiving far too much money and doing too little work. But when the States-general met on May 4, 1789, the clergy were found to be ready to play a prominent part as leaders of reform, while the majority of the Assembly, whether Jansenist, Protestant, or anti-Christian, were opposed to the privileges of the Church. On August 4, when most of the feudal rights were swept away, the clergy suftered with the other lords : their tithes were abolished without compen- sation, and Talleyrand developed the scheme to which he adhered throuc^hout his lonc^ career as reformer, that of confiscation of the Church's property and payment of the clergy by the State. So little had some of the prelates understood the position of affairs that the archbishop of Aries had actually proposed that the State should pay the debts of the clergy. Instead, it was the clergy who had to pay the deficit in the treasury of the State. Talleyrand proposed that the Church property should be seized by the State and the bishops and clergy, chosen as they then were, be paid
252 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
by the State. The change was carried out in a much p. .. more extreme manner. The Church lands
constitu- were confiscated and sold, and the civil tion of the constitution of the clergy was carried, clergy, ^j j^ ^YiQ bishoprics were reduced and fixed
in accord with the new departments. Bishops were to be chosen by the councils of the departments, parish priests by the administrative councils of the districts ; and electors need not be Catholics, but even Jews might vote. The cathedral chapters were sup- pressed. It was added a few days later that every member of the clergy should take an oath of obedience to the constitution of the State and to the civil consti- tution of the clergy. No French citizen was to be allowed to recognise the authority of any foreign pre- late. The amount of property confiscated was estimated at 180 millions of francs. The sale of property was rapidly accomplished throughout France, and purchasers were, besides the corporate bodies themselves, largely lawyers and tradesmen. The " people " profited very little by the sale.^ In vain did the pope protest : the king was obliged to yield. It was a veritable revolution in the French Church. Not only was the connection with Eome repudiated in a vital point, but the internal constitution was entirely changed.
Up to the Eevolution the king's power over the
-,„ ^ r Church had been almost absolute. These
Effects of 1 • 1 1 1 p 1
the civil powers passed into the hands or the nation,
constitu- and the property of the Church with
tion of the them. The civil constitution of the clergy
^' was a natural consequence of this state of
' Tliis is well illustrated in an excellent paper, L'alu'nation des bic/ia du clerge, by V. Forot, 1905.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 253
affairs. It was intended to substitute tlie people for the king as the patrons of benefices, to abolish every office which was not a cure, to redistribute ecclesiastical revenues, and to throw open all ecclesias- tical posts to all clergy. At the same time it was a definite reassertion of Gallicanism, and repudiated all obedience to the authority of the Papacy in the internal affairs of the French Church. The redivision of France on a geometrical basis, which Burke so scorn- fully ridiculed, gave a bishop to each department and paid the bishops and clergy on strictly arithmetical principles. Some sixty bishoprics were suppressed, and eight new sees were created. Democratic prin- ciples were emphasised. The bishops were provided with a council of priests without whom they could exercise no jurisdiction ; and they were elected by the ordinary electoral bodies, for whose franchise there was no test. All these acts tended to weaken the ties with Eome. It may be asserted also that they placed the clergy under the power of the bishops without a protector. The abolition of institution by the pope made a breach with Eome inevitable, and from the first placed the civil constitution under the ban of Eome. None the less, it was welcomed by many of the bishops as the reassertion of cration of ancient freedom. One hundred and twenty- the consti- nine bishops refused the oath of the civil tutional constitution. Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, ^^ °P^' swore to the constitution, renounced his orders, and yet was the consecrator of the new "constitutional" bishops, Expilly and Marolles. The other eveques jureurs refused. "Nous jurons," said Jarente of Orleans, " mais nous ne sacrons pas." The consecra-
254 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
tion was sacrilegious, but it is admitted to be valid. Sixteen of the new bishops were members of the Constituent Assembly, the most famous being Gobel, who was made archbishop of Paris, and Grcgoire, who was consecrated to the new see of Loir-et-Cher. Of the eighty-three constitutional bishops, fifty-five were parish priests. Many of these were sincerely good men, devoted to their sacred work ; others w^ere the devotees of an idea — of Gallicanism, republicanism, or democracy. All were, in Koman eyes, Jansenists of the type which was austere and rigorous but proud and disobedient.
The new bishops were treated at first with every ceremonial honour by the state. The constitution appeared to be a great success. Over forty thousand parish priests, citrus and vicaires, took the oaths.
But in reality it was this act more than anything else which made the constitutional change a revolution. An unbiassed critic has said : —
" History, now slowly shaking itself free from the passions of a century, agrees that the civil consti- tution of the clergy was the measure which, more than any other, decisively put an end to whatever hopes there might be of a peaceful transition from the old order to the new." ^
The division in the Church was never healed, and it was one step merely in the advance towards first the rejection and then the suppression of all religion. On August 26, 1792, old and new priests were ordered to leave France within fourteen days. Many fled, but perhaps as many remained, ministering secretly, and as the persecution grew^ more and more honoured by the faithful among the people.
^ John Moiley, Burke, p. 156.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 255
Eapidly the Eevoliition made progress towards Atheism. When the National Convention ^^^ began to sit, after an attempt to defend National the Church, skilfully managed by Gregoire, Conven- at once a sincere Christian and a sincere ^^°"' republican, the strength of the forces of revolt was not long in making itself felt.
"When Jacobinism came into power the suppression of the Church became certain. The Abbe Emery, head of the seminary of S. Sulpice, was imprisoned, and the prisons were soon filled with priests. Jacobinism, with " pedantic ruffians " for its leaders, was the deadly foe of the Christian faith.
"Although the Jacobins were scarcely more irre- ligious than the Abbe Sieyes or IMadame Koland, although Danton went to confes- Jacobinism sion and Barere w^as a professing Christian, Atheism, they imparted to modern democracy that implacable hatred of religion which contrasts so strangely with the examples of its Puritan proto- type."i
The massacres of September, 1792, set the seal to the new departure. On Sunday, September 2, twenty- three priests w^ere murdered in the prison of the Abbaye, and a hundred and fifteen, including the arch- bishop of Aries and the bishops of Beauvais and Saintes and the king's confessor Hebert, superior of the Eudistes. ScA^enty-nine priests were murdered next day, and then the provincial towns followed the ex- ample. In Paris all was organised by the republican leaders. Edict after edict of increasing savagery now followed. Every unsworn priest who remained in
^ Lord Acton, History of Freedom, etc., p. 88.
256 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
France was ordered to be executed within twenty-four hours, and those who had been transported went through horrors ahnost indescribable.
On January 21, 1793, Louis XVI. was executed as a traitor to the people, and on June 2, 1793, with the suppression of the Girondins, began the Jf^Te^ror ^®^Sn of Terror, which completed the de- struction of the Churcli. Abjurations of Christianity became common from the time when at Nevers, in October, Fouche proclaimed that all religious signs in public places should be destroyed, the clergy be forbidden to wear their dress, and over the ceme- teries should be placed the inscription, " Death is an eternal sleep."
Step by step the Eevolution advanced. Civil marriage was established, and every one whom the Abolition State would marry was given the right to of religion, demand the Church's blessing. The clergy 1793- were forbidden to keep registers of baptism
or marriage. On November 26, 1793, the Convention, of which seventeen bishops and some clergy were members, decreed the abolition of all religion. In order to obtain a pension the clergy were obliged to repudiate their orders. Those who refused to apostatise were added to the ranks of those who were already proscribed for refusing the oath to the civil constitu- tion. Fauchet, constitutional bishop of Calvados, who declared that it was impossible to destroy religion, was guillotined for his audacity. Some of the bishops suffered on the scaffold, several apostatised. Gobel, the constitutional archbishop of Paris, headed pos asy. ^^^ ^.^^ ^^ infamy by appearing before
the Convention and renouncing his orders. Twelve
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
257
of his episcopal vicars accompanied him. There seemed for a while to be a violent reaction against celibacy. Many clergy, such as the Abbe Gaudin of the Oratoire, married, and even four bishops, Lomenie, coadjutor of Sens, Torne, bishop of Bourges, Massieu of Beauvais, and Lindet of Evreux ; then a Convention even endeavoured to enforce oforiests marriage on parish priests. A priest, it was said, " took a wife to serve as a lightning rod." At Ausch all priests who should not marry within six months from September, 1793, were excluded from the clubs. The mass of the bishops, however, and a Council of the French Church held in 1797, still for- bade marriage, and when Talleyrand married the only relaxation he could obtain in later years was a brief reducing him to lay communion. Gregoire alone in the Convention refused to deny his faith or his orders, and yet from his undoubted sincerity as a republican escaped imprisonment. He, when the Terror was over, called the bishops again together, and was the centre of a body of men whose holiness had been tried in the fire and who held firm to their belief in Gallicanism, and in the Catholic faith.
