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Wylie, James Aitken, 1808-
1890. The history of Protestantisr
««,■- -y:--'. :
'i^^^KL
The History
OF
Protestanti sm
Rev. J. A. WYLIE, LL.D
Anther of " The Papacy," "Daybreak in Spain,'' d-v.
ILLUSTRATED.
rROlESlANTlSM, THE SACRED CAUSE. OF GOD's LIGIIT AND TRUTH AGAINST THE DeVII.'s FaLSITV ANIi
Darkness. "— Carlvk.
Volume \. CASSELL PETTER & GALPIN
LONDON. PARIS &^ NEW YORK.
CONTENTS.
llJook JFirst, PROGKESS FROM THE FIRST TO THE FOURTEENTn CENTURY
CHAPTER
I. — PKOTEST.iXTISM .....-•
n. — Declension of the Early Christian Chi rcii
III. Development of the Papacy trom the times of Constantine to those or Hildebe.vnh
IV. — Development of the Papacy from Grecory VIT. to Boniface VTII. V. — llEDi-iiVAL Protestant Witnesses ....
VT. — The Waldenses — Their Valleys ....
VII. — The Waldenses — Their JIissions ami JIartyri>o.m< VIII.— The Pavlicians ......
IX. — Crusades against the Aliiioenses ....
X. — Erection of Tribunal of iNaL'isiTios
XI. PR0TEST.4.NTS BEFORE PrOTEST.INTISM ....
XII. — Abelaed, and Rise of Modern Scepticis«
13 23
2H 32 38 44
47
13ook ^fcona. ■mCLIFFE Am) HIS TIMES, OR ADVENT OF PR0TESTA\TI.SM. I. — WiCLiFFE : his Birth and Edvcation .....
II. — WiCLIFFE, AND THE PoPe's ENCROACHMENTS ON ENGLAND .
III. — Wicliffe's Battle with Rome for England's Independence IV. — Wicliffe's Battle with the IiIendicant Friars . , . V. — The Fri.irs versus the Gospel in Exglanh ....
VI. — The B.wtle of the P.vrliament with the I'ope ....
VII. — Persecution of Wicliffe by the Pope anh the Hierarchy VIII. — Hierarchical Persecution of WiCliffe Kesumeu IX. — ^\\''icliffe's Views ox Church Proi'Ertv and Church Reforsi . X. — The Translation of the Scriptures, or the English Bible XI. — ^AVicLiFFE and Tr.\nsubstantiation . . . •
XII. — Wicliffe's Appeal to Parlument ......
XIII. — AVici.iFFE before Convocation in Person, and before the lioM.ts Curia by Letter XIV. — Wicliffe's Last Days .......
XV. — Wicliffe's Theological and Church System ....
99 108 113 119 112 124 127
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
THEIR ChARACTEB, AKD THEIE LaP.OVES
'Booh Wtlvi, JOHN HUSS AXD THE HUSSITE WARS.
CHAPTER
I.^BiRTH, Education', and First Labovks or llis
II. — HuSS BEGINS HIS WaKFAKE AGAINST RoME .
III. — Ctkowisg Opposition of Hiss to Ko.me IV. — Pkepabations for the Covncil of Constance V. — Deposition of the Rival Popes VI. — Imprisonment and Examination of Huss . VII. — Condemnation and Martvrdom of Hiss VIII. — -Wicliffe and Hrss compared in their Theology, IX. — Trial and Temptation of Jerome .
X. — The Trial of Jerome XI. — Condemnation and Burning of Jerome XII. — Wicliffe, Hvss, and Jerome, or the Three First Witnesses of Modern Christendom XIII.— The Hvssite Wars .... XIV. — Commencemfnt or the Hissite Wars XV. — Marvellous Genus of Ziska as a General XVI. — Second Crisade against Bohemia . XVII. — Brilli.ant Successes of the Hussites XVIII. — The Council of Basle XIX.— Last Scenes of the Bohemian Reformation
PAGE
130 13/5
in
144 149 lo4 161 165 167 171 173 176 178 184 189 190 195 202 207
TBook JFourtI). CHRISTENDOM AT THE OPENING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. I. — Protestantism and BIedi.ev^vlism ........
II.— The Empire ...........
III. — The Papacy, or Christendom under the Tiara ......
213 215 220
TBoclk JFlftt).
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY TO THE LEIPSIC DISPUTATION, 1510.
I. — Luther's Birth, Childhood, and School-d.iys ........ 226
II. — Luther's College-life ........... 232
III. — Luther's Life in the Convent ......,•■■ 236
IV. — Luther thb SIonk decomes Luther the Reformer ....... 239
V. — Luther as Priest, Professor, and Preacher ........ 243
^n. — Luther's Journey to Rome ........... 245
VII. — ^Luther in Rome ............ 251
VIII. — Tetzel Preaches Indulgence.s .......... 2.55
IX.— The "Theses" 260
X. — Luther ATT.^CKED ry Tet/el, Pkierio, and Eck ........ 266
XI. — Luther's Journey to Augsburg . . . . . . . . . • 272
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
XII. — Luther's ArrE.utAxcE BEroiiE C.vkdinal C.uetan XIII. — Luther's Return to Wittemberg and L.\bours there
XIV. illLTITZ — C.VUI.ST.\DT Dr. EcK
XV. — The Leipsic Disput.^tion ....
281 2ST 293
FROM THE LEIPSIC DISPUTATION TO THE DIET AT W0K5IS, 1521
I. — Protestantism .\.\d Imperlilism ; or, the JIonk \yv the Monarch II. — Poi'E Leo's Bull ....
III. — Interviews and Negoti.itions rV. — Luther summoned to the Diet at Worms V. — Luther's Journey and Arkiv.al at Worms VI. — Luther before the Diet .^t Worms VII. — Luther tut under the Ban of the Empire
30i 310 317 326 S29 335 31.5
Book ©fbtiitf). PROTEST.\NTISM IN ENGLAND FROM THE TIMES OF WICLIFFE TO THOSE OF HENRY I. — The First Protest.ant MaetyrS in England II, — The Theology of the Early Engllsh Protestants III. — Growth of English Protestantism ....
IV. — Efforts for the Redistribution of Ecclesiastical Property .
V. TRL4.L .iND CONDEMN.VTION OF SiR JOHN OlDCASTLE (LoRD C'oBHAM)
VT. — Lollaedism Denounced as Treason VII. — Martyrdom op Lord Cobham
VIII. — LoLL.ARDlSM UNDER HeNRY V. .\ND HeNRY VI.
IX. — Rome's Attempt to Regain Domin-vnoy in England X. — Resist.ince to Papal Encroachments XI. — Influence of the W.iks of the Fifteenth Century on the Progress of Protestantism
350 356 362 3G6 370 377 3S1 381 303 396 401
TBaak (Zcigljtl).
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM IN SWITZERLAND FROM A.D. 151G TO ITS KSTABLISIDIENT
AT ZURICH, 1.525.
I. — Switzerland — The Country .vsd the People
II. — Condition of Switzerl.vnd Prior to the Reformation III.— Corruption of the Swiss Church . IV. — Zwingle's Birth .ynd School-days .
V. — Zwingle's Progress tow.akds Emancipation VI. — Zwingle in Presence of the Bible
VII. EiNSIEDELN AND ZuRIC}!
VIII. — The Pardon-monger and the Plague IX. — Extension of the Eeform.vtion to Bern .vnd oiher Swias Towns
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408 |
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|
412 |
|
|
416 |
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-i21 |
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423 |
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430 |
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432 |
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437 |
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441 |
HI8T0RY OF PROTESTANTISM.
CHAPTER
X. — SritEAD or Protestantism ix Easterx ISwitzehi.axh
XI. — The Question" of Forbidden Meats
XI I. — I'lBLic Disputation at Zurich ....
XIII. — Dissolution or Conventual and Monastic Establishments XIV. — Dlscussion on Images and the Mass
XV. — Establishment ou Protest.\ntism in Zurich
TBook i!3iJitl).
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM FROM THE DIET OF WORMS, 1521, TO THE AUGSBrRG
CONFESSION, 1.530.
I. — The CJerman New Testament II. — The Aholitiox or the Mass III. — PorE AiiituN .\Nii HIS Scheme of Reform .
IV. — Pol'E ('l.KMENT AND THE X'lREMRERG DiET . V. NlREMllERI; .....
VI. — TiiE Ratishon League and Reformation VII. -Ei'thek's Views on the Sacrament and iMAGE-woRsinr . A'lll. — Wai; of ti[E Peasants .....
IX. — The Pjattle of Pavia .\ni> its Influence on Protest.vntism X.— Diet of Sfires. 1.52(i, and League against the Emperor XI. — The Sack of Rome ......
XII. OnG.iNISATION of THF. LuTHER.AN ChURCH
XIII. — Constitution of the Church of IIesse ... XIV. — Pulitk's and Prodigies .....
XV.^TitE Great Pjiotest ......
XVI. — Conference at Marburg .....
XVII. — The M.utnuKG Confession .....
XVIII. — The Emperor, the Turk, and the Reformation .
XTX. — Meeting hetween the Emperor .\yu Pope at Bologna . XX. — Preparations for the Augsrurg Diet XXI. — Arrival of the Emperor .\t Augsrurg .vnd Opening or the D XXII. — Luther in the Cohurg. and Melancthon at the Diet . XXIII. — Reading of the Augsburg Confession XXIV. — After the Diet of Augsburg ....
XXA'. — Attempted Refutation of the Confession XXVI. — End of the Diet or Augsburg ....
XXVII. — A Retrospect — 1517-1530 — Progress
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS.
Luther before the Diet at Worms
Illustrated front page
The Emperor Constantmc the Great
View of Constantinople
Visit of Charlcniag-ne to the Pope
I'enanco of Hem-y IV. of Lierniany
View in JMilan . . ■ •
View of Tm-in ....
The VaUey of jingi'ogmi
Monte CasteUuzzo and Xow Waldensian Tempi
Waldensian llissionaries in Giuso of Pedlars
The MartiTdoni of Constantino of Samosata
Troubadour and Barbs
Dominican Monk and Inquisitionci-
A'iew of Toidouse
View in Rome : the Island of the Tiber
Albigensian Worshippeis on the Banks of the Khono
The Orleans Martyrs ....
Brescia .......
Arnold ofBrcscia Preaching
Tomb of Abelard ....
JohnWicliffe .....
Canterbury Cathedral from the East End
King John and the Pope's Legate
Balliol College, Oxford (about the time of WicliftV) '
The Coliseiuu .....
View in the Campagna ....
".His eyes bui-ning witli a strange tire, he [St. Francis]
Group of Mendicant Friar.s
The Belfry at Bruges ....
•Jolm of Gaunt .....
Altercation between John of Gaunt and the Bishop of L
The LoUards' Tower, Lambeth Palace
Popular Demon.stration at Lambeth Palace in favoui- of
Avignon, a sometime Residence of the Popes
Wiehffe and the Monks : Scene in the Bed-chambir
luteiior of the Vatican Library
Wayside Preadiiug from the Bilile (time of Wiclift'c)
Lutterworth Cliurch ....
Trial of WicUffe ....
