The age of revolution : being an outline of the history of the church from 1648 to 1815

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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

o

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1908

THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

575933 A

ASTOR, LENOX AND

TiLDEN FOUNDATIONS

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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

575933A

loo THE AGE OF REVOLUTION

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