Meanwhile nearly 2,500 French churches were turned into " temples of Eeason." The cathedral church of Notre-Dame at Paris was profaned by a hideous parody of worship in which an opera dancer was enthroned, and hymns were sung in her honour as the personification of Eeason, the power by which Eeligion had been destroyed. The Convention echoed with shouts of " No more priests : no more gods but those whom nature supplies." Every church in Paris was closed. The sacred pictures, statues, books, vestments, were
258 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
outraged and profaned. At Lyons a wretched woman was seated on the high altar and worshipped with incense. Tombs of kings and saints and common folk were rifled, and their bodies were burnt or scattered or given to dogs. In March, 1794, it was determined to ex- ecute all refractory priests, and no less than Execution ^^^ ^^ ^.^^ constitutional bishops mounted of priests. , „^ , ^ - / ^
the scanold, among them the renegade
Gobel (who recanted his apostasy at the last, and died imploring mercy for all the crimes he had committed), and Lamourette of the Ehone-et-Loire, the friend of Mirabeau and one of the chief orators of the Conven- tion. In the country districts, except where Catholi- cism was strong, as in la Vendee, the most hideous excesses were mingled with the most cal- ,. ' lous persecution. A few examples may suffice
to show how martyrs were made, and how those suffered who were not actually slain, and how each illustrates the heroism of Christian sanctity and The Car- ^^^ horrors of the time. At Compiegne six- melites at teen Carmelites were turned out of their Compiegne. house, but they still continued to live accord- ing to their rule. This the Eevolutionary Committee of Compiegne considered to be proof of " fanaticism " dangerous to the Republic, and the revolutionary tri- bunal sentenced them to death. Few of the horrors of the Revolution were worse than this brutal and un- pardonable crime. But persecution was not always "unto blood." A story to which there are more parallels comes from Rouen. It records the rt^Rouem history of the Mother de Belloy of the Con- vent of the Visitation and of her nuns, their loyalty and their sufferings, and their restoration
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 259
at last to the freedom of the cloistered life they loved so well.
Mother Marie-Madeleine-Anastasie de Belloy, of an ancient noble family, was elected superior of her House in 1787, and re-elected in 1790. The devotion of her youth seems to have been confirmed by her attachment to the "cult" of S. Benedict Labre,^ one of those curious associations of family with religious sentiment which have done much to build up the peculiar form of Continental religious life. When the Revolution came, the Mother and the whole of her convent declared, in answer to the questions addressed by order of the National Assembly, their desire to remain permanently bound by their vows. One of the nuns, it is interesting to note, was a Mrs. Johnston, widow of an English officer, who had resumed her maiden name of Wollaston. For a time the convent was left unmolested, though its property was con- fiscated and the nuns suftered great privations. It was in the midst of this period of want that the nuns declared their happiness in the cloister and their confidence in their superior by re-electing her as their head. A new difficulty was introduced by the civil constitution of the clergy. The faithful who rejected the ministrations of the " sworn " clergy deserted the parish churches and thronged the chapels of the re- ligious ; the bishop appointed by the State ordered them to close their doors to these visitors ; they refused, and on June 17, 1791, their chapels were closed by order of the Government. At the end of 1792 they were deprived of all their property, personal as well as real, and turned adrift — a scene which
1 See p. 265.
26o THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
recent events have enabled us only too plainly to picture to ourselves. On September 29 the expulsion took place, and the convent is now the Museum of Antiquities at Eouen.
For several years the sisters suffered persecution as well as privation, often having to fly from the violence of mobs, and to take refuge in strange hiding-places. Still, many of them kept together, and they all did what they could to earn their living without breaking their vows. At times imprisoned, they managed barely to keep alive when they were free, by tlie humblest work, by teaching, and by keeping a iKiision. At last the Concordat brought back liberty, and finally the imperial decree of May 1, 1806, authorised the resump- tion of monastic life by those who were determined to adopt its rules, and on November 21, 1806, the Mother and her children renewed their vows, and resumed their habits. Mother de Belloy lived but a short time after this happy ending of her troubles.
The story is a typical illustration of the history of French religion during the revolutionary era. The bitterest days of persecution and terror were not of long duration. On March 24, 1794, the Hebertists, the Voltairean party, met their fate on the scaffold. On April 5 Danton followed them to death. On May 7 the worsliip of Reason, which had been little
but immoral buffoonery, was abolished, when Robes- Eobespierre declared that the French people
believed in God and the immortality of the soul. "Atheism," he declared, "is aristocratic. The idea of a great Being who watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant wickedness is alto- gether popular. If God did not exist it would be
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 261
necessary to invent Him." ^ And having so said he proceeded to invent Him. He provided the French nation with a Supreme Being, after the style of Kousseau's sentiment, whose worship in the open air was designed by the painter David, and formed a picturesque amusement for summer afternoons. But no such substitute for the love of Christ and the worship offered by His Church could endure, even in a land where all the ancient foundation seemed to be cast down. It was not long before those who attended the tedious fantasies of the Champ de Mars began to feel, and to say, " You are beginning to bore us with your 'Etre Suprhney On July 28, 1794, Eobespierre him- self was executed, and the Commune of Paris was abolished.
At first no toleration and little cessation of persecu- tion followed the end of the " Eeign of Terror." But on December 21, Gregoire, who remained still un- harmed in the Convention, made a bold appeal for freedom of worship; but it was not till February 21, 1795, that it was decreed that liberty of worship should not be interfered with since it was Rggtora- the right of every man. Within a few months tion of the churches were again opened. Notre- religion
Dame was again given up to the Church *" France,
. 1795'
on August 15, and, purified from its desecra- tion, became again the centre of the Christianity of the capital.
Bishop Gregoire devoted himself to the restoration of religion throughout France, and his success was remarkable and rapid. Everywhere the people turned back to religion from the horrors of the Terror and
^ Speecli at the Jacobin Club, 1 Frimaire, an 2 (Xov. 20, 1793).
262 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
the proscription. By October, 1795, when the Direc- tory came into power. Mass was said again in three- fourths of the parishes of France. Gradually the sworn clergy and bishops were retiring from their posts, and the Emigres and insermenUs were returning to their old cures. The assermenUs had not really gained by the Government aid that had been at first given them, and, though many of them had held firmly to their posts during the period of persecution, many of them were mere rhetorical worldlings who had sacrificed the dignity of the priesthood to political interest, and others were Jansenists of an extreme and semi-ration- alist type. Few had succeeded in winning the con- fidence of the people. The bishops were anxious to reunite the Church, but on the Galilean principles of 1682.
The Directory did not prove tolerant, as was ex- pected. It sold a number of churches and abbeys, — many of which, including the famous Cluny,^ were Di ecto destroyed — it continued petty persecu- tion of the clergy, and it set up an absurd new religion called Theophilanthropism, of which one of the directors, Lareveilliere-Lepaux, was the apostle. But all this could not last. Frenchmen had awoke to the reality of religion. Those who were not atheists saw that they had no refuge but Christianity. " Jesus Christ died for His religion," said the apostate Talley- rand to the leader of the Theophilanthropists : " if you are to succeed with yours you must do the same."
In August, 1797, the Church was ready to assume again her position as guide and teacher of the people. A national council of the clergy attended by seventy-
^ See 7'Ac Church and the Barbarians, p. 173.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 263
two representatives, of whom twenty-six were bishops, met at Notre-Dame and passed canons for the govern- ment of the Church, giving to the clergy much more power in the elections, and remaining firm in rejection of papal jurisdiction. While admitting the supremacy of the pope it adhered to the Declaration of 1682. There seemed a real chance of freedom for a national Church, Catholic in creed but not acknowledging the absolute power of Rome. But the future of religion in France was now seen to depend upon two factors, one the permanent factor of the Italian Papacy, the other the novel power of a military dictator.
CHAPTER XVI NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH
WHILE the Directory was plundering and blun- dering in Paris a young Corsican general was winning victories for France in Italy, and showing besides his extraordinary military genius a remarkable aptitude for political intrigue. His first prominent intervention in the affairs of the Church was due to the position of the Papacy in 1796.
On the death of Clement XIV., in 1774, Giovanni Angelo Braschi, treasurer of the Apostolic Chamber, Election of was elected pope by the interest of the Pius VI., French agent. Cardinal Bernis, long the 1774- minister of Louis XV. He took the name
of Pius VL, and he found himself called upon to deal with a society in which the principles of the Frencli thinkers were making a profound impression. Every- where the Catholic powers were restraining the privileges of the Papacy. While the Jesuits were involved in condemnation which the bull of suppres- sion Dominus ac Rcdernptor noster had set forth in uncompromising terms, Italian writers, such as Bec- caria in his Lcllfti e pene, were denouncing the Inquisition, and scientists and antiquaries were turning from the Church to the discoveries of physical nature and to the revival of the paganism of classic
264
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 265
days. Pius VI. was involved also from the first in the still-continuing troubles connected with the Jesuits; he stood between the Catholic powers anxious that every fragment of the roots ^^ of theii system should be extirpated, and the cynical politics of Catherine II., who supported the Society within her dominions as a political instru- ment which might some day be useful. He showed his sympathy with the Jesuits in a curious way, by the beatification of a French beggar, Benedict Joseph Labre, who had died in Kome in 1783, and about whom very little was known, and refused it to Juan de Palafox, a Mexican bishop, whom Charles III. of Spain greatly revered, and who had been the life-long foe of the Jesuits. For the rest, the early years of his pontificate were remarkable for the ostentation of his architectural operations, for his efforts to reclaim the Pontine Marshes, and for his futile attempt to cajole Joseph II. by a visit to Vienna. His disputes with Naples and with Tuscany, though he was victorious over Eicci, were hardly more edifying to his power. " The Court of Naples," he said, " treats me with greater contempt than a village priest." The last sign of the feudal homage of the southern kingdom to the pope was abandoned. Throughout Italy his power was flouted. Abroad his political claims were dis- regarded. The only sign of respect which marked his pontificate was the request of the Catholic powers for the appointment of a bishop for North America, which led in 1789 to the creation of the see of Baltimore.
The progress of the French Eevolution was wit- nessed in Rome with profound dissatisfaction and
266 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
alarm. In spite of the urgent letters of the pope,
Effects Louis XVI. was obliged to yield on all the
of the points which broke the union between
French France and the Papacy. Pius VI. found hini-
Revolution ggjf opposed to half of the French clergy, who
on Rome. ^^, , . ., . . , °, ' ,
accepted the civil constitution and adhered
to Gallican principles, and he liad to become the
guardian and refuge of many of the rest, who fled from
France to throw themselves on his protection. The
execution of the king caused still further dismay. On
January 13, 1793, the envoy of the French Eepublic
was murdered in Eome. Not till 1796 was a French
army able to demand satisfaction. The leader of that
army was General Bonaparte.