High Street of O.xford (time of Wiclift'c)
Wielift'e before the Convocation at O.xford
•John Huss .....
View of Prague .....
Soldiers Searching for Bohemian Protestants The Jliiaclc at Wilsnach : People flocking to the Churc Destruction of the Works of Wiehife at Pragu<? Jerome of Prague ....
wandered about the country
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
View of the City of Constanoe ....
A'iew in the T)to1 — Innspruck ....
Entry of Poi^e John into Constance- Reception of John Hiiss at Nuremherg
Jfurcmhcrg ......
Bishop of Lodi Preaching- at the Trial of IIus.s .
Trial of Huss : Degrading- the Martp-
Kecantation of Jerome .....
View on the Ehine : Schaifliausen
Jerome Speaking at his Trial ....
Trial of Jerome ; Waiting for the Sentence
" As they Tverc leading him out of the church .... he he
llap oi Bohemia, Mora™, and Bavaria .
Departiu'c of Pope Martin V. for Piome .
The Outrage at Prague .....
Celebration of the Eucharist liy the Hussites in a Field near Pr
Dresden . . ' .
Mc(-lilin ......
Hussite Shield ......
Portrait of Procopius .....
Arrival of the Hussite Deputies at Basle
Seal of the Council of Basle ....
Cathedi-al of Basle .....
jEneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.), .John Ziska, George Podichrad Tahorites Sclceting a Pastor ....
Tahorites Worshipping in a Cave View in Frankfoi-t-on-thc-Maine View in Ghent ......
Liege .......
Jlartin Luther ......
View of Eisnach ......
.John Luther taldng liis Son to School
Luther Sing-ing in the Streets of Eisnach
The Cathedral of Erfurt .....
Liithcr Entering the Augustinian Convent
The Ordin,ation of Luther to the Priesthood
Liither Preaching in the Old Wooden Church at Wittemlierg
View of Bologna ......
View of Florence ......
The Sehlossrkii-k, or Castle-church, at Wittcmberg Tctzel's Procession .....
Luther Nailing liis " Theses " to the Door of the Schluss-kirk at lAither's House at Wittembei'g ....
Pope Leo X. . .
In the Market-place of Wittcmhcrg : People Discussing the "
View of Augsburg . ...
The Old Castle at Weimar ....
Frederick III., Elector of Saxony, sm-namcd '• Tlio Wise" Luther Escaping from Augshui'g ....
Luther's Pamphlet: Scene at the Printing-house
View of Mainz ......
jVi-riv.il of the Wittcmberg Theolog-ians at Leipsic Philip Melancthon .....
View in Aix-la-Chapellc .....
Charles V., Emperor of Germany
The Conclave Electing the Emperor of Cicnnany
View of Treves ......
shop Eoc
in unum Demn
hyzan.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
View of Coljui-g, a Rcsldencu of LuUili- during the Diet of Augsbur Desiderius Erasmus .....
Luther Burning the Pope's Bull ....
View of Cologne ......
The Catiiedi-al of 'Wonns .....
The Piinces Summoned before the Emperor
Leo X. pronounciirg the " Bull of the Lord's Supper"
Luther's House at Franlifort ....
Luther at the Casement .....
View in Wittembcrg .....
View of AVorms ......
Luther Attacked by Masked Horsemen in the Thuringian ForcsS
George Spalatin, of the Ecclesiastical Coimciil of Sa.xony
Dr. Justus Jonas, Professor of Theology at Wittembcrg
Water-spout on Luther's House at Eisnacli
Interior of the Wai-tburg .....
Conference between Thorpe and .Uundel
Old St. Paul's and Neighbourhood in l-')40
The Cathedi-al and Leaning Tower of Pisa
Archbishop Arundel at Oxford ....
Chamber in the Lollards' Tower, Lambeth Palace, where the lie
Facsimile of Part of a Pago of Wiclifl'c's Bible .
Lord Cobham at a LoUard Preadiing
View of the Tower of London fi-om the Kivcr Thames (1700)
Friar Preaching from a Movable Pulpit (Royal Mi'., Hi', 3)
Lord Cobham before the Bishops ....
Henry V.'s Attack upon a Lollard Conventicle . Sir John Oldcastle, afterwards Lord Cobham Instruments of Toitiu'o .....
Hem-y V. and his Parliament (from the llarlc'uni J/.y6'. id the B,
King Henry V. .
Lollards making Abjmution of tlieu- Faitli
View of Canterbury .....
Preaching at St. Paul's Cross in the Fifteenth Centmy .
The Ai-chbishops of York and Canterbury before the PaiUamont
Cardinal Beaufort's Chantry, Winchester Cathedral
View of "SVestminstor Abbey from the JIall, St. Jann s's Park
A''iew in Lucemo ......
View in Lausanne ......
UMc Zwinglo ......
A Swiss Peasant Family .....
View in Zurich ......
Zwingle ainong liis Friends ....
(Ecolampadius ......
Francis I. of France .....
Zwingle Preaching in Zvuidi Cathedral .
Hcniy Bullinger ......
C'athedi-al of Jlilan .....
Samson Selling Indulgences ....
A Swiss Refonner Preaching to his Flock in thr ( )\,rn Field View of Einsiedcln Abbey ....
Slap of Switzerland .....
The Councillors Dissolving the Augustine Order of Jlouks in Zmich Hettinger Destroying the Imago ....
Crypt of the Cathedi-al of Basle (I.JO.5) .
View of Lake Zug ......
Celebration of the Lord's Supper in the Protestant Foru; by tl
were C
tmiastev Abbey
HISTORY OF PEOTESTANTISM.
Hemy VIII. of England
View in Thuringia : the Wartburg in the Distance
View of Luther's Room in the Warthurg, showing the Ink-stain
John Biigcnhagen (Pomeranus) ....
Little Giitc of a Parish Chm-oh, Nui-emherg-
Balcony of the Armouiy, Nuremberg
Part of the City Walls, Nuremberg
A Wittemboi-g Student Preaching in Lime-tree Meadow
The Papal Nuncio Chieregato in Nuremberg
A Gala-day in Nuremberg (time, Sixteenth Ccntui-y)
The River Pegnitz, intersecting the City of Nm-embcrg .
St. Scbald's Church, Nuremberg ....
-Vlbert Diii-cr ......
View of Bui'gofl, showing the Cathcdi-al .
Luther Challenging Carlstadt to Write against liim
Death of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony
The Chartreuse of Pavia .....
Cai'dinal AVolscy ......
The Reformed Princes on theii- Way to the Diet at Spires The Cathedral of Spires .....
The Castle of St. Angclo, Rome ....
John. Frederick, Elector of Saxony, sumamed " The Steadfast Fi-ancis Lambert Preaching ....
View in Barcelona .....
King Ferdinand, afterwards Emperor of Gci-many
Arrival of King Ferdinand at Spires
The Elector of Saxony Reading the Protest at tlie Diet of Spires
A'iew of Marburg ......
Portrait of Blartin Bucer .....
Luther and Zwingle Discussing at Marburg- Interior of the Courtyard of a Bologneso House Portrait of Cardinal C^ampeggio ....
The Three Protestant Ambassadors before the Emperor Charles
Entrance to the Imperial Castle, Nui-cmberg
A Street in Coburg .....
Luther in Coburg Castle : the Diet of Jackdaws
Meeting of the Emperor Charles and the Protestant Princes
The Protestant Princes Signing their Confession
The Protestant Princes Presenting their Confession to Charles
Mew in Strasburg .....
The Deputies from the Imperial Cities Awaiting an Audience of
Charles sees the Play of the Masks
The Peller Court at Nuremberg ....
Portrait of Philip of Ilesso . . . ■
Esciipe of Pliilip of Hesse from Augsbui'g
History of Protestantism.
mok sh'^t
PROGRESS FROM THE FIRST TO FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
THE
CHAPTER I.
PROTESTANTISM.
Protestantism— The Seed of Arts, Letters, Free States, &e.— Its History a Grand Drama— Its Origin— Outside Humanity— A Great Creative Power— Protestantism Revived Christianity.
The History of Protestantism, wliicli we propose to write, is no mere history of dogmas. The teachings of Christ are the seeds; the modern Christendom, with its new life, is the goodly tree which has sprang from them. We shall speak of the seed and also of the tree, small at first, still growing, and destined one day to cover the earth.
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
How that seed was deposited in the soU ; how the tree grew up and flourished despite the furious tempests that warred around it ; how, century after centiuy, it lifted its top higher in heaven, and spread its boughs wider around, sheltering liberty, nursing letters, fostering art, and gathering a fra- ternity of prosperous and powerful nations around it, it will be our business in the following pages to show. Meanwhile we wish it to be noted that tliis is what we understand by the Protestantism on the history of which we are now entering. Viewed thus — and any narrower view would be \uitrue alike to philosophy and to fact — the History of Protestantism is the record of one of the grandest dramas of all time.
It is true, no doubt, that Protestantism, strictly ^dewed, is simply a principle. It is not a policy. It is not an empii-e, having its fleets and armies, its ofiicers and tribunals, wherewith to extend its dominion and make its authority be obeyed. It is not even a Church with its liierarchies, and S}Tiods and edicts ; it is simply a principle. But it is the greatest of all principles. It is a creative power. Its plastic influence is all-embracing. It penetrates into the lieai-t and renews the indi- vidual. It goes down to the depths and, by its omnipotent but noiseless energy, vivifies and re- generates society. It thus becomes the creator of all that is true, and lovely, and great ; the founder of free kingdoms, and the mother of pure churches. The globe itself it claims as a stage not too wide for the manifestation of its beneficent action ; and the whole domain of terrestrial aflairs it deems a sphere not too vast to fill with its spirit, and rule by its law.
Whence came this principle t The name Pro- testantism is veiy recent : the thing itself is very ancient. The term Protestantism is scarcely older than 300 years. It dates from the Protest which the Lutheran princes gave in to the Diet of Spires in 1529. Restricted to its historical signification. Protestantism is purely negative. It only defines the attitude taken up, at a great historical era, by one party in Christendom with reference to another party. But had this been all, Protestantism would have had no history. Had it been purely negative, it would have begim and ended with the men who assembled at the German town in t-he year alrcftdy specified. The new world that has come out of it
is the proof that at the bottom of this protest was a great principle wliich it has pleased Providence to fertilise, and make the seed of those grand, bene- ficent, and enduring achievements wliich have made the past three centimes in many respects the most eventful and wonderful in history. The men who handed in tins protest did not wish to create a mere void. If they disowned the creed and threw ofi" the yoke of Rome, it was that they might plant a piu-er faith and restore the government of a higher Law. They replaced the authority of the Infallibility with the authority of the Word of God. The long and dismal obscuration of centuries they dispelled, that the twin stars of liberty and knowledge might shine forth, and that, conscience being unbound, the intellect might awake from its deep somnolency, and human society, renewing its youth, might, after its halt of a thousand years, resume its march towards its high goal.
We repeat our question — Whence came this principle? And we ask our readers to mark well oiu- answer, for it is the key-note to the whole of our vast subject, and places us, at the very outset, at the springs of that long narration on which we are now entering.
