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Lindsay,	, Thomas M.	1843-
1914.
A history of the	reformat	ioi

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International Theological Library

A HISTORY

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OF

THE REFORMATION

BT

THOMAS M. LINDSAY, MA., D.D.

PRINCIPAL, THE UNITED FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW

THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY FROM ITS BEGINNING TO THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

iyot>

TO

«

The Rev. GEORGE CLARK HUTTON, D.D.

PREFACE.

This History of the Eeformation has been written with the intention of describing a great religious movement amid its social environment. The times were heroic, and produced great men, with striking individualities not easily weighed in modern balances. The age is sufficiently remote to compel us to remember that while the morality of one century can be judged by another, the men who belong to it must be judged by the standard of their contemporaries, and not altogether by ours. The religious revival was set in a framework of political, intellectual, and economic changes, and cannot be disentangled from its surroundings without danger of mutilation. All these things add to the difficulty of description.

My excuse, if excuse be needed, for venturing on the task is that the period is one to which I have devoted special attention for many years, and that I have read and re-read most of the original contemporary sources of information. While full use has been made of the labours of predecessors in the same field, no chapter in the volume, save that on the political condition of Europe, haa been written without constant reference to contemporary evidence.

A History of the Eeformation, it appears to me, must describe five distinct but related things — the social and religious conditions of the age out of which the great

vii

Vlll PREFACE

movement came; the Lutheran Reformation down to 1555, when it received legal recognition ; the Eeformation in countries beyond Germany which did not submit to the guidance of Luther ; the issue of certain portions of the religious life of the Middle Ages in Anabaptism, Socinian- ism, and Anti-Trinitarianism ; and, finally, the Counter- Reformation.

The second follows the first in natural succession ; but the third was almost contemporary with the second. If the Reformation won its way to legal recognition earlier in Germany than in any other land, its beginnings in France, England, and perhaps the Netherlands, had ap- peared before Luther had published his Theses. I have not found it possible to describe all the five in chronological order.

This volume describes the eve of the Reformation and the movement itself under the guidance of Luther. In a second volume I hope to deal with the Reformation beyond Germany, with Anabaptism, Socinianism, and kindred matters which had their roots far back in the Middle Ages, and with the Counter-Reformation.

The first part of this volume deals with the intellectual, social, and religious life of the age which gave birth to the Reformation. The intellectual life of the times has been frequently described, and its economic conditions are begin- ning to attract attention. But few have cared to investigate popular and family religious life in the decades before the great revival. Yet for the history of the Reformation movement nothing can be more important. When it is studied, it can be seen that the evangelical revival was not a unique phenomenon, entirely unconnected with the immediate past. There was a continuity in the religious life of the period. The same hymns were sung in public and in private after the Reformation which had been in

PREFACE j x

use before Luther raised the standard of revolt. Many of the prayers in the Reformation liturgies came from service-books of the mediaeval Church. Much of family instruction in religious matters received by Eeformers when they were children was in turn taught by them to the succeeding generation. The great Reformation had its roots in the simple evangelical piety which had never entirely disappeared in the mediaeval Church. Luther's teaching was recognised by thousands to be do startling novelty, but something which they had alv. at heart believed, though they might not have been able to formulate it. It is true that Luther and his fellow- Reformers taught their generation that Our Lord, Jesus Christ, filled the whole sphere of God, and that other mediators and intercessors were superfluous, and thai they also delivered it from the fear of a priestly caste ; but men did not receive that teaching as entirely new ; they rather accepted it as something they had always felt, though they had not been able to give their feelings due and complete expression. It is true that this simple piety had been set in a framework of superstition, and that the Church had been generally looked upon as an institution within which priests exercised a secret science of redemption through their power over the sacraments ; but the old evangelical piety existed, and its traces can be found when sought for.

A portion of the chapter which describes the family and popular religious life immediately preceding the Re- formation has already appeared in the London Quark rhj Review for October 1903.

In describing the beginnings of the Lutheran Reforma- tion, I have had to go over the same ground covered by my chapter on " Luther" contributed to the second volume of the Cambridge Modern History, and have found it impossible

X PREFACE

not to repeat myself. This is specially the case with the account given of the theory and practice of Indulgences. It ought to be said, however, that in view of certain strictures on the earlier work by Kornan Catholic reviewers, I have gone over again the statements made about Indul- gences by the great mediseval theologians of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and have not been able to change the opinions previously expressed.

My thanks are due to my colleague, Dr. Denney, and to another friend for the care they have taken in revising the proof-sheets, and for many valuable suggestions which have been given effect to.

