On neither side was the policy one of sheer hatred. North and south the purpose increased throughout the century to unite the two countries and thus put an end to the perennial and noxious war. If the early Tudors {351} were mistaken in thinking they could assert a suzerainty by force of arms, they also must be credited with laying the foundations of the future dynastic union. Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister, was married to James IV of Scotland. Somerset hoped to effect the union more directly by the marriage of Edward VI and Mary Queen of Scots. That a party of enlightened statesmen in England should constantly keep the union in mind, is less remarkable under the circumstances than that there should have been built up a considerable body of Scotchmen aiming at the same goal. Notwithstanding the vitality of patriotism and the tenacity with which small nations usually refuse to merge their own identity in a larger whole, very strong motives called forth the existence of an English party. One favorable condition was the feudal disorganization of society. Faction was so common and so bitter that it was able to call in the national enemy without utterly discrediting itself. A second element was jealousy of France. For a time, with the French marriages of James V with Mary of Lorraine, a sister of the Duke of Guise, and of Mary Queen of Scots with Francis II, there seemed more danger that the little kingdom should become an appanage of France than a satellite of her southern neighbor. The licentiousness of French officers and French soldiers on Scotch soil made their nation least loved when it was most seen. [Sidenote: Influence of religion] But the great influence overcoming national sentiment was religion. The Reformation that brought not peace but a sword to so much of Europe in this case united instead of divided the nations.
It is sometimes said that national character reveals itself in the national religion. This is true to some extent, but it is still more important to say that a nation's history reveals itself in its forms of faith. From religious statistics of the present day one could {353} deduce with considerable accuracy much of the history of any people.
The contrast between the churches of England and Scotland is the more remarkable when it is considered that the North of England was the stronghold of Catholicism, and that the Lowland Scot, next door to the counties of the Northern Earls who rose against Elizabeth, flew to the opposite extreme and embraced Protestantism in its most pronounced form. To say that Calvinism, uncompromising and bare of adornment, appealed particularly to the dour, dry, rationalistic Scot, is at best but a half truth and at worst a begging of the question. The reasons why England became Anglican and Scotland Presbyterian are found immediately not in the diversity of national character but in the circumstances of their respective polities and history. England cast loose from Rome at a time when the conservative influence of Luther was predominant; Scotland was swept into the current of revolution under the fiercer star of Calvin. The English reformation was started by the crown and supported by the new noblesse of commerce. The Scotch revolution was markedly baronial in tone. It began with the humanists, continued and flourished in the junior branches of great families, among the burgesses of the towns and among the more vigorous of the clergy, both regular and secular. The crown was consistently against the new movement, but the Scottish monarch was too weak to impose his will, or even to have a will of his own. Neither James V nor his daughter could afford to break with Rome and with France. James V, especially, was thrown into the arms of his clergy by the hostility of his nobles. Moreover, after the death of many nobles at the battle of Flodden, the clergy became, for a time, [Sidenote: 1513] the strongest estate in the kingdom.
{354} Like the other estates the clergy were still in the Middle Ages when the Reformation [Sidenote: Reformation] came on them like a thief in the night. In no country was the corruption greater. The bishops and priests took concubines and ate and drank and were drunken and buffeted their fellow men. They exacted their fees to the last farthing, an especially odious one being the claim of the priest to the best cow on the death of a parishioner. As a consequence the parsons and monks were hated by the laity.
Humanism shed a few bright beams on the hyperborean regions of Dundee and Glasgow. Some Erasmians, like Hector Boece, prepared others for the Reformation without joining it themselves; some, like George Buchanan, threw genius and learning into the scales of the new faith. The unlearned, too, were touched with reforming zeal. Lollardy sowed a few seeds of heresy. About 1520 Wyclif's version of the New Testament was turned into Scots by one John Nesbit, but it remained in manuscript.
In the days before newspapers tidings were carried from place to place by wandering merchants and itinerant scholars. Far more than today propaganda was dependent on personal intercourse. One of the first preachers of Lutheranism in Scotland was a Frenchman named La Tour, who was martyred on his return to his own country. The noble Patrick Hamilton made a pilgrimage to the newly founded University of Marburg, and possibly to Wittenberg. Filled, as his Catholic countryman, Bishop John Leslie put it, "with venom very poisonable and deadly . . . soaked out of Luther and other archheretics," he returned to find the martyr's crown in his native land. [Sidenote: February 29, 1528] "The reek of Patrick Hamilton" infected all upon whom it blew. Other young men visited Germany. Some, like Alexander Alesius and John MacAlpine, found positions in {355} foreign universities. Others visited Wittenberg for a short time to carry thence the new gospel. A Scotch David[1] appears at Wittenberg in January 1528. Another Scot, "honorably born and well seen in scholastic theology, exiled from his land on account of the Word," made Luther's acquaintance in May, 1529. Another of the Reformer's visitors was James Wedderburn whose brother, John, [Sidenote: 1540-2] translated some of the German's hymns, and published them as "Ane compendious Booke of Godly and spiritual Songs."
While men like these were bringing tidings of the new faith back to their countrymen, others were busy importing and distributing Lutheran books. The Parliament prohibited [Sidenote: July 17, 1525] all works of "the heretic Luther and his disciples," but it could not enforce this law. The English agent at Antwerp reported to Wolsey that New Testaments and other English works were bought by Scottish merchants [Sidenote: February 20, 1527] and sent to Edinburgh and St. Andrews. The popularity and influence of Tyndale's and Coverdale's Bible is proved by the rapid anglicizing, from this date onward, of the Scots dialect. The circulation of the Scriptures in English is further proved by the repetition of the injunctions against using them. But the first Bible printed in Scotland was that of Alexander Arbuthnot in 1579, based on the Geneva Bible in 1561.
[Sidenote: March 14, 1531]
Another indication of the growth of Lutheranism is the request of King James V to Consistory for permission to tax his clergy one-third of their revenues in order to raise an army against the swarm of his Lutheran subjects. As these Protestants met in private houses, Parliament passed a law, [Sidenote: 1540] "That none hold nor let be holden in their houses nor other ways, congregations or conventicles to commune or dispute of {356} the Holy Scripture, without they be theologians approved by famous universities."
As the new party grew the battle was joined. At least twelve martyrs perished in the years 1539-40. [Sidenote: Pamphlets] The field was taken on either side by an army of pamphlets, ballads and broadsides, of which the best known, perhaps, is David Lyndsay'sAne Satire of the thrie Estatis. In this the clergy are mercilessly attacked for greed and wantonness. [Sidenote: 1540] The New Testament is highly praised by some of the characters introduced into the poem, but a pardoner complains that his credit has been entirely destroyed by it and wishes the devil may take him who made that book. He further wishes that "Martin Luther, that false loon, Black Bullinger and Melanchthon" had been smothered in their chrisom-cloths and that St. Paul had never been born.
[Sidenote: Mary Stuart, born Dec. 8, 1542]
When James V died, he left the crown to his infant daughter of six days old, that Mary whose beauty, crimes and tragic end fixed the attention of her contemporaries and of posterity alike. For the first three years of her reign the most powerful man in the kingdom was David Beaton, Cardinal Archbishop of St. Andrews. His policy, of course, was to maintain the Catholic religion, and this implied the defence of Scotch independence against England. Henry VIII, with characteristic lack of scruple, plotted to kidnap the infant queen and either to kidnap or to assassinate the cardinal. Failing in both, he sent an army north with orders to put man, woman and child to the sword wherever resistance was made. Edinburgh castle remained untaken, but Holyrood was burned and the country devastated as far as Sterling.