Protestantism is not solely the outcome of human progress ; it is no mere principle of perfectibility inherent in humanity, and ranking as one of its native powers, in vii-tue of which when society becomes corrupt it can purify itself, and when it is arrested in its com-se by some external force, or stops from exhaustion, it can recruit its energies and set forward anew on its path. It ia neither the product of the individual reason, nor the result of the joint thought and energies of tlie species. Protestantism is a principle which has its origin outside human society : it is a Divine graft on the intellectual and moral natui'e of man, whereby new vitalities and forces are introduced into it, and the human stem yields henceforth a nobler fniit. It is the descent of a heaven-born influence which allies itself with all the instincts and powers of the individual, with all the laws and cravings of society, and which, quickening both the individual and the social being into a new life, and directing their eflbrts to nobler objects, pei-mits the highest development of which humanity is capable, and the fullest possible accomplisliment of all its grand ends. In a word, Protestantism is revived Christianity.
THE FIRST STONE OP "BABYLON."
CHAPTER II.
DECLENSION OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
Early Triumphs of the Truth— Causes— The Fourth Century— Early Simplicity lost— The Chm-ch remodelled on the Pattern of the Empire— Disputes regarding Easter-day— Descent of the Gothic Nations— Introduction of Pagan Rites into the Church- Acceleration of Corruption— Inability of the World aU at once to receive the Gospel in its greatness.
All through, from the fifth to the fifteenth cen- tury, the Lamp of Truth burned dimly in the sanc- tuary of Christendom. Its flame often sunk low, and appeared about to expire, yet never did it wholly go out. God remembered his covenant with the light, and set bounds to the darkness. Not only had this heaven-kindled lamp its period of waxing and waning, Kke those luminaries that God has placed on high, but like them, too, it had its appointed circuit to accomplish. Now it was on the cities of Northern Italy that its light was seen to fall ; and now its rays illumined the plains of Southern France. Now it shone along the course of the Danube and the Moldau, or tinted the pale shores of England, or shed its glory upon the Scottish Hebrides. Now it was on the sum- mits of the Alps that it was seen to burn, spread- ing a gi'acious morning on the mountain-tops, and giving promise of the sure approach of day. And then, anon, it woidd buiy itself in the deep valleys of Piedmont, and seek shelter from the furious tempests of persecution behind the great rocks and the eternal snows of the everlasting hills. Let us briefly trace the gi-owth of this truth to the days of Wicliffe.
The spread of Christianity during the first three centuries was rapid and extensive. The main causes that contributed to this were the translation of the Scriptures into the languages of the Roman world, the fidelity and zeal of the preachei-s of the Gospel, and the heroic deaths of the martyrs. It was the success of Christianity that first set limits to its progress. It had received a terrible blow, it is true, under Domitian. This, which was the most terri- ble of all the early persecutions, had, in the belief of the Pagans, utterly exterminated the " Christian superstition." So far from this, it had but afibrded the Gospel an opportunity of giving to the world a mightier proof of its divinity. It rose from the stakes and massacres of Domitian, to begin a new career, in which it was destined to triumph over the empire which thought that it had crushed it. Dig- nities and wealth now flowed in upon its ministers
and disciples, and according to the uniform testi- mony of all the early historians, the faith which had maintained its piu-ity and vigour in the humble sanctuaries and lowly position of the fii-st age, and amid the fires of its pagan persecutors, became corrupt and waxed feeble amid the gorgeous temples and the worldly dignities which imperial favour had lavished upon it.
From the fourth century the coiTuptions of the Christian Church continued to make marked and rapid progi-ess. The Bible began to be hidden from the people. And in proportion as the light, which is the surest guarantee of liberty, was withdrawn, the clergy usm-ped authority over the members of the Church. The canons of councils were put in the room of the one infallible Rule of Faith ; and thus the first stone was laid in the foundations of " Babylon, that great city, that made all nations to drink of the wine of the wi-ath of her fornication." The ministers of Christ began to afiect titles of dignity, and to extend theii- authority and jiu-isdic- tion to temporal matters, forgetfiil that an oflice bestowed by God, and sei-viceable to the highest interests of society, can never fail of respect when filled by men of exemplaiy character, sincerely devoted to the discharge of its duties.
The beginning of this matter seemed innocent enough. To obviate pleas before the secular tribu- nals, ministers were frequently asked to arbitrate in disputes between members of the Church, and Constantino made a law confirming all such de- cisions in the consistories of the clergy, and shutting out the review of their sentences by the civil judges.' Proceeding in this fatal path, the next step was to form the external polity of the Church upon the model of the civil government. Four vice-kings or prefects governed the Roman Empire imder Constantino, and why, it was asked, should not a similar arrangement be introduced into the Chm-ch? Accordingly the Christian world was divided into four great dioceses ; over each diocese
1 Eusebius, De Vita Const., lib. iv., cap. 27. Eccles. Hist., vol. i., p. 1G2 ; Dublin, 1723.
Dupin,
HISTORY OF PEOTESTANTISM.
was set a patriarch, who governed the whole clei'gy of liis domain, and thus arose four great thrones or princedoms in the House of God. Where there had been a bi'otherhood, there was now a hierarchy; and from the lofty chair of the Patriarch, a grada- tion of rank, and a subordination of authority and office, ran do"\vn to tlie lowly state and contracted sphere of the Pi-esbyter. ' It was splendour of rank, rather than the fame of learning and the lustre of virtue, that henceforward conferred dis- tinction on the ministers of the Chiu'ch.
Such an arrangement was not fitted to nourish spii-ituality of mind, or humility of disposition, or peacefulness of temper. The enmity and violence of the persecutor, the clergy had no longer cause to dread ; but the spirit of faction which now took possession of the dignitaries of the Church awakened vehement disputes and fierce conten- tions, which disparaged the authority and sullied the glory of the sacred office. The emperor him- self was witness to these unseemly spectacles. " I entreat you," we find him pathetically saying to the fathers of the Council of Nice, " beloved minis- ters of God, and servants of our Saviour Jesus Christ, take away the cause of our dissension and disagreement, establish peace among yourselves." -
WhUe the " living oracles " were neglected, the zeal of the clergy began to spend itself upon rite^ and ceremonies borrowed from the pagans. These were midtiplied to siich a degree, that Augustine complained that they were " less tolerable than the yoke of the Jews under the law." ^ At this period the Bishops of Rome wore costly attire, gave sump- tuous banquets, and when they went abroad were carried in litters. ■• They now began to sjjeak with an authoritative voice, and to demand obedience from all the Churches. Of this the dispute between the Eastern and Western Chui-ches respecting Easter is an instance in point. The Eastern Church, fol- lowing the Jews, kept the feast on the 1 4th day of the month Nisan* — the day of the Jewish Passover.
1 Eusebius, De Vita Const., lib. iv., cap. 24. Mosheim, Eccles. Hist., vol. i., cent. 4, p. 94; Glasgow, 1831.
2 Eusebius, Ecdes. Hist., lib. iii., cap. 12, p. 490 ; Parisiis, 1659. Dupin, Ecdes. Hist., vol. u., p. 14; Lond., 1693.
8 Baronius admits that many things have been laudably- translated from Gentile superstition into tlie Christian religion (Annal., ad An. 58). And Binnius, extolUng the munificence of Constantine towards the Church, speaks of his superstitionis gentilias justa (Emvlatio (** just emula- tion of the Gentile superstition "). — Condi., tom. 7, notaa in Donat. Constan.
* Ammian. Marcel., lib. xxvii., cap. 3. Mosheim, vol. i., cent. 4, p. 95.
« Nisan corresponds with the latter half of our March and the first half of our April.
The Churches of the West, and especially that of Rome, kept Easter on the Sabbath following the 14th day of Nisan. Victor, Bishop of Rome, re- solved to put an end to the controversy, and accordingly, sustaining himself sole judge in this weighty point, he commanded all the Churches to observe the feast on the same day with himself. The Churches of the East, not aware that the Bishop of Rome had authority to command theii" obedience in this or in any other matter, kept Easter as before ; and for this flagi-ant contempt, as Victor accounted it, of his legitimate authority, he excom- municated them. ' They refused to obey a human ordinance, and they were shut out from the king- dom of the Gospel. This was the fii'st peal of those thunders which were in after times to roU so often and so terribly from the Seven Hills.
Riches, flattery, deference, continued to wait upon the Bishop of Rome. The emperor saluted him as Father ; foreign Churches sustained hiin as judge in their disjiutes; heresiarchs sometimes fled to him for sanctuary; those who had favours to beg extolled his piety, or afiected to follow his customs ; and it is not surprising that his pride and ambition, fed by continual incense, continued to gi'ow, till at last the presbyter of Rome, from being a vigilant pastor of a single congregation, before whom he went in and out, teaching them from house to house, preaching to them the Word of Life, serving the Lord with all humility in many tears and temptations that befel him, raised his seat above his equals, mounted the throne of the patriarch, and exercised lordsliip over the heritage of Christ.
The gates of the sanctuary once forced, the stream of corruption continued to flow with ever- deepening volume. The declensions in doctiine and worship already introduced had changed the brightness of the Church's morning into twilight ; the descent of the Northern nations, which, be- ginning in the fifth, continued through several successive centiuies, converted that twilight into night. The new tribes had changed their country, but not their superstitions ; and, imhappily, there .
0 The Council of Nicaea, a.d. 325, enacted that the 21st of March should thenceforward be accounted the vornal equinox, that the Lord's Day following the full moon next after the 21st of March should be kept as Easter Day, but that if the full moon happened on a Sabbath, Easter Day should be the Sabbath following. This is the canon that regulates the observance of Easter in the Church of England. " Easter Day," says the Common Prayer Book, " is always the first Sunday after the full moon wliich happens upon or next after the 21st day of March ; and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after."
