A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume III Part 20

Although Charles hastened to take advantage of this, the Sicilian Vespers, in 1283, gave him ample occupation at home, and his projects were, perforce, laid aside.[665]

In the territories subjected to Latin domination the conditions were somewhat different. It was impossible to uproot the native Church, and the two rites were necessarily permitted to coexist, with alternations of tolerance and persecution, of persuasion and coercion. In 1303 Benedict XI., when ordering the Dominican prior of Hungary to send missionaries to Albania and other provinces, speaks of the Latin churches and monasteries in a manner to show that the two rites were allowed side by side, and only intrusions of the Greeks were to be resisted. Doc.u.ments which chance to have been preserved concerning the kingdom of Cyprus ill.u.s.trate the perplexities of the situation and the varying policy pursued. In 1216 Innocent III. reduced the bishoprics of the island from fourteen to four--Nicosia, Famagosta, Limisso, and Baffo--and provided in each a Greek and Latin bishop for the respective rites, which was an admission of equality in orthodoxy. Forty years later we find the Greek monasteries subjected to the Latin Archbishop of Nicosia, and there seems to have been some ascendency claimed by the Latin prelates, for in 1250 the Greek archbishop pet.i.tioned Innocent IV.

for permission to reconst.i.tute the fourteen sees and consecrate bishops to fill them; that they should all be independent of the Archbishop of Nicosia, and that all Greeks and Syrians be subjected to them and not to the Latins. This prayer was rejected. Alexander IV. gave an express power of supervision to the Latin prelates, which naturally led to quarrels, and at times the Greeks were treated as heretics by zealous churchmen and by those whose authority was set at nought, as we learn from some appeals to Boniface VIII. in 1295. John XXII. energetically endeavored to extirpate certain heresies and heretical practices of the Greeks, but seems to have allowed the regular observance of their rites.

Yet about the same time Bernard Gui, in his collection of inquisitorial formulas, gives two forms of abjuration of the Greek errors and reconciliation from the excommunication p.r.o.nounced by the canons against the schismatic Greeks, showing that the inquisitors of the West were accustomed to lay hold of any unlucky Greek who might be found in the Mediterranean ports of France. Their fate was doubtless the same in Aragon, for Eymerich does not hesitate to qualify them as heretics. The persecuting spirit grew, for about 1350 the Council of Nicosia, although it allowed the four Greek bishops of Cyprus to remain, still ordered all to be denounced as heretics who did not hold Rome to be the head of all churches and the pope to be the earthly vicar of Christ, and in 1351 a proclamation was issued ordering all Greeks to confess once a year to a Latin priest and to take the sacrament according to the Latin rite. If this was enforced, it must have provided the Inquisition with abundant victims, for in 1407 Gregory XII. defined that any Greek who reverted to schism after partic.i.p.ating in orthodox sacraments was a relapsed, and he ordered the inquisitor Elias Pet.i.t to punish him as such, calling in if necessary the aid of the secular arm.[666]

The Venetians, when masters of Crete, endeavored to starve out the Greek Church by forbidding any bishop of that rite to enter the island, and any inhabitant to go to Constantinople for ordination. Yet, in 1373, Gregory XI. learned with grief that a bishop had succeeded in landing, and that ordination was constantly sought by Cretans in Constantinople.

He appealed to the Doge, Andrea Contareni, to have the wholesome laws enforced, but to little purpose, for in 1375 he announced that nearly all the inhabitants were schismatics, and that nearly all the cures were in the hands of Greek priests, to whom he offered the alternative of immediate conversion or ejection.[667]

Efforts so spasmodic were of course unavailing. So far from suppressing the Greek Church it was found that many Catholics living in a schismatic population became perverts. To this, in 1449, Nicholas V. called the attention of the inquisitor of the Greek province, telling him that although the Oriental rite was praiseworthy, it must be kept distinct from the Latin, and that all such cases must be coerced, even if the a.s.sistance of the secular arm was necessary. There was scant encouragement for the Inquisition in those lands, however, for when, in 1490, Innocent VIII. appointed Fra Vincenzo de' Reboni as Inquisitor of Cyprus, where there were many heretics, and ordered the Bishops of Nicosia, Famagosta, and Baffo each to give him a prebend for his support, there was so energetic a remonstrance from the prelates that Innocent withdrew the demand. From all this it is evident that in its relations with the Greek Church Rome was governed by policy; that it could exercise toleration whenever the occasion demanded, and that the Inquisition was practically quiescent in its dealings with these heretic populations, although their heresy was of a dye so much deeper than that of many sectaries who were ruthlessly exterminated.[668]

During the Middle Ages there were few greater pests of society than the _quaestuarii_, or pardoners--the sellers of indulgences and pardons, who wandered over the face of Europe with relics and commissions, with brazen faces and stout lungs, vending exemptions from penance and purgatory, and prospective admission to paradise; telling all manner of lies, and at once disgracing the Church and impoverishing the credulous.

Sometimes they were the authorized agents of Rome or of a bishop of a diocese; sometimes they farmed out a district for a fixed price or for a portion of the spoils; sometimes they merely bought from the curia or a local prelate the letters which authorized them to ply their trade.