[Sidenote: Cardinal Beaton]
Defeated by England, Beaton was destined to {357} perish in conflict with his other enemy, Protestantism. During this time of transition from Lutheranism to Calvinism, the demands of the Scotch reformers would have been more moderate than they later became. They would doubtless have been content with a free Bible, free preaching and the sequestration of the goods of the religious orders. Under George Wishart, who translated the First Helvetic Confession, [Sidenote: 1536 or 1537] the Kirk began to assume its Calvinistic garb and to take the aspect of a party with a definite political program. The place of newspapers, both as purveyors of information and as organs of public opinion, was taken by the sermons of the ministers, most of them political and all of them controversial. Of this party Beaton was the scourge. He himself believed that in 1545 heresy was almost extinct, and doubtless his belief was confirmed when he was able to put Wishart to death. [Sidenote: March 1, 1546] In revenge for this a few fanatics murdered him. [Sidenote: May 29]
[Sidenote: John Knox]
In the consummation of the religious revolution during the next quarter of a century, one factor was the personality of John Knox. A born partisan, a man of one idea who could see no evil on his own side and no good on the other, as a good fighter and a good hater he has had few equals. His supreme devotion to the cause he embraced made him credulous of evil in his foes, and capable of using deceit and of applauding political murder. Of his first preaching against Romanism it was said, "Other have sned [snipped] the branches, but this man strikes at the root," and well nigh the latest judgment passed upon him, that of Lord Acton, is that he differed from all other Protestant founders in his desire that the Catholics should be exterminated, either by the state or by the self-help of all Christian men. His not to speak the words of love and mercy from the gospel, but to curse and {358} thunder against "those dumb dogs, the poisoned and pestilent papists" in the style of the Old Testament prophet or psalmist. But while the harshness of his character has repelled many, his fundamental consistency and his courage have won admiration. As a great preacher, "or he had done with his sermon he was so active and vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in blads and fly out of it." His style was direct, vigorous, plain, full of pungent wit and biting sarcasm.
Even the year of his birth is in dispute. The traditional date is 1505; but it has been shown with much reason that the more likely date is 1513 or 1514. That he had a university education and that he was ordained priest is all that is known of him until about 1540. During the last months of Wishart's life Knox was his constant attendant. His own preaching continued the work of the martyr until June, 1547, when St. Andrews was captured by the French fleet and Knox was made a galley slave for nineteen months. Under the lash and, what grieved him even more, constantly plied with suggestions that he should "commit idolatry" in praying to the image of Mary, his heart grew bitter against the French and their religion.
Released, either through the influence of the English government, [Sidenote: January 1549] or by an exchange of prisoners, Knox spent the next five years in England. After filling positions as preacher at Berwick and Newcastle, [Sidenote: 1551] he was appointed royal chaplain and was offered the bishopric of Rochester, which he declined because he foresaw the troubles under Mary. As the pioneer of Puritanism in England he used his influence to make the Book of Common Prayer more Protestant. Not long after Mary's accession Knox fled to the Continent, spending a few years at Frankfort and Geneva. He was much impressed by "that notable servant of {359} God, John Calvin" whose system he adopted with political modifications of his own.
In the meantime things were not going well in Scotland. The country had suffered another severe defeat [Sidenote: September 10, 1547] at the hands of the English in the battle of Pinkie. The government was largely in the hands of the Queen Dowager, Mary of Lorraine, who naturally favored France, and who married her daughter, the Queen of Scots, to the Dauphin Francis, [Sidenote: April 24, 1558] both of them being fifteen years old. By treaty she conveyed Scotland to the king of France, acting on the good old theory that her people were a chattel. Though the pact, with its treason to the people, was secret, its purport was guessed by all. Whereas the accession of Francis II momentarily bound Scotland closer to France, his death in the following year again cut her loose, and allowed her to go her own way.
All the while the Reformed party had been slowly growing in strength. Somerset took care to send plenty of English Bibles across the Cheviot Hill, rightly seeing in them the best emissaries of the English interest. The Scotch were drawn towards England by the mildness of her government as much as they were alienated from France by the ferocity of hers. In Scotland the English party, when it had the chance, made no Catholic martyrs, but the French party continued to put heretics to death. The execution of the aged Walter Milne, [Sidenote: 1558] the last of the victims of the Catholic persecution, excited especial resentment.
Knox now returned to his own country for a short visit. [Sidenote: Knox, August, 1555] He there preached passionately against the mass and addressed a letter to the Regent Mary of Lorraine, begging her to favor the gospel. This she treated as a joke, and, after Knox had departed, she sentenced him to death and burnt him in effigy. From Geneva he continued to be the chief adviser of the {360} Protestant party whose leaders drew up a "Common Band," usually known as the First Scottish Covenant. [Sidenote: December 3, 1557] The signers, including a large number of nobles and gentlemen headed by the earls of Argyle, Glencairn and Morton, promised to apply their whole power, substance and lives to maintain, set forward and establish "the most blessed Word of God and his congregation." Under the protection of this bond, reformed churches were set up openly. The Lords of the Congregation, as they were called, demanded that penal statutes against heretics be abrogated and "that it be lawful to us to use ourselves in matters of religion and conscience as we must answer to God." This scheme of toleration was too advanced for the time.
[Sidenote: 1557]
As the assistance of Knox was felt to be desirable, the Lords of the Congregation urgently requested his return. [Sidenote: 1558] Before doing so he published his "Appellation" [Sidenote: May 2, 1559] to the nobles, estates and commonalty against the sentence of death recently passed on him. When he did arrive in Edinburgh, his preaching was like a match set to kindling wood. Wherever he went burst forth the flame of iconoclasm. Images were broken and monasteries stormed not, as he himself wrote, by gentlemen or by "earnest professors of Christ," but by "the rascal multitude." In reckoning the forces of revolution, the joy of the mob in looting must not be forgotten. [Sidenote: May 11] From Perth Knox wrote: "The places of idolatry were made equal with the ground; all monuments of idolatry that could be apprehended, consumed with fire; and priests commanded, under pain of death, to desist from their blasphemous mass." Similar outbursts occurred at St. Andrews, and when Knox returned to Edinburgh, civil war seemed imminent. Pamphlets of the time, likeThe Beggars' Warning, [Sidenote: 1559] distinctly made the threat of social revolution.
{361} But as a matter of fact the change came as the most bloodless in Europe. The Reformers, popular with the middle and with part of the upper classes, needed only to win English support to make themselves perfectly secure. The difficulty in this course lay in Queen Elizabeth's natural dislike of Knox on account of hisFirst Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. In this war-whoop, aimed against the Marys of England and Scotland, Knox had argued that "to promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire above any realm is repugnant to nature, contrary to God, and, finally, it is the subversion of good order and of all equity and justice." The author felt not a little embarrassment when a Protestant woman ascended the throne of England and he needed her help. But to save his soul he "that never feared nor flattered any flesh" could not admit that he was in the wrong, nor take back aught that he had said. He seems to have acted on Barry Lyndon's maxim that "a gentleman fights but never apologizes." When he wrote Elizabeth, [Sidenote: July 20, 1559] all he would say was that he was not her enemy and had never offended her or her realm maliciously or of purpose. He seasoned this attempt at reconciliation by adding a stinging rebuke to the proud young queen for having "declined from God and bowed to idolatry," during her sister's reign, for fear of her life.