It appears that for a short time the Directory entertained the idea of making a concordat with Eome on the basis of the recognition of the civil constitution of the clergy. But Pius VI. was not yet prepared to give way, and after considerable hesitation he threw himself into the arms of Austria. The burst of war which follow^ed was merely ridiculous, and Eome was soon at the mercy of Bonaparte. The French general show^ed none of the animosity tow^ards the Papacy which marked the policy of the Directory. He had at least, unlike Lareveilliere, no rival religion to encourage. He remonstrated with the Directory on the harshness of the treatment which was intended, and the terms which he secured for the pope were lighter than might have been expected; but yet they have been truly regarded as the beginning of the end of the tem- poral power.
By this Peace of Tolentino (February 19, 1797) (i.) the pope withdrew from all leagues against
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 267
France and paid fifteen million lire ; (ii.) he ceded Avignon, Venaissin, Bologna, Ferrara, Ko- Peace of magna. The sacrifice was made of more Tolentino, than a year's revenue and a third of the ^797- papal territory. The arrangement was merely tem- porary. The Directory still continued their animosity towards the Papacy. Lareveilliere looked forward to the death of Pius as affording an opportunity to " deliver the world at last from the dominion of the pope."
Joseph Bonaparte was sent to represent France at the papal court, and the opportunity of the murder of a French general in a semi-political squabble was taken to occupy Eome (February, 1798) and expel the pope. He had refused to recognise " the Eoman
republic " which was set up under the segis -> , . ^ i o Expulsion
of the French, and was ordered to leave the of Pius VI. city within forty-eight hours. After a from sojourn at Siena and then at the beautiful ^^^^y Certosa on the hills above Florence, he was ^^^ ^^^^.j^ taken to Valence, in Dauphiny, and there 1799. he died on August 29, 1799.
The conclave met at Venice during the temporary success of the coalition against France, and on March 24, 1800, it elected Barnaba Luigi Chiaramonti, gigction who had preached in 1797 a sermon in which of he showed that there was no antagonism be- Pius VII., tween democracy and the gospel, or even ^ republicanism and the Church of Christ. He was a man of ability, not bigoted or behind the age, and quite ready to adapt himself to new ideas. On July 3 he made a triumphal entry into Rome. From the first he took as his chief minister Cardinal Consalvi, a man
268 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
of genius and prudence, who devoted himself heart and soul, with no personal ambition, to the preservation of the Papacy during the years of peril which were to come.
Meanwhile much had happened in France. The Directory had been overthrown and the victorious The general was made First Consul (December,
position 1799). On June 14, 1800, Bonaparte won of Bona- the battle of Marengo. On the field he P^*"^^* began those negotiations with the pope
which led first to the return to Eome and eventually to the Concordat of 1801. He fully understood the moral influence of the Papacy. A few days before his great victory he had declared to the priests at Milan that the Catholic religion was the only one which could bring happiness to a well-ordered community or lay firm the foundation of government. He spoke of it as "our religion," declared that he looked on the priests as his dearest friends, and threatened that any one who insulted them should be held a disturber of the public peace and punished, if need be, with death. Eeligion, he said, was already restored in France, and he was prepared to sweep away all obstacles to a complete reconciliation with Eome. Needless to say the speech was soon reported to the pope, as it was intended to be. The First Consul was preparing the way for a concordat.
From what motives did he act ? Political ones, there can be no doubt. He saw in the continual His revolutions of France since the king was
religious dethroned a sign that religion was the safest opinions. security for popular government. Appar- ently he was not a believer in the exclusive claims of
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 269
any Church to represent religion, but he was far too discernino; not to see the immense influence exercised on mankind by the religious idea. He regarded religion, and especially the Catholic Cliurch, as one of the strongest supports of the power of the state. His moral constitution, says M. Thiers (very quaintly), inclined him toward religious feelings : if so, it did not carry him to religious acts. " My nerves," he once said, " are in sympathy with the feeling of God's existence." And beyond this, if a remark attributed to him at S. Helena is to be credited, he does not seem to have gone : " Everything proclaims the exist- ence of a God : that cannot be questioned ; but all our religions are evidently the work of men": yet this may have been a morose saying of his exile rather than a real belief. No doubt he was a Theist, but in Egypt he declared himself a Mohammedan. It was from the point of view of the security of the State that he began to consider the possibility of reunion with liome.
In 1793 the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, with all other religious laws, had been abolished, and there remained of the " Constitutional Church " no -phe Con- very large remnant among the higher clergy stitutional who had not apostatised or given up their Church in clerical functions. But there was still a certain number of bishops and several priests who were ready to follow where the sturdy Bishop Gregoire should lead. The contrast between them and the "non-jurors" was not so great as has been imagined. Common persecution had changed the opinion which shows itself so virulently in the earlier attacks upon the asserment^s. The hons i^retres who did not take
270 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
the oath have been represented in exaggerated language as persecuted, continually in danger of death, and dying like the martyrs of old ; while the C2cr^ jureur has been shown in the most odious light — a traitor contrasted with a hero. How much or how little truth there is in this view may be discovered from a study of the letters and papers of Bishop Gregoire, the head of the " Constitutional Church." It was he who now proceeded to do his best to fill up the ranks of the Episcopate. Forty sees remained vacant since the Terror. Before 1801 eighteen bishops died, fourteen of whom had meanwhile resumed their episcopal functions. Those who were chosen to fill their places were for the most part men who had kept clear of politics : one exception was Audrein, consecrated on July 22, 1799, for Finistere. He had been a member of the Convention, and had voted for the death of the king, and four months after his execution he was assassinated by Chouans, less as an episcopal intruder than as a regicide. Fifty-nine constitutional bishops were in possession of their sees when the negotia- tions for the Concordat began. And under them were many clergy. But the reconciliation with the "orthodox" party was to seek. The unsworn clergy had in many cases returned and were in possession of the field, and the Consulate made no difference between them and the others. To them, as well as to the others, the churches had been restored, and the clergy were recognised by the state as legally invested with sacerdotal functions. Only a promise of fidelity to the constitution was required from them, no longer an oath to the Eepublican Government.
Still a great deal more was wanted to restore
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 271
religion in France than a mere toleration of the clergy. The Church, still surrounded by foes (for the effect of the work of Voltaire and his followers had by no means ceased), was divided within itself. There were the unsworn priests, who could depend on no more than the silent connivance of Government ; and opposed to them, in a sense, were the constitu- tional priests, who obeyed the bishops elected under the civil constitution. The unsworn bishops, if they were dangerous to the prospect of a religious settle- ment, had, it might seem, the game in their hands ; and so long as they held their position, and the pope supported them, in exercising on France an influence naturally biassed by the passion and ignorance that were fostered in exile, there was no hope of any small measures of conciliation bringing peace to the divided Church. A complete union was necessary, and that involved a union with Eome.
The victorious Consul had taken the first step. He announced that he desired that Catholicism should be the dominant religion in France, that all the bishops should resign their sees, and ^egotia- that then those whom he nominated should RQ^e. receive institution from the pope. Cardinal Spina was sent to Paris, and a long and critical negotiation was begun. It was carried through by the firmness and diplomatic tact of the First Consul. He showed himself, with his colleagues, at Mass. He w^as ready with precedents for all the concessions that he suggested : when the difficulty of the sworn bishops came up he cut the Gordian knot with his sword. As we have said, fifty-nine of the constitutional bishops then survived. Napoleon overrode their
272 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
rights, and gave to the pope the power to dispossess those who would not receive institution at his hand. He presented a list of persons to be confirmed in their sees, and omitted from it the name of Gregoire, who retired into private life and died in 1831 without ever surrendering his Galilean opinions. Some accepted the new order ; some abandoned their sees ; some had never returned to the faith. So ended a strange episode in the liistory of the Church. The civil con- stitution of the clergy passed into the domain of antiquity. Talleyrand, who had consecrated the first of the new bishops, and had then repudiated liis orders, survived as the greatest diplomatist of his age.
On July 15, 1801, the plenipotentiaries signed the document, and on April 8, 1802, the Concordat be- Xhe tween the Eoman Papacy and the French
Concordat, Republic became law. The following was ^^°^- the preamble to this important settlement :
" The Government of the French Eepublic recognises that the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion is tlie religion of the great majority of French citizens.
"His Holiness likewise recognises that the same religion has obtained and at this time still looks for the greatest good and the greatest glory from the establishment in France of Catholic worship, and of the personal profession which the consuls of the Re- public make thereof."
The articles then proceeded to state that the Catholic and Apostolic Roman worship is to be freely exercised in France, worship being public but con- forming to the police regulations which the Govern- ment should deem necessary for the public peace. This last provision enabled the First Consul to add a
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 273
number of " Organic Articles," to which the pope never assented, by which he revived a number of Gallican usages. A new delimitation of dioceses was ordered, so as to make the sees vacant, and to admit of a rearrangement with a view to fixed and equable salaries. The First Consul was to nominate to " the archbishoprics and bishoprics of the new delimitation. His Holiness shall confer canonical in- stitution, according to the forms established as to France before the change of Government. Nomina- tions to bishoprics which fall vacant later shall also be made by the First Consul, and canonical institution shall be given by the Holy See, in accordance with the foregoing Article. The archbishops and bishops shall, after their nomination before the First Consul, take the oath of fidelity used before the change of Government, as expressed in the following terms : —
" ' I swear and promise to God, on the Holy Gospels, to be obedient and faithful to the Government estab- lished by the constitution of the French Eepublic. I also promise to have no participation in or be privy to any design, to enter no society, whether in France or without, which is contrary to the public peace ; and if, in my diocese or elsewhere, I hear of any conspiracy against the State I shall inform the Government thereof.'