Tetzel, who stirred the indignation of Luther to rebellion, was only a representative of a horde of vagabonds who for centuries had fleeced the populations and had done all in their power to render religion contemptible in the eyes of thinking men. The Dominican Thomas of Cantimpre bitterly compares the trifling sums which purchased salvation from papal emissaries collecting funds for the Italian wars of the Holy See with the endless labors and austerities of his brethren and of the Franciscans--the sleepless vigils and the days spent in ministering to the spiritual needs of fellow-creatures, without obtaining a.s.sured pardon for their sins. The character of these peddlers of salvation is summed up in a tract presented to the Council of Lyons in 1274 by Umberto de' Romani, who had resigned the generalate of the Dominican Order in 1263. He declares that they expose the Church to derision by their lies and filthiness; they bribe the prelates and thus obtain what privileges they want; the frauds of their letters of pardon are almost incredible; they find a fruitful source of gain in false relics, and though they collect large sums from the people, but little inures to the ostensible objects for which the collections are made.[669]

These creatures were not to be reached by the ordinary jurisdiction, for they either bore papal commissions or those of the bishop of the diocese; their trade was too profitable to all parties to be suppressed, and the only way of curbing their worst excesses seemed through the Inquisition. Accordingly the Inquisition had hardly been fully organized when Alexander IV. had recourse to it for this purpose, and included in the powers conferred on inquisitors that of restraining the _quaestuarii_ and of forbidding their preaching. This was repeated by successive popes; it came to be embodied in the canon law, and was customarily included in the enumeration of duties recited in the commissions issued to inquisitors. A t.i.the of the energy shown in hunting down Waldenses and Spirituals would have effectually suppressed the worst features of this shameful traffic, but that energy was wholly lacking. In all the annals of the Inquisition I have met with but a single case, occurring in 1289, when Berenger Pomilli was brought before the inquisitor Guillaume de Saint-Seine. He was a married clerk of Narbonne, who stated that for thirty years he had followed the trade of _qustuarius_ in the dioceses of Narbonne, Carca.s.sonne, and elsewhere, collecting the alms of the pious for the building of churches, bridges, and other objects. He was wont to preach to the people during the celebration of ma.s.s, and confessed to telling the most outrageous lies--that the cross which Christ carried to the place of crucifixion was so heavy that it would be a burden for ten men; that when the Virgin stood at the foot of the cross it bent over so that she kissed the Saviour's hands and feet, after which it arose again, and many fables concerning purgatory and the liberation of souls--the latter, which were the real frauds of his trade, being prudently suppressed in the official report of his confession. A question as to his belief in these stories revealed to him his danger, for to admit it would have been to stamp himself a heretic.

He humbly replied that he knew that he had been habitually uttering lies, but he told them to move the hearts of his hearers to liberality, and he at once begged to be penanced. What penance was awarded him does not appear.[670]

That trials of this sort were rare is evident from the complaint of the Council of Vienne, in 1311, that these vagabonds were in the habit of granting plenary indulgences to those who made donations to the churches which they represented, of dispensing from vows, of absolving for perjury, homicide, and other crimes, of relieving their benefactors from a portion of any penance a.s.signed them, or the souls of their relations from purgatory, and granting immediate admission to paradise. All this was forbidden for the future, but the Inquisition was no longer relied upon to coerce the pardoners to obedience; the bishops were ordered to take the matter in hand and punish the evil-doers. They proved as inefficient as might have been expected. The abuse continued until it became the proximate cause of the Reformation, after which the Council of Trent abolished the profession of pardoner, avowedly because it was the occasion of great scandal among the faithful, and that all efforts to reform it had proved useless.[671]

More important was the nonfeasance of the Inquisition with respect to simony. This was the corroding cancer of the Church throughout the whole of the Middle Ages--the source whence sprang almost all the evils with which she afflicted Christendom. From the highest to the lowest, from the pope to the humblest parish priest, the curse was universal. Those who had only the sacraments to sell made a trade of them. Those whose loftier position gave them command of benefices and preferment, of dispensations and of justice, had no shame in offering their wares in open market, and preferment thus obtained filled the Church with mercenary and rapacious men whose sole object was to swell their purses by extortion and to find enjoyment in ign.o.ble vices. Berthold of Ratisbon, about the middle of the thirteenth century, preaches that simony is the worst of sins, worse than homicide, adultery, perjury, but it now so crazes men that they think through it to serve G.o.d.[672]

Instinctively all eyes turned to the Holy See as the source and fountain of all these evils. A quaint popular satire, current in the thirteenth century, shows how keenly this was felt:

"Here beginneth the Gospel according to the silver Marks. In those days the pope said to the Romans: When the Son of Man shall come to the throne of our majesty, first say to him: Friend, why comest thou? And if he continue to knock, giving you nothing, ye shall cast him into outer darkness. And it came to pa.s.s that a certain poor clerk came to the court of the lord pope and cried out, saying: Have mercy on me, ye gate-keepers of the pope, for the hand of poverty hath touched me. I am poor and hungry, I pray you to help my misery. Then were they wroth and said: Friend, thy poverty perish with thee; get thee behind me Satan, for thou knowest not the odor of money. Verily, verily, I say unto thee that thou shalt not enter into the joy of thy Lord until thou hast given thy last farthing.

"Then the poor man went away and sold his cloak and his coat and all that he had, and gave it to the cardinals and gate-keepers and chamberlains. But they said: What is this among so many? And they cast him beyond the gates, and he wept bitterly and could find nought to comfort him. Then came to the court a rich clerk, fat and broad and heavy, who in his wrath had slain a man. First he gave to the gate-keeper, then to the chamberlain, then to the cardinals; and they thought they were about to receive more. But the lord pope, hearing that the cardinals and servants had many gifts from the clerk, fell sick unto death. Then unto him the rich man sent an electuary of gold and silver, and straightway he was cured. Then the lord pope called unto him the cardinals and servants, and said unto them: Brethren, take heed that no one seduce you with empty words. I set you an example; even as I take, so shall ye take."[673]