But the advantages of union outweighed such minor considerations as bad manners, and early in 1560 a league was formed between England and the Lords of the Congregation. Shortly after the death of Mary of Lorraine [Sidenote: June 11, 1560] the Treaty of Edinburgh [Sidenote: Treaty of Edinburgh, July 6] was signed between the queen of England and the lords of Scotland. This provided: (1) that all English and French troops be sent out of Scotland except 120 French; (2) that all warlike preparations cease; (3) that the {362} Berwickshire citadel of the sea, Eyemouth, be dismantled; (4) that Mary and Francis should disuse the English title and arms; (5) that Philip of Spain should arbitrate certain points, if necessary; (6) that Elizabeth had not acted wrongfully in making a league with the Lords of the Congregation. Mary and Francis refused to ratify this treaty.
A supplementary agreement was proposed between Mary Stuart and her rebellious Protestant subjects. She promised to summon Parliament at once, to make neither war nor peace without the consent of the estates, and to govern according to the advice of a council of twelve chosen jointly by herself and the estates. She promised to give no high offices to strangers or to clergymen; and she extended to all a general amnesty.
[Sidenote: Revolution]
The summons of Parliament immediately after these negotiations proved as disastrous to the old régime as the assembly of the French Estates General in 1789. Though bloodless, the Scotch revolution was as thorough, in its own small way, as that of Robespierre. Religion was changed and a new distribution of political power secured, transferring the ascendency of the crown and of the old privileged orders to a class of "new men," low-born ministers of the kirk, small "lairds" and burgesses. The very constitution of the new Parliament was revolutionary. In the old legislative assemblies between ten and twenty greater barons were summoned; in the Parliament of 1560 no less than 106 small barons assembled, and it was to them, together with the burgesses of the cities, that the adoption of the new religion was due. A Confession of Faith, [Sidenote: Scottish Confession] on extreme Calvinistic lines, had been drawn up by Knox and his fellows; this was presented to Parliament and adopted with only eight dissenting voices, those of five laymen and three bishops. The minority was overawed, not only by the majority in {363} Parliament but by the public opinion of the capital and of the whole Lowlands.
[Sidenote: Laws of the estates]
Just a week after the adoption of the Confession, the estates passed three laws: (1) Abolishing the pope's authority and all jurisdiction by Catholic prelates; (2) repealing all previous statutes in favor of the Roman church; (3) forbidding the celebration of mass. The law calls it "wicked idolatry" and provides that "no manner of person nor persons say mass, nor yet hear mass, nor be present thereat under pain of confiscation of all their goods movable and immovable and punishing their bodies at the discretion of the magistrate." The penalty for the third offence was made death, and all officers were commanded to "take diligent suit and inquisition" to prevent the celebration of the Catholic rite. In reality, persecution was extremely mild, simply because there was hardly any resistance. Scarcely three Catholic martyrs can be named, and there was no Pilgrimage of Grace. This is all the more remarkable in that probably three-fourths of the people were still Catholic. The Reformation, like most other revolutions, was the work not of the majority, but of that part of the people that had the energy and intelligence to see most clearly and act most strongly. For the first time in Scotch history a great issue was submitted to a public opinion sufficiently developed to realize its importance. The great choice was made not by counting heads but by weighing character.
The burgher class having seized the reins of government proceeded to use them in the interests of their kirk. The prime duty of the state was asserted to be the maintenance of the true religion. Ministers were paid by the government. Almost any act of government might be made the subject of interference by the church, for Knox's profession, "with the policy, mind {364} us to meddle no further than it hath religion mixed in it," was obviously an elastic and self-imposed limitation.
[Sidenote: Theocracy]
The character of the kirk was that of a democratic, puritanical theocracy. The real rulers of it, and through it of the state, were the ministers and elders elected by the people. The democracy of the kirk consisted in the rise of most of these men from the lower ranks of the people; its theocracy in the claim of these men, once established in Moses' seat, to interpret the commands of God. "I see," said Queen Mary, after a conversation with Knox, "that my subjects shall obey you rather than me." "Madam," replied Knox, "my study is that both princes and people shall obey God"—but, of course, the voice of the pulpit was the voice of God. As a contemporary put it: "Knox is king; what he wills obeyit is." Finally the kirk was a tyranny, as a democracy may well be. In life, in manners, in thought, the citizen was obliged, under severe social penalty, to conform exactly to a very narrow standard.
[Sidenote: Queen Mary in Scotland, August 19, 1561]
When Queen Mary, a widow eighteen years old, landed in Scotland, she must have been aware of the thorny path she was to tread. It is impossible not to pity her, the spoiled darling of the gayest court of Europe, exposed to the bleak skies and bleaker winds of doctrines at Edinburgh. Endowed with high spirit, courage, no little cleverness and much charm, she might have mastered the situation had her character or discretion equaled her intellect and beauty. But, thwarted, nagged and bullied by men whose religion she hated, whose power she feared and whose low birth she despised, she became more and more reckless in the pursuit of pleasure until she was tangled in a network of vice and crime, and delivered helpless into the hands of her enemies.
{365} Her true policy, and the one which she began to follow, was marked out for her by circumstances. Scotland was to her but the stepping-stone to the throne of England. As Elizabeth's next heir she might become queen either through the death of the reigning sovereign, or as the head of a Catholic rebellion. At first she prudently decided to wait for the natural course of events, selecting as her secretary of state Maitland, "the Scottish Cecil," a staid politician bent on keeping friends with England. But at last growing impatient, she compromised herself in the Catholic plots and risings of the disaffected southerners.
So, while aspiring to three crowns, Mary showed herself incapable of keeping even the one she had. Not religion but her own crimes and follies caused her downfall, but it was over religion that the first clash with her subjects came. She would have liked to restore Catholicism, though this was not her first object, for she would have been content to be left in the private enjoyment of her own worship. Even on this the stalwarts of the kirk looked askance. Knox preached as Mary landed that one mass was more terrible to him than ten thousand armed invaders. Mary sent for him, hoping to win the hard man by a display of feminine and queenly graciousness. [Sidenote: August 1561-December 1563] In all he had five interviews with her, picturesquely described by himself. On his side there were long, stern sermons on the duties of princes and the wickedness of idolatry, all richly illustrated with examples drawn from the sacred page. On her side there was "howling together with womanly weeping," "more howling and tears above that the matter did require," "so many tears that her chamber-boy could scarce get napkins enough to dry her eyes." With absurdly unconscious offensiveness and egotism Knox began acquaintance with his sovereign by remarking that he was as well {366} content to live under her as Paul under Nero. Previously he had maintained that the government was set up to control religion; now he informed Mary that "right religion took neither original nor authority from worldly princes but from the Eternal God alone." "'Think ye,' quoth she, 'that subjects, having power, may resist their princes?' 'If princes exceed their bounds, madam, they may be resisted and even deposed,'" replied Knox. Mary's marriage was the most urgent immediate question of policy. When Knox took the liberty of discussing it with her she burst out: "What have you to do with my marriage? Or what are you within this commonwealth?" "A subject born within the same," superbly retorted the East Lothian peasant, "and though neither earl, lord nor baron, God has made me a profitable member."
[Sidenote: Marriage with Darnley, July 1565]
Determined, quite excusably, to please herself rather than her advisers in the choice of a husband, Mary selected her cousin Henry Stuart Lord Darnley; a "long lad" not yet twenty. The marriage was celebrated in July, 1565; the necessary papal dispensation therefor was actually drawn up on September 25 but was thoughtfully provided with a false date as of four months earlier. Almost from the first the marriage was wretchedly unhappy. The petulant boy insisted on being treated as king, whereas Mary allowed him only "his due." Darnley was jealous, probably with good cause, of his wife's Italian secretary, David Riccio, and murdered him in Mary's presence; [Sidenote: March 9, 1566] "an action worthy of all praise," pontificated Knox.