"The ecclesiastics of second rank shall take the same oath before the civil authorities appointed by the Government. The bishops shall nominate to cures, but only those to whose appointment the Government has agreed. The bishops may have chapters in their cathedrals, and seminaries for their
T
2 74 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
diocese; but the Government does not bind itself to endow them. All metropolitical, cathedral, parish, and other churches which have not been alienated and are necessary for worship, shall be put at the disposal of the bishops. His Holiness, for the sake of peace and the happy re-establishment of the Catholic re- ligion, declares that neither he nor his successors will in any way disturb those who have acquired any alienated Church property ; and in consequence, the ownership thereof, and the rights and revenues thereto attached, shall continue to remain in their hands or those of their assigns." The Government guaranteed a salary to the clergy. The pope recognised in the First Consul the rights and prerogatives which had belonged to the Bourbon Government. Napoleon as head of the French State became " the eldest son of the Church."
Such was the Concordat, which might read like a submission of the French Government, State and The Church, to the pope. But the Organic
Organic Articles added by Bonaparte were designed Articles. j^q secure at the same time the supremacy of the State and the liberty of the Church. They contained the following : —
1. No Bull, brief, rescript, decree, mandate, pro- vision, signature serving as provision, or other instru- ments issued from the Court of Eome, even if only concerning individuals, shall be received, published, printed, or otherwise put into execution, without authorisation from the Government.
2. No individual calling himself nuncio, legate, vicar or commissary apostolic, or using any other title, shall be able, without the same authorisation.
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 275
to exercise ou French soil or elsewhere any function relating to the aft airs of the Galilean Church.
3. The degrees of foreign synods, even those of general councils, shall not be published in France until the Government have examined their form and seen that they conform to the laws, rights, and liberties of the French Eepublic, and that their publication will not in any way disturb or aftect public peace.
4. No national or metropolitan council, no diocesan synod, no deliberative assembly, shall meet without express permission from the Government.
6. In all cases of " abuse, by superiors and other churchmen there shall be recourse to the Council of State " (which was here substituted for the old Parle- ments, which had the right of hearing appeals comme cVahiis). Cases of abuse w^ere defined as : assumption or excess of power : infringement of the laws and regulations of the Eepublic : disregard of the regula- tions laid down by the canons received in France : an attempt on tlie franchises and customs of the Galilean Church ; and all enterprise and proceeding which, in the exercise of worship, can compromise the honour of citizens, arbitrarily disquiet their consciences, become merely an engine of oppression or harm to them, or be a public scandal.
7. Likewise also there shall be recourse to the Council of State if the public exercise of worship, or the liberty which the laws and regulations guarantee to ministers, be interfered with.
Finally, the famous articles of 1682 were definitely revived, '' Those chosen to teach in the seminaries shall subscribe the declaration made by the clergy of France in 1682, and published by an edict the same
276 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
year ; they shall submifc to teach the doctrines therein contained, and the bishops shall send an instrument on this submission to the Councillor of State charged with all affairs relating to worship."
Thus Bonaparte really won an entire victory. The pope was quite ignorant, when he signed the Con- cordat, of the Organic Articles. Never Effects would he have signed if he had known.
Concordat -^^^ ^^® ultimate results of the Concordat were quite contrary to what Bonaparte designed, and placed the French Church more and more under the pope. The Church was made de- pendent on the State : it had no property of its own : its great monasteries were destroyed : its parish priests were practically the nominees of the bishops. Thus everything depended on the bishops — and if they took their orders from Eome, every one else had to follow them. But this was for the future to show. Mean- while all was outward peace. Of the constitutional bishops ten, after more or less hesitation, were at length allowed to assume their places among the hier- archy created by the Concordat and sanctioned by the pope. The rest for the most part acted as parish priests and submitted to the new regime. G-regoire, the one man who had stood firm throughout the worst days of the Terror, had no share in the rewards of the restoration. The pope would not forgive him for the creation of the Constitutional Episcopate. Napoleon, no doubt, thought him too dangerous to be given power.
A Concordat with the Italian Eepublic followed. Here, again, the pope had to give way. The peace with Eome did not prevent the houleverseinent of ecclesiastical Germany. The position of the great
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 277
archbishopric-electorates had long been watched by the secular powers with greedy eyes. -^^^ Napoleon found it in every way useful to secularisa- destroy them and to share the spoil. It was tions in carried out by Talleyrand, to whom the pope. ermany. had now given a brief, releasing him from the obliga- tion of his orders.
"From his entrance into office he pursued the policy of secularisation, From Salzburg all round to Liege Europe was covered with ecclesiastical proprietors and potentates, and it was an opportune and congenial resource to suppress them in order to satisfy the princes who had to be consoled for the conquests of Bonaparte. This process of ecclesiastical liquidation was Talleyrand's element. He had destroyed the Church of France as a privileged and proprietary corporation : and by the like impulse he helped to deprive the clergy of the Empire of their political prerogative." ^ Koln, Mainz and Trier ceased to be prince-bishoprics with great political power, and pre- served only their ecclesiastical status and spiritual privileges.
The secularisation was agreed upon at Luneville February, 1801 (France, Austria and Germany), but Austria delayed to accomplish it. In consequence Prussia was allied with Russia, whose emperor, Alex- ander, w^as anxious to maintain the influence of his grandmother, Catherine II., in Germany. Napoleon also was allied with Alexander, and France by the invi- tation of Austria took a part, which soon became a lead- ing one, in the negotiations, but one far from favour- able to the emperor. Prussia obtained the lion's share
^ Lord Acton, Historical Essays, p. 410.
278 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
of the spoils. The pope was obliged unwillingly to pass over the secularisation in silence. The decree of secularisation was pronounced in the Diet of the Empire on February 25, 1803, the suzerainty of the princes was abolished, and the land was given over to the civil governments. Monasteries were abolished. The confederation of the Ehine took up the position of " F^ebronius " and Joseph II. Similar reforms were taking place at the same time in other states, Bavaria and AViirttemberg among them. In 1808 the papal Curia broke off all relations with Bavaria. Karl Theodor von Dalberg, the last elector of Mainz, who became at the secularisation the only ecclesiastical member of the electoral college which survived till the dissolution of the Empire, and now bore the title of archbishop of Eatisbon, the only ecclesiastical state remaining (Mainz sinking into an inferior position and becoming a suffragan see to Malines), endeavoured to negotiate a settlement in wliich Germany should be practically independent of Eome, with himself as primate. But he was unsuccessful. The pope was firm against concession, and ecclesiastical Germany remained in confusion till the fall of Napoleon.
In 1806 Francis II., Ciesar and Augustus, abandoned the title of Holy Eoman Emperor, and the Empire, which dated at least since Charles the Great, the Holy came to an end.^ Germany had never re- Roman covered from the Thirty Years' War, in its Empire, prosperity, or from the Seven Years' War, '^°^- in its unity. From 1756 to 1763 Catholic
and Protestant had been pitted against each other on sanguinary fields. Prussia had risen to the headship.
^ See The Church and the Barbarians, p. 152.
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 279
Austria, in spite of Joseph IL, had fallen into the back- ground. Saxony with its Catholic sovereign and Bavaria with its Catholic people had sunk out of count. And now even in Germany the Napoleon's power of the indefatigable French usurper influence seemed to enter into every detail of Church i" life. This is illustrated by the interesting ^'^"^^"y- life of the Abbe Gabriel Henry, who was cur4 of Jena from 1795 to 1815, and preserved the town from pillage after the great battle. He was an 6migr6, and was the first to create a " parish " for the Catholics at Jena, which ceased at his contemplated return to France. Invited by Charles Augustus of Saxe- Weimar, the Maecenas of his age, through the arch- bishop of Mainz, Henry grouped round him all the Catholics of the neighbourhood, and won the respect of the Lutherans and of the Protestant University, where he ministered to the Catholic students. It was he who pleaded before Napoleon for the L^niversity and for the Catholics, for whom he won, through the treaty of December 15, 1806, equal rights with the Protestants. His own account of his interview with the emperor is extremely interesting. His story is an example of what a strong and sincere man could obtain from Napoleon.
The Eevolution had now affected all Europe, and that which it had found old and in decay had now vanished away. The Papacy remained : few foresaw the Eestoration which would give it new Coj-ona- life. The coronation of Napoleon as em- tion of peror on December 2, 1804, was the climax Napoleon, of the reconciliation between Eome and ^ ^' France. The emperor desired to gain from religion
28o THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
the dynastic prestige which he lacked, and to be linked by traditional rites to " Charlemagne," whose successor he claimed to be. There were long negotiations ; but in spite of diplomatic skill Eome had to yield. The pope himself came to Paris. Consalvi, who had managed in the Concordat, with such extraordinary tact and patience, to secure for the Church the utmost that it was possible to save, remained be- hind in Eome. Eeceived with the utmost enthusiasm in Paris and at first with courteous respect by Napoleon, Pius YIL, after insisting upon a reli- gious ceremony of marriage between him and his wife Josephine (whom he was already planning to divorce), anointed and hallowed both emperor and empress and blessed the ensigns of their sovereignty. But the great conqueror placed his crown upon his own head and then crowned his wife. It w^as the nadir of the pope's unhappiness. Eome was to be the second city of the new Empire, but it was suggested that Pius VII. should live at Avignon. He seemed to sink into a mere chaplain of the upstart emperor.
