Sketches of Church History Part 20

While the popes were thus trying to lord it over all men, from the emperor downwards, there were many who hated their doctrines and would not allow their authority. The Albigenses and Waldenses, although persecuted as we have seen, still remained in great numbers, and held the opinions which had drawn so much suffering on them. The Albigenses, indeed, were but a part of a greater body, the _Cathari_, who were spread through many countries, and had an understanding and fellowship with each other which were kept up by secret means. And there were other sects, of which it need only be said here that in general their opinions were very wild and strange, and very unlike, not only to the papal doctrines, but to the Christianity of the Bible and of the early Church.

Whenever any of the clergy, from the pope downwards, gave an occasion by pride or ambition, or worldly living, or neglect of duty, or any other fault, these sects took care to speak of the whole Church as having fallen from the faith, and to gain converts for themselves by pointing out the blemishes which were allowed in it.

On the other hand, as I have mentioned,[85] the Inquisition was set on foot for the discovery and punishment of such doctrines as the Roman Church condemned; and it was worked with a secrecy, an injustice, and a cruelty which made men quake with fear wherever it was established. It is a comfort to know that in the British islands this hateful kind of tyranny never found a footing.

[85] Page 225.

There were large numbers of persons called Mystics, who thought to draw near to G.o.d, and to give up their own will to His will, in a way beyond what ordinary believers could understand. Among these was a society which called itself the _Friends of G.o.d_; and these friends belonged to the Church at the same time that they had this closer and more secret tie of union among themselves. There is a very curious story how John Tauler, a Dominican friar of Strasburg, was converted by the chief of this party, Nicolas of Basel. Tauler had gained great fame as a preacher, and had reached the age of fifty-two, when Nicolas, who had been one of his hearers, visited him, and convinced him that he was nothing better than a Pharisee. In obedience to the direction of Nicolas, Tauler shut himself up for two years, without preaching or doing any other work as a clergyman, and even without studying. When, at the end of that time, he came forth again to the world, and first tried to preach, he burst into tears and quite broke down; but on a second trial, it was found that he preached in a new style, and with vastly more of warmth and of effect than he had ever done before. Tauler was born in 1294, and died in 1361.

In these times many were very fond of trying to make out things to come from the prophecies of the Old Testament and of the Revelation, and some people of both s.e.xes supposed themselves to have the gift of prophecy.

And in seasons of great public distress, mult.i.tudes would break out into some wild sort of religious display, which for a time carried everything before it, and seemed to do a great deal of good, although the wiser people looked on it with distrust; but after a while it pa.s.sed away, leaving those who had taken part in it rather worse than better than before. Among the outbreaks of this kind was that of the _Flagellants_, which showed itself several times in various places. The first appearance of it was in 1260, when it began at Perugia, in the middle of Italy, and spread both southwards to Rome and northwards to France, Hungary, and Poland. In every city, large companies of men, women, and children moved about the streets, with their faces covered, but their bodies naked down to the waist. They tossed their limbs wildly, they dashed themselves down on the ground in mud or snow, and cruelly _flagellated_ (or flogged) themselves with whips, while they shouted out shrieks and prayers for mercy and pardon.

Again, after a terrible plague called the Black Death, which raged from Sicily to Greenland about 1349,[86] parties of flagellants went about half-naked, singing and scourging themselves. Whenever the Saviour's sufferings were mentioned in their hymns, they threw themselves on the ground like logs of wood, with their arms stretched out in the shape of a cross, and remained prostrate in prayer until a signal was given them to rise.

[86] See page 191.

These movements seemed to do good at first by reconciling enemies and by forcing the thoughts of death and judgment on unG.o.dly or careless people. But after a time they commonly took the line of throwing contempt on the clergy and on the sacraments and other usual means of grace. And when the stir caused by them was over, the good which they had appeared to do proved not to be lasting.

CHAPTER XX.

JOHN WYCLIF.

(BORN ABOUT 1324. DIED 1384.)

At this time arose a reformer of a different kind from any of those who had gone before him. He was a Yorkshireman, named John Wyclif, who had been educated at Oxford, and had become famous there as a teacher of philosophy before he began to show any difference of opinions from those which were common in the Church. Ever since the time when King John disgusted his people by his shameful submission to the pope,[87] there had been a strong feeling against the papacy in England; and it had been provoked more and more, partly because the popes were always drawing money from this country, and thrusting foreigners into the richer places of the English Church. These foreigners squeezed all that they could out of their parishes or offices in England; but they never went near them, and would have been unable to do much good if they had gone, because they did not understand the English language. And another complaint was, that, while the popes lived at Avignon, they were so much in the hands of their neighbours, the kings of France, that the English had no chance of fair play if any question arose between the two nations, and the pope could make himself the judge. And thus the English had been made ready enough to give a hearing to any one who might teach them that the popes had no right to the power which they claimed.