With this crime begins in earnest that sickening tale of court intrigue and blackest villainy that has commonly passed as the then history of Scotland. To revenge her beloved secretary Mary plotted with a new paramour, the Earl of Bothwell, an able soldier, a {367} nominal Protestant and an evil liver. On the night of February 9-10, 1567, the house of Kirk o' Field near Edinburgh where Darnley was staying and where his wife had but just left him, was blown up by gunpowder and later his dead body was found near by. Public opinion at once laid the crime at the right doors, and it did not need Mary's hasty marriage with Bothwell [Sidenote: Marriage with Bothwell, May 15, 1567] to confirm the suspicion of her complicity.
The path of those opposed to the queen was made easier by the fact that she now had an heir, James, [Sidenote: James VI, June 19, 1566] of Scotland the sixth and afterwards of England the first. The temper of the people of Edinburgh was indicated by the posting up of numerous placards accusing Bothwell and Mary. One of these was a banner on which was painted a little boy kneeling and crowned, and thereon the legend: "Avenge the death of my father!" Deeds followed words; [Sidenote: July 16] Parliament compelled the queen under threat of death to abdicate in favor of her son and to appoint her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, regent. At the coronation of the infant king Knox preached. [Sidenote: July 29] A still more drastic step was taken when Parliament declared Mary guilty of murder [Sidenote: December 15] and formally deposed her from the throne. That Mary really was guilty in the fullest degree there can be no reasonable doubt. An element of mystery has been added to the situation by a dispute over the genuineness of a series of letters and poems purporting to have been written by Mary to Bothwell and known collectively as the Casket Letters. They were discovered in a suspiciously opportune way by her enemies. The originals not being extant, some historians have regarded them in whole or in part as forgeries, but Robertson, Ranke, Froude, Andrew Lang and Pollard accept them as genuine. This is my opinion, but it seems to me that the fascination of {368} mystery has lent the documents undue importance. Had they never been found Mary's guilt would have been established by circumstantial evidence.
Mary was confined for a short time in the castle of Lochleven, but contrived to escape. As she approached Glasgow she risked a battle, [Sidenote: May, 1568] but her troops were defeated and she fled to England. Throwing herself on Elizabeth's mercy she found prison and finally, after nineteen years, the scaffold. An inquiry was held concerning her case, but no verdict was rendered because it did not suit Elizabeth to degrade her sister sovereign more than was necessary. Not for the murder of her husband, but for complicity in a plot against Elizabeth, was Mary finally condemned to die. In spite of the fact that she did everything possible to disgrace herself more deeply than ever, such as pensioning the assassin of her brother Moray, her sufferings made her the martyr of sentimentalists, and pieces of embroidery or other possessions of the beautiful queen have been handed down as the precious relics of a saint.[2]
All the murderous intrigues just narrated contributed thoroughly to disgrace the Catholic and royalist party. The revolution had left society dissolved, full of bloodthirsty and false men. But though the Protestants had their share of such villains, they also had the one consistent and public-spirited element in the kingdom, namely Knox and his immediate followers. Moray was a man rather above the average respectability and he confirmed the triumph of Protestantism in the Lowlands in the few short years preceding his assassination in January, 1570. But by this time the revolution had been so firmly accomplished that nothing could shake it. The deposition of a queen, though {369} a defiance of all the Catholic powers and of all the royalist sentiment of Europe, had succeeded. The young king was brought up a Protestant, and his mind was so thoroughly turned against his mother that he acquiesced without a murmur in her execution. At last peace and security smiled upon North Britain. [Sidenote: Preparation for union with England] The coming event of the union with England cast its beneficent shadow over the reign of Elizabeth's successor.
[Sidenote: Absolution]
The Reformation ran the same course as in England earlier; one is almost tempted to hypostatize it and say that it took the bit between its teeth and ran away with its riders. Actually, the man cast for the rôle of Henry VIII was James VI; the slobbering pedant without drawing the sword did what his abler ancestors could not do after a life-time of battle. He made himself all but absolute, and this, demonstrably, as head of the kirk.
In 1584 Parliament passed a series of statutes known as the Black Acts, putting the bodies and souls of the Scotch under the yoke of the king, who was now pope as well. In 1587 the whole property of the pre-Reformation church, with some trifling exceptions, was confiscated and put at the king's disposition. As in England, so here, the lands of abbeys and of prelates was thrown to new men of the pushing, commercial type. Thus was founded a landed aristocracy with interests distinct from the old barons and strong in supporting both king and Reformation.
[Sidenote: Reaction in the kirk, 1592]
It is true that this condition was but temporary. Just as in England later the Parliament and the Puritans called the crown to account, so in Scotland the kirk continued to administer drastic advice to the monarch and finally to put direct legal pressure upon him. The Black Acts were abrogated by Parliament in 1592 and from that time forth ensued a struggle between the {370} king and the presbyteries which, in the opinion of the former, agreed as well together as God and the devil. Still more after his accession to the English throne James came to prefer the episcopal form of church government as more subservient, and to act on the maxim, "no bishop, no king."
[1] Could he have been David Borthwick or David Lyndsay? See Luther's letters andDictionary of National Biography.
[2] Such a piece of embroidery has been kept in my mother's family from that day to this.
{371}
It is sometimes so easy to see, after the event, why things should have taken just the course they did take, that it may seem remarkable that political foresight is so rare. It is probable, however, that the study of history not only illumines many things, and places them in their true perspective, but also tends to simplify too much, overemphasizing, to our minds, the elements that finally triumphed and casting those that succumbed into the shadow.
[Sidenote: Italy]
However this may be, Italy of the sixteenth century appears to offer an unusually clear case of a logical sequence of effects due to previously ascertainable causes. That Italy should toy with the Reformation without accepting it, that she should finally suppress it and along with it much of her own spiritual life, seems to be entirely due to her geographical, political and cultural condition at the time when she felt the impact of the new ideas.
In all these respects, indeed, there was something that might at first blush have seemed favorable to the Lutheran revolt. Few lands were more open to German and Swiss influences than was their transalpine neighbor. Commercially, Italy and Germany were united by a thousand bonds, and a constant influx of northern travellers, students, artists, officials and soldiers, might be supposed to carry with them the contagion of the new ideas. Again, the lack of political unity might be supposed, as in Germany, so in Italy, {372} to facilitate sectional reformation. Finally, the Renaissance, with its unparalleled freedom of thought and its strong anti-clerical bias, would at least insure a fair hearing for innovations in doctrine and ecclesiastical ideals.
And yet, as even contemporaries saw, there were some things which weighed far more heavily in the scale of Catholicism than did those just mentioned in the scale of Protestantism. In the first place the autonomy of the political divisions was more apparent than real. Too weak and too disunited to offer resistance to any strong foreign power, contended for by the three greatest, Italy became gradually more and more a Spanish dependency. After Pavia [Sidenote: 1525] and the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis [Sidenote: 1529] French influence was reduced to a threat rather than a reality. Naples had long been an appendage of the Spanish crown; Milan was now wrested from the French, and one after another most of the smaller states passed into Spain's "sphere of influence." The strongest of all the states, the papal dominions, became in reality, if not nominally, a dependency of the emperor after the sack of Rome. [Sidenote: 1527] Tuscany, Savoy and Venetia maintained a semblance of independence, but Savoy was at that time hardly Italian. Venice had passed the zenith of her power, and Florence, even under her brilliant Duke Cosimo de' Medici [Sidenote: Cosimo de' Medici, 1537-1574] was amenable to the pressure of the Spanish soldier and the Spanish priest.