He was at leng;th allowed to return to Eome, w^ience he took every occasion of showing his resent- ment. Month by montli the emperor's demands increased. He was the successor of " Charlemagne " ; the pope's policy must always be in subjection to his. Consalvi advised the pope to consult the cardinals. They all agreed that " the independence of the Holy See was too closely connected with the welfare of religion" for the pope to acknowledge the emperor's authority in temporal matters. Napoleon proceeded to make his brother king of Naples and to give two principalities which belonged to the pope, Benevento
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 281
and Pontecorvo, to Talleyrand and his marshal Bernadotte. The emperor by the decree of April 2,
1808, annexed several provinces to the ^nnexa- kingdom of Italy. The Concordat of tion of 1801 was applied to the Italian provinces, the papal The Legations were annexed to the new ^ ^ ^^' kingdom of Italy. The pope was ordered to expel from his territories the subjects of all states at war with Napoleon. On February 13, 1806, Napoleon wrote to Pius YII. :— " Your holiness is the sovereign of Pome, but I myself am its emperor : all my enemies must be yours." Step by step aggression became conquest, and at last on February 2, 1808, the French troops entered Ivonie. Pius protested in vain. At length, on May 18,
1809, Napoleon annexed the whole Eoman territory. The decree of the senate pronounced the union of the ecclesiastical states with France. The incom- patibility of religion with temporal sovereignty was declared, and the pope was to occupy (as says Von Panke) very much the position of a prince of the Empire. Pius resisted and excommunicated " all who have used violence against the Church." He was carried ofi' to Savona, to Grenoble, and finally, in 1812, Fontainebleau.
A deadlock like that under Louis XIV. ensued. The pope refused institution to the bishops. There was need of a new Concordat. The Church was cut off from Pome. It seemed even possible that the petite iglisc, that small body of "un- j^^^ sworn " bishops who had refused to resign breach their rights at the time of the Concordat, with and who were strongly Bourbon in their °"^^" sympathies, might revive and win the position of
282 THE AGE OF REV^OLUTION
leaders of the Church. The divorce of Napoleon's brother by an imperial edict, the creation of a chancery for the archbishop of Paris to grant a decree of nullity of his own marriage and a licence to marry again, were further insults. When Eome was de- clared to be the second city of the Empire, and an income and palaces were offered to the pope, it was Senatus ordered that every future pope should swear Consultum, assent to the Articles of 1682. When these February Articles w^ere declared binding on the whole 17, 1810. Empire, many bishops and priests in Italy refused assent and were deported. The Abbe Emery, superior of S. Sulpice, who had lived beloved and respected throughout the horrors of the Hevolution, in vain urged the emperor to moderation. Napoleon kept the pope in close confinement and endeavoured to coerce him into submission. When French bishoprics became vacant and Napoleon sent his nominations to the cliapters, they had secret orders from the pope at Savona, and some were bold enough to obey pope rather than emperor. The chapter of Paris refused to elect Cardinal Maury, who had French acted as Napoleon's tool. In 1810 a Church National Council of the French Church Council, met at Paris. It showed the utmost re- ^°* spect for the pope and declined to sanction
any act without his consent; but the emperor had forced from him a half -concession. Sharp methods soon convinced such of the members as the emperor allowed to remain ; they agreed that sees ought not to be vacant more than a year, and if the pope did not give institution within six months the metro- politan had the right to act in his stead. But the
NAPOLEON AND THE CHURCH 283
pope remained quite firm. To give up more would be, he said, to surrender the most sacred rights of the Apostolic See. Even Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, who had long been subservient to the hand which had raised him, turned against it, and declared that if any of his suffragans dared to consecrate a bishop without the pope's institution he would ex- communicate them. In May, 1812, the pope was brought a prisoner to Fontainebleau. When the failure of the Eussian campaign taught even p^^ai Napoleon that he needed friends, he came victory of to see Pius, on January 18, 1813, and an the pope. arrangement was arrived at, a sort of new concordat, in which the emperor yielded his demand that the Galilean Articles should be universally binding, and the pope agreed to the councirs decree as to the insti- tution of bishops. There were other points, but the consequence of the Concordat was slight, as though Napoleon had it declared a law of the state on February 13, the pope, on March 24, protested against its pub- lication and declared he had been misled.
But events now moved rapidly. When Napoleon suffered defeat after defeat from the Allies he en- deavoured to make peace with the pope. It was too late. The emperor had to give Pius his liberty, and on January 23 he left Fontainebleau, at first for Savona and afterwards for Piome. Napoleon had learnt that though he could conquer the strong he could not overcome the weak. " The power that rules over souls has a greater sway than that which rules over bodies," he said. It was the epitaph of his ecclesiastical policy.
CHAPTER XVII THE RESTORATION
VERY briefly must the facts of the Restoration which, in Church as in State, followed the fall of Napoleon be told here, for these belong to the tale of the Church of modern days.
The beginning of the reaction against the revo- lution in religion dates from the romantic movement Beginning of 1794, when France was attacked, as in of the past ages, by her traditional foes, and "out-
reaction, raged history " reasserted herself. " The nation fortified itself against the new ideas by calling up the old, and made the ages of faith and of imagin- ation a defence from the age of reason." ^ But a new force in things ecclesiastical was added in 1815 to the historical reaction of earlier years.
The fall of Napoleon brought about a revival which was as prominent in the field of religion as it was in literature and politics. Reason was seen not to mean rationalism, nor toleration infidelity. The The Re- Christian writers of the Restoration period storation of were very far from decrying reason ; it was 1815. one of the great epochs of apologetic phil-
osophy. It was the period of the recognition of the shallowness of the pseudo -history which had attacked
^ Lord Acton, Historical Essays, p. 346. 284
THE RESTORATION 285
the Bible and the Church during the Kevolution, the period when, influenced alike by sound ideas of con- stitutional growth and by the fire of imaginative re- construction, something approaching to genuine his- torical criticism was begun. The destruction of the Papacy had seemed complete ; but it also shared in the revival. Just as in France Gallicanism survived the storm of the Eevolution and the Ultramontane pressure of the Concordat, " in Germany, in in spite of the abolition of the ecclesiastical Germany, states, the ideals of ' Febronius ' were still in the as- cendant, aiming at a great national German Church, which should absorb at least the Lutherans and owe at best but a shadowy allegiance to Eome ; and the prince primate, Karl von Dalberg, had sent to the Congress of Vienna, to represent the interests of the German Church, Bishop von Wessenburg, who, as vicar-general of Constance, had, on his own authority, reformed the services in his diocese in an avowed efibrt to meet the Protestants half-way." ^ The Catholic princes of Germany would not have been unwilling to forward a project of union on Catholic lines, largely because it might serve their own ambitions, as well as consolidate the unity of Germany which the constitu- tion of 1815 made possible. But the Papacy was de- termined to resist, and to resist on the old lines. The Jesuits had been suppressed, with every expression of moral reprobation, by the request of the Catholic Powers. They were restored on August 7, 1814, by the bull Sollicituclo omnium ecclesiarum.
A literary movement in favour of Koman Catholi- cism followed. Then arose De Maistre, the apologist
^ Cambridge Modern History ^ vol. x., "The Restoration," p. 6.
286 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
of reaction, tinged with some Liberal sympathies, and " the intellectual father of modern Ultramontanism." In 1814 De Maistre's Principe g^ndratcur des constitu- tions politiques was published, a political theory based on the infallible authority of Church and pope as guides of mankind. The Eestoration Government in France had ecclesiastics as members of its ranee. ]^jj^ig^j.y^ ^nd the great Lamennais as the brilliant exponent of its principles. Chateaubriand led the literary reaction with his Genie du christian- isme. With the accession of Charles X. the French monarchy was definitely allied with the restored Church, and with the Jesuits, who w^ere secretly allowed to return and teach. In Italy, Austria, the great Catholic power, was mistress, educating, con- trolling the Press, but ultimately raising up those who should overthrow her dominance. The smaller states especially felt the reaction. Modena revoked all the decrees of the revolutionary period and gave new powers to the clergy. In Eome the papal Government was more despotic than ever, and already the destruction of the temporal power was foreseen, from the very vehemence of its assertion of tyranny. Pius VII. was restored to his throne amid uni- versal rejoicing. His chief minister was Cardinal Con- salvi, who had caused his election, and who was called the " soul of the pope, the man who held tlie double key to his heart." Napoleon had said of him : " This man, who never would become a priest, is more of a priest than all the others " ; yet he was far less reac- tionary than most of those who formed the advisers of the restored pope. In London, where he was most cordially welcomed (and wore an English clergyman's
THE RESTORATION 287
dress and a " white tie "), and at Vienna during the long sessions of the Congress, he showed a masterly genius for diplomacy ; he was the means of linking the old ideas to the new. He saw that it was im- possible to restore all things to the pre-Napoleonic state. He would not join the Holy Alliance. He occupied himself with restoring the financial posi- tion of the Papacy, with the creation of a system of " bureaucratic tutelage," and with controlling, so far as possible, the relations with the state in the revived monarchies. Bavaria was far more compliant. A concordat with the pope, while excluding the Jesuits, established ecclesiastical power New con- more firmly than any other country deemed cordats. possible, and the Church by separate treaties was also recognised and endowed in Prussia, Hanover and the Upper Khine. In Belgium the provisions of the Con- cordat of 1801 obtained: to the Netherlands, after long negotiation, they were extended. It was the era of concordats in the AVestern Church, and the gradual approach to the political emancipation of Eoman Catholics in England was a feature of the same move- ment.
In Prance itself a settlement was not easy. The Chambers would not pass a new arrangement by, which the Concordat of 1516 took the place of the Napoleonic Concordat. The Concordat of 1801, sub- jected to revision, finally remained in force. Gallican- ism was to die, but it died hard.