GROWTH OF SUPERSTITIOUS RITES.
was neither zeal nor vigour in the Christianity of the age to effect theii- instruction and their genuine conversion. The Bible had been with- drawn ; in the pulpit fable had usurped the place of truth ; holy lives, whose silent eloquence might have won upon the barbarians, were rarely exempli- fied ; and thus, instead of the Church dissipating the superstitions that now encompassed her like a cloud, these superstitions all but quenched her own light. She opened her gates to receive the new peoples as they were. She sprinkled them with the baptismal water ; she inscribed their names in her registers ; she taught them in their invocations to repeat the titles of the Trinity; but the doctrines of the Gospel, which alone can enlighten the understand- ing, pm-ify the heart, and em-ich the life with vir- tue, she was little careful to inculcate upon them. She folded them within her pale, but they were scarcely more Christian than before, while she was greatly less so. From the sixth century down- wards Christianity was a mongrel system, made up of pagan rites revived from classic times, of super- stitions imported from the forests of Northern Germany, and of Christian beliefs and observances wliich continued to linger in the Church from primitive and purer times. The inward power of religion was lost ; and it was in vain that men strove to supply its place by the outward foi-m. They nourished their piety not at the living foun- tains of truth, but with the "beggarly elements" of ceremonies and relics, of consecrated lights and holy vestments. Nor was it Divine knowledge only that was contemned ; men forbore to cultivate letters, or practise virtue. Baronius confesses that in the sixth century few in Italy were skilled in both Greek and Latin. Nay, even Gregory the Great acknowledged that he was ignorant of Greek. "The main qualifications of the clergy were, that they should be able to read well, sing their matins, know the Loi-d's Prayer, psalter, forms of exorcism, and understand how to compute the times of the sacred festivals. Nor were they very sufficient for this, if we may believe the account some have given of them. Musculus says that many of them never saw the Scriptures in all their lives. It would seem incredible, but it is delivered by no less an authority than Amama, that an Archbishop of Mainz, lighting upon a. Bible and looking into it, expressed himself tlius : ' Of a truth I do not know what book this is, but I perceive everything in it is against us.'" '
Apostacy is like the descent of heavy bodies, it proceeds with ever-accelerating velocity. Fii'st, lamps were lighted at the tombs of the martyi-s ;
1 Bennet's Memorial of the Beformaiion, p. 20; Edin., 1748.
next, the Supper was celebrated beside their graves ; next, prayers were oflered /or them and to them;^ next, paintings and images began to dis- figure the walls, and corpses to pollute the floors of the churches. Baptism, which apostlea required water only to dispense, could not be celebrated without white robes and clu'ism, milk, honey, and salt ^ Then came a crowd of chtu-ch officers whose names and numbers are in striking contrast to the few and simple orders of men who were employed in the first propagation of Christianity. There were sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, readers, choris- ters, and portei-s ; and as work must be found for tliis motley host of labourers, there came to be fasts and exorcisms; there were lamps to be lighted, altars to be arranged, and churches to be conse- crated ; there was the eucharist to be carried to the dying ; and there were the dead to be btuied, for which a special order of men was set apart. When one looked back to the simplicity of early times, it could not but amaze him to think what a cumbrous array of curious macliinery and costly furniture was now needed for the service of Christianity. Not more stinging than true was the remark that "when the Church had golden chalices she had wooden pi-iests."
So fai', and through these various stages, had the declension of the Church proceeded. The point she had now reached may be termed an epochal one. From the line on which she stood there was no going back ; she must advance into the new and unknown regions before her, though every step would carry her farther from the simple form and vigorous life of her early days. She had received a new impregnation from an alien principle, the same, in fact, from which had sprung the great systems that covered the earth before Christianity arose. This principle could not be summarily extirpated ; it must rim its course, it must de- velop) itself logically ; and having, in the conrse of centuries, brought its fruits to maturity, it would then, but not till then, perish and pass away.
Looking back at this stage to the change which had come over the Church, we cannot fail to see that its deepest originating cause must be sought
' These customs began thus. In times of persecution, assemblies often met in churchyards as the place of greatest safety, and the " elements ' ' were placed on the tombstones. It became usual to pray that the dead might be made partakers in the " lirst resurrection." This was grounded on the idea which the primitive Christians entertained respecting the millennium. After Gregoi-y I., prayers for the dead regarded their deliverance from purgatory.
s Dupin, Eccles. Hist., vol. i., cent, 3,
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
in tlie inability of the -world to receive the Gospel in all its greatness. It was a boon too mighty and too free to be easily understood or credited by man. The angels in their midnight song in the vale of Bethlehem had defined it briefly as sublimely, "good- will to man." Its greatest preacher, the Apostle Paul, had no other definition to give of it. It was not only a rnle of life but " grace," the " grace of God," and therefore sovereign, and boimdless. To man fallen and undone the Gosjiel oflered a full
an eclipse has passed upon the exceeding glory of the Gospel. As we pass from Paul to Clement, and from Clement to the Fathers that succeeded him, we find the Gospel becoming less of gi-ace and more of merit. The light wanes as we travel down the Patristic road, and remove ourselves fiirther from the Apo.stolic dawi. It continues for some time at least to be the same Gospel, but its glory is shorn, its mighty force is abated; and we are reminded of the change that seems to
THE EMPEROR COXSTANTIXE THE GREAT.
■, (ip/ M. Clarac.)
forgiveness, and a comjilete spiritual renovation, issuing at length in the inconceivable and infinite felicity of the Life Eternal. But man's nai-row heart could not enlarge itself to God's vast bene- ficence. A good so immense, so complete in its nature, and so boundless in its extent, he could not believe that God would bestow without money and without price ; there must be conditions or qualifications. So he reasoned. And hence it is that the moment inspired men cease to address us, and that their disciples and scholars take their place — men of apostolic spirit and doctrine, no doubt, but without the direct knowledge of their predecessors — we become sensible of a change;
pass upon the sun, when after contemplating him in a tropical hemisphere, we see him in a northern sky, where his beams, having to force tlieir way through mists and vapours, are robbed of half their splendour. Seen throiigh the fogs of the Patristic age, the Gospel scarcely looks the same which had buist upon the world without a cloud but a few centuries before.
This disposition — that of making God less free in his gift, and man less dependent in the reception of it : the desire to introduce the element of merit on the side of man, and the element of condition on the side of God — operated at last in opening tlie door for the pagan principle to creep back into the
HISTORY OF PKOTESTANTISM,
Church. A change of a deadly and subtle kind passed upon the worship. Instead of being the spontaneous thanksgiving and joy of the soul, that no more evoked or repaid the blessings which awakened that joy than the odours wliich the flowers exhale are the cause of their growth, or the joy that kindles in the heart of man when the sun rises is the cause of his rising — worship, we say, from being the expression of the soul's emotions, was changed into a rite, a rite akin to those of the Jewish temples, and still more akin to those of the Greek mythology, a rite in which lay couched a certain amount of human merit and inherent eflicacy, that partly ci'eated, partly applied
the blessings with which it stood connected. This was the moment when the pagan virus inoculated the Christian institution.
This change brought a multitude of others in its train. Worship being transformed into sacrifice — sacrifice in which was the element of expiation and purification — the " teaching ministry " was of course converted into a " sacrificing priesthood." When this had been done, there was no retreating ; a boundary had been reached which could not be recrossed till centuries had rolled away, and trans- formations of a more portentous kind than any which had yet taken place had passed upon the Chui'ch.
CHAPTER III.
DE^TLOPMENT OF THE PAPACY FROM THE TIMES OF CONSTANTINE TO THOSE OF HILDEERAKD.
Imperial Edicts— Prestifre of Eome— Fall of the "Western Empii-e— The Papacy seeks and finds a New Basis of Power —Christ's Vicar— Conversion of Gothic Nations— Pepin and Charlemagne— The Lombards and the Saracens- Forgeries and False Decretals — Election of the Eoman Pontiif .
Before opening our great theme it may be needful to sketch the rise and development of the Papacy as a politico-ecclesiastical power. The history on which we are entering, and which we must rapidly traverse, is one of the most wonderful in the world. It is scarcely possible to imagine humbler begin- nings than those from which the Papacy arose, and certainly it is not possible to imagine a loftier height than that to which it eventually climbed. He who was seen in the first century presiding as the humble pastor over a single congregation, and claiming no rank above his brethren, is beheld in the twelfth century occupying a seat from wMcli he looks down on all the thrones temporal and spiritual of Christendom. How, we ask with amazement, was the Papacy able to traverse the mighty space that divided the h\mible pastor from the mitred king?
We traced in the foregoing chapter the decay of doctrine and manners within the Church. Among the causes which contributed to the exaltation of the Papacy this declension may be ranked as funda- mental, seeing it opened the door for other deterio- rating influences, and mightily fiivoured then- opera- tion. Instead of "reaching forth to what was before," the Christian Church permitted herself to
be overtaken by the spirit of the ages that lay behind her. There came an after-growth of Jewish ritualism, of Greek philosophy, and of Pagan cere- monialism and idolatry ; and, as the consequence of this threefold action, the clergy began to be gradu- ally changed, as already mentioned, from a " teach- ing ministry " to a " sacrificing priesthood." This made them no longer ministers or servants of their feUow-Chiistians ; they took the position of a caste, claiming to be superior to the laity, invested with mysterious powers, the channels of grace, and the mediators with God. Thus there arose a hierarchy, assuming to mediate between God and men.
The hierarchical polity was the natm-al concomi- tant of the hierarchical doctrine. That polity was so consolidated by the time that the empire became Christian, and Constantino ascended the throne (311), that the Church now stood out as a body distinct from the State ; and her new organisation, subsequently received, in imitation of that of the empire, as stated in the previous chapter, helped still further to define and strengthen her hierarchical government. Still, the primacy of Ptome was then a thing unheard of Manifestly the 300 Fathers who assembled (a.d. 325) at Nicsea knew nothing of it for in their sixth and seventh canons they
THE POPE CLAIMS TO BE OHRISTS VICAR.
9
expressly recognise the authority of the Churches of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and others, each within its own boundaries, even as Rome had jurisdiction witliin its limits ; and enact that the jurisdiction and privileges of these Chui-ches shall be retained.' Under Leo the Great (440 — 461) a forward step was taken. The Church of Rome assumed the form and exercised the sway of an ecclesiastical principality, while her head, in virtue of an imperial manifesto (445) of Valentinian III., which recognised the Bishop of Rome as supreme over the Western Church, affected the authority and pomp of a spiritual sovereign.
Still farther, the ascent of the Bishop of Rome to the supremacy was silently yet powerfully aided by that mysterious and subtle influence which ap- peared to be indigenous to the soil on which his chair was placed. In an age when the rank of the city determined the rank of its pastor, it was natural that the Bishop of Rome should hold something of that pre-eminence among the clergy which Rome held among cities. Gradually the reverence and awe with which men had regarded the old mistress of the world, began to gather round the person and the chair of her bishop. It was an age of factions and strifes, and the eyes of the contending parties natui'ally turned to the pastor of the Tiber. They craved his advice, or they submitted theii- differences to his judgment. These applications the Roman Bishop was careful to register as acknowledgments of his superiority, and on fitting occasions he was not forgetful to make them the basis of new and higher claims. The Latin race, moreover, retained the practical habits for wliich it had so long been renowned ; and while the Easterns, giving way to their speculative genius, were expending their energies in controversy, the Western Church was steadily pursuing her onward path, and skilfully availing herself of everjrthing that could tend to enhance her influence and extend her jurisdiction.
The removal of the seat of empire from Rome to the splendid city on the Bosphorus, Constantinople, which the emperor had built with becoming mag- nificence for his residence, also tended to enliance the power of the Papal chair. It removed from the side of the Pope a functionary by whom he was eclipsed, and left him the first person in the old capital of the world. The emperor had departed, but the prestige of the old city — the fi-uit of count- less victories, and of ages of dominion — had not depai-ted. The contest which had been going on for some time among the five great patriarchates —
1 Hardouin,.4(;taComri!., torn, i., col. .325; Parisiis, 1715. Dupin, Ecclcs. Hist., vol. i., p. 600; Dublin edition.
Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome — the question at issue being the same as that which provoked the contention among the dis- ciples of old, " which was the greatest," was now restricted to the last two. The city on the Bos- phorus was the seat of government, and the abode of the emperor; this gave her patriarch powerful claims. But the city on the banks of the Tib(;r wielded a mysterious and potent charm over the imagination, as the heir of her who had been the possessor of all the power, of all the glory, and of aU the dominion of the past ; and this vast prestige enabled her patriarch to carry the day. As Rome was the one city in the earth, so her bishop was the one bishop in the Church. A centmy and a half later (606), this pre-eminence was decreed to the Roman Bishop in an imperial edict of Phocas.