Enormous odds were thrown against the Reformers because Italy was the seat of the papacy. In spite of all hatred of Roman morals and in spite of all distrust of Roman doctrine, this was a source of pride and of advantage of the whole country. As long as tribute flowed from all Western Europe, as long as kings and emperors kissed the pontiff's toe, Rome was still in a sense the capital of Christendom. An example of how {373} the papacy was both served and despised has been left us by the Florentine statesman and historian [Sidenote: Guiccidardini, 1483-1540] Guiccidardini: "So much evil cannot be said of the Roman curia," he wrote, "that more does not deserve to be said of it, for it is an infamy, an example of all the shame and wickedness of the world." He might have been supposed to be ready to support any enemy of such an institution, but what does he say?
No man dislikes more than do I the ambition, avarice and effeminacy of the priests, not only because these vices are hateful in themselves but because they are especially unbecoming to men who have vowed a life dependent upon God. . . . Nevertheless, my employment with several popes has forced me to desire their greatness for my own advantage. But for this consideration I should have loved Luther like myself, not to free myself from the silly laws of Christianity as commonly understood, but to put this gang of criminals under restraint, so that they might live either without vices or without power.
From this precious text we learn much of the inner history of contemporary Italy. As far as the Italian mind was liberated in religion it was atheistic, as far as it was reforming it went no further than rejection of the hierarchy. The enemies to be dreaded by Rome were, as the poet Luigi Alamanni wrote, [Sidenote: Alamanni, 1495-1556] not Luther and Germany, but her own sloth, drunkenness, avarice, ambition, sensuality and gluttony.
The great spiritual factor that defeated Protestantism in Italy was not Catholicism but the Renaissance. [Sidenote: Renaissance vs. Reformation] Deeply imbued with the tincture of classical learning, naturally speculative and tolerant, the Italian mind had already advanced, in its best representatives, far beyond the intellectual stage of the Reformers. The hostility of the Renaissance to the Reformation was a deep and subtle antithesis of the interests of this world {374} and of the next. It is notable that whereas some philosophical minds, like that of the brilliant Olympia Morata, who had once been completely skeptical, later came under the influence of Luther, there was not one artist of the first rank, not one of the greatest poets, that seems to have been in the least attracted by him. A few minor poets, like Folengo, [Sidenote: Folengo, 1491-1544] showed traces of his influence, but Ariosto and Tasso were bitterly hostile. [Sidenote: Ariosto, 1531] The former cared only for his fantastic world of chivalry and faery, and when he did mention, in a satire dedicated to Bembo, that Friar Martin had become a heretic as Nicoletto had become an infidel, the reason in both cases is that they had overstrained their intellects in the study of metaphysical theology, "because when the mind soars up to see God it is no wonder that, it falls down sometimes blind and confused." Heresy he elsewhere pictures as a devastating monster.
{375} But there was a third reason why the Reformation could not succeed in Italy, and that was that it could not catch the ear of the common people. If for the churchman it was a heresy, and for the free-thinker a superstition, for the "general public" of ordinarily educated persons it was an aristocratic fad. Those who did embrace its doctrines and read its books, and they were not a few of the second-rate humanists, cherished it as their fathers had cherished the neo-Platonism of Pico della Mirandola, as an esoteric philosophy. So little inclined were they to bring their faith to the people that they preferred to translate the Bible into better Greek or classical Latin rather than into the vulgar Tuscan. And just at the moment when it seemed as if a popular movement of some sort might result from the efforts of the Reformers, or in spite of them, came the Roman Inquisition and nipped the budding plant.
[Sidenote: Christian Renaissance]
But between the levels of the greatest intellectual leaders and that of the illiterate masses, there was a surprising number of groups of men and women more or less tinctured with the doctrines of the north. And yet, even here, one must add that their religion was seldom pure Lutheranism or Calvinism; it was Christianized humanism. There was the brilliant woman Vittoria Colonna, who read with rapture the doctrine of justification by faith, but who remained a conforming Catholic all her life. There was Ochino, the general of the Capuchins, whose defection caused a panic at Rome but who remained, nevertheless, an independent rather than an orthodox Protestant. Of like quality were Peter Martyr Vermigli, an exile for his faith, and Jerome Bolsec, a native of France but an inhabitant of Ferrara, whence he took to Geneva an eccentric doctrine that caused much trouble to Calvin. Finally, it was perfectly in accordance with the Italian genius that the most radical of Protestant dissenters, the unitarians Lelio and Fausto Sozzini, should have been born in Siena.
Among the little nests of Lutherans or Christian mystics the most important were at Venice, Ferrara and Naples. As early as 1519 Luther's books found their way to Venice, and in 1525 one of the leading canon lawyers in the city wrote an elaborate refutation of them, together with a letter to the Reformer himself, informing him that his act of burning the papal decretals was worse than that of Judas in betraying, or of Pilate in crucifying, Christ. The first sufferer for the new religion was Jerome Galateo. [Sidenote: 1530] Nevertheless, the new church waxed strong, and many were executed for their opinions. A correspondence of the brethren with Bucer and Luther has been preserved. In one letter they deeply deplore the schisms on the doctrine of the eucharist as hurtful to their cause. The {376} famous artist Lorenzo Lotto [Sidenote: 1540] was employed to paint pictures of Luther and his wife, probably copies of Cranach. The appearance of the Socinians about 1550, and the mutual animosity of the several sects, including the Anabaptist, was destructive. Probably more fatal was the disaster of the Schmalkaldic war and the complete triumph of the emperor. The Inquisition finished the work of crushing out what remained of the new doctrines.
[Sidenote: Naples]
That Naples became a focus of Protestantism was due mainly to John de Valdes, a deeply religious Spaniard. From his circle went out a treatise on justification entitledThe Benefit of Christ's Death, by Benedict of Mantua, of which no less than 40,000 copies were sold, for it was the one reforming work to enjoy popularity rivalling that of Luther and Erasmus. Influenced by Valdes, also, Bartholomew Forzio translated Luther'sAddress to the German Nobilityinto Italian.
[Sidenote: Ferrara]
At the court of Ferrara the duchess, Renée de France, gathered a little circle of Protestants. Calvin himself spent some time here, and his influence, together with the high protection of his patroness, made the place a fulcrum against Rome. Isabella d'Este, originally of Ferrara and later Marchioness of Mantua, one of the brilliant women of the Renaissance, for a while toyed with the fashionable theology. Cardinal Bembo saw at her castle at Mantua paintings of Erasmus and Luther. [Sidenote: 1537] One of the courtly poets of Northern Italy, Francis Berni, bears witness to the good repute of the Protestants. In hisRifacimentoof Boiardo'sOrlando Inamorato, he wrote: "Some rascal hypocrites snarl between their teeth, 'Freethinker! Lutheran!' but Lutheran means, you know, good Christian."