Vainly the intrepid energy and inflexible will of Hildebrand in the eleventh century strove to extirpate the ineradicable curse. It only grew wider and deeper as the Church extended its powers and centralized them in the Holy See. Simony was recognized in the canon law as a heresy, punishable as heresy with perpetual seclusion, and as such was justiciable by the Inquisition. With that organization at the command of the Holy See the untiring energy which through so many generations pursued the Cathari and Waldenses could in time have cured this spreading ulcer and purified the Church, but the Inquisition was never instructed to prosecute simoniacs, and there is no trace in its records that it ever volunteered to do so. In fact, had any overzealous official attempted such uncalled-for work he would speedily have been brought to his senses, for simony was not only the direct source of profit to the curia in the sale of preferment, but indirectly so in the sale of dispensations to those who had incurred its disabilities. It seems almost a contradiction in terms to speak of the Holy See issuing dispensations for heresy, and yet this was habitual. Legates and nuncios, when despatched abroad, were empowered to gather a harvest among the faithful by issuing dispensations for all manner of disabilities and irregularities, and among these simony is conspicuously noted. This ceased when John XXII. systematized the sale of absolutions and drew everything to the papal penitentiary, when pardon for simony in a layman could be had for six grossi, in a cleric for seven, and in a monk for eight. It is easy to see why the Inquisition was not used to suppress a heresy so profitable in every aspect. Indeed, while under the canon law it was held to be a heresy, yet it was practically never treated as such. Guillaume Durand, in his _Speculum Juris_, written in 1271, gives formulas for the accusation, by private individuals, of simoniacal bishops and priests and monks, but neither he nor his numerous commentators make the slightest allusion to it as subject to the procedure against heresy.[674]

It would be impossible to exaggerate the corruption which from this cause interpenetrated every fibre of the Church, filling benefices with ignorant and worldly men, eager to wring from the unfortunates committed to their cure the sums with which they had bought the preferment.

Stephen Palecz, in a sermon preached before the Council of Constance, declares that there is scarce a church in Christendom free from the stain of simony, owing to the desperate struggle of all kinds of men to obtain the honors, wealth, and luxury attending an ecclesiastical preferment, and resulting in the promotion of the ignorant, weak, and wicked, who could not find employment as shepherds or swineherds. So unblushing was the venality of the Holy See that dialecticians and jurists of high authority seriously argued that the pope could not commit simony. This is scarce surprising when popes were found who could do a sharp stroke of business, like Boniface IX. In want of money to pay his troopers and defray the cost of his vast buildings, he suddenly deposed nearly all the prelates who chanced to be at the papal court, and many absent ones, or he translated them to t.i.tular sees, and then sold to the highest bidder the places thus vacated. Many unlucky ones, who were unable to buy back their preferment, wandered around the court without bread to eat, and the confusion and discord caused in many provinces was indescribable. Theodore a Niem, to whom we are indebted for this fact, was himself a papal official for thirty-five years, and knew whereof he spoke when he compared the splendid liberality of the German prelates with the stingy avarice of the Italians, who gave nothing in charity, but bent their whole energies to enriching themselves and their families. But when they die, he says, the collectors of the apostolic camera seize the whole spoil, and through this depredation and rapine it would be impossible to exaggerate the destruction of the Italian cathedrals and monasteries, which are left almost tenantless. As for the camera itself, its officials have hard heads and stony bosoms, and hearts more impenetrable to mercy than steel itself. They are as pitiless to Christians as Turks or Tartars could be, stripping all newly promoted prelates of everything. If the latter cannot pay their demands, forbearance for a time is sold at an immoderate price under terrible oaths, and if anything has been kept back for the expenses of the homeward journey it is extorted, so that whoever escapes from their clutches can truly say, _Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator_. If you go there to pay a thousand florins and a single one is light, you are not allowed to depart till you have replaced it with a heavier one, or made good in silver twice the deficiency. And if, within a year, the promised sum is not paid, the bishop becomes a simple priest again, and the abbot a simple monk. Never satiated, the proper place of these officials is with the infernal furies, with the harpies, and with the unsatisfied Tantalus. Poggio, who was papal secretary for forty years, describes the applicants for preferment as worthy of these officials. They were idle, ignorant, sordid men, useless for all good purposes, who hung around the curia, clamoring for benefices or any other favor which they could get. Another papal official tells us that Boniface IX. filled the German sees with unfit and useless persons, for he who paid the most obtained the preferment. Many paid ten times more than it had cost their predecessors, for some archbishoprics fetched forty thousand florins, others sixty thousand, and others eighty thousand.[675]

It was in vain that Gerson proved that the papal demand of first-fruits of preferments was simony. It was in vain that the councils of Constance and of Siena complained and protested, and that of Basle endeavored to frame reformatory regulations. Equally vain was the attempt of Charles VII. and the Emperor Albert II. in the Pragmatic Sanctions of 1438, against the protests of Eugenius IV., to declare the annates and first-fruits to be simony. The papal system was too strong for its grasp to be thrown off, and up to the time of the Reformation simony continued to be the all-pervading curse.[676]

In addition to this source of infection from above there was an equally potent cause of demoralization from below in the immunity enjoyed by the clergy from secular jurisdiction. Not only were the people scandalized by seeing clerical homicides and criminals of all sorts set free after the mockery of a trial in the ecclesiastical courts, but the impunity thus enjoyed drew into the ranks of the Church hosts of vile and worthless men, who sought in the tonsure security from justice.[677]

Under such a system it is easy to conceive the character of the prelates and priests with which the Church was everywhere afflicted. Making some allowance for rhetorical enthusiasm, the invective of Nicholas de Clemangis must be received as true. As for the bishops, he says, as they have to spend all the money they can raise to obtain their sees, they devote themselves exclusively to extortion, neglecting wholly their pastoral duties and the spiritual welfare of their flocks; and if, by chance, one of them happens to pay attention to such subjects, he is despised as unworthy of his order. Preaching is regarded as disgraceful.

All preferment and all sacerdotal functions are sold, as well as every episcopal ministration, laying on of hands, confession, absolution, dispensation; and this is openly defended, as they say they have not received gratis, and are not bound to give gratis. The only benefices bestowed without payment are to their b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and jugglers. Their jurisdiction is turned equally to account. The greatest criminals can purchase pardon, while their proctors trump up charges against innocent rustics which have to be compounded. Citations under excommunication, delays and repeated citations, are employed, until the most obstinate is worn out and forced to settle, with enormous charges added to the original trifling fine. Men prefer to live under the most cruel tyrants rather than undergo the judgments of the bishops. Absenteeism is the rule. Many of the bishops never see their dioceses; and these are more useful than those who reside, for the latter contaminate their people by their evil example. As no examination is made into the lives of aspirants to the priesthood, but only as to their ability to pay the stipulated price, the Church is filled with ignorant and immoral men.