THOMAS M. LINDSAY.

March, 1900.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.

ON THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

CHAPTER I. The Papacy.

1. The Papacy — Its claim to universal Supremacy , . The religious background of the claim

Its sanction from the needs of the practical religious life

2. The Temporal Supremacy

3. The Spiritual Supremacy

Its interference with the secular authority .

The financial exactions of the unreformed Papacy .

PAGR

1 2 3 5 7 8 11

CHAPTER II. The Political Situation.

1. The small extent of Christendom 18

2. Consolidation, the ruling political principle of the Period . 19

3. England and its consolidation under the Tudors . . 20

4. France and the establishment of central authority . . 22

5. Spain became wholly Christian 26

6. Germany and Italy — not compact nationalities ... 30

7. The five great powers of Italy 32

8. Germany or the Empire — a multiplicity of separate princi-

palities 35

Attempts at a constitutional unity 38

The election of Charles v. as Emperor .... 40

CHAPTER III. The Renaissance.

1. The transition from the Mediaeval to the Modern World . 42

2. The Revival of Literature and Art 4C

Xll

CONTENTS

§ 3. Its earlier relation to Christianity

§ 4. The Brethren of the Common Lot

§ 5. German Universities, Schools and Scholarship

§ 6. The earlier German Humanists .

§ 7. The Humanist Circles in the Cities .

§ 8. Humanism in the Universities .

§ 9. Reuchlin

§ 10. The Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum .

§11. Ulrich von Hutten

PAGH

48 51 53 57 60 63 67 72 75

CHAPTER IV. Social Conditions.

1. Towns, Trade, and Artisan Life 79

2. Geographical Discoveries and the beginnings of a World

Trade 84

3. Increase in Wealth and luxurious Living .... 86

4. The condition of the Peasantry 89

5. Earlier Social Revolts 95

6. The Religious Socialism of Hans Bohm .... 99

7. The Bundschuh Revolts 103

8. The causes of the continuous Revolts 106

Germany full of social discontent and class hatreds . .112

CHAPTER V.

Family and Popular Religious Life in the Decades before the reformation.

§ 1. The Devotion of Germany to the Roman Church . .114

§ 2. Preaching 117

§ 3. Church Festivals— Miracle Plays— The Feast of the Ass . 119 § 4. The Family Religious Life — its continuity throughout the

period of the Reformation .121

§ 5. A superstitious Religion based on fear .... 127

Pilgrimages, Pilgrim Guide-books 127

Confraternities of the Blessed Virgin and St. Anna . .135

Reformation of the Mendicant Orders 137

§ 6. Non-Ecclesiastical Religion 139

Ecclesiastical Reforms carried out by the secular authorities 140 Mediaeval Charity — Beggars, ecclesiastical and other — Lay- management of Charity 141

The Kalands and other religious confraternities . . . 144

Translations of the Scriptures into German . . . 147 § 7. The Brethren — Mediaeval Nonconformists — The Praying

Circles of the Mvstics — The Unitas Fratrum . . 152

CONTENTS

XU1

CHAPTER VI.

Humanism and the Reformation.

1. Savonarola and the Christian Humanists of Italy

2. John Colet and the Christian Humanists of England Dislike to the Scholastic Theology Colet and the Hierarchies of Dionysius

3. Erasmus — The " Christian Philosophy " His visit to England and how it marked him His writings which were meant to serve the Refo The defects of the Humanist Reformation ,

	PAGE
	158
and .	163
.	166
.	169
.	172
	177
mnation	179
• •	, 186

BOOK II.

THE KEFOKMATION.

CHAPTER I.

Luther to the Beginning of the Controversy about Indulgences.

1. Why Luther was successful as the Leader in a Reformation 189 /

2. Luther's Youth and Education . . . . . 193 At the University of Erfurt 196

3. Luther in the Erfurt Convent 199

4. Luther's Early Life at Wittenberg 205

5. Luther's Early Lectures on Theology 208

6. The Indulgence- seller and his reception in a German city . 213

CHAPTER II.

From the Beginning of the Indulgence Controversy to the Diet of Worms.