[Sidenote: Roman prelates affected by Luther]
The most significant sign of the times, and the most ominous for the papacy, was that among those affected by the leaven of Lutheranism were many of the leading {377} luminaries in the bosom of the church. That the Florentine chronicler Bartholomew Cerratani expressed his hope that Luther's distinguished morals, piety and learning should reform the curia was bad enough; that the papal nuncio Vergerio, after being sent on a mission to Wittenberg, should go over to the enemy, was worse; that cardinals like Contarini and Pole should preach justification by faith and concede much that the Protestants asked, was worst of all. "No one now passes at Rome," wrote Peter Anthony Bandini about 1540, "as a cultivated man or a good courtier who does not harbor some heretical opinions." Paul Sarpi, the eminent historian of Trent, reports that Luther's arguments were held to be unanswerable at Rome, but that he was resisted in order that authority might be uphold. For this statement he appeals to a diary of Francis Chieregato, an eminent ecclesiastic who died on December 6, 1539. As the diary has not been found, Lord Acton rejects the assertion, believing that Sarpi's word cannot be taken unsupported. But a curious confirmation of Sarpi's assertion, [Sidenote: Sarpi's assertion] and one that renders it acceptable, is found in Luther's table talk. Speaking on February 22, 1538, he says that he has heard from Rome that it was there believed to be impossible to refute him until St. Paul had been deposed. Ho regarded this as a signal testimony to the truth of his doctrines; to us it is valuable only as an evidence of Roman opinion. It is not too much to say that at about that time the most distinguished Italian prelates were steering for Wittenberg and threatened to take Rome with them. How they failed is the history of the Counter-reformation.
Nothing can better indicate the consternation caused at Rome by the appearance of the Lutheran revolt than {378} the fact that for the first time in 144 years and for the last time in history the cardinals elected as supreme pontiff a man who was not an Italian, Adrian of Utrecht. [Sidenote: Adrian VI, 1522-September 1523] After teaching theology at Louvain he had been appointed tutor to Prince Charles and, on the accession of his pupil to the Spanish throne was created Bishop of Tortosa, and shortly thereafter cardinal and Inquisitor General of Spain. While in this country he distinguished himself equally by the justness of his administration and by his bitter hatred of Luther, against whom he wrote several letters both to his imperial master and to his old colleagues at Louvain.
[Sidenote: December 1521]
The death of Leo X was followed by an unusually long conclave, on account of the even balance of parties. At last, despairing of agreement, and feeling also that extraordinary measures were needed to meet the exigencies of the situation, the cardinals, in January, offered the tiara to Adrian, who, alone among modern popes, kept his baptismal name while in office. The failure of Adrian VI to accomplish much was due largely to the shortness of his pontificate of only twenty months, and still more to the invincible corruption he found at Rome. His really high sense of duty awakened no response save fear and hatred among the courtiers of the Medicis. When he tried to restore the ruined finances of the church he was accused of niggardliness; when he made war on abuses he was called a barbarian; when he frankly confessed, in his appeal to the German Diets, that perchance the whole evil infecting the church came from the rottenness of the Curia, he was assailed as putting arms into the arsenal of the enemy. His greatest crime in the eyes of his court was that he was a foreigner, an austere, phlegmatic man, who could understand neither their tongue nor their ways.
{379} Exhausted by the fruitless struggle, Adrian sank into his grave, a good pope unwept and unhonored as few bad popes have ever been. On his tomb the cardinals wrote: "Here lies Adrian VI whose supreme misfortune in life was that he was called upon to rule." A like judgment was expressed more wittily by the people, who erected a monument to Adrian's physician and labeled it, "Liberatori Patriae."
[Sidenote: Clement VII, 1523-34]
The swing of the pendulum so often noticed in politics was particularly marked in the elections to the papacy of the sixteenth century. In almost every instance the new pope was an opponent, and in some sort a contrast, to his predecessor. In no case was this more true than in the election of 1523. Deciding that if Adrian's methods were necessary to save the church the medicine was worse than the disease, the cardinals lost no time in raising another Medici to the throne. Like all of his race, Clement VII was a patron of art and literature, and tolerant of abuses. Personally moral and temperate, he cared little save for an easy life and the advancement of the Three Balls. He began that policy, which nearly proved fatal to the church, of treating the Protestants with alternate indulgence and severity. But for himself the more immediate trouble came not from the enemy of the church but from its protector. Though Adrian was an old officer of Charles V, it was really in the reign of Clement that the process began by which first Italy, then the papacy, then the whole church was put under the Spanish yoke.
[Sidenote: Spanish influence, 1525-6]
After Pavia and the treaty of Madrid had eliminated French influence, Charles naturally felt his power and naturally intended to have it respected even by the pope. Irritated by Clement's perpetual deceit and intrigue with France, Charles addressed to him, in 1526, a document which Ranke calls the most {380} formidable ever used by any Catholic prince to a pope during the century, containing passages "of which no follower of Luther need be ashamed."
[Sidenote: Sack of Rome, May and September 1527]
Rather to threaten the pope than to make war on him, Charles gathered a formidable army of German and Spanish soldiers in the north under the command of his general Frundsberg. All the soldiers were restless and mutinous for want of pay, and in addition to this a powerful motive worked among the German landsknechts. Many of them were Lutheran and looked to the conquest of Rome as the triumph of their cause. As they loudly demanded to be lead against Antichrist, Frundsberg found that his authority was powerless to stop them. [Sidenote: March 16, 1527] When he died of rage and mortification the French traitor Charles, Constable of Bourbon, was appointed by the emperor in his place, and, finding there was nothing else to do, led the army against Rome and promised the soldiers as much booty as they could take. Twice, in May and September, the city was put to the horrors of a sack, with all the atrocities of murder, theft and rapine almost inseparable from war. In addition to plundering, the Lutherans took particular pleasure in desecrating the objects of veneration to the Catholics. Many an image and shrine was destroyed, while Luther was acclaimed pope by his boisterous champions. But far away on the Elbe he heard of the sack and expressed his sorrow for it.
The importance of the sack of Rome, like that of other dramatic events, is apt to be exaggerated. It has been called the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Catholic reaction. It was neither the one nor the other, but only one incident in the long, stubborn process of the Hispanization of Italy and the church. For centuries no emperor had had so much power in Italy as had Charles. With Naples and {381} Milan were now linked Siena and Genoa under his rule; the states of the church were virtually at his disposal, and even Florence, under its hereditary duke, Alexander de' Medici, was for a while under the control of the pope and through him, of Charles.
Nor did the fall of the holy city put the fear of God into the hearts of the prelates for more than a moment. The Medici, Clement, who never sold his soul but only pawned it from time to time, without entirely abandoning the idea of reform, indefinitely postponed it. Procrastinating, timid, false, he was not the man to deal with serious abuses. He toyed with the idea of a council but when, on the mere rumor that a council was to be called the prices of all salable offices dropped in a panic, he hesitated. Moreover he feared the council would be used by the emperor to subordinate him even in spiritual matters. Perhaps he meant well, but abuses were too lucrative to be lightly affronted. As to Lutheranism, Clement was completely misinformed and almost completely indifferent. While he and the emperor were at odds it grew mightily. Here as elsewhere he was irresolute; his pontificate, as a contemporary wrote, was "one of scruples, considerations and discords, of buts and ifs and thens and moreovers, and plenty of words without effect."
[Sidenote: Paul III, 1534-49]
The pontificate of Paul III marks the turning point in the Catholic reaction. Under him the council of Trent was at last opened; the new orders, especially the Jesuits, were formed, and such instrumentalities as the Inquisition and Index of prohibited books put on a new footing. Paul III, a Farnese from the States of the Church, owed his election partly to his strength of character, partly to the weakness of his health, for the cardinals liked frequent vacancies in the Holy See. Cautious and choleric, prolix and stubborn, he had a real desire for reform and an earnest wish to avoid {382} quarrels with either of the great powers that menaced him, the emperor and France. The reforming spirit of the pope showed itself in the appointment of several men of the highest character to the cardinalate, among them Gaspar Contarini and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. In other cases, however, the exigencies of politics induced the nomination of bad men, such as Del Monte and David Beaton. At the same time a commission was named to recommend practical reforms. The draft for a bull they presented for this purpose was rejected by the Consistory, but some of their recommendations, such as the prohibition of the Roman clergy to visit taverns, theaters and gambling dens, were adopted.