Few are able to read. They haunt the taverns and brothels, consuming time and substance in eating, drinking, and gambling; they quarrel, fight, and blaspheme, and hasten to the altar from the embraces of their concubines. Canons are no better; since, for the most part, they have bought exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, they commit all sorts of crimes and scandals with impunity. As for monks, they specially avoid all to which their vows oblige them--chast.i.ty, poverty, and obedience--and are licentious and undisciplined vagabonds. The Mendicants, who pretend to make amends for the neglect of duty by the secular clergy, are pharisees and wolves in sheep's clothing. With incredible eagerness and infinite deceit they seek everywhere for temporal gain; they abandon themselves beyond all other men to the pleasures of the flesh, feasting and drinking, and polluting all things with their burning l.u.s.ts. As for the nuns, modesty forbids the description of the nunneries, which are mere brothels, so that to take the veil is equivalent to becoming a public prost.i.tute.[678]

We might suspect this to be the exaggeration of a soured ascetic if it were not for the unanimous testimony of all who describe the condition of the Church from the thirteenth century on. When St. Bonaventura defended the Mendicants against the charge of a.s.sailing, in their sermons, the vices of the secular clergy, he denied their doing so for the reason that any such arraignment would be superfluous; and, moreover, that if they were to unveil the full turpitude of the clerical cla.s.s these would all be expelled, and there would be no hope of seeing their places more worthily filled, for the bishops would not select virtuous men. To do so, moreover, would deprive the people of all faith in the Church, and heresy would become uncontrollable. In another tract he declares that almost all priests were legally incapable of performing their functions, either through the simony attendant on their ordination or through the commission of crimes entailing suspension and deprivation. It was not infrequent, he says, for priests to persuade women that there was no sin in intercourse with a clerk.[679]

In 1305 Frederic of Trinacria, in a confidential letter to his brother, Jayme II. of Aragon, says that he has been led to doubt whether the Gospel was divine revelation or human invention, for three reasons. The first is the character of the secular clergy, especially of the bishops, abbots, and other prelates, who are dest.i.tute of all spiritual life, and are pestiferous in their influence through the public display of their wickedness. The second reason is the character of the regular clergy, and especially of the Mendicants, whose morals and lives stupefy all observers; they are so alienated from G.o.d that they justify the seculars and the laity by the comparison; their wickedness is so notorious that he fears that some day the people will rise against them, for they bring infection into every house which they frequent. The third reason is the negligence of the Holy See, which of old, as we are told, used to send legates through the kingdoms to look after the condition of religion; but now this is never done, and they are sent only for worldly objects.

We see, he says, that it labors without ceasing to slay schismatics, but we never see it solicitous to convert them. The eloquence of Arnaldo de Vilanova was required to persuade Frederic that all this was compatible with the truth of Christianity, and he undertook to introduce a reformation in his own kingdom, commencing with himself.[680]

Marsiglio of Padua may be a suspected witness when he a.s.sumes, as a universally recognized fact, the corruption of the ma.s.s of ecclesiastics. They despoiled the poor, they were insatiable in their greed, and what they wrung from their flocks was wasted in debauchery.

Boys, unlettered men, unknown persons, were promoted to benefices, and the bishops, by their example, carried to destruction more souls than they saved by their teaching. But his contemporary, Alvaro Pelayo, the Franciscan penitentiary of John XXII., is beyond suspicion, and he describes the Church of his time as completely secularized. There is no act of secular life in which priests and monks are not busy. As for the prelates, he can only compare them to the fabled Lamia, with a human head and the body of a beast--a monstrous fury which tears its own offspring to pieces and destroys all within its reach. The prelates, he says, give no teaching to their people, but flay and rend them. The bread due to the poor is lavished on jesters and dogs. Faith and justice have abandoned the earth; there is no humanity or kindness; the voracious flame of wrath and envy destroys the Church and skins the poor with fraud and simony. Scripture and the canons are regarded as fables.

Through the iniquity of the priests and prelates the evils gather, for they publicly pervert the law, they render false judgments, they add blood to blood, for many perish through their frauds and machinations.

They gloss and declare the law as they choose. The doctors and prelates and priests shed the blood of the just. They take the broad path that leads to destruction, and will not enter, nor permit others to enter, the narrow way that conducts to eternal life. This description is fully borne out by a letter of Benedict XII. to the Archbishop of Narbonne, describing the utter demoralization of the clergy of his province, so lately purified of heresy by the tireless labors of the Inquisition.[681]

Benedict's well-intentioned effort at reformation was fruitless, and after his death matters only became worse, if possible. Under Clement VI. vices of all kinds flourished more luxuriantly than ever. In 1351 a Carmelite, preaching before the pope and cardinals, inveighed against their turpitude in terms which terrified every one, and caused his immediate dismissal. Shortly afterwards a letter was affixed to the portals of the churches addressed to the pope and his cardinals. It was signed Leviathan, Prince of Darkness, and was dated in the centre of h.e.l.l. He saluted his vicar the pope and his servants the cardinals, with whose help he had overcome Christ; he commended them for all their vices, and sent them the good wishes of their mother, Pride, and their sisters, Avarice, l.u.s.t, and the rest, who boast of their well-being through their help. Clement was sorely moved, and fell dangerously sick, but the writer was never discovered. When Clement died, the next year, a majority of the cardinals were disposed to cast their votes for Jean Birel, Prior of the Grande Chartreuse, but the Cardinal of Perigord warned them that their favorite had such zeal for the Church, and was a man of such justice, equity, and disregard of persons, that he would speedily bring them back to their ancient condition, and that in four months their coursers would be converted into beasts of burden.