§ 1. The theory and practice of Indulgences in the sixteenth

century 217

The Penitentiaries and the early Satisfactions . . .218 A thesaurus meritorum, the Sacrament of Penance, and the

doctrine of Attrition 219

Attrition, Confession, and Indulgence the mediaeval scheme of

salvation for the indifferent Christian .... 223

Did Indulgences remit guilt 1 225

Luther looked at Indulgences from their 'practical effect . 226

XIV CONTENTS

PAGE

§ 2. Luther's Theses against Indulgences 228

Luther summoned to Rome 232"^

The mission of Charles von Milt itz 234

§ 3. The Leipzig Disputation 236

§ 4. The three Treatises — The Liberty of a Christian Man, To the Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Cap- tivity of the Church of Christ 239

§ 5. The Bull Exurge Domine 247

Luther burns the Papal Bull 250

§ 6. Luther, the representative of Germany .... 252

Luther and the Humanists 255

The Elector Frederick of Saxony 258

CHAPTER III.

The Diet of Worms.

§ 1. The Roman Nuncio Aleander 261

§ 2. The Emperor Charles v 264

§ 3. In the City of Worms 267

Was Luther to be summoned to Worms or was he not ? . 270

Luther's journey to Worms 273

§ 4. Luther in Worms 275

§ 5. The first appearance before the Diet 278

§ 6. The second appearance before the Diet .... 284

§ 7. The Conferences 293

J Luther's disappearance and the consternation produced . 295

\§ 8. The Ban and what was thought of it 297

' § 9. Popular Literature — revolutionary literature — literature

^ directly connected with the Lutheran movement . 300

§ 10. The spread of Luther's teaching 305

§ 11. Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt 311

The Wittenberg Ordinance 314

§ 12. Luther back in Wittenberg 316

CHAPTER IV. From the Diet of Worms to the Close of the

Peasants' War.

'§ 1. The continued spread of Lutheran teaching .

The Nuncio Campeggio and his intrigues in Germany § 2. The beginnings of division in Germany § 3. The Peasants' War . . . . . § 4. Revolutionary Manifestoes — The Twelve Articles

§ 5. Luther and the Peasants' War

§ 6. Germany divided into two separate camps .

319 322 324 326 331 335 338

CONTENTS XV

CHAPTER V.

From the Diet of Speyer, 1526, to the Religious Peace of Augsburg, 1555.

PA OK

§ 1. The Diet of Speyer, 1526 340

Otto von Pack's forgery 344

§ 2. The Protest at Speyer .../.... 346

§ 3. Luther and Zwingli 347

§ 4. The Marburg Colloquy 352

The Controversy about the Sacrament of the Supper . . 353

§ 5. The Emperor in Germany 351)

§ 6. The Diet of Augsburg, 1530 363

§ 7. The Augsburg Confession 364

§ 8. The Reformation to be crushed 368

Luther at Coburg 369

§ 9. The Schmalkald League 373

Two conflicting ideas of reformation — Charles v. and

Luther 375

Ducal Saxony and Electoral Brandenburg become Protestant 377

§ 10. The Bigamy of Philip of Hesse 380

A General Council to be held at Trent .... 383

§ 11. Maurice of Saxony 384

§ 12. Luther's death 384

Extent of reformed Germany 386 '

§ 13. The Religious War 389

§ 14. The Augsburg Interim 390

Charles V. defeated — The Protestant Conference at Passau 393

§ 15. The Religious Peace of Augsburg . ... . . 395

CHAPTER VI.

The Organisation of the Lutheran Churches.

Principles of organisation 400

The Visitations 405

Consistorial Courts — Superintendents — Synods . . . 412

Democratic constitution for the Church of Hesse . . 415

CHAPTER VII.

The Lutheran Reformation outside Germany-.

Scandinavian lands 417

The Reformation in Denmark and Norway . . . 419 The Reformation in Sweden 421

XVI CONTENTS

CHAPTER VIII. The Religious Principles inspiring the Reformation.

PAQB

§ 1. The Reformation did not take its rise from a criticism of

doctrines 426

§ 2. The universal Priesthood of Believers 435

§ 3. Justification by Faith 444

§ 4. Holy Scripture 453

§ 5. The Person of Christ 468

§ 6. The Church 480

Chronological Summary 489

Index 515

BOOK I. ON THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

CHAPTEE L

THE PAPACY.1

§ 1. Claim to Universal Supremacy.

The long struggle between the Mediaeval Church and the Mediaeval Empire, between the priest and the warrior,2 ended, in the earlier half of the thirteenth century, in the overthrow of the Hohenstaufens, and left the Papacy sole inheritor of the claim of ancient Eome to be sovereign of the civilised world.

Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi.