[Sidenote: May, 1535Consilium delectorum cardinalium et aliorum praelatorum]
A second commission of nine ecclesiastics of high character, including John Peter Caraffa, Contarini, Pole and Giberti, was created to make a comprehensive report on reform. The important memorial they drew up fully exposed the prevalent abuses. The root of all they found in the exaggeration of the papal power of collation and the laxity with which it was used. Not only were morally unworthy men often made bishops and prelates, but dispensations for renunciation of benefices, for absenteeism and for other hurtful practices were freely sold. The commission demanded drastic reform of these abuses as well as of the monastic orders, and called for the abolition of the venal exercise of spiritual authority by legates and nuncios. But the reform memorial, excellent and searching as it was, led to nothing. At most it was of some use as a basis of reforms made by the Council of Trent later. But for the moment it only rendered the position of the church more difficult. The reform of the Dataria, for example, the office which sold graces, privileges, indults, dispensations and benefices, was {383} considered impossible because half of the papal revenue, or 110,000 ducats annually, came from it. Nor could the fees of the Penitentiary be abolished for fear of bankruptcy, though in 1540 they were partially reduced. [Sidenote: 1538] The most obvious results of the Consilium was to put another weapon into the hands of the Lutherans. Published by an unauthorized person, it was at once seized upon by the Reformers as proof of the hopeless depravity of the Curia. So dangerous did it prove to simple-minded Catholics that it was presently put on the Index!
Paul's diplomacy tried to play off the Empire against France and to divert the attention of both to a crusade against the Turk. Hoping to advance the cause of the church by means of the war declared by Charles V on the Schmalkaldic League, the pope, in return for a subsidy, exacted a declaration in the treaty, that the reason of the war was religious and the occasion for it the refusal of the Protestants to recognize the Council of Trent's authority. But when Charles was victor he used his advantage only to strengthen his own prerogative, not effectively to suppress heresy. Paul now dreaded the emperor more than he did the Protestants and his position was not made easier by the threat of Charles to come to terms with the Lutherans did Paul succeed in rousing France against him. In fact, with all his squirming, Paul III only sank deeper into the Spanish vassalage, while the championship of the church passed from his control into that of new agencies that he had created.
[Sidenote: Julius III, 1550-55]
It was perhaps an effort to free the Holy See from the Spanish yoke that led the cardinals to raise to the purple, as Julius III, Cardinal John Mary Ciocchi del Monte who as one of the presidents of the oecumenical council had distinguished himself by his opposition to {384} the emperor. Nevertheless his pontificate marked a relaxation of the church's effort, for policy or strength to pursue reform he had none.
[Sidenote: Marcellus II, April 9-May 1, 1555]
Marcellus II, who was pope for twenty-two days, would hardly be remembered save for the noble Mass of Pope Marcellus dedicated to him by Palestrina.
With the elevation of Cardinal Caraffa to the tiara Peter's keys [Sidenote: Paul IV, 1555-9] were once more restored to strong hands and a reforming heart. The founder of the Theatines was a hot-blooded Neapolitan still, in spite of his seventy-nine years, hale and hearty. Among the reforms he accomplished were some regulations relating to the residence of bishops and some rules for the bridling of Jews, usurers, prostitutes, players and mountebanks. But he was unable to reform himself. He advanced his young kinsmen shamelessly to political office. His jealousy of the Jesuits, in whom he saw a rival to his own order, not only caused him to neglect to use them but made him put them in a very critical position. Nor did he dare to summon again the council that had been prorogued, for fear that some stronger power should use it against himself. He chafed under the Spanish yoke, coming nearer to a conflict with Charles V and his son Philip II than any pope had ventured to do. He even thought of threatening Philip with the Inquisition, but was restrained by prudence. In his purpose of freeing Italy from foreign domination he accomplished nothing whatever.
[Sidenote: Pius IV, 1560-5]
Pius IV was a contrast to the predecessor whom he hated. John Angelo Medici, of Milan, not connected with the Florentine family, was a cheerful, well-wishing, beneficent man, genial and fond of life, a son of the Renaissance, a patron of art and letters. The choice of a name often expresses the ideals and tendencies of a pope; that of Pius was chosen perhaps in imitation {385} of Pius II, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the most famous humanist to sit on the fisherman's throne. And yet the spirit of the times no longer allowed the gross licentiousness of the earlier age, and the cause of reform progressed not a little under the diplomatic guidance of the Milanese. In the first place, doubtless from personal motives, he made a fearful example of the kinsmen of his predecessor, four of whom he executed chiefly for the reason that they had been advanced by papal influence. This salutary example practically put an end to nepotism; at least the unfortunate nephews of Paul IV were the last to aspire to independent principalities solely on the strength of kinship to a pope.
[Sidenote: Reforms]
The demand for the continuation and completion of the general council, which had become loud, was acceded to by Pius who thought, like the American boss, that at times it was necessary to "pander to the public conscience." The happy issue of the council, from his point of view, in its complete submissiveness to the papal prerogative, led Pius to emphasize the spiritual rather than the political claims of the hierarchy. In this the church made a great gain, for, as the history of the time shows plainly, in the game of politics the papacy could no longer hold its own against the national states surrounding it. Pius leaned heavily on Philip, for by this time Spain had become the acknowledged champion of the church, but he was able to do so without loss of prestige because of the gradual separation of the temporal from the spiritual power.
Among his measures the most noteworthy was one regulating the powers of the college of cardinals, while their exclusive right to elect the pontiff was maintained against the pretensions of the council. The best Catholic spirit of the time was represented in {386} Cardinal Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, an excellent prelate who sought to win back members of Christ to the fold by his good example, while he did not disdain to use the harsher methods of persecution when necessary. Among the amiable weaknesses of Pius was the belief, inherited from a bygone age, that the Protestants might still be reunited to the church by a few concessions, such as those of the marriage of the clergy and the use of the cup by the laity.
[Sidenote: Pius V, 1566-72]
With Pius V a sterner spirit entered into the councils of the church. The election of the Dominican and Chief Inquisitor Michael Ghislieri was a triumph for the policy of Borromeo. His pitiless hatred of the heretics hounded Catharine de' Medici against the Huguenots, and Philip II against the Dutch. Contrary to the dictates of prudence and the wishes of the greatest Catholic princes, he issued the bull deposing Elizabeth. But he was severe to himself, an ascetic nicknamed for his monkish narrowness "Friar Wooden-shoe" by the Roman populace. He ruthlessly reformed the Italian clergy, meting out terrible punishments to all sinners. Under his leadership Catholicism took the offensive in earnest and accomplished much. His zeal won him the name of saint, for he was the last of the Roman pontiffs to be canonized.
But the reign of sainthood coupled with absolutism is apt to grow irksome, and it was with relief that the Romans hailed the election of Hugo Buoncompagno as Gregory XIII. [Sidenote: Gregory XIII, 1572-85] He did little but follow out, somewhat weakly, the paths indicated by his predecessors. So heavily did he lean on Spain that he was called the chaplain of Philip, but, as the obligations were mutual, and the Catholic king came also to depend more and more upon the spiritual arms wielded by the papacy, it might just as well have been said that Philip was the executioner employed by Gregory. The {387} mediocrity of his rule did not prevent notable achievement by the Jesuits in the cause of the church. His reform of the calendar will be described more fully elsewhere.