Frightened at this prospect, they incontinently elected Innocent VI.[682]

These stories are verified by Petrarch's descriptions of the papal court at Avignon, wherein even his glowing rhetoric fails to satisfy the vehemence of his indignation, while the details which he gives to justify his ardor are unfit to repeat. It is the Western Babylon, and nothing which is told of a.s.syria or Egypt, or even of Tartarus, can equal it, for all such are fables by comparison. Here you find Nimrod and Semiramis, Minos and Rhadamanthus, Cerberus consuming all things, Pasiphae under the bull, and her offspring, the monster Minotaur. Here you see confusion, blackness, and horror. It is not a city, but a den of spectres and goblins, the common sink of all vices, the h.e.l.l of the living. Here G.o.d is despised, money is worshipped, the laws are trodden under foot, the good are ridiculed till there scarce is one left to be laughed at. A deluge is necessary, but there would be no Noah, no Deucalion to survive it. Avignon is the woman clothed in purple and scarlet, holding the golden bowl of her abominations and the uncleanness of her fornications. He returns to the subject again and again with undiminished wrath, and he casually alludes to one of the cardinals as a man of a n.o.bler soul, who might have been good had he not belonged to the sacred college. The mocking spirit of Boccaccio is equally outspoken. From the highest to the lowest, every one in the papal court is abandoned to the most abominable vices. The sight of it converts a Jew, for he argues that Christianity must be of G.o.d, seeing that it spreads and flourishes in spite of the wickedness of its head.[683]

Gregory XI. was the fiercest persecutor of heresy in the fourteenth century, incessantly active against Brethren of the Free Spirit, Waldenses, and Fraticelli. He could boast that even as his namesake and prototype, Gregory IX., had founded the Inquisition, so he had restored it and had extended it into Germany. Yet, with all this zeal for compelling unity of faith, St. Birgitta was divinely commissioned to convey to him this message from the Lord:

"Hear, O Gregory XI., the words I say to thee, and give unto them diligent attention! Why dost thou hate me so? Why are thy audacity and presumption so great against me that thy worldly court destroys my heavenly one? Proudly thou despoilest me of my sheep. The wealth of the Church which is mine, and the goods of the faithful of the Church, thou extortest and seizest, and givest to thy worldly friends. Thou takest unjustly the store of the poor and lavishest it without shame on thy worldly friends. What have I done to thee, O Gregory? Patiently have I suffered thee to rise to the high-priesthood, and I have foretold to thee my will by letters divinely sent to thee, warning thee of the salvation of thy soul, and reproaching thy recklessness. How then dost thou repay my many favors? Why in thy court dost thou suffer unchecked the foulest pride, insatiable avarice, wantonness execrable to me, and all-devouring simony? Moreover, thou dost seize and carry away from me innumerable souls, for well-nigh all who go to thy court thou plungest into the fire of h.e.l.l.... Gird up thy loins, then, and fear not. Arise and bravely seek to reform the Church which I have purchased with my blood, and it will be restored to its former state, though now a brothel is more respected than it is. If thou dost not obey my command, know verily that thou wilt be condemned, and every devil of h.e.l.l will have a morsel of thy soul, immortal and inconsumable."

In another vision St. Birgitta was ordered to represent to the pope the deplorable state of all orders of the clergy. Priests were rather pimps of the devil than clerks of G.o.d. The monasteries were well-nigh abandoned, ma.s.s was only celebrated in them intermittently, while the monks resided in their houses and had no shame in acknowledging their offspring, or wandered around, frequently clad in armor under their frocks. The doors of the nunneries were open night and day, and they were rather brothels than holy retreats. Such is the burden of St.

Birgitta's repeated revelations, and nothing that Wickliff or Huss could say of the depravity of the clergy could exceed the bitterness of her denunciation.[684]

The inspiration of St. Catharine of Siena was equally outspoken. In her letters to Gregory XI., Urban VI., and the dignitaries who listened respectfully to her enunciations of the voice of G.o.d, her constant theme is the corruption of every rank in the hierarchy and the immediate necessity for reform. To Gregory she announces that G.o.d will sharply rebuke him if he does not cleanse the Church of its impurities; G.o.d demands of him to cast aside lukewarmness and fear, and to become another man, that he may eradicate the abundance of its iniquity. To Urban she says that it is not possible for him to put an end to the evil everywhere committed throughout Christendom, and especially by the clergy, but at least he can do what lies within his power. The prelates she describes as caring for nothing but pleasure and ambition; they are infernal demons carrying off the souls of their subjects, they are wolves and traffickers in the divine grace. As for the priests, they are the exact opposites of what they should be, injuring all who come in contact with them; all their lives are corrupt, and they are not worthy to be called men, but, rather, beasts, wallowing in filth and indulging in all the wickedness craved by their b.e.s.t.i.a.l appet.i.tes; they are not guardians of souls, but devourers, delivering them up to the Wolf of h.e.l.l.[685] All these warnings fell upon deaf ears, and the Church, during the Great Schism, plunged, if possible, deeper into the pit of abominations.

In 1386 Telesforo, the hermit of Cosenza, could only explain the Schism by the wealth and worldliness of the clergy, whom G.o.d could only reform by stripping them of their temporalities and thus forcing them to live according to the gospel. Although Henry of Hesse disputed the prophetic gifts of Telesforo, he, too, had no hesitation in ascribing the Schism to the simony, avarice, pride, luxury, and vanity of the Church, and he can only explain it by G.o.d sometimes in his wrath allowing his servants to act according to their own evil desires. Even should the Schism be healed, he can only look forward to the Church falling from bad to worse until the coming of Antichrist. This he antic.i.p.ates speedily, for all the prophetic signs are present in the extreme iniquity of the world.

The insatiable avarice and ambition of clergy and laity will lead them to support any one who promises them worldly advantage, and they will unite in aiding Antichrist to conquer the world. Bad as were the attacks of heresy, he says, the peace now enjoyed by the Church after overcoming the heretics is even worse, for in it the evil spirits succeed in excluding virtues and subst.i.tuting vices--a significant admission from an enthusiastic churchman of the result of the labors of the Inquisition.[686]

These deplorable statements are confirmed by the supplication of the Council of Pisa in 1409 to Alexander V., and by the reformers who gathered around the Council of Constance in hopes of seeing it fulfil its functions of purifying the Church in its head and members--John Gerson, Cardinal d'Ailly, Cardinal Zabarella, Bernhardus Baptizatus, Theodoric Vrie. I have already quoted Nicholas de Clemangis, and need only say that the others were equally outspoken and equally full of detail, while the reformatory projects drawn up for consideration by the council are eloquent as to the evils which they were designed to remove.