Thus, before the Empire of the West fell, the Bishop of Rome had established substantially his spiritual supremacy. An influence of a manifold kind, of which not the least part was the prestige of the city and the empire, had lifted him to this fatal pre-eminence. But now the time has come when the empire must fall, and we expect to see that supremacy which it had so largely helped to biuld up faU vidth it. But no ! The wave of bar- barism which rolled in from the North, overwhelm- ing society and sweeping away the empire, broke harmlessly at the feet of the Bishop of Rome. The shocks that overtm-ned dynasties and blotted out nationalities, left his power imtouched, his seat un- shaken. Nay, it was at that very hour, when society was perishing around him, that the Bishop of Rome laid anew the foundations of his power, and placed them where they might remain im- movable for all time. He now cast himself on a far stronger element than any the revolution had swept away. He now claimed to be the successor of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and the Vicar of Christ.
The canons of Councils, as recorded in Hardouin, show a stream of decisions from Pope Celestine, in the middle of the fifth century, to Pope Boniface II. in the middle of the sixth, claiming, directly or indirectly, this august prerogative. ' When the Bishop of Rome placed his chair, with all the prerogatives and dignities vested in it, upon this ground, he stood no longer upon a merely imperial foundation. Henceforward he held neither of Coesar nor of Rome ; he held immediately of Heaven. What one emperor had given, another emperor might take away. It did not suit the Pope to hold
2 Hai-d. i. 1477; ii. 787, 8SS. B.irou. vi. 205.
10
HISTORY OF PROTESTAIJTISM.
his office by so uncertam a tenure. He made haste, therefore, to place his supremacy where no future decree of emperor, no lapse of years, and no com- ing revolution could overturn it. He claimed to rest it upon a Divine foundation; he claimed to be not merely the chief of bishops and the first of patriarchs, but the vicar of the Most High God.
With the assertion of this dogma the system of the Papacy was completed essentially and doctrin- ally, but not as yet practically. It had to wait the full development of the idea of vicarship, which was not tin the days of Gregoiy VII. But here have we the embryotic seed — the vicarship to wit — out of which the vast structure of the Papacy has spiimg. This it is that plants at the centre of the system a pseudo-divine jiu'isdiction, and places the Pope above all bishops with their flocks, above all kings with then- subjects. This it is that gives the Pope two swords. This it is that gives him three crowns. The day when this dogma was proclaimed was the true bii-thday of the Popedom. The Bishop of Rome had till now sat in the seat of Ctesar; henceforward he was to sit in the seat of God.
From this time the growth of the Popedom was rapid indeed. The state of society favoured its development. Night had descended upon the world from the North ; and in the universal barbarism, the more prodigious any pretensions were, the more likely were they to find both belief and submission. The Goths, on arriving in their new settlements, beheld a religion which was served by magnificent cathedrals, imposing rites, and wealthy and power- fvd prelates, presided over by a chief priest, in whose reputed sanctity and ghostly authority they found again their own chief Druid. These rude warriors, who had overturned the throne of the Csesars, bowed down before the chair of the Popes. The evangelisation of these tribes was a task of easy accomplishment. The " Catholic faith," which they began to exchange for their Paganism or Arianism, consisted chiefly in their being able to recite the names of the objects of their worship, which they were left to adore with much the same rites as they had practised ia their native forests. They did not much concern themselves with the study of Christian doctrine, or tlie practice of Christian virtue. The age furnished but few manuals of the one, and still fewer models of the other.
The fii'st of the Gothic princes to enter the Roman communion was Clovis, King of the Franks. In fulfilment of a vow which he had made on the field of Tolbiac, where he vanquished the Allemanni, Clovis was baptised in the Cathedral of Rheims (496), with every circumstance of solemnity which
could impress a sense of the awfulness of the rite on the minds of its rude proselytes. Three thou- sand of his warlike subjects were baptised along with him. ' The Pope styled him " the eldest son of the Church," a title which the Kings of France, his successors, have worn these 1,400 yeai-s. When Clovis ascended fi-om the baptismal font he was the o'nly as well as the eldest son of the Church, for he alone, of all the new chiefs that now governed the West, had as yet submitted to the baptismal rite.
The threshold once crossed, others were not slow to follow. In the next century, the sixth, the Burgundians of Southern Gaul, the Visigoths of Spain, the Suevi of Portugal, and the Anglo-Saxons of Britain entered the pale of Rome. In the seventh centm-y the disposition was still gi-owing among the piinces of Western Europe to submit themselves and refer their disputes to the Pontifi" as their spiritual father. National assemblies were held twice a year, under the sanction of the bishops. The prelates made use of these gatherings to pro- cure enactments favourable to the propagation of the faith as held by Rome. These assemblies were first encouraged, then enjoined by the Pope, who came in this way to be regarded as a sort of Father or protector of the states of the West. Accordisgly we find Sigismund, King of Burgundy, ordering (554) that an assembly should be held for the future on the 6th of September eveiy year, "at which time the ecclesiastics are not so much en- grossed with the worldly cares elf husbandry." - The ecclesiastical conquest of Germany was in this century completed, and thus the spiritual dominions of the Pope were still further extended.
In the eighth centmy there came a moment of supreme peril to Rome. At almost one and the same time she was menaced by two dangers, which threatened to sweep her out of existence, but which, in their issue, contributed to strengthen her do- minion. On the west the victorious Saracens, having crossed the Pyi-enees and overrun the south of France, were watering their steeds at the Loire, and threatening to descend upon Italy and plant the Crescent in the room of the Cross. On the north, the Lombards — who, under Allioin, had established themselves in Central Italy two cen- times before — had burst the barrier of the Apen- nines, and were brandishing theii' swords at the gates of Rome. They were on the point of re- placing Catholic orthodoxy with the creed of Arianism. Having taken advantage of the icono- clast disputes to throw ofi" the imperial yoke, the
' Miiller, TJniv. History, vol. ii., p. 21 ; Lend., 1S18. ' Miiller, vol. ii., p. 23.
THE "DONATION" OF THE EMPEEOE. CONSTANTINE.
11
Pope could expect no aid from the Emperor of Con- stantinople. He turned his eyes to France. The promjat and powerful interposition of the Frankish arms saved the Papal chaii', now in extreme jeopardy. The intrepid Charles Martel drove back the Saracens (732), and Pepin, the Mayor of the palace, son of Charles Martel, who had just seized the throne, and needed the Papal sanction to colour his usurpation, with equal promptitude hastened to the Pope's help (Stephen II.) against the Lombards (754). Having vanquished them, he placed the keys of their towns upon the altar of St. Peter, and so laid the first foundation of the Pope's temporal sovereignty. The yet more illustrious son of Pepin, Charlemagne, had to repeat tliis service in the Pope's behalf The Lombards be- coming again troublesome, Charlemagne subdued them a second time. After his campaign he visited Eome (774). The youth of the city, bearing olive and palm branches, met him at the gates, the Pope and the clergy received him in the vestibule of St. Peter's, and entering " into the sepulchre where the bones of the apostles lie," he finally ceded to the pontifi" the territories of the conquered tribes.' It was in this way that Peter obtained his " patri- mony," the Church her dowiy, and the Pope his triple crown.
Tlie Pope had now attained two of the three grades of power that constitute his stupendous dignity. He had made himself a bishop of bishops, head of the Church, and he had become a crowned monarch. Did this content him ? No ! He said, " I win ascend the sides of the moimt ; I will plant my throne above the stars; I vdll be as God." Not content with being a bishop of bishops, and so governing the whole spiritual affau-s of Christendom, he aimed at becoming a king of kings, and so of governing the whole temporal affairs of the world. He aspired to supremacy, sole, absolute, and un- limited. Tliis alone was wanting to complete that colossal fabric of power, the Popedom, and towards this the pontiff now began to strive.
Some of the arts had recourse to in order to grasp the coveted dignity were of an extraordinary kind. An astounding document, purporting to have been written in the fourth century, although unheard of till now, was in the year 776 brought out of the darkness in which it had been so long suffered to remain. It was the "Donation" or Testament of tlie Emperor Constantino. Con- stantine, says the legend, found Sylvester- in one of the monasteries on Mount Soracte, and having mounted him on a mule, he took hold of his bridle
' JliiUer, vol. ii., p. 71.
rein, and walking all the way on foot, the emperor conducted Sylvester to Rome, and placed him upon the Papal tlu-one. But this was as nothing com- pared with the vast and splendid inheritance which Constantino conferred on him, as the following quotation from the deed of gift to which we have referred will show : —
" We attribute to the See of Peter all the dignity, all the glory, all the authority of the imperial power. Furthermore, we give to Sylvester and to his successors our palace of the Lateran, which is incontestably the finest palace on the earth; we give him our crown, our mitre, our diadem, and all our imperial vestments ; we trans- fer to him the imperial dignity. We bestow on the holy Pontiff in free gift the city of Rome, and all the western cities of Italy. To cede precedence to him, we divest ourselves of our authority over all those provinces, and we withdraw from Rome, transferring the seat of our empire to Byzantium ; inasmuch as it is not proper that an earthly emperor should preserve the least authority, where God hath established the head of his religion." -
A rare piece of modesty this on the part of the Popes, to keep this invaluable document beside them for 400 years, and never say a word about it; and equally admirable the policy of selecting the darkness of the eighth century as the fittest time for its publication. To quote it is to re- fute it. It was probably forged a little before A.D. 754. It was composed to repel the Longobards on the one side, and the Greeks on the other, and to influence the mind of Pepin. In it, Constan- tino is made to speak in the Latin of the eighth centiuy, and to addi-ess Bishop Sylvester as Prince of the Apostles, Vicar of Christ, and as having authority over the four great thrones, not yet set up, of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Con- stantinople. It was probably written by a priest of the Lateran Church, and it gained its object — that is, it led Pepin to bestow on the Pope the Exarchate of Ravenna, with twenty towns to ftir' nish oil for the lamps in the Roman chiu-ches.
During more than 600 years Rome impressively cited this deed of gift, inserted it in her codes, per- mitted none to question its genuineness, and burned those who refused to believe in it. The first dawn of light in the sixteenth century suificed to discover the cheat.
2 We quote from the copy of the document in Pope Leo's letter in Hardouin's Collection. Epistola I., LeonU Papal IX.; Acta Conciliorum et Epistolce Decretalcs, tom. vi., pp. 934, 936 ; Parisiis, 1714. The English reader will find a copy of the pretended original document in full in Historical Essay on the Power of the Popes, vol. ii., Ap-- pendix, tr. from French ; London, 1838.
"DECRETALS OF ISIDORE."