Gregory XIII offers an opportunity to measure the moral standard of the papacy after half a century of reform. His policy was guided largely by his ruling passion, love of a natural son, born before he had taken priest's orders, whom he made Gonfaloniere of the church and would have advanced to still further preferment had not his advisers objected. Gregory was the pope who thanked God "for the grace vouchsafed unto Christendom" in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was also the pope who praised and encouraged the plan for the assassination of Elizabeth.[1]
[Sidenote: Sixtus V, 1585-90]
In the person of Sixtus V the spirit of Pius V returned to power. Felix Peretti was a Franciscan and an Inquisitor, an earnest man and a hard one. Like his predecessors pursuing the goal of absolutism, he had an advantage over them in the blessing disguised as the disaster of the Spanish Armada. From this time forward the papacy was forced to champion its cause with the spiritual weapons at its command, and the gain to it as a moral and religious power was enormous. In some ways it assumed the primacy of Catholic Europe, previously usurped by Spain, and attained an influence that it had not had since the Great Schism of the fourteenth century.
The reforms of Sixtus are important rather for their comprehensive than for their drastic quality. The whole machinery of the Curia was made over, the routine of business being delegated to a number of standing committees known as Congregations, such as the Congregation of Ceremonies to watch over matters of precedence at the papal court, and the Congregation {388} of the Consistory to prepare the work of the Consistory. The number of cardinals was fixed at seventy. New editions of the breviary and of the Index were carefully prepared. At the same time the moral reforms of Trent were laxly carried out, for while decrees enforcing them were promulgated by Sixtus with one hand, with the other he sold dispensations and privileges.
[1]Ante, p. 338.
While the popes were enjoying theirjus incorrigibilitatis—as Luther wittily expressed it—the church was going to rack and ruin. Had the safety of Peter's boat been left to its captains, it would apparently have foundered in the waves of schism and heresy. No such dangerous enemy has ever attacked the church as that then issuing from her own bosom. Neither the medieval heretics nor the modern philosophers have won from her in so short a time such masses of adherents. Where Voltaire slew his thousands Luther slew his ten thousands, for Voltaire appealed only to the intellect, Luther appealed to the conscience.
[Sidenote: Decline of Protestantism]
The extraordinary thing about the Protestant conquests was their sudden end. Within less than fifty years the Scandinavian North, most of Germany including Austria, parts of Hungary, Poland, most of Switzerland, and Great Britain had declared for the "gospel." France was divided and apparently going the same road; even in Italy there were serious symptoms of disaffection. That within a single generation the tide should be not only stopped but rolled back is one of the most dramatic changes of fortune in history. The only country which Protestantism gained after 1560 was the Dutch Republic. Large parts of Germany and Poland were won back to the church, and Catholicism made safe in all the Latin countries.
{389} [Sidenote: Spanish revival]
The spirit that accomplished this work was the spirit of Spain. More extraordinary than the rapid growth of her empire was the conquest of Europe by her ideals. The character of the Counter-reformation was determined by her genius. It was not, as it started to be in Italy, a more or less inwardly Christianized Renaissance. It was a distinct and powerful religious revival, and one that showed itself, as many others have done, by a mighty reaction. Medievalism was restored, largely by medieval methods, the general council, the emphasis on tradition and dogma, coercion of mind and body, and the ministrations of a monastic order, new only in its discipline and effectiveness, a reduplication of the old mendicant orders in spirit and ideal.
[Sidenote: Preparation for calling a council]
The Oecumenical Council was so double-edged a weapon that it is not remarkable that the popes hesitated to grasp it in their war with the heretic. They had uncomfortable memories of Constance and Basle, of the election and deposition of popes and of decrees limiting their prerogatives. And, moreover, the council was the first authority invoked by the heretic himself. Adrian might have been willing to risk such a synod, but before he had time to call one, his place was taken by the vacillating and pusillanimous Clement. Perpetually toying with the idea he yet allowed the pressure of his courtiers and the difficulties of the political situation—for France was opposed to the council as an imperial scheme—indefinitely to postpone the summons.
The more serious-minded Paul III found another lion in his path. He for the first time really labored to summon the general synod, but he found that the Protestants had now changed their position and would no longer consent to recognize its authority under any conditions to which he could possibly assent. Though {390} his nuncio Vergerio received in Germany and even in Wittenberg a cordial welcome, it was soon discovered that the ideas of the proper constitution of the council entertained by the two parties were irreconciliable. Fundamentally each wanted a council in which its own predominance should be assured. The Schmalkaldic princes, on the advice of their theologians, asked for a free German synod in which they should have a majority vote, and in this they were supported by Francis I and Henry VIII. Naturally no pope could consent to any such measures; under these discouraging circumstances, the opening of the council was continually postponed, and in place of it the emperor held a series of religious colloquies that only served to make the differences of the two parties more prominent.
[Sidenote: Summons of Council, November 19, 1544]
After several years of negotiation the path was made smooth and the bullLaetare Hierusalemsummoned a general synod to meet at Trent on March 15, 1545, and assigned it three tasks: (1) The pacification of religious disputes by doctrinal decisions; (2) the reform of ecclesiastical abuses; (3) the discussion of a crusade against the infidel. Delay still interfered with the opening of the assembly, which did not take place until December 15, 1545.
[Sidenote: First period, 1545-7]
The council was held at three separate periods with long intervals. The first period was 1545-7, the second 1551-2, the third 1562-3. The city of Trent was chosen in order to yield to the demand for a German town while at the same time selecting that one nearest to Italy, for the pope was determined to keep the action of the synod under control. Two measures were adopted to insure this end, the initiative and presidency of the papal legates and packing the membership. The faculties to be granted the legates were already decided upon in 1544; these lieutenants were to be, according to Father Paul Sarpi, angels of peace to preside, make {391} all necessary regulations, and publish them "according to custom." The phrase that the council should decide on measures, "legatis proponentibus" was simply the constitutional expression of the principal familiar in many governments, that the legislative should act only on the initiative of the executive, thus giving an immense advantage to the latter. The second means of subordinating the council was the decision to vote by heads and not by nations and to allow no proxies. This gave a constant majority to the Italian prelates sent by the pope. So successful were these measures that the French ambassador bitterly jested of the Holy Ghost coming to Trent in the mailbags from Rome.
[Sidenote: Membership]
At the first session there were only thirty-four members entitled to vote: four cardinals, four archbishops, twenty-one bishops and five generals of orders. There were also present other personages, including an ambassador from King Ferdinand, four Spanish secular priests and a number of friars. The first question debated was the precedence of dogma or reform. Regarding the council chiefly as an instrument for condemning the heretics, the pope was in favor of taking up dogma first. The emperor, on the other hand, wishing rather to conciliate the Protestants and if possible to lure them back to the old church, was in favor of starting with reform. The struggle, which was carried on not so much on the floor of the synod as behind the members' backs in the intrigues of courts, was decided by a compromise to the effect that both dogma and reform should be taken up simultaneously. But all enactments dealing with ecclesiastical irregularities were to bear the proviso "under reservation of the papal authority."
[Sidenote: Dogmatic decrees]
The dogmatic decrees at Trent were almost wholly oriented by the polemic against Protestantism. {392} Practically nothing was defined save what had already been taken up in the Augsburg Confession or in the writings of Calvin, of Zwingli and of the Anabaptists. Inevitably, a spirit so purely defensive could not be animated by a primarily philosophical interest. The guiding star was not a system but a policy, and this policy was nothing more nor less than that of re-establishing tradition. The practice of the church was the standard applied; many an unhistorical assertion was made to justify it and many a practice of comparatively recent growth was sanctioned by the postulate that "it had descended from apostolic use." "By show of antiquity they introduce novelty," was Bacon's correct judgment.