Elsewhere before long there was a strong reaction. Consalvi, at the Congress of Vienna, procured for the pope the return of a great part (but by no means all) of the possessions which belonged to the temporal
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
power. Tliough the Holy Eoman Empire never re- turned to life, the "Holy Alliance" of sovereigns which was before long to come into being was to be an expression — strange combination — of Christian and Absolutist principles. But the gravest dangers that might be seen from the first to beset the future of the Church were those which surrounded the restoration of the Jesuits and the Inquisition.
Already, in 1801, the Company had been restored in Eussia, in 1804 in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In many lands the members of the Society had held together. In Xorth America, for example, they man- aged to continue to hold, and to acquire, property, by secretly observing their original government and regis- tering themselves as the Corporation of the Eoman Catholic clergy, and so the property of the Society was for the most part preserved intact.^ It was easy in Spain and Italy and Austria to set the Society on its feet again. But it was very difficult in France, and Portugal and Brazil uttered the strongest protests. It was a curious commentary on the past that the Jesuits were expelled from Eussia and Poland in 1820.
With the Inquisition the danger for the future was even greater. Its revival in Eome and the great number of prosecutions for heresy begun immediately were, there can be no doubt, productive of serious damage to the papal power by associating it with the most repulsive features of a system which it was hoped the Eevolution had finally destroyed. In Spain the results were as bad, if they were longer in working
^ See T. Hughes, s.j., "The History of the Society of Jesus in Xorth America," Documents, vol. i. part i., where tlie matter is illustrated in detail.
THE RESTORATION 289
themselves out. We must retrace our steps to see the position of the Inquisition in that country.
As the eighteenth century drew to a close the In- quisition carried on its work under constantly increas- ing limitations. Charles III. kept it in on every side, and though the scandalous Godoy for a time favoured it, the continual decrease in the number of the cases with which it dealt showed that it was doomed to gradual extinction. In 1798 the French constitu- tional bishop Gregoire advised the Spanish inquisitor- general to suppress the Office : the letter had a large circulation in Spain. But Joseph Bonaparte became king under a constitution which forbade toleration. It was not till the Cortes of Cadiz seriously took in hand the reform of the constitution that the suppression was decreed, on February 22, 1813. While the chapter of Cadiz associated it with the Papacy and therefore protested against its destruction,^ a mani- festo attributed the decay of Spain to the abuses of the Inquisition, and declared that the restoration of their jurisdiction to the bishops was necessary for the
^ See Defence of Religioii and its 3Iinisters, published by the chapter of Cadiz Cathedral in 1814. "The kings, with the exception of the protection and aid of the Church, which they had sworn, gave nothing of their own authority to the power of the Inquisition ; for the Inquisitors are delegates of the Supreme Pontitf, where universal jurisdiction is recognised in the Church from its earliest age ; and the Catholic kings only made a manifestation of their zeal, petitioning Sixtiis IV. to provide by his ordinary delegation a salu- tary remedy for the evils which the superstition of the bad Christians, introduced by apostates and confessed heretics into Spain; and his blessedness granted this against them, their favourers and receivers, in order that the Inquisitors should persecute and punish them, as .of right they could persecute and punish them ; and that no inno- vation should be introduced without the express consent of his holiness."
290 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
prosperity of the Church. The measure was resisted, but the resistance was overpowered. The Inquisi- tion came back with the restoration of despotism, and the final abolition did not occur till July 15, 1834.
Seeds of future danger there remained in the Eoman Church, danger which should accentuate her differences with the modern spirit of freedom in education and in political life. The danger to the Eastern Church was still in the future, for in 1815 it seemed not the least progressive element of national life. In England there was a period of feebleness following the great revival of the late eighteenth century, and awaiting a new inspiration. The lesson which the long period of Eevolution leaves on the mind is that the true solution of the grave difficulties which press on the Church during a period of change lies in the recognition of her freedom. And that recognition the Church should herself extend to the individual. To bind on men's shoulders burdens that are grievous to be borne, whether they be the super- stitious beliefs of which there is no trace in the Bible or the early Fathers of the Church, or the prescrip- tion of a particular attitude in regard to politics or social questions, is suicidal. God has not given to the rulers of the Church in any country, in any age, an infallible judgment. He has given them a deposit of faith, a Church which guards it, a ministry which brings its power to the help of the individual believer. And the unity for which all Christendom longs and prays can only be found by the supremacy of truth, and the supremacy of truth can only come by the untram- melled love of freedom. "Ye shall know the truth
THE RESTORATION 291
and the truth shall make you free." That is the grandest of all promises ; and if we turn from the tale of disasters and failures, of contradictory judg- ments, of contending theologies, of unworthy ministers and unwise rulers, which seems to make up so much of the history of the Church, we can yet thank God and take courage, because we never lose sight of the inex- tinguishable determination of the human spirit to be free, and because we see, through strife and disap- pointment, that the Hand which points and guides towards liberty is the Hand of Him Who loves eter- nally the children whom He has made.
APPENDIX 1
LIST OF EMPERORS AND POPES
Year of iccession. |
POPES. |
EMPERORS. |
Year of Accession. |
1621 |
Gregory XV. |
||
1624 |
Urban VIII. |
||
Ferdinand III. |
1637 |
||
1644 |
Innocent X. |
||
1655 |
Alexander VII. |
||
Leopold I. |
1658 |
||
1667 |
Clement IX. |
||
1670 |
Clement X. |
||
1676 |
Innocent XI. |
||
1689 |
Alexander VIII. |
||
1691 |
Innocent XII. |
||
1700 |
Clement XI. |
||
* Joseph I. |
1705 |
||
^Charles VI. |
1711 |
||
1720 |
Innocent XIII. |
||
1724 |
Benedict XIII. |
||
1730 |
Clement XII. |
||
1740 |
Benedict XIV. |
||
♦Charles VII. (of Bavaria) |
1742 |
||
*Francis I. (of Lorraine) |
1745 |
||
1758 |
Clement XIII. |
||
^Joseph II. |
1765 |
||
1769 |
Clement XIV. |
||
*Leopold II. |
1790 |
||
1774 |
Pius VI. |
^Francis II. |
1792 |
1800 |
Pius Vll. |
Abdication of Francis II.
1806
* Never actually crowned at Rome.
All emperors were of the House of Habsburg except Charles VII, and Francis I.
APPENDIX II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Over so large a period it is impossible to give a full bibliography. The books mentioned are those which the author has found especially useful in writing this volume, and the list is intended to be suggestive only, and in no sense complete.
Von Ranke, History of the Popes.
Nielsen, History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century.
Jervis, History of the Church of France.
„ The Gallican Church and the Revolution. The Cambridge Modern History, Vols, iv., v., viii,, ix., x. K. Wild, Lothar Franz von Schonhorn (Heidelberg, 1904). Viscount St. Gyres, Frangois Fenelon. Overton and Relton, English Church., 1714-1800. Bishop Butler's Analogy and Sermons
(Dean Bernard's edition). Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain, 1729-63 (Hartshorne). Winchester, Life of John Wesley. H. T. Edwards, Wales and the Welsh Church. Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History (ed. Stubbs). Journal d' Andre Ly, 1746-6S (PslTis, 1906). Doyle, English in America.
Cross, Anglican Episcopate and American Colonies. Rousseau, Regne de Charles III. d'Espagne (Paris, 1907). H. C. Lea, History of the Spanish Inquisition. Mention, Rapports du clerge avec la royante, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1903). Danvila y CoUado, Reinado de Carlos III. (Madrid, v.d.). Berthe, Life of S. Alfonso Liguori.
293
294 THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Schipa, Regno di Napoli al tempo di Carlo di Borhone
(Naples, 1904). Vaughan, Last of the Royal Stuarts.
Burke, Letters on the French Revolution and on a Regicide Peace. John Morley, Voltaire.
„ „ Rousseau.
„ „ Diderot.
Coxe, House of Austria. Paganel, Joseph II. J. F. Bright, Maria Theresa.
,, Joseph II.
Dampier, The Orthodox Church in Austria-Hungary. Von Ranke, Servia, Bosnia and the Slave Provinces. Roscoe, Memoirs of Ricci (Eng. trans., 1829). Memoirs of Pius VI. (1799). J. Mantenay, St. BenoU Lahre.
Pisani, Repertoire hiographique de I'Episcopat Constitutionnel. Rinieri, La diplomazia pontificia nel Secolo XIX. (5 vols, already published, under 4 sub-titles).