13
In the follo^ving century another document of a like extraordinary character was given to the world. We refer to the " Decretals of Isidore." These wei'o concocted about the year 845. They pro- fessed to Le a collection of the letters, rescripts, and
Greeks have reproachfully termed " the native home of inventions and falsifications of documents." The writer, who professed to be living Ln the first cen- tury, painted the Church of Rome in the niagniti- cence which she attained only in the ninth ; and
rEXA.Nt'E OF UENUtV IV
GEKMAJiY.
bulls of the early pastors of the Chiu-ch of Rome — Anacletus, Clement, and others, down to Sylvester — the very men to wliom the tei'ms " rescript" and " bull " were unknown. The burden of this com- pilation was the pontifical supremacy, which it aflirmed had existed from the first age. It was the clumsiest, but the most successful, of all the forgeries which have emanated from what the
made the pastors of the first age speak in the pompous words of the Popes of the Middle Ages. Abounding in absurdities, contradictions, and ana- chronisms, it affords a measure of the intelligence of the age that accepted it as authentic. It was eagerly laid hold of by Nicholas I. to prop up and extend the fabric of his power. His successors made it the arsenal from which they drew their
14
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
weapons of attack against both bishops and kings. It became the foundation of the canon law, and continues to be so, although there is not now a Popish writer who does not acknowledge it to be a piece of impostiu'e. " Never," says Father de Rignon, " was there seen a forgery so audacious, so extensive, so solemn, so persevering."' Yet the discovery of the fraud has not shaken the system. The learned Dupiu supposes that these decretals were fabricated liy Benedict, a deacon of Mentz, who was the first to publish them, and that, to give them greater currency, he prefixed to them the name of Isidore, a bishop who flourished in Seville in the seventh century. " Without the pseudo- Isidore," says Janus, " there oould have been no Gregory VII. The Isidorian forgeries were the broad foundation which the Gregorians built upon."^ All the while the Papacy was working on an- other line for the emancipation of its chief from interference and control, whether on the side of the
people or on the side of the kings. In early times the bishops were elected by the people.' By-aud- by they came to be elected by the clergy, with con- sent of the people ; but gradually the people were excluded from all share in the matter, first in the Eastern Church, and then in the Western, although traces of popular election are fomid at Milan so late as the eleventh centuiy. The election of the Bishoj) of Rome in early times was iir no way diflerent from that of other bishops — that is, he was chosen by the people. Next, the consent of the emperor came to be necessary to the validity of the popiilar choice. Then, the emperor alone elected the Pope. Next, the cardinals claimed a voice in the matter ; they elected and presented the object of their choice to the emperor for confirmation. Last of all, the cardinals took the business entirely into their own hands. Thus gradually was the way paved for the full emancipation and absolute supremacy of the Popedom.
CHAPTER IV.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY FROJI GKEUORY VII. TO BONIFACE VIII.
ffhe War of Investitures— Gre^'ory VII. and Henry IV.— The Mitre Triumphs over the Empire— Noon of the Papacy imder Innocent III.— Continued to Boniface VIII. — First and Last Estate of the Roman Pastors Contrasted — Seven Centiu-ies of Continuous Success — Interpreted by Some as a Proof that the Papacy is Divine — Eeasons erplaining.this Marvellous Success — Eclipsed by the Gospel's Progress.
We come now to the last great struggle. There lacked one grade of pov/er to comi)lete and crown this stupendous fabric of dominion. The spiritual supremacy was achieved in the seventh centur}', the temporal sovereignty was attained in the eighth ; it wanted only the pontifical supremacy — sometimes, although impropei'ly, styled the tempo- ral supremacy — to make the Pope supreme over kings, as he had already become over peoples and bishojjs, and to vest in him a jurisdiction that has not its like on earth — a jurisdiction that is unique, inasmuch as it ai-rogates all powers, absorbs all rights, and spurns all limits. Destured, before terminating its career, to ci-ush beneath its iron foot thrones and nations, and masking an ambition
' Etudes B^ligieitses, November, 1866. - The Pope and ihe Council, by "Jani's, London, 18G9.
p. 10-5;
as astute as Lucifer's with a dissimulation as pro- foixnd, this power advanced at first with noiseless steps, and stole uj)on the world as night steals upon it ; but as it neared the goal its strides grew longer and swifter, till at last it vaulted over the throne of nionarchs into the seat of God.
Tliis great war we shall now jwoceed to consider. When the Popes, at an early stage, claimed to be the vicars of Christ, they virtually challenged that boundless jurisdiction of which their proudest era beheld them in actual possession. But they knew that it would be imprudent, indeed impossible,
' The above statement regarding the mode of electing bishops during the first three centuries rests on the authority of Clement, Bishop of Home, in the first cen- tury; Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, in the third century; and of Gregory Nazianzen. See also De Dominis, Do Repub. Eccles.; Blondel, Apologm; Dean Waddington; Carrow, Supremacy ; and Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. 1.
TRIUMPH OF THE MITEE OVER THE EMPIRE.
15
as yet to assert it in actual fact. Their motto was Spes messis in semiiie. Discerning " the harvest in the seed," tliey were content meanwhile to lodge the principle of supremacy in their creed, and in the general mind of Europe, knowing that future ages would fructifj' and ripen it. Towards this they began to work quietly, yet skilfully and perse- veringly. At length came overt and open mea- sures. It was now the year 1073. The Papal chair was filled by perhaps the greatest of all the Popes, Gregory VII., the noted Hildebrand. Daring and ambitious beyond all who had pre- ceded, and beyond most of those who have followed him on the Papal thi'one, Gregory fully grasped the great idea of Theocracy. He held that the reign of the Pope was but another name for the reign of God, and he resolved never to rest till that idea had been realised in the sub- jection of all authority and power, spiritual and temporal, to the chair of Peter. " When he drew out," says Janus, " the whole system of Papal omni- potence in twenty-seven theses in his ' Dictatus,' these theses were partly mere repetitions or corol- laries of the Isidorian decretals ; partly ho and his friends sought to give them the appearance of tra- dition and antiquity by new fictions."' We may take the followng as samples. The eleventh maxim says, " the Pope's name is the chief name in the world;" the twelfth teaches that "it is lawful for him to depose emperors ;" the eighteenth affirms that " his decision is to be withstood liy none, but he alone may annul those of all men." The nineteenth declares that "he can be judged by no one." The twenty-fifth vests in him the absolute power of deposing and restoring bishops, and the twenty- seventh the power of amiiiUing the allegiance of subjects." Such was the gage that Gregory flung down to the kings and nations of the world — we say of the world, for the pontifical supremacy embraces all who dwell upon the earth.
Now began the war between the mitre and the empire ; Gregory's object in this war being to wrest from the emperors the power of appointmg the bishops and the clergy generally, and to assume into his own sole and irresponsible hands the whole of that intellectual and spiritual machinery by which Christendom was governed. The strife was a Idoody one. The mitre, though sustaining occasional re- verses, continued nevertheless to gain steadily upon the empire. The spu-it of the times helped the priesthood in their struggle witli the civil power.
■ The Pope and the Council, p. 107.
- Binnius, C'onciKd. vol. iii, pars. 2., p. 297; Col. Agi-ip., 1618.
The age was superstitious to the core, and though in no wise spiritual, it was very thoroughly ecclesi- astical. The crusades, too, broke the spirit and drained the wealth of the princes, while the grow- ing power and augmenting riches of the clergy cast the balance ever more and more against the State.
For a brief space Gregoiy VII. tasted in his own case the luxury of wielding this more than mortal power. There came a gleam through the awful darkness of the tempest he had raised — not final victory, which was yet a century distant, but its presage. He had the satisfaction of seeing the emperor, Henry IV. of Germany — whom he had smitten ^vith excommunication — barefooted, and in raiment of sackcloth, waiting three days and nights at the castle-gates of Canossa, amid the winter drifts, suing for forgiveness. But it was for a mo- ment only that Hildebrand stood on this dazzling pinnacle. The fortune of war very quickly turned. Henry, the man whom the Pope had so sorely humiliated, became victor in his turn. Gregory died, an exile, on the pi-omontoi-y of Salerno ; but his successors espovised his project, and strove by wiles, by arms, and by anathemas, to reduce the world under the sceptre of the Papal Theocracy. For well-nigh two dismal centuries the conflict was maintained. How truly melancholy the re- cord of these times ! It exhibits to our sorrowing gaze many a stricken field, many an empty throne, many a city sacked, many a spot deluged ^vith blood !
Biit through all this confusion and misery the idea of Gregory was perseveringly pursued, till at last it was realised, and the mitre was beheld trium- phant over the empire. It was the fortune or the calamity of Innocent III. (1198 — 1216) to celebrate this great victory. Now it was that the pontifical supremacy reixched its full development. One man, one will again governed the world. It is with a sort of stupefied awe that we look back to the thirteenth century, and see in the foreground of the receding storm this Colossus, uprearmg itself in the person of Innocent III., on its head all the mitres of the Cliurch, and in its hand all the sceptres of the State.
" In each of the tliree leading objects which Rome has pursued," says Hallam — "independent sovereignty, supremacy over the Chi-istian Church, control over the princes of the earth — it was the fortune of this pontiff' to conquer."' "Rome," he says again, " inspired during this age all the terror of her ancient name ; she was once more mistrass of
3 Hallam, ii. 27G.
16
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
the world, and kings were her vassals."' She had fought a gi-eat fight, and now she celebrated an un- equalled triumph. Innocent appointed all bishops; he summoned to his tribunal all causes, from the gravest affairs of mighty kingdoms to the private concerns of the luimble citizen. He claimed all kingdoms as his fiefs, all monarchs as his vassals ; and launched with unsparing hand the bolts of excommunication against all who withstood his l)ontifical will. Hildebrand's idea was now fully realised. The pontifical supremacy was beheld in its plenitude — the jilenitude of spiiitual power, and that of tempoi'al power. It was the noon of the Papacy ; but the noon of the Papacy was the mid- night of the world.
The grandeur which the Papacy now enjoyed, and the jurisdiction it wielded, have received dogmatic expression, and one or two selections will enable it to paint itself as it was seen in its noon. Pope Innocent III. affirmed " that the pontifical authority so much exceeded the royal power as the sun doth the nioon."^ Nor could he find words fitly to desciibe his own fonnidable functions, save those of Jehovah to his jn-ophet Jeremiah : " See, I have set thee over tha nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pidl down, and to destroy, and to throw down." "The Church my spouse," we find the same Pope saying, " is not married to me without bringing me something. She hath given me a dowry of a price beyond all price, the plenitude of sjnritual things, and the extent of things temporal;' the greatness and abundance of both. She hath given me the mitre in token of things spii-itual, the crown in token of the temporal ; the mitre for the priesthood, and the crown for the kingdom ; making me the lieu- tenant of him who hath written upon his vesture, and on his thigh, ' the King of kings and the Lord of lords.' I enjoy alone the plenitude of power, that others may say of me, next to God, 'and out of his fulness have Ave received.' " * " We declare," says Boniface VIII. (1294—1303), in his bull Unam Sanctam, " define, pronounce it to be neces- sary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontifi"." This subjection is declared in the bull to extend to all afiaii-s. " One sword," says the Pope, " must be under another, and the temporal authority must be subject to the spiritual power ; whence, if the earthly power go
' Hallam, ii. 284.