1 Sources : Apparatus super quinque libris decretalium (Strassburg, 1488) ; Burchard, Diarium (ed. by Thuasne, Paris, 1883-1885), in 3 vols. ; Brand, Narrenschiff (ed. by Simrock, Berlin, 1872) ; Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum, qitce de rebus fidei et morum a conciliis cecumenicis et summis pontificibus, emanarunt (Wiirzburg, 1900), 9th ed. ; Erler, Der Liber Cancellarice Apostolicce vom Jahre 1J(80 (Leipzig, 1888) ; Faber, Tractatus de Ruine Ecclesie Planctu (Memmingen) ; Murner, Schelmenzunft and Narrenbeschwbrung (Nos. 85, 119-124 of Neudrucke deutschen Litteraturwerke) ; Mirbt, Qucllen zur Geschichte des Papsttums (Freiburg i. B. 1895) ; Tangl, Die papstlichen Kanzleiordnungen von 1200-1500 (Innsbruck, 1894) ; and Das Taxwesen der papstlichen Kirche {Mitt, des Instituts filr osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, xiii. 1892).

Later Books: "Janus," The Pope and the Council (London, 1869); Harnack, History of Dogma (London, 1899), vols. vi. vii. ; Thudichen, Papsttum und Reformation (Leipzig, 1903); Haller, Papsttum und Kirchen- Reform (1903) ; Lea, Cambridge Modern History (Cambridge, 1902), vol. i. xix.

2 " In hac (sc. ecclesia) ejusque potestate duos esse gladios, spiritualem videlicet et temporalem, evangelicis dictis instruimur. . . . Ille sacerdotis, is manu regum et militum, sed ad nutum et patienciam sacerdotis" ; Boni- face viii. in the Bull, Unam Sanctam.

T*

2 THE PAPACY

Strong and masterful Popes had for centuries insisted on .exercising powers which, they asserted, belonged to them as the successors of St. Peter and the representatives of Christ upon earth. Ecclesiastical jurists had translated their assertions into legal language, and had expressed them in principles borrowed from the old imperial law. Precedents, needed by the legal. mind to unite the past with the present, had been found in a series of imaginary papal judgments extending over past centuries. The forged decretals of the pseudo-Isidor (used by Pope Nicholas I. in his letter of 866 a.d. to the bishops of Gaul), of the group of canonists who supported the pretensions of Pope Gregory vn. (1073-1085), — Anselm of Lucca, Deusdedit, Cardinal Bonzio, and Gregory of Pa via, — gave to the papal claims the semblance of the sanction of antiquity. The Decretum of Gratian, issued in 1150 from Bologna, then the most famous Law School in Europe, incorporated all these earlier forgeries and added new ones. It displaced the older collections of Canon Law and became the starting-point for succeeding canonists. Its mosaic of facts and false- hoods formed the basis for the theories of the imperial powers and of the universal jurisdiction of the Bishops of Eome.1

The picturesque religious background of this conception of the Church of Christ as a great temporal empire had been furnished by St. Augustine, although probably he would have been the first to protest against the use made of his vision of the City of God. His unfinished master- piece, De Civitate Dei, in which with a devout and glowing imagination he had contrasted the Civitas Terrena, or the secular State founded on conquest and maintained by fraud and violence, with the Kingdom of God, which he identified with the visible ecclesiastical society, had filled the imagination of all Christians in the days immediately preceding the dissolution of the Eoman Empire of the West, and had contributed in a remarkable degree to the

1 A succinct account of these forgeries will be found in "Janus,* The Pope and the Council (London, 1869), p. 94.

UNIVERSAL SUPREMACY 3

final overthrow of the last remains of a cultured paganism. It became the sketch outline which the jurists of the Eoman Curia gradually filled in with details by their strictly defined and legally expressed claim of the Eoman Pontiff to a universal jurisdiction. Its living but poetically indefinite ideas were transformed into clearly defined legal principles found ready-made in the all-embracing juris- prudence of the ancient empire, and were analysed and exhibited in definite claims to rule and to judge in every department of human activity. When poetic thoughts, which from their very nature stretch forward towards and melt in the infinite, are imprisoned within legal formulas and are changed into principles of practical jurisprudence, they lose all their distinctive character, and the creation which embodies them becomes very different from what it was meant to be. The mischievous activity of the Eoman canonists actually transformed the Civitas Dei of the glorious vision of St. Augustine into that Civitas Terrena which he reprobated, and the ideal Kingdom of God became a vulgar earthly monarchy, with all the accompaniments of conquest, fraud, and violence which, according to the great theologian of the West, naturally belonged to such a society. But the glamour of the City of God long remained to dazzle the eyes of gifted and pious men during the earlier Middle Ages, when they contem- plated the visible ecclesiastical empire ruled by the Bishop of Eome.