INDEX
Acton, Lord, 26, 30, 255, 277 Aleth, (Pavilion) bishop of, 29, 40 Alexander L, Tsar, 85 Alexander YIL, pope, 4, 5, 8, 58,
62, 134, 144, 226 Alexander YIII., pope, 39 Alexandria, the Catholic Church
of, patriarchs, etc., 72, 74 Alexis, the Tsar, 72, 73 Altieri, Cardinal. See Clement X. Amadeus, Victor, of Savoy, 38 Amalia of Saxony, wife of Charles
III., 172 America, English colonies in
North, 114 sqq., 265 Ancona, the mark of, 191 Angelique, Mere, 60, 61, 63 Anne, Queen, 101, 106 Anthimus, patriarch of Jerusa- lem, 82 Antioch, the patriarch of, 74 Antivari, M. Bizzi, archbishop of,
93 Antoinette, Marie, 217, 250 Aquinas, S. Thomas, 23, 105,
211, 229 Aranda, the Conde de, 181 Arnauld, Antoine, 60, 61, 62,
63, 227
Arrieta, Manuel de Roba y, 181 Articles, the Organic, 273-6 Askenzay, Professor, quoted, 84 Athanasius, bishop of ^\'eissen-
burg, 89, 90 Atterbury, bishop of Rochester,
126, 127 Augustinus of Jansen, 59, 60, 62,
63 Austria, the Jesuits in, 34, 183, 216
Auvergne, M. Olier in, 57 Avignon, 39, 267, 280 Azzolino, Cardinal Decio, 7, 9 Azpuru, Thomas, 183
Baireuth, the House of, 18 Balkan States, the Church in the,
91-4 Bamberg, the bishop of, 14, 16
sqq. Bangor, bishop of. See Hoadly Bangorianism, 106, 107 Benedict XIIL, 190, 191 Benedict XIV., 103, 141, 163,
172, 175, 179, 192, 200-2, 233 Benedictines, the, 24, 58 Benilawski, Annuncio, 82 Benin, 139
Berkeley, Bishop, 102, 108, 109 Bernis, Cardinal, 184, 264 Bizzi, Marino. See Antivari Bossuet, 31, 32, 34, 35, 39, 41-4,
47, 48, 49, 53, 54, 55 Bounty, Queen Anne's, 101 Bourbons, the Spanish, 161 sqq. Bourdaloue, 54, 55 Brandenburg, 13, 14 Brankorich, Sabbas, 88 Brosch, Dr. Moritz, quoted, 2 Buchanan, Dr. Claudius, 143 Bulgares, Eugenios, 82 Bull, George, bishop of S. David's,
99 Burgundy, the duke of, pupil of
Fenelon, 51-3 Burnet, Bishop Gilbert, 77, 97,
99, 100 Butler, Bishop, 102, 104, 105,
108, 111 sqq., 127, 241
295
296
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Calvinists, Calvinism, 71, 76, 87,
98, 107 Cambrai, the see of, 52 Camisards, the, 36, 37 Cammin, 10 Canada, 51, 144 Can nan ore, 141 Canterbuiy, archbishops of. See
Juxon, Laud, Sheldon, San- croft, Tillotson, Wake Canton, 135 Capaccio, the bishop of, on the
condition of Naples, 195 Capuchins, the, 11, 132, 139, 140,
141 Carmelites, the, 141, 142, 144 Caroline, Maria, queen of Naples,
205, 206 Carthusians, the, 21, 232 Castellamare, Falcoia, bishop of,
193 Catherine I., 78 Catherine II., 83, 84 Catz, Bartholomew, 226 Cavalier, Jean, 36 Celibacy of the clergy, 159, 257 Cevennes, the, 36, 37 Ceylon, 141 Charles I., king of England, 95,
96, 145 Charles II., 97, 100 Charles III., king of Naples and
of Spain, 161, 163, 171-4, 179-
88, 190, 196, 197, 201, 205,
289 Charles X., 286 Chayla, the arch-priest, 36 Chen-si, 135
Chigi, Fabio. See Alexander VII. China, 132 sqq. China, Cochin, 131, 143, 144 Choiseul, 177
Christina, queen of Sweden, 7, 9 Church, the Galilean, 28 sqq, Clement IX., 5, 6, 8, 9 Clement X., 9, 63, 64, 134 Clement XL, 64, 134, 189, 190 Clement XIL, 134 Clement XIIL, 174, 179, 183 Clement XIV., 83, 84, 184-7
Coblenz, the Articles of, 216, 221 Codde, Peter, 228, 229 Cologne, archbishopric of (Koln),
12, 13, 39, 220, 221 Compton, Bishop, 150 Concordat of 1753, the, 162 Concordat of 1801, 272 sqq., 287 Congo, the, 139 Consalvi, Cardinal, 267, 268, 280,
286, 287 Constance, the Council of, 32 Constantinople, patriarchs of, 70-
85 passim, 88, 89, 91-4 Convention, the National, 252
sqq., 256, 257, 261 Convocation in England, 107 Conybeare, Bishop, 109 Corinth, archbishop of, 81 Court, the Monastery, in Russia,
74 Covenanters, the Scottish, 36 Croatia, 86, 87 Cranganore, 142 Cyprus, the Church of, 71
Daemen, Adam, 230 d'Achery, Benedictine scholar, 59 de Agreda, Maria, 169, 185 de Belloy, Mother, 259, 260 de Berulle, 56
de Brienne, Lomenie, 249-50 de Britto, John, 140 Declaration of 1682, the Galilean,
32-4, 39, 210, 263, 275, 276 de Cock, Theodore, 228, 229 de Condren, Charles, 57 Defensio declarationis cleri Galli-
cani, 34, 35 de la Maisonforte, ]\Ille., 46 de la Torre, James, 226 de Maintenon, Madame, 46, 64 de Molinos, Miguel, 44, 45 de Noailles, Cardinal, 64, 65,
234-5 de' Nobili, Robert, 140 de Paul, S. Vincent, 56 De propaganda Jide , Congregation ,
131 sqq.; at Turin, 37 de Rhodes, Alexandre, 143, 144 de Rohan, Cardinal, 249, 250
INDEX
297
de Saci, Jansenist, 61
Descartes, 60, 67
de Sericourt, Jansenist, 61
de Sevigne, Madame, 42, 46, 54, 55
d'Estrees, Cardinal, 45
de Talleyrand Perigord, Maurice, bishop of Autun, prince of Benevento, 250, 251, 253, 257, 262, 277, 281
de Tillemont, ecclesiastical his- torian, 62, 64
de Toro, Joseph Fernandez, 170
d'Harlai, archbishop of Paris, 35, 54
d'Houay, Charles, 56
Diamper, the Synod of, 141
Directory, the, 262, 263, 266-8
Dollinger, Dr. J. von, 30
Dominicans, the, 132
Dominus ac Redemptor noster, Bull, 185 sqq., 264
Dositheos, patriarch of Jerusalem, 71
Du Pin, 101
Durham, bishop of. See Butler
du Verger, Abbe de S. Cyran, 61, 62
Electoral College, the, 12
Elias of Weissenburg (Karlsburg),
87 Empire, the, 1, 2, 10-20, 278 Ems, the Convention at, 221 Encydopcedia, the, 241, 244,
245 Esquilace, 182 Eudes, Pere, 56-8 Eudistes, the, 56
Faith, The Rock of, by Stephen
Yavorski, 76 Falconi, 44
Farnese, Elizabeth, 162 Febronius, Justinius (von Hon-
them), 215, 216, 278, 285 Fenelon, archbishop of Cambrai,
35, 47-54 Ferdinand VI., 162, 163 Fichte, 225
Firmian, archbishop of Salzburg,
14, 224 Florence, the Synod at (1787),
210, 211 Floridablanca, the count of, 187 France, the Jesuits in, 24, 26, 55,
64-6, 171, 11^ sqq., 288 Franciscans, the, 132, 221 Frascati, bishop of. See Henry
Benedict Frederick the Great, 219, 223, t 224, 245
i Friedrich Wilhelm I., 18 j Fuh-Kien, 135, 136
j Ganganelli, Lorenzo. See Clement ! XIV. Gaubil, Antoine, 134 George II., 114, 115 George III., 204, 254, 261, 269,
270, 272 George, Kara, 93 Germany, primate of, Mainz as,
278 Geriindio, Fray, 180 Goa, 139-41, 154 Gobel, archbishop of Paris, 256,
258 Godoy, Prince of the Peace, 289 Gooch, Sir Thomas (bishop of
Ely), 116, 117 Gran, the see of, 88 Green, John Richard, 104, 105 Gregoire, Bishop, 254, 255, 289 Gregory XV., 131 Guide, The Spiritual, of Molinos,
44, 45, 169, 170 Gutensell in Swabia, the abbess
of, 19 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, 7 Guyon, Madame, 45-7
Halberstadt, 10 Hamowicz, Gervasius, 90 Harlai. See d'Harlai Harris, Howell, 125 Helvetius, 24 Henrietta of Orleans, 41 Henry Benedict, cardinal of York, 103, 202-5
298
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Hermannstadt, orthodox bishop
of, 90 Hoadly, bishop of Bangor, 107,
114, 116 Hooker, Richard, 105 Huguenots, the, 35-7 Hume, David, 104
In Coena Domini, Bull, 208, 219 India, English missions in, 142-4 India. Sec Jesuits, Capuchins,
de' Nobili Innocent X. (Barberini), 2, 3, 8,
62, 134 Innocent XL (Odeschalchi), 30,
33, 34, 38, 45 Innocent XIL, 16, 39, 48 Innocent XIII., 231 Inquisition, the, in Spain, 163-
71, 173, 174,179,180, 288-90;
in Portugal, 168, 178 ; in Italy,
6, 165, 166, 169,170, 173, 174;
in India, 139, 140; in Sicily,
208 ; in America, 159 Ireland, 128, 129 Isla, Jose Francisco, 182
James II. of England, 25, 100 Jansen, bishop of Ypres, 59-62 Jansenists, the, 28, 59 sqq., 135,
175 Japan, Church in, 138, 139 Jassy, Synod of, 71 Jerusalem, patriarch of, 71, 72 Jesuits, the, 22-8, 30, 60, 64-6, 83, 84, \QQ-SS, 197-9, 216, 222, 286, 288 and sec other refer- ences Jesuits, the, in Spain, 171 ; in North America, 144, 146 sqq. ; in South America, 24, 153-60, 168, 171, 180, 181 ; in Portu- gal, 174-5, 178, 179 ; in Italy, 23 sqq. ; in China, 24, 132, 144 ; in Corsica, 132 sciq. ; in France, see France ; in Parma, 182, 183, in Sicily, 182, 183 ; in Prussia, 186 ; in India, 140 sqq. ; in Germany, 11, 25 ; in the Netherlands, 222, 226-30, 233,
235 ; in Russia, 82-4 ; in Poland, 82-4 Jesus and His Mother, the Con- fraternity of the Heart of, 58 ' Jones, Grutfyd, 125 Joseph I., emperor, 19, 20 Joseph II., 56, 89, 90, 92, 195,
214 s^g., 278 Juthia, 135 Juxon, Archbishop, 97
Kaempfer, Dr. Englebert, quoted,
136 Kant, Immanuel, 111, 112 Kaunitz, Count, 220 Kien-Lung, emjieror, 136 Kempten, the abbat of, 15 Kerrich, Samuel, 114 sqq. Kianardi, the Treaty of (1774),
91 Kollonicz, Cardinal, 88 Koln, the ecclesiastical electors
of, 12, 13, 39 (and see Cologne) Kolomna, bishop of, 73
Labre, Benedict, 259, 265 Lacombe, 44, 46
Lambertini, Prospero. See Bene- dict XIV. Laud, Archbishop, 73, 96, 98,
122 Lea, Dr. Henry Charles, 163
sqq. Lecky, Right Hon. W. E. H., 69,
113, 114 Leopold I., emperor, 40, 88, 92 Leopold II., duke of Tuscany and
emperor, 208-11, 218 Le Tellier, 35, 64, 65 Letters, the Provincial, 62, QQ,
68, 69 Liberation, the Great War of
German, 224 Liguori, S. Alphonso de', 103,
192-9 Longueville, the Duchesse de, 63 Louis XIII. , 56 Louis XIV., 29 sqq. Louis XV., 177, 186, 264 Louis XVL, 246 sqq.