At first Sigismund and the Germans, with the French and English nations, were united in demanding that reformation should precede the election of a pope in place of the deposed John XXIII., but the close alliance formed between Sigismund and Henry V. alienated the French; by a skilful use of this they were won over, and the prospects of reform grew so desperate that Sigismund seriously contemplated seizing all the cardinals, as the main obstacle to the wished-for action, and removing them from Constance. On learning this, far from yielding, they put on their red hats and wore them in the streets as a token of their readiness to undergo martyrdom, and a paper was drawn up stigmatizing the English and Germans as Wickliffites and Hussites. The Germans responded in a vigorous protest, officially describing the condition of the Church in terms as decided as those employed by Nicholas de Clemangis. For this state of things they hold the Holy See solely responsible, for they date back these abuses to a time, a century and a half before, when the increasing pretensions of the curia enabled it to infect all Christendom with its vices, and they allude with special horror to the use of the papal penitentiary, worse than ordinary simony, whereby crimes were taxed in proportion to their heinousness and villainous traffic was made in sin. The Church, they concluded, had forfeited the reverence of the laity, which regarded it with contempt, as rather Antichristian than Christian. The steadfast att.i.tude of the Germans, however, was weakened by the death of their strongest ally, Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, and two of Sigismund's most trusted prelates were bribed to betray the cause. The Archbishop of Riga, who was tired of his constant quarrels with the Teutonic knights, was promised the rich bishopric of Liege, and the Bishop of Coire was promised the archbishopric of Riga. The opposition crumbled away, and Martin V. was elected. The French quickly saw their mistake, and appealed to Sigismund, who curtly referred them to the pope whom they had chosen, and who now had full power of granting or refusing reform.

The council hurriedly adjourned after pa.s.sing a few canons of little worth, and providing for a succession of general councils at short intervals.[687]

We have seen how reform was skilfully eluded at the Council of Siena in 1424. At Basle it fared no better. In 1435 Andreas, Bishop of Minorca, addressed to the Cardinal-legate Cesarini an exhortation in which he said, "Evils, sins, and scandals have so increased, especially among the clergy, that, as the prophet says, already accursed lying and theft, and adultery and simony, and murder and many other crimes have deluged the earth.... The avarice and l.u.s.t of domination and the foul and abominable lives of the ecclesiastics are the cause of all the misfortunes of Christendom. The infidel and the heretic say that if the Christian faith and gospel law were true and holy, the prelates and priests would not live as they do, nor would the spiritual rulers work such confusion and scandal in Christendom without instant punishment from the Lord Jesus Christ, the founder of the gospel and the Church." Bishop Andreas further urged that the council condemn by an irrefragable decision the impious doctrine of some canonists that the pope cannot commit simony.

Two years later, in 1437, John Nider, the Dominican, declared that the general reformation of the Church was hopeless, on account of the wickedness of the prelates and the lack of good-will of the clergy.

Partial reforms might be practicable, but even in this the difficulty was almost insuperable. The council, he said, in its six years of existence had been unable to reform a single nunnery, although aided by all the force of the secular power.[688]

The council, indeed, attempted some reformation, but Eugenius IV. and his successors refused to observe its canons. Even in Germany and France the old abuses were reinstated, with their deplorable consequences. The writers of the period are as emphatic as their predecessors in describing the superabounding and universal turpitude of the Church during the remainder of the century. That they do not exaggerate may be a.s.sumed from one or two instances. In 1459 there died at Arras, at the age of eighty, Nicaise le Va.s.seur, canon and head of the chapter of Arras. He not only had daughters and committed incest with them, but also with a daughter-granddaughter whom he had by one of them. Yet so blunted was the moral sense of Church and people that, as we are told, this monster officiated "_tres honorablement_" in divine service on all feasts and holidays, and the only comment of the chronicler is that he did it most becomingly. When, in 1474, the death of Sixtus IV. was received in Rome with a paean of joy, people commented not so much upon his selling benefices to the highest bidder and his other devices of extorting money, as upon the manner in which he rewarded the boys who served his unnatural l.u.s.ts by granting to them rich bishoprics and archbishoprics. Under such men as Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., there could only be deeper degradation expected. Julius II. was a _condottiere_ rather than a priest; but when political exigencies led him to summon the Lateran Council, earnest souls like Jacob Wimpfeling permitted themselves to hope that he would set bounds to the moral plague which pervaded all the churches. When he died, and Leo X.

conducted the labors of the a.s.sembled fathers, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola addressed him an epistle describing the evils for which reformation was requisite. It is a repet.i.tion of the old complaints. The worship of G.o.d was neglected, the churches were held by pimps and catamites; the nunneries were dens of prost.i.tution, justice was a matter of hatred or favor; piety was lost in superst.i.tion; the priesthood was bought and sold; the revenues of the Church ministered only to the foulest excesses, and the people were repelled from religion by the example of their pastors. The author of a little anonymous tract printed about the year 1500 feels obliged to prove by laborious citations that fornication is forbidden to the clergy, and he attributes the contempt generally entertained for the Church to the openly scandalous lives of its members. To appreciate fully the effect on the popular mind of this degradation of the Church, we must keep in view the supernatural powers claimed and exercised by the priesthood, which made it the arbiter of every man's destiny, for salvation depended not so much on individual desert as on the ministrations of those who controlled the sacraments.