The requirements of the practical religion of everyday life were also believed to be in the possession of this ecclesiastical monarchy to give and to withhold. For it was the almost universal belief of mediaeval piety that the mediation of a priest was essential to salvation ; and the priesthood was an integral part of this monarchy, and did not exist outside its boundaries. " No good Catholic Christian doubted that in spiritual things the clergy were the divinely appointed superiors of the laity, that this power proceeded from the right of the priests to celebrate the sacraments, that the Pope was the real possessor of

4 THE PAPACY

this power, and was far superior to all secular authority." * In the decades immediately preceding the Reformation, many an educated man might have doubts about this power of the clergy over the spiritual and eternal welfare of men and women ; but when it came to the point, almost no one could venture to say that there was nothing in it. And so long as the feeling remained that there might be something in it, the anxieties, to say the least, which Christian men and women could not help having when they looked forward to an unknown future, made kings and peoples hesitate before they offered defiance to the Pope and the clergy. The spiritual powers which were believed to come from the exclusive possession of priesthood and sacraments went for much in increasing the authority of the papal empire and in binding it together in one com- pact whole.

In the earlier Middle Ages the claims of the Papacy to universal supremacy had been urged and defended by ecclesiastical jurists alone ; but in the thirteenth century theology also began to state them from its own point of view. Thomas Aquinas set himself to prove that sub- mission to the Roman Pontiff was necessary for every human being. He declared that, under the law of the New Testament, the king must be subject to the priest to the extent that, if kings proved to be heretics or schismatics, the Bishop of Rome was entitled to deprive them of all kingly authority by releasing subjects from their ordinary obedience.2

The fullest expression of this temporal and spiritual supremacy claimed by the Bishops of Rome is to be found in Pope Innocent iv.'s Commentary on the Decretals3 (1243- 1254), and in the Bull, Unam Sanctam, published by Pope Boniface vm. in 1302. But succeeding Bishops of Rome

1 Harnack, History of Dogma, vi. 132 n. (Eng. trans.).

2 Compare his Opuscula contra errores Grccconim; De regimtne principum. (The first two books were written by Thomas and the other two probably b^ Tolomeo (Ptolomaius) of Lucca.)

8 Apparatus sxqicr quinquc libris Dccretalium (Strassburg, 1488).

TEMPORAL SUPREMACY 5

in no way abated their pretensions to universal sovereignty. The same claims were made during the Exile at Avignon and in the days of the Great Schism. They were asserted by Pope Pius II. in his Bull, Execrabilis et pristinis (1459), and by Pope Leo X. on the very eve of the Eeformation, in his Bull, Pastor JEternus (1516); while Pope Alexander vi. (Eodrigo Borgia), acting as the lord of the universe, made over the New World to Isabella of Castile and to Ferdinand of Aragon by legal deed of gift in his Bull, Inter ccctera divince (May 4th, 1493).1

The power claimed in these documents was a twofold supremacy, temporal and spiritual.

§ 2. The Temporal Supremacy.

The former, stated in its widest extent, was the right to depose kings, free their subjects from their allegiance, and bestow their territories on another. It could only be

1 Full quotations from the Bulls, Unam Sanctam and Inter ccetera divince, are to be found in Mirbt's Quellen zur Geschichte ties Papstlums (Leipzig, 1895), pp. 88, 107. The Bulls, Execrabilis and Pastor jEternus, are in Denzinger, Enchiridion (Wiirzburg, 1900), 9th ed. pp. 172, 174.

The Deed of Gift of the American Continent to Isabella and Ferdinand is in the 6th section of the Bull, Inter ccetera divince. It is as follows : — "Motu proprio . . . de nostra mera liberalitate et ex certa scientia ac de apostolicae potestatis plenitudine omnes insulas et terras firmas inventas et inveniendas, detectas et detegendas versus Occidentem et Meridiem fabricando et construemlo unam lineam a Polo Artico scilicet Septentrione ad Polum Antarticum scilicet Meridiem, sive terra} firmae et insula? inventae et inveniendae sint versus Indiam aut versus aliam quamcumque partem, quse linea distet a qualibet insularum, quae vulgariter nuncupantur de los Azores y cabo vierde, centum leucis versus Occidentem et Meridiem ; ita quod omnes insulse et terrae firmae, repertae et reperiendae, detectae et detegendae, a praefata linea versus Occidentem et Meridiem per alium Regem aut Priucipem Christianum non fuerint actualiter possessae usque ad diem nativitatis Domini Nostii Jesu Christi proxiini praeteritum . . . auctoritate omnipotentis Dei nobis in Beato Petro concessa, ac vicarius Jesu Christi, qua fungi mur in terris, cum omnibus illarum dominiis, civitatibus, castris, locis et villis, juribusque et jurisdictionibus ac pertinentiis univeris, vobis haeredibusque et successoribus vestris in perpetuum tenore praesf ntium donamus. . . . Vosque et haeredcs ac successores praefatos illarum dominos cum plena, libera et omnimoda potestate, auctoritate etjurisdictione facimus, constituinms et deputamus."