INDEX
299
Louise, Madame, de France, 238-
40 Lucar, Cyril, 70-2 Luxan, Don Joseph Benegasi y,
162 Ly, Andre, 135 sqq.
Mabillon, 59 Macao, 135, 136, 137 Madrid, motin at, 181, 182 Madura, 140 Magdeburg, 10 Mahmud II., 82 Maidalcliina, Donna Olympia, 3 Mainz, the archbishop elector of.
See Schbnborn Malabar, 141, 142 Malagrida, 178, 179 Malaval, Francois, 44, 45 Mallo, bishop of, 83, 84 Mansfield, Lord Chancellor, 124 Marengo, the battle of, 268 Marguerite Marie, Blessed, 56 Massillon, 43, 55, 56 Matamba, the queen of, 139 Maubisson, 61
Maximcs des Saints, the, 47-9, 53 Meaux, bishop of. See Bossuet Meindaerts, Peter, 233 Mesenguy, 173 Mexico, the Church in, 158, 180,
265 Mezeray, 56 Michelet, 49 Minden, 11 Moga, Basilius, 90, 91 Mohilow, 83, 84 Molina, Luis de, 26 ; "Molinists," 170 Molinos, Miguel de, 44, 45, 169,
and cf. Quietists Montenegro, 92, 94 Moral Theology, the, of S.
Alphonso, 198-9 Moravians, the, 119, 123 Moscow, patriarchs of, 72 sqq. Mouravieff, quoted, 72 Munkacs, bishop of, 87 Miinster, Peace of, 2, 10. Cf.
Westphalia
Nantes, the Edict of, 35, 36 Naples, 7, 8, 172, 182, 187, 190,
192-7, 205, 206, 212, 288 Napoleon, 213, 266-83, 286 Nicolas I., 74
Nicosia, Council at, 16, 68, 71 Nijgorod, the forests of, 77 Nikon, the patriarch, 72-4, 76 Noris, Cardinal, 179, 180
Ofen, the Serbian bishop of, 90
Olavide, 187, 188
Olier, founder of S. Sulxjice, 56,
57 Orleans, the Regent, 65 Osnabrilck, 2, 10 Ostia, bishop of. See Henry
Benedict
Palafox, Juan de, 181, 185, 265 Panders, the bishop of (de Caulet),
29 Paraguay, 153-60 Paris, archbishop of. /SVvjd'Harlai,
de Noailles Paris, the Parlement of, 30, 33 Pascal, 62, 63, 66-9, 110, 175 Pattison, Mark, quoted, 104 Pearson, John, bishop of Chester,
99 Peking, 80 Fenstes, the, 66-9 Penn, William, 146-8 Perrier, Mile., 62, 63 Peter the Great, 75-80, 82, 94 Peterborough, Charles Mordaunt,
earl of, 50 Phanar, the, 70
Philip v., king of Spain, 161, 162 Philip of Parma, Prince, 183, 184,
190 Philosophy, the Cartesian, 58.
See Descartes Pistoia, the Synod of, 209-10 Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham,
127, 151
I, 84, 219, 220, 264
Pius YL,
sqq. Pius YII.
286-7
267 sqq., 280-3,
300
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Poland, the Church in, 82-5 Poltier, Francois, 137 Poniatowski, Stanislaus, 83 Port Royal, 60-9 Portugal, the Church in, 168,
174, 178, 179 Pombal, Marquis, 168, 175, 178.
179 Potcamp, Gerard, 230 Potter, Archbishop, 115, 116 Probabilism, 26-8, 197, 198 Propositions, the Five, 62, 63, 230 Protestation of loyal Roman
Catholics, 129 Prussia, the Jesuits in, 1 86 Pskof, archbishop of, 76 Pyle, Edmund, 114 sqq.
Quesnel, Pere, 64, 65
Quietist controversy, the, 43 sqq.
Quietists, the, ^Z-hA. passim
Racine, 64 Rakoczy, George, 87 Raskolniks, the, 74-6 Relation of 1663, the Venetian, 6 Rhodes, Alexandre de, 143, 144 Ricci, bishop of Pistoia, 103,
209-12 Ricci, general of the Jesuits, 186 Ricci, Jesuit missionary, 132, 133 Robespierre, 260-1 Romagna, the, 6 Roman Catholic emancipation,
128 sqq. Rousseau, J. J., 244, 261 Romaine, 124 Rowlands, Daniel, 125 Rucellai, 208, 209 Russia, the Church in, 70, 72-85,
94
Sacred Heart, the Cult of the, 56,
58, 209 Salamanca, University of, 121 Saldanha, Cardinal, 156, 175, 176 Sancroft, Archbishop, 100 Savoy, Victor Amadeus, duke of,
38 S. Cyr, 46
S. Cyran, the Abbe de. See du
Verger Seabury, Samuel, Bishop, 152, 153 Seraphim, the patriarch, 85 Serbia, the Church in, 90-4 S. Germain des Pres, 59 Sharpe, Archbishop, 36 Sheldon, Archbishop, 99 Sheik-ul-Islam, the, 80 Simonowicz, Stephen, 87 S. Lazare, 56
S. Louis, the (apocryphal) Prag- matic Sanction of, 31 Sobieski, John, 9 Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 145 Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, 145-7, 149, 151-3 Sorbonne, the College of the, 32,
129 South America, Church in, 153
sqq. S. Sergius, convent of, 75 S. Simon, Memoirs, 46, 47, 51 S. Sulpice, seminary, 50, 56 Ste. Beuve, 43, QQ Steenoven, Cornelius, 232 S. Thomas Aquinas, 23, 105, 211,
229 S. Thomas, Christians of, 141,
142, 143 S. Theresa, 43
Swartz, Dr., missionary, 142 Synod, the Holy, 78, 79
Tanucci, Bernardo, 172, 173, 181,
185 Taylor, Jeremy, bishop of Down
and Connor, 99 Teresa, Maria, empress and queen
of Hungary, 90, 185, 217 Terror, the Reign of, 256-61 Teutonic Order, the Grand Master
of, 13 Theatines, the, 139 Theophilanthropists, the, 262 Tillotson, Archbishop, 113, 149 Tolentino, the Peace of, 267-8 Toleration, ■ the Edict of, under
Joseph II., 219
INDEX
301
Torregiani, Cardinal, 173 Transsilvania, the Church in, 86
sqq. Trier, the archbishop electors of,
12, 13 Turkey, the Church in, 70-2,
80-2
Uniformity, the Act of, 97, 98 Unigenitus, bull or constitution,
64, 65, 180, 231, 232, 234-7 Urban VIII. , 3 Utrecht, the see of, 226 sqq.
van Esi)en, canonist, 229, 232 van Heussen, Hugh, 228, 229 van Xeercassel, Bishop, 227-8 van Renssalaer, Nicholas, 145 van Rhijn, John Jacob, 233, 234 Vaudois, the, 37, 38 Vieira, Antonio, 168 Vienna, the Congress of, 285, 287 Villars, Marshal, 36, 37 Vitelleschi, Mutio, 23 Voltaire, F. M. A. de, Q6, 132 von Falkenstein, Count (Joseph
II.), 217 von Ranke, L. , quoted, 5, 220 von Schonborn, Lothar Franz,
16-22 von Stolberg, Leopold, 224
AVake, Archbishop, 101, 102, 107,
108 Waldenses, the, 37, 38 Wall, General, 174 Wallachia, 89, 93 War, the Thirty Years', 1-3, 10-
12, 19, 20, 25, 29 Wellesley, Marquess, 143 Wesley, John, 103, 104, 119-25,
150 Westphalia, the Peace of, 1-4,
10-14 Whitefield, George, 103, 118,
149 Wilberforce, William, 130 I Wilson, Bishop, 104, 118 j Winchester, Professor, quoted, j 120 sqq.
: Worms, the bishopric of, 13, 14 j Wiirzburg, the bishopric of, 14, I 16 : Wuytiers, Barchman, 232
Xavier, S. Francis, 131, 132, 138.
I Yavorski, Stephen, 76 Ypres, bishop of. See Jansen Yung-Chi, Emperor, 132
Zelo domus Dei, Bull, 2, 12