How benumbing was this influence on the moral faculties is visible in the confession of Anna Miolerin, one of the Tyrolese witches burned in 1506, where the spread of witchcraft is attributed to the sensual and drunken priests who are unable to confess their penitents properly, or to baptize children, so that the latter, unprotected by the sacrament, are easily betrayed to Satan. The priests, she says, ought to baptize children reverently and repeat all the words of the ceremony.[689]

As for monasticism, Abbot Trithemius gives us a vigorous sketch of its demoralization. The great Benedictine Order, the mother and exemplar of the rest, had been founded on a wise and comprehensive system, including productive labor in the fields and religious observances in the houses: but he tells us that the monks when abroad were idle and vain, and when inside the walls were abandoned to carnal delights, with nothing of decorous to show but the habit, and even this was mostly neglected. No one thought of enforcing the forgotten discipline. The monasteries had become stables for clerks, or fortresses for fighting-men, or markets for traders, or brothels for strumpets, in which the greatest of crimes was to live without sin. The abbots thought of nothing but of satisfying their appet.i.tes and vanities, their l.u.s.ts, their ambition, and their avarice, while the brethren were monks only in name, and were vessels of wrath and sin. A confirmatory glimpse at the interior life of these establishments is afforded by Angelus Rumpherus, elected Abbot of Formbach in 1501, in his account of his immediate predecessor, Leonhard, who had ruled the abbey since 1474. He was especially fond of using torture, of which he had infinite ingenious varieties at his service.

Unable to endure his tyranny, a monk named Engelschalk, a man of good natural parts and disposition, fled, but was taken sick and brought back. He was thrown into the dungeon of the abbey, a building without light and ventilation, except a narrow slit through which to pa.s.s in food. Here he died, without even the viatic.u.m, his request for a confessor being refused, and when, as he was dying, the abbot and some of the monks entered, the blood flowed copiously from his nose, showing that they were his murderers.[690]

Under the guidance of a Church such as this, the moral condition of the laity was unutterably depraved. Uniformity of faith had been enforced by the Inquisition and its methods, and so long as faith was preserved, crime and sin were comparatively unimportant except as a source of revenue to those who sold absolution. As Theodoric Vrie tersely puts it, h.e.l.l and purgatory would be emptied if enough money could be found. The artificial standard thus created is seen in a revelation of the Virgin to St. Birgitta, that a pope who was free from heresy, no matter how polluted by sin and vice, is not so wicked but that he has the absolute power to bind and loose souls. There are many wicked popes plunged in h.e.l.l, but all their lawful acts on earth are accepted and confirmed by G.o.d, and all priests who are not heretics administer true sacraments, no matter how depraved they may be. Correctness of belief was thus the sole essential; virtue was a wholly subordinate consideration. How completely under such a system religion and morals came to be dissociated is seen in the remarks of Pius II. quoted above, that the Franciscans were excellent theologians, but cared nothing about virtue.[691]

This, in fact, was the direct result of the system of persecution embodied in the Inquisition. Heretics who were admitted to be patterns of virtue were ruthlessly exterminated in the name of Christ, while in the same holy name the orthodox could purchase absolution for the vilest of crimes for a few coins. When the only unpardonable offence was persistence in some trifling error of belief, such as the poverty of Christ; when men had before them the example of their spiritual guides as leaders in vice and debauchery and contempt of sacred things, all the sanctions of morality were destroyed and the confusion between right and wrong became hopeless. The world has probably never seen a society more vile than that of Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The brilliant pages of Froissart fascinate us with their pictures of the artificial courtesies of chivalry; the mystic reveries of Rysbroek and of Tauler show us that spiritual life survived in some rare souls, but the ma.s.s of the population was plunged into the depths of sensuality and the most brutal oblivion of the moral law. For this Alvaro Pelayo tells us that the priesthood were accountable, and that, in comparison with them, the laity were holy. What was that state of comparative holiness he proceeds to describe, blushing as he writes, for the benefit of confessors, giving a terrible sketch of the universal immorality which nothing could purify but fire and brimstone from heaven. The chroniclers do not often pause in their narrations to dwell on the moral aspects of the times, but Meyer, in his annals of Flanders, under date of 1379, tells us that it would be impossible to describe the prevalence everywhere of perjuries, blasphemies, adulteries, hatreds, quarrels, brawls, murder, rapine, thievery, robbery, gambling, wh.o.r.edom, debauchery, avarice, oppression of the poor, rape, drunkenness, and similar vices, and he ill.u.s.trates his statement with the fact that in the territory of Ghent, within the s.p.a.ce of ten months, there occurred no less than fourteen hundred murders committed in the bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses, taverns, and other similar places. When, in 1396, Jean sans Peur led his crusaders to destruction at Nicopolis, their crimes and cynical debauchery scandalized even the Turks, and led to the stern rebuke of Bajazet himself, who as the monk of Saint-Denis admits, was much better than his Christian foes. The same writer, moralizing over the disaster of Agincourt, attributes it to the general corruption of the nation. s.e.xual relations, he says, were an alternation of disorderly l.u.s.ts and of incest; commerce was nought but fraud and trickery; avarice withheld from the Church her t.i.thes, and ordinary conversation was a succession of blasphemies. The Church, set up by G.o.d as a model and protector for the people, was false to all its obligations. The bishops, through the basest and most criminal of motives, were habitual accepters of persons; they anointed themselves with the last essence extracted from their flocks, and there was in them nothing of holy, of just, of wise, or even of decent. Luke Wadding is a witness above suspicion; his conscientious study of original sources ent.i.tles his opinions to weight, and we may accept his description of Italy in the early part of the fifteenth century: "At that time Italy was sunk in vice and wickedness. In the Church there was no devotion, in the laity no faith, no piety, no modesty, no discipline of morals. Every man cursed his neighbor; the factions of Guelf and Ghibelline flooded the streets of the towns with fraternal blood, the roads were closed by robbers, the seas infested with pirates. Parents slew with rejoicing their children who chanced to be of the opposite faction. The world was full of sorcery and incantations; the churches deserted, the gambling-houses filled." The testimony is too uniform to explain it away with the a.s.sumption that it represents only the disenchantment of puritanism. aeneas Sylvius was no puritan, and his adventurous life had made him, perhaps, better acquainted with the whole of Christendom than any other man of his time, and in 1453 he says: "It is for this that I dread the Turks. Whether I look upon the deeds of princes or of prelates I find that all have sunk, all are worthless. There is not one who does right, in no one is there pity or truth. There is no recognition of G.o.d upon earth; you are Christians in name, but you do the work of heathen.