b THE PAPACY

enforced when the Pope found a stronger potentate willing to carry out his orders, and was naturally but rarely exercised. Two instances, however, occurred not long before the Eeforrnation. George Podiebrod, the King of Bohemia, offended the Bishop of Rome by insisting that the Roman See should keep the bargain made with his Hussite subjects at the Council of Basel. He was summoned to Rome to be tried as a heretic by Pope Pius II. in 1464, and by Pope Paul II. in 1465, and was declared by the latter to be deposed ; his subjects were released from their allegiance, and his kingdom was offered to Matthias Cor- vinus, the King of Hungary, who gladly accepted the offer, and a protracted and bloody war was the consequence. Later still, in 1511, Pope Julius II. excommunicated the King of Navarre, and empowered any neighbouring king to seize his dominions — an offer readily accepted by Ferdinand of Aragon.1

It was generally, however, in more indirect ways that this claim to temporal supremacy, i.e. to direct the policy, and to be the final arbiter in the actions of temporal sovereigns, made itself felt. A great potentate, placed over the loosely formed kingdoms of the Middle Ages, hesitated to provoke a contest with an authority which was able to give religious sanction to the rebellion of powerful feudal nobles seeking a legitimate pretext for defying him, or which could deprive his subjects of the external consolations of religion by laying the whole or part of his dominions under an interdict. We are not to suppose that the exercise, of this claim of temporal supre- macy was always an evil thing. Time after time the actions and interference of right-minded Popes proved that the temporal supremacy of the Bishop of Rome meant that moral considerations must have due weight attached to them in the international affairs of Europe ; and this fact,

1 The excommunication, with its consequences, was used to threaten Queen Elizabeth by the Ambassador of Philip ir. in 1559 {Calendar of Letters and State Papers relating to English affairs preserved principally in the Archives of Simancas, i. 62, London, 1892).

SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY 7

recognised and felt, accounted largely for much of the practical acquiescence in the papal claims. But from the time when the Papacy became, on its temporal side, an Italian power, and when its international policy had for its chief motive to increase the political prestige of the Bishop of Eome within the Italian peninsula, the moral standard of the papal court was hopelessly lowered, and it no longer had even the semblance of representing morality in the international affairs of Europe. The change may be roughly dated from the pontificate of Pope Sixtus iv. (1471-1484), or from the birth of Luther (November 10th, 1483). The possession of the Papacy gave this advantage to Sixtus over his contemporaries in Italy, that he " was relieved of all ordinary considerations of decency, con- sistency, or prudence, because his position as Pope saved him from serious disaster." The divine authority, assumed by the Popes as the representatives of Christ upon earth, meant for Sixtus and his immediate successors that they were above the requirements of common morality, and had the right for themselves or for their allies to break the most solemn treaties when it suited their shifting policy.

§ 3. The Spiritual Supremacy.

The ecclesiastical supremacy was gradually interpreted to mean that the Bishop of Eome was the one or universal bishop in whom all spiritual and ecclesiastical powers were summed up, and that all other members of the hierarchy were simply delegates selected by him for the purposes of administration. On this interpretation, the Bishop of Rome was the absolute monarch over a kingdom which was called spiritual, but which was as thoroughly material as were those of France, Spain, or England. For, according to mediaeval ideas, men were spiritual if they had taken orders, or were under monastic vows ; fields, drains, and fences were spiritual things if they were Church pro- perty ; a house, a barn, or a byre was a spiritual thing, if it stood on land belonging to the Church. This papal

8 THE PAPACY

kingdom, miscalled spiritual, lay scattered over Europe in diocesan lands, convent estates, and parish glebes — inter- woven in the web of the ordinary kingdoms and princi- palities of Europe. It was part of the Pope's claim to spiritual supremacy that his subjects (the clergy) owed no allegiance to the monarch within whose territories they resided ; that they lived outside the sphere of civil legis- lation and taxation ; and that they were under special laws imposed on them by their supreme spiritual ruler, and paid taxes to him and to him alone. The claim to spiritual supremacy therefore involved endless interference with the rights of temporal sovereignty in every country in Europe, and things civil and things sacred were so inextricably mixed that it is quite impossible to speak of the Keforma- tion as a purely religious movement. It was also an endeavour to put an end to the exemption of the Church and its possessions from all secular control, and to her con- stant encroachment on secular territory.