' P. Innocent III. in Decret. Greg., lib. i., tit. 33. ' " Spiritualium plenitudinem, et latitudinem tempo- ralium." ^ Itinerar. Ital., jiart ii., De C'or©n. Eom. Pont.
astray, it must be judged by the spiritual."* Such are a few of the "great words" which were heard to issue from the Vatican Mount, that new Sinai, which, like the old, encompassed by fiery terrors, had upreai'ed itself in the midst of the astonished and affi'iglited nations of Christendom.
What a contrast between the first and the last estate of the jtastors of the Roman Church ! — be- tween the humility and ^loverty of the first century, and the splendour and power in which the thirteenth saw them enthroned ! This contrast has not escaped the notice of the greatest of Italian poets. Dante, in one of his lightning flashes, has brought it before us. He describes the first pastoi's of the Church as coming
-" barefoot and lean.
Eating their bread, as chanced, at the first table." And addressing Peter, he says : — •
" E'en thou went'st forth in poverty and hunger To set the goodly plant that, from the Vine It once was, now is grown unsightly bramble." '
Petrarch dwells repeatedly and with moi'e amplifi- cation on the same theme. We quote only the first and last stanzas of his sonnet on the Church of Rome : —
" The fire of wrathfvxl heaven alight. And all thy harlot tresses smite.
Base city ! Thou from humble fare. Thy acorns and thy water, rose To greatness, rich with others' woes,
Efijoicing in the ruin thou didst bear.
" In former days thou wast not laid On down, nor under cooling shade ;
Thou naked to tlie winds wast given. And through the sharp and thorny road Thy feet without the sandals trod;
But now thy life is such it smells to heaven." ''
There is something here out of the ordinary course. Wc have no desire to detract from the worldly wisdom of the Popes; they were, in that respect, the ablest race of rulers the world ever saw. Their enterprise soared as high above the vastest scheme of other potentates and conquerors, as their ostensible means of achieving it fell below theirs. To build such a fabric of dominion upon the Gospel, every
^ "Oportet gladium esse sub gladio, et temporalem authoritatem spirituali subjici potestati. Ergo, si deviat terrena potestas judicabitur a potestate spirituali." (Corp. Jur. Can. a Pitlueo, torn. II., Ertrav., lib. i., tit. viii., cap. 1; Paris, 1671.)
'' Parndiso, canto xxiv.
' Lc Biine del Petrarca, tome i., p. 325, ed. Lod. Casteh
PROGRESS' OF ROPERY AND THE GOSPEL COMPARED.
17
line of which repudiates and condemns it ! to impose it upon the world without an army and without a fleet ! to bow the necks not of ignorant peoples only, but of miglity potentates to it ! nay, to persuade tlie latter to assist in establishing a power which they could hardly but foresee would crush themselves ! to piu'sue this scheme through a succession of cen- turies without once meeting any serious check or repulse — for of the 130 Popes between Boniface III. (606), who, in. partnership with Phocas, laid the foundations of the Papal grandeur, and Gregory VII., who first realised it, onward through other two centuries to Innocent III. (1216) and Boniface VIII. (1303), who at last put the top-stone upon it, not one lost an inch of ground whicli his prede- cessor had gained ! — to do all this is, we repeat, something out of the ordinaiy course. There is nothing like it again in the whole history of the world.
This success, continued through seven centuries, was audaciously interpreted into a j^roof of the divinity of the Papacy. Behold, it has been said, when the throne of Cresar was overturned, how the chair of Peter stood erect ! Behold, when the barbarous nations rushed like a torrent into Italy, overwhelming laws, extinguishing know- ledge, and dissolving society itself, how the ark of the Church rode in safety on the flood ! Be- hold, when the "^dctorious hosts of the Saracen approached the gates of Italy, how they were turned back ! Behold, when the mitre waged its great contest with the empire, how it triumphed ! Behold, when the Reformation broke out, and it seemed as if the kingdom of the Pope was numbered and finished, how three centiu'ies have been added to its sway ! Behold, in fine, when revolution broke out in France, and swept like a whii-lwind over Europe, bearing down thrones and dynasties, how the bark of Peter outlived the storm, and rode triiunphant above the waves that engulfed appa- rently stronger structiu-es ! Is not this the Church of which Christ said, " The gates of hell shall not prevail against it 'I "
What else do the words of Cardinal Baronius mean 1 Boasting of a supposed donation of the kingdom of Hungary to the Roman See by Stephen, he says, ." It fell out by a wonderful providence of God, that at the very time when the Roman Church might appear ready to fall and perish, even then distant kings approach the Apostolic See, which they acknowledge and venerate as the only temjjle of the universe, the sanctuary of piety, the pillar of truth, the immovable rock. Beholil, kings — not from the East, as of old they came to the cradle of Christ, but from the North — led by faith, they
humbly approach the cottage of the fisher, the Church of Rome herself, ofl'ering not only gifts out of their treasures, but bringmg even kingdoms to her, and asking kingdoms from her. Whoso is ■wise, and \vill record these things, even he shall understand the lovingkindness of the Lord." ^
But the success of the Papacy, when closely ex- amined, is not so surprising as it looks. It camiot be justly pronounced legitimate, or fairly won. Rome has ever been swimming with the tide. The evils and passions of society, which a true benefactress would have made it her business to cm'e — at least, to alleviate — Rome has studied rather to foster into strength, that she might be borne to power on the fold current which she herself had created. Amid battles, bloodshed, and confusion, has her path lain. The edicts of subservient Councils, the foi-geries of hireling priests, the amis of craven monarchs, and the thunderbolts of excommuni- cation have never been wanting to open her path. Exploits won by weapons of this sort are what her historians delight to chronicle. These are the victories that constitute her glory ! And then, there remains yet another and great deduction from the apparent grandeur of her success, in that, after all, it is the success of only a few — a caste — ■ the clergy. For although, during her early career, the Roman Cliiu'ch i-endered certain important services to society — of which it will delight us to make mention in fitting place — when .she grew to matiu-ity, and was able to develop her real genius, it was felt and acknowledged by all that her principles implied the ruin of all interests save her own, and that there was room in the world for none but herself If her march, as shown in history down to the sixteenth century, is ever onwards, it i» not less true that behind, on her path, lie the ■\vi-ecks of nations, and the ashes of literatm-e, of liberty, and of civilisation.
Nor can we help observing that the career of Rome, with all the fictitious brilliance that encom- passes it, is utterly eclipsed when placed beside the silent and sublime progress of the Gospel. Tlie latter we see wiiming its way over mighty oljstacles solely by the force and sweetness of its o\vn trvith. It touches the deep wounds of society only to heal them. It speaks not to awaken but to hush the rough voice of strife and war. It enlightens, pimfies, and blesses men wherever it comes, and it does all this so gently and unboastingly ! Reviled, it re- viles not agam. For curses it returns blessings. It imsheathes no sword ; it spills no blood. Cast
' Baronius, Annal., ann. 1000, torn, x., col. 963 ; Col. Agrip., 1609.
18
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
into chains, its victories are as many as when free, and more glorious ; dragged to the stake and burned, from the ashes of the martyr there start up a thousand confessors, to speed on its career and swell the glory of its triumj)h. Compared with this how different has been the career of Rome ! —
— as different, iji fact, as the thunder-cloud which comes onward, mantling the skies in gloom and scathing the earth with fiery bolts, is difi'erent fi'om the morning descending from the mountain-tops, scattering around* it the silveiy light, and awaken- ing at its presence songs of joy.
CHAPTER V.
irEDI.r.VAL PROTESTANT WITNESSES.
Ambrose of Milan— His Diocese— His Thoology— Rufinus, Presbyt,pr of Aquiloia— Laui-entius of Milan— Tlio Bishops of the Grisons — Churches of Lomharily in Seventh and Eighth Centuries — Claude in the Ninth Century — His Labours — Outline of his Theology — His Doctrine of the Eucharist — His Battle against Images — His Views on the Eoman Primacy — Proof thence arising — Councils in France approve his Views — Question of the Services of the Eoman Church to the Western Nations.
The apostaoy was not universal. At no time did God leave his ancient Gosj)el without witnesses. When one body of confessors yielded to the dark- ness, or was cut off by violence, another arose in some other land, so that there was no atje in
which, ill some counti-y or other of Christendom, public testimony was not borne against the errors of Rome, and in behalf of the Gospel which she sought to destroy.
The country in which we find the earliest of
AMBROSE OF MILAN.
19
tliese Protesters Ls Italy. The Sec of Rome, in those (lays, embraced only tlie capital and the .surrounding provinces. The diocese of Milan, which included the plain of Lombardy, the Alj)S of Piedmont, and the southern provinces of France, greatly exceeded it in extent.' It is an undoubted historical foct that this powerful diocese wa.s not then tributary to the Papal chair. " The Bishops of Milan," says Pope Pelagius I. (555), " do not
the eleventh century, he admits that " for 200 years together the Church of Milan had been separated from the Church of Rome." Even then, though on the very eve of the Hildelirandine era, the destruction of the independence of the diocese was not accomplished without a pi-otest on the part of its clergy, and a tumult on the part of the people. The former affirmed that " the Ambrosian Church was not subject to the laws of
VIEW OF TVEiy.
come to Rome for ordination." He farther in- forms us that this " was an ancient custom of theirs."- Pope Pelagius, however, attempted to subvert this " ancient custom," but his efforts resulted only in a wider estrangement between the two dioceses of Milan and Rome. For when Platina speaks of the subjection of Milan to the Pope under Stephen IX.,'' in the middle of
' AUii, Ancient Churches of Piedmont, chap. 1; LonJ., 1690. M'Crie, Italy, p. 1 ; Edin., 183.'?.
- " Is uios antiquus fuit." (Labbei et G.ib. Cossartii Concil., torn, vi., col. 482; Vcnetiis, 1729.)
^ A mistake of the historian. It was under Nicholas II. (1059) that the independence of Milan was extinguished.
Rome ; that it had been alwaijs free, and could not, with honour, surrender its liberties." The latter liroke out into clamour, and threatened violence to Damianus, the deputy sent to receive theii' sub- mission. " The people gi-ew into higher ferment," says Baronius ;* " the bells were rung ; the episco- pal palace beset ; and the legate threatened with death." Traces of its early independence remain to this day in the Rito or Culto Ambrogiano,
Platina's words are: — " Che [chiesa di Milano] era forse dueento anni stata dalla chiesa di Roma separata." (His- ioria delle Vite dei Sommi Pontefici, p. 128; Venetia, 1600.) •• Baronins, Annal., ann. 1059, tom. xi., col. 277 ; Col. Agi-ip., 1609.
20
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
still ill use tlu'oiigliout tlie wliole of the ancient Archbislioprio of Milan.