[87] Page 219.

There had always been a great unwillingness to pay the tribute which King John had promised to the Roman see. If the king was weak, he paid it; if he was strong, he was more likely to refuse it. And thus it was that the money had been refused by Edward I., paid by Edward II., and again refused by Edward III., whom Pope Urban V., in 1366, asked to pay up for thirty-three years at once. In this case, Wyclif took the side of his king, and maintained that the tribute was not rightly due to the pope. And from this he went on to attack the corruptions of the Church in general. He set himself against the begging friars, who had come to great power, worming themselves in everywhere, so that they had brought most of the poorer people to look only to them as spiritual guides, and to think nothing of the parish clergy. In order to oppose the friars, Wyclif sent about the country a set of men whom he called _poor priests_. These were very like the friars in their rough dress and simple manner of living, but taught more according to a plain understanding of the Scriptures than to the doctrines of the Roman Church. It is said that once, when Wyclif was very ill, and was supposed to be dying, some friars went to him in the hope of getting him to confess that he repented of what he had spoken and written and done against them. But Wyclif, gathering all his strength, rose up in his bed, and said, in words which were partly taken from the 118th Psalm, "I shall not die but live, and declare the evil deeds of the friars." He was several times brought before a.s.semblies of bishops and clergy, to answer for his opinions; but he found powerful friends to protect him, and always came off without hurt.

It was in Wyclif's time that the rebellion of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw broke out, as we read in the history of England (A.D. 1381); but, although Wyclif's enemies would have been very glad to lay some of the blame of it at his door, it is quite certain that he had nothing to do with it in any way.

In those days almost all books were written in Latin, so that none but learned people could read them. But Wyclif, although he wrote some books in Latin for the learned, took to writing other books in good, plain English, such as every one could understand; and thus his opinions became known to people of all cla.s.ses. But the greatest thing that he did was the translation of the Bible into English. The Roman Church would not allow the Scriptures to be turned into the language of the country, but wished to keep the knowledge of it for those who could read Latin, and expected the common people to content themselves with what the Church taught. But Wyclif, with others who worked under him, translated the whole Bible into English, so that all might understand it. We must remember, however, that there was no such thing as printing in his days, so that every single book had to be written with the pen, and of course books were still very dear, and could not be at all common.

It is said that Pope Urban V. summoned Wyclif to appear before him at Rome; but Wyclif, who was old, and had been very ill, excused himself from going; and soon after this he died, on the last day of the year 1384.

Wyclif had many notions which we cannot agree with; and we have reason to thank G.o.d's good providence that the reform of the Church was not carried out by him, but at a later time and in a more moderate and sounder way than he would have chosen. But we must honour him as one who saw the crying evils of the Roman Church and honestly tried to cure them.

Wyclif's followers were called _Lollards_, I believe from their habit of _lulling_ or chanting to themselves. After his death they went much farther than he had done, and some of them grew very wild in their opinions, so that they would not only have made strange changes in religious doctrine, but would have upset the government of kingdoms.

Against them a law was made by which persons who differed from the doctrines of the Roman Church were sentenced to be burnt, under the name of heretics, and many Lollards suffered in consequence. The most famous of these was Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, a brave but rather hot-headed and violent soldier, who was suspected of meaning to get up a rebellion. For this and his religious opinions together he was burnt in Smithfield, which was then just outside London (A.D. 1417); the same place where, at a later time, many suffered for their religion in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Mary.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE POPES RETURN TO ROME.

A.D. 1367-1377.

While the popes lived at Avignon, Rome suffered very much from their absence. There was nothing like a regular government. The great Roman families (such as the Colonnas, whom I have mentioned in speaking of Boniface VIII.) carried on their quarrels with each other, and no one attempted or was strong enough to check them. Murders, robberies, and violences of all sorts were common. The vast and n.o.ble buildings which had remained from ancient times were neglected; the churches and palaces fell to decay; even the manners of the Romans became rough and rude, from the want of anybody to teach them better and to show them an example.

And not only Rome, but all Italy missed the pope's presence. The princes carried on their wars by means of hired bands of soldiers, who were mostly strangers from beyond the Alps. These bands hired out their services to any one who would pay enough, and, although they were faithful to each employer for the time that was agreed on, they were ready at the end of that time to engage themselves for money to one who might be their late master's enemy. The most famous captain of such hireling soldiers was Sir John Hawkwood, an Englishman, who is commonly said to have been a tailor in London before he took to arms; but this I believe to be a mistake. He fought for many years in Italy, and a picture of him on horseback, which serves for his monument, is still to be seen in Florence Cathedral.