To show how this claim for spiritual supremacy tres- passed continually on the domain of secular authority and created a spirit of unrest all over Europe, we have only to look at its exercise in the matter of patronage to bene- fices, to the way in which the common law of the Church interfered with the special civil laws of European States, and to the increasing burden of papal requisitions of money.

In the case of bishops, the theory was that the dean and chapter elected, and that the bishop-elect had to be confirmed by the Pope. This procedure provided for the selection locally of a suitable spiritual ruler, and also for the supremacy of the head of the Church. The mediaeval bishops, however, were temporal lords of great influence in the civil affairs of the kingdom or principality within which their dioceses were placed, and it was naturally an object of interest to kings and princes to secure men who would be faithful to themselves. Hence the tendency was for the civil authorities to interfere more or less in episcopal appointments. This frequently resulted in making these elections a matter of conflict between the head of

RESERVATIONS 9

the Church in Eome and the head of the State in Fnnce, England, or Germany ; in which case the rights of the dean and chapter were commonly of small account. The contest was in the nature of things almost inevitable even when the civil and the ecclesiastical powers were actuated by the best motives, and when both sought to appoint men competent to discharge the duties of the position with ability. But the best motives were not always active. Diocesan rents were large, and the incomes of bishops made excellent provision for the favourite followers of kings and of Popes, and if the revenues of one see failed to express royal or papal favour adequately, the favourite could be appointed to several sees at once. Papal nepotism became a byword ; but it ought to be remembered that kingly nepotism also existed. Pope Sixtus V. insisted on appoint- ing a retainer of his nephew, Cardinal Giuliano della Eovere, to the see of Modrus in Hungary, and after a contest of three years carried his point in 1483 ; and Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, gave the archbishopric of Gran to Ippolito d'Este, a youth under age, and after a two years' struggle compelled the Pope to confirm the appoint- ment in 1487.

During the fourteenth century the Papacy endeavoured to obtain a more complete control over ecclesiastical ap- pointments by means of the system of Reservations which figures so largely in local ecclesiastical affairs to the dis- credit of the Papacy during the years before the Eeformation. For at least a century earlier, Popes had been accustomed to declare on various pretexts that certain benefices were vacantes apud Scdem Apostolicam, which meant that the Bishop of Eome reserved the appointment for himself. Pope John xxn. (1316—1334), founding on such previous practice, laid down a series of rules stating what benefices were to be reserved for the papal patronage. The osten- sible reason for this legislation was to prevent the growing evil of pluralities ; but, as in all cases of papal lawmaking, these Constitutiones Johannince had the effect of binding ecclesiastically all patrons but the Popes themselves. For

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the Popes always maintained that they alone were superior to the laws which they made. They were supra legem or legibus absoluti, and their dispensations could always set aside their legislation when it suited their purpose. Under these constitutions of Pope John xxn., when sees were vacant owing to the invalidation of an election they were reserved to the Pope. Thus we find that there was a disputed election to the see of Dunkelcl in 1337, and after some years' litigation at Eome the election was quashed, and Eichard de Pihnor was appointed bishop auctoritate apostolica. The see of Dunkeld was declared to be reserved to the Pope for the appointment of the two succeeding bishops at least.1 This system of Reservations was gradu- ally extended under the successors of Pope John xxn., and was applied to benefices of every kind all over Europe, until it would be difficult to say what piece of ecclesiastical pre- ferment escaped the papal net. There exists in the town library in Trier a MS. of the Rules of the Roman Chancery on which someone has sketched the head of a Pope, with the legend issuing from the mouth, Reservamus omnia, which somewhat roughly represents the contents of the book. In the end, the assertion was made that the Holy See owned all benefices, and, in the universal secularisation of the Church which the half century before the Eeformation witnessed, the very Eules.of the Eoman Chancery contained the lists of prices to be charged for various benefices, whether with or without cure of souls ; and in completing the bargain the purchaser could always procure a clause setting aside the civil rights of patrons.