Execration and falsehood and slaughter and theft and adultery are spread among you, and you add blood to blood. What wonder if G.o.d, indignant at your acts, places on your necks Mahomet, the leader of the Turks, like another Nebuchadnezzar, for you are either swollen with pride, or rapacious with avarice, or cruel in wrath, or livid with envy, or incestuous in l.u.s.t, or unsparing in cruelty. There is no shame in crime, for you sin so openly and shamelessly that you seem to take delight in it." To what extent the Church was responsible for this may be judged by the terrible condition of Rome under Innocent VIII. as pictured in the diary of Infessura. Outrages of all kinds were committed with impunity so long as the criminal had wherewith to compound with the papal chancery; and when Cardinal Borgia, the vice-chancellor, was reproached with this, he piously replied that G.o.d did not desire the death of the sinner, but that he should pay and live. A census of the public women showed them to number sixty-eight hundred, and when the vicar of the city issued a decree ordering all ecclesiastics to dismiss their concubines, Innocent sent for him and ordered its withdrawal, saying that all priests and members of the curia kept them, and that it was no sin.[692]

This was the outcome of the theocracy whose foundation had been laid by Hildebrand in the honest belief that it would realize the reign of Christ on earth. Power such as was claimed and exercised by the Church could only be wielded by superhuman wisdom. Human nature was too imperfect not to convert it into an instrumentality for the gratification of worldly pa.s.sions and ambition, and its inevitable result was to plunge society deeper and deeper into corruption, as unity of faith was enforced by persecution. In this enforcement, as I have said, faith became the only object of supreme importance, and morals were completely subordinated, tending naturally to the creation of a perfectly artificial and arbitrary standard of conduct. If, to win the favor of Satan, a man trampled on the Eucharist believing it to be the body of Christ, he was not liable to the pains of heresy; but if he did so out of disbelief, he was a heretic. If he took interest for money believing it to be wrong, he was comparatively safe; if believing it to be right, he was condemned. It was not the act, but the mental process, that was of primary importance, and wilful wrong-doing was treated more tenderly than ignorant conscientiousness. Thus the divine law on which the Church professed to be founded was superseded by human law administered by those who profited by its abuse. As Cardinal d'Ailly tells us, the doctors of civil law regarded the imperial jurisprudence as more binding than the commands of G.o.d, while the professors of canon law taught that the papal decretals were of greater weight than Scripture. Such a theocracy, practically deeming itself as superior to its G.o.d, when it had overcome all dissidence, could have but one result.[693]

When we consider, however, the simple earnestness with which such mult.i.tudes of humble heretics endured the extremity of outrage and the most cruel of deaths, in the endeavor to ascertain and obey the will of G.o.d in the fashioning of their lives, we recognize what material existed for the development of true Christianity, and for the improvement of the race, far down in the obscurer ranks of society. We can see now how greatly advanced might be the condition of humanity had that leaven been allowed to penetrate the whole ma.s.s in place of being burned out with fire. Unorganized and unresisting, the heretics were unable to withstand the overwhelming forces arrayed against them. Power and place and wealth were threatened by their practical interpretation of the teachings of Christ. The pride of opinion in the vast and laboriously constructed theories of scholastic theology, the conscientious belief in the exclusive salvation obtainable through the Church alone, the recognized duty of exterminating the infected sheep and preserving the vineyard of the Lord from the ravages of heretical foxes, all united to form a conservatism against which even the heroic endurance of the sectaries was unavailing. Yet there are few pages in the history of humanity more touching, few records of self-sacrifice more inspiring, few examples more instructive of the height to which the soul can rise above the weaknesses of the flesh, than those which we may glean from the fragmentary doc.u.ments of the Inquisition and the scanty references of the chroniclers to the abhorred heretics so industriously tracked and so pitilessly despatched. Ignorant and toiling men and women--peasants, mechanics, and the like--dimly conscious that the system of society was wrong, that the commands of G.o.d were perverted or neglected, that humanity was capable of higher development, if it could but find and follow the Divine Will; striving each in his humble sphere to solve the inscrutable and awful problems of existence, to secure in tribulation his own salvation, and to help his fellows in the arduous task--these forgotten martyrs of the truth drew from themselves alone the strength which enabled them to dare and to endure martyrdom. No prizes of ambition lay before them to tempt their departure from the safe and beaten track, no sympathizing crowds surrounded the piles of f.a.gots and strengthened them in the fearful trial; but scorn and hatred and loathing were their portion to the last. Save in cases of relapse, life could always be saved by recantation and return to the bosom of the Church, which recognized that even from a worldly point of view a converted heretic was more valuable than a martyred one, yet the steadfast resolution, which the orthodox characterized as satanic hardening of the heart, was too common to excite surprise.[694]

This inestimable material for the elevation of humanity was plucked up as tares and cast into the furnace. Society, so long as it was orthodox and docile, was allowed to wallow in all the wickedness which depravity might suggest. The supreme object of uniformity in faith was practically attained, and the moral condition of mankind was dismissed from consideration as of no importance. Yet the incongruity between the ideal of Christianity and its realization was too unnatural for the situation to be permanent. In the Church as well as out of it there was a leaven working. While St. Birgitta was thundering her revelations in the unwilling ears of Gregory XI., William Langland, the monk of Malvern, sharpened his bitter denunciations of friar and prelate by reminding the common-folk that love and truth were the sole essentials of Christianity--

"Loue is leche of lyf and nexte owre lorde selve, And also the graith gate that goth in-to heuene; For-thi I sey as I seide ere by the textis, Whan alle tresores ben ytryed treuthe is the beste.