The Romans again and again entreated the popes to come back to their city. The chief poet and writer of the age, Petrarch, urged them both in verse and in prose to return. But the cardinals, who at this time were mostly Frenchmen, had grown so used to the pleasures of Avignon that they did all they could to keep the popes there. At length, in 1367, Urban V. made his way back to Rome, where the emperors both of the East and of the West met to do him honour; but after a short stay in Italy he returned to Avignon, where he soon after died (A.D. 1370). His successor, Gregory XI., however, was more resolute, and removed the papacy to Rome in 1377; and this was the end of what was styled the seventy years' captivity in Babylon.[88]

[88] See page 240.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE GREAT SCHISM.

A.D. 1378-1410.

Gregory XI. died in 1378, and the choice of a successor to him was no easy matter. The Romans were bent on having a countryman of their own, that they might be sure of his continuing to live among them. They guarded the gates, they brought into the city a number of rough and half-savage people from the hills around, to terrify the cardinals; and, when these were shut up for the election, the mob surrounded the palace in which they were, with cries of "We will have a Roman, or at least an Italian!" Day and night their shouts were kept up, with a frightful din of other kinds. They broke into the pope's cellars, got drunk on the wine, and were thus made more furious than before. At length, the cardinals, driven to extreme terror, made choice of Bartholomew Prignano, archbishop of Bari, in south Italy, who was not one of their own number. It is certain that he was not chosen freely, but under fear of the noise and threats of the Roman mob; but all the forms which follow after the election of a pope, such as that of coronation, were regularly gone through, and the cardinals seem to have given their approval of the choice in such a way that they could not well draw back afterwards.

But Urban VI. (as the new pope called himself), although he had until then been much esteemed as a pious and modest man, seems to have lost his head on being raised to his new office. He held himself vastly above the cardinals, wishing to reform them violently, and to lord it over them in a style which they had not been used to. By such conduct he provoked them to oppose him. They objected that he had not been freely chosen, and also that he was not in his right mind; and a party of them met at Fondi, and chose another pope, Clement VII., a Frenchman, who settled at Avignon.

Thus began what is called the Great Schism of the West. There were now two rival popes--one of them having his court at Rome, and the other at Avignon; and the kingdoms of Europe were divided between the two. The cost of keeping up two courts weighed heavily on the Christians of the West; and all sorts of tricks were used to squeeze out fees and money on all possible occasions. As an instance of this, I may mention that Boniface IX., one of the Roman line of popes, celebrated two jubilees, with only ten years between them, although in Boniface VIII.'s time it had been supposed that the jubilee was to come only once in a hundred years.

The princes of Europe were scandalized by this division, and often tried to heal it, but in vain; for the popes, although they professed to desire such a thing, were generally far from hearty in saying so. At length it seemed as if the breach were to be healed by a council held at Pisa in 1409, which set aside both the rivals, and elected a new pope, Alexander V. But it was found that the two old claimants would not give way; and thus the council of Pisa, in trying to cure the evil of having two popes, had saddled the Church with a third.

Alexander did not hold the papacy quite eleven months (June, 1409, to May, 1410). He had fallen wholly under the power of a cardinal named Balthasar Cossa; and this cardinal was chosen to succeed him, under the name of John XXIII. John was one of the worst men who ever held the papacy. It is said that he had been a pirate, and that from this he had got the habit of waking all night and sleeping by day. He had been governor of Bologna, where he had indulged himself to the full in cruelty, greed, and other vices. He was even suspected of having poisoned Alexander; and, although he must no doubt have been a very clever man, it is not easy to understand how the other cardinals can have chosen one who was so notoriously wicked to the papacy.

CHAPTER XXIII.

JOHN HUSS.

A.D. 1369-1414.

It would seem that after a time Wyclif's opinions almost died out in England. But meanwhile they, or opinions very like them, were eagerly taken up in Bohemia. If we look at the map of Europe, we might think that no country was less likely than Bohemia to have anything to do with England; for it lies in the midst of other countries, far away from all seas, and with no harbours to which English ships could make their way.

And besides this, the people are of a different race from any that have ever settled in this country, or have helped to make the English nation, and their language has no likeness to ours. But it so happened that Richard II. of England married the Princess Anne, granddaughter of the blind king who fell at Cressy, and daughter of the emperor Charles IV., who usually lived in Bohemia. And when Queen Anne of England died, and the Bohemian ladies and servants of her court went back to their own country, they took with them some of Wyclif's writings, which were readily welcomed there; for some of the Bohemian clergy had already begun a reform in the Church, and Wyclif's name was well known on account of his writings of another kind.

Among those who thus became acquainted with Wyclif's opinions was a young man named John Huss. He had been an admirer of Wyclif's philosophical works; but when he first met with his reforming books, he was so little taken with them that he wished they were thrown into the Moldau, the river which runs through Prague, the chief city of Bohemia.

But Huss soon came to think differently, and heartily took up almost all Wyclif's doctrines.