On the other hand, ecclesiastical preferments always implied the holders being liferented in lands and in monies, and the right to bestow these temporalities was protected by the laws of most European countries. Thus the ever-extending papal reservations of benefices led to continual conflicts between the laws of the Church — in this case latterly the Eules of the Eoman Chancery — and the laws of the European States. Temporal rulers sought to 1 Scottish Historical Review, i. 318-320.

EXACTIONS IN MONEY 11

protect themselves and their subjects by statutes of Prce- munire and others of a like kind,1 or else made bargains with the Popes, which took the form of Concordats, like that of Bourges (1438) and that of Vienna (1448). Neither statutes nor bargains were of much avail against the superior diplomacy of the Papacy, and the dread which its supposed possession of spiritual powers inspired in all classes of people. A Concordat was always represented by papal lawyers to be binding only so long as the good- will of the Pope maintained it ; and there was a deep-seated feeling throughout the peoples of Europe that the Church was, to use the language of the peasants of Germany, " the Pope's House," and that he had a right to deal freely with its property. Pious and patriotic men, like Gascoigne in England, deplored the evil effects of the papal reservations ; but they saw no remedy unless the Almighty changed the heart of the Holy Father ; and, after the failures of the Conciliar attempts at reform, a sullen hopelessness seemed to have taken possession of the minds of men, until Luther taught them that there was nothing in the indefinable power that the Pope and the clergy claimed to possess over the spiritual and eternal welfare of men and women.

To Pope John xxn. (1316-1334) belongs the credit or discredit of creating for the Papacy a machinery for gathering in money for its support. His situation rendered this almost inevitable. On his accession he found himself with an empty treasury ; he had to incur debts in order to live ; he had to provide for a costly war with the Visconti ; and he had to leave money to enable his suc- cessors to carry out his temporal policy. Few Popes lived so plainly ; his money-getting was not for personal luxury, but for the supposed requirements of the papal policy. He was the first Pope who systematically made the dispensa- tion of grace, temporal and eternal, a source of revenue. Hitherto the charges made by the papal Chancery had

1 The two English statutes of Praemunire are printed in Gee and Hardy, Documents illustrative of English Church History (London, 1896), pp. 103, 122.

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been, ostensibly at least, for actual work done — fees for clerking and registration, and so on. John made the fees proportionate to the grace dispensed, or to the power of the recipient to pay. He and his successors made the Tithes, the Annates, Procurations, Fees for the bestowment of the Pallium, the Medii Fructus, Subsidies, and Dispensa- tions, regular sources of revenue.

The Tithe — a tenth of all ecclesiastical incomes for the service of the Papacy — had been levied occasionally for extraordinary purposes, such as crusades. It was still supposed to be levied for special purposes only, but necessary occasions became almost continuous, and the exactions were fiercely resented. When Alexander vi. levied the Tithe in 1500, he was allowed to do so in Eng- land. The French clergy, however, refused to pay ; they were excommunicated ; the University of Paris declared the excommunication unlawful, and the Pope had to withdraw.

The Annates were an ancient charge. From the begin- ning of the twelfth century the incoming incumbent of a benefice had to pay over his first year's income for local uses, such as the repairs on ecclesiastical buildings, or as a solatium to the heirs of the deceased incumbent. From the beginning of the thirteenth century prelates and princes were sometimes permitted by the Popes to exact it of entrants into benefices. One of the earliest recorded instances was when the Archbishop of Canterbury was allowed to use the Annates of his province for a period of seven years from 1245, for the purpose of liquidating the debts on his cathedral church. Pope John xxn. began to appropriate them for the purposes of the Papacy. His predecessor Clement v. (1305-1314) had demanded all the Annates of England and Scotland for a period of three years from 1316. In 1316 John made a much wider demand, and in terms which showed that he was prepared to regard the Annates as a permanent tax for the general purposes of the Papacy. It is difficult to trace the stages of the gradual universal enforcement of this tax ; but in

EXACTIONS IN MONEY 13

the decades before the Eeformation it was commonly imposed, aud averages had been struck as to its amount.1 " They consisted of a portion, usually computed at one-half, of the estimated revenue of all benefices worth more than 25 florins. Thus the archbishopric of Eouen was taxed at 12,000 florins, and the little see of Grenoble at 300 ; the great abbacy of St. Denis at 6000, and the little St. Ciprian Poictiers at 33 ; while all the parish cures in France were uniformly rated at 24 ducats, equivalent to about 30 florins." Archbishoprics were subject to a special tax as the price of the Pallium, and this was often