One consequence of this ecclesiastical independ- ence of Northern Italy was, that the corniptions of wliich Rome was the source were late in being introduced into Milan and its diocese. The evan- gelical light shone there some centuries after the darkness had gathered in the southern pai't of the peninsula. Ambrose, who died A.d. 397, was Bishop of Milan for twenty-tlu-ee years. His theology, and that of his diocese, was in no essen- tial respects different from that wliich Protestants hold at this day. The Bible alone was lus rule of faith ; Christ alone was the foundation of the Churcli ; the justification of the sinner and the remission of sins were not of human merit, but by the expiatory sacrifice of the Cross ; there were but two Sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and in the latter Christ was held to be present only figuratively.' Such is a summary of the faith professed and tauglit by the chief bishop of the north of Italy in the end of the fourth centuiy.-
Rufinus, of Aquileia, firat metropolitan in the diocese of Milan, taught substantially the same doctrine in the fifth century. His treatise on the Creed no more agrees with the catecliism of the Council of Trent than does the catechism of Protestants.' His successors at Aquileia, so far as can be gathered from the writings which they have left behind them, shared the sentiments of Rufiiius.
To come to the sixth century, we find Lauren- tius, Bishop of Milan, holding that tlie penitence of the heart, without tlie absolution of a priest, suflices for pardon ; and in the end of the same century (a.d. 590) we find the bishops of Italy and of the Grisons, to the number of nine, reject- ing the communion of the Pope, a.s a heretic, so little then was the infollibility believed in, or the Roman supremacy acknowledged.'' In the seventh century we find Mansuetus, Bishop of Milan, declaring that the whole faith of the Church is contained in the Apostle's Creed ; from which it is evident that he did not regard as necessary to salvation the additions which Rome had then begun to make, and the many ,slie has since appended to the apostolic doctrine. The Ambrosian
' Allix, Chvrches of Piedmont, chap. 3.
- "This is not todily but spiritual food," says St. Ambrose, in his Booh of Mysteries and Sacraments, " for the body of the Lord is spiritual." (Dupiu, Eccles. Hist., vol. ii., cent. 4.)
^ Allix, Churches of Piedmont, chap. 4.
* Ibid., chap. 5.
Liturgy, which, as we have said, continues to be used in the diocese of MUan, is a monument to the comparative purity of tlie faith and worship of the early Churches of Lombardy.
In the eighth centmy we find Paulinus, Bishop of Aqifileia, declaring that " we feed upon the divine nature of Jesus Christ, which caimot be said but only with respect to believers, and must be understood metaphorically." Thus manifest is it that he rejected the corporal manducation of the Church of Rome. He also warns men against approaching God tlu'Ough any other mediator or advocate than Jesus Christ, aflSiming that he alone was conceived without sin ; that he is the only Redeemer, and that he is the one founda- tion of the Church. " If any one," says Allix, "■vvill take the pains to examine the opinions of this bishoji, he will tind it a hard thing not to take notice that he denies what the Church of Rome aftinns with relation to all these ai-ticle.«, and that he alfirms what the Church of Rome denies."^
It must be acknowledged that these men, de- spite their great talents and their ardent piety, had not entii'ely escaped the degeneracy of their age. The light that was in them was partly mixed with darkness. Even the great Ambrose was touched with a veneration for relics, and a weakness for other superstitions of liis times. But as regards the cardinal doctrines of salvation, the faith of these men was essentially Protestant, and stood out in bold antagonism to the leading principles of the Roman creed. And such, with more or less of clearness, must be held to have been the profession of the pastore over whom they presided. And the Churches they ruled and taught were numerous and "widely planted. They flourished in the towns and villages which dot the vast plain that stretches like a garden for 200 miles along the foot of the Alps ; they existed in those romantic and fertile valleys over which the great mountains hang then- pine forests and snows, and, passing the summit, they extended into the southern provinces of France, even as far as to the Rhone, on the banks of which Polycarp, the disciple of John, in early times had planted the Gospel, to be watered in the succeeding centuries by the blood of thou- sands of martyi's.
Darkness gives relief to the light, and error necessitates a fuller development and a clearer definition of truth. On this jJi'inciple the ninth centui-y produced the most remarkable perhaps of all those great champions who strove to set
■' Allix, Churches of Piedmont, chap. 8.
CLAUDIUS OF TURIN.
21
limits to the gi-owing snpei-stition, and to presence, pure and iindefiled, the faith which apostles had preached. The mantle of Ambrose descended on Claudivis, Archbishoii of Tui-iii. This man beheld with dismay the stealthy approaches of a power which, putting out the eyes of men, bowed their necks to its yoke, and bent their knees to idols. He grasped the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and the battle wliich he so courage- ously waged, delayed, thoTigh it could not prevent, the fall of liis Church's independence, and for two centuiies longer the light continued to shine at the foot of the Alps. Claudius was an earnest and indefatigable stvident of Holy Scripture. That Book can-ied him back to the first age, and set him down at the feet of apostles, at the feet of One gi'eater than apostles ; and, while dai'kness was descending on the earth, around Claude still shone the day.
The truth, drawn from its primeval fountains, he proclaimed throughout his diocese, which included the valleys of the Waldenses. Wliere his voice could not reach, he laboured to convey instruction by his pen. He wi-ote commentaries on the Gospels ; he published expositions of almost all the epistles of Paul, and several books of tlie Old Tes- tament ; and thus he furni.shed his contemporaries with the means of judging how far it became them to submit to a jurisdiction so manifestly usurped as that of Rome, or to embrace tenets so undeniably novel as tliose which she was now foisting upon the world.^ The sum of what Claude maintained was that there is but one Sovereign in the Church, and he is not on earth ; that Peter had no superiority over the other apostles, save in this, that he wa.s the first who preached the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles ; that human merit is of no avail for sal- vation, and that faith alone saves lis. On tliis car- dinal point he insists with a clearness and breadth wliich remind one of Luther. The authority of tradition he repudiates, prayers for the dead he condemns, as also the notion that the Cluu-ch cannot err. As regards relics, instead of holiness he can find in them nothing but rottenness, and advises that they be instantly returned to the gi-ave, from wliich they ought never to have been taken.
' "Of all these works there is nothing printed," says Allix (p. 60), "but Ids commentary upon the Epistle to the Galatians. The monks of St. Germain have his commen- tary upon all the epistles in MS., in two vohimes, wliich were found in the librai-y of the Abbey of Fleury, near Orleans. They have also Ms MS. eommentarics on Levi- ticus, wliich formerly belonged to the library of St. Remy at Eheims. As for his commentary on St. Matthew, there are several MS. copies of it in England, as well as elsewhere." See also list of his works in Dupin.
Of the Eucharist, he writes in his commentary on Matthew (a.d. 81.5) in a way which shows tliat he stood at the gi-eatest distance from the o]jinions wliicJi Paschasius Radbertus broached eighteen years afterwards. Paschasius Radbertus, a monk, aftei-wards Abbot of Corbei, pretended to explain witli precision the manner in which the body and blood of Christ are present in the Eucharist. He published (831) a treatise, " Concerning the Sacra- ment of the Body and Blood of Christ." His doc- trine amounted to the two follomng propositions : — 1. Of the bread and wine nothing remains after consecration but the outward figure, under which the body and blood of Christ are really and locally present. 2. This body present in the Eucharist is the same body that was born of the Virgin, that suffered upon the cross, and was raised from the grave. This new doctrine excited the astonishment of not a few, and called forth several powerful opponents — amongst others, Johannes Scotus.^ Claudius, on the contrary, thought that the Supper was a memorial of Christ's death, and not a repeti- tion of it, and tliat the elements of bread and -wine were only symbols of the flesh and blood of the Saviour.' It is clear from this that transubstan- tiation was unknown in the ninth century to the Churches at the foot of the Alps. Nor was it the Bishop of Tui-in only who held this doctrine of the Eucharist; we are entitled to infer that the bishops of neighbouring dioceses, both north and south of the Alps, shared the opinion of Claude. For though they differed from him on some other points, and did not conceal their difference, they expressed no dissent from his views respecting the Sacrament, and in proof of their concurrence in his general policy, strongly urged him to continue his expositions of the Sacred Scriptures. Specially was this the case as regiirds two leading ecclesiastics of that day, Jonas, Bislioj) of Orleans, and the Abbot Theodemii'us. Even in the centuiy following, we find certain bishops of the nortli of Italy saj-ing that " wicked men eat the goat and not the lamb," language wholly incomprehensible from the lips of men who believe in tranrmbstantiation.'
The worsliip of images was then making rapid strides. The Bishop of Rome was the gi-eat advo- cate of this ominous innovation ; it was on tliis point that Claude fought his great battle. He resisted it with all the logic of his pen and all the force of his eloquence ; he condemned the practice
- See Mosheim, Eeclcs. Hist., cent. P.
^ " Hie [panis] ad corpus Christi mystico, illud [vinum] refertur ad sanguinem." (MS. of Com. on Matthen'.)
^ Allix, chap. Id.
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
as idolatrous, and he purged those churches in his diocese which liad begun to admit representations of saints and divine persons within their walls, not even sparing the cross itself.' It is instructive to mai-k that the advocates of images in the ninth century justified their use of them by the very same arguments which Romanists employ at this day ; and that Claude refutes them on the same gi'ound taken by Protestant writers still. We do not worship the image, say the foi-mer, we use it simply as the medium through which our worship ascends to him whom the image represents ; and if we kiss the cross, we do so in adoration of him who died upon it. But, replied Claude — as the Protestant polemic at this hour replies — in kneeling to the image, or kissing the cross, you do what the second commandment forbids, and what the Scripture con- demns as idolatry. Your worship terminates in the image, and is the worship not of God, but simply of the image. With his argument the Bishop of Turin mingles at times a little raillery. "God commands one thing," says he, "and these people do quite the contrary. God commands us to bear our cross, and not to worship it ; but these are all for worshipping it, whereas they do not bear it at all. To serve God after this manner is to go away from him. For if we ought to adore the cross because Christ was fastened to it, how many other things are there which touched Jesus Christ ! Why don't they adore mangei-s and old clothes, because he was laid in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes ? Let them adore asses, because he entered into Jerusalem upon the foal of an ass."^
On the subject of the Roman primac)', he leaves it in no wise doubtful what liis sentiments were. " We know very well," says he, " that this passage of the Gospel is very iU iniderstood — ' Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church : and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,' under pretence of wliicli words the stupid and ignorant common people, destitute of all spiritual knowledge, betake themselves to Rome in hopes of acquiring eternal life. The ministiy
' Dupin, Eccles. Hist., cent. 9. The worship of images was decreed by the second Council of Nice; but that decree was rejected by France, Spain, Germany, and the diocese of Milan. The worship of images was moreover condemned by the Council of Frankfort, 79-t. Claude, in his letter to Tlieodemir, says :—" Appointed bishop by Louis, I came to Turin. I found all the churches full of
the filth of abominations and images If
Christians venerate the images of saints, thoy have not abandoned idols, but only changed their names." {Mag. Bib., tome iv-, part 2, p. 149.)
2 Allix, chap. P.
belongs to all the true superintendents and pastors of the Church, who discharge the same as long as they are in this world ; and when they have paid the debt of death, others succeed in their places, who enjoy the same authority and power. Know thou that he only is apostolic who is the keeper and guardian of the apostle's doctrine, and not he who boasts lumself to be seated in the chair of the apostle, and in the meantime doth not acquit himself of the chai-ge of the apostle."^
We have dwelt the longer on Claude, and the doctrines which he so powerfully advocated by both voice and pen, because, although the picture of his times — a luxurious clergy but an ignorant people, Churches growing in magnificence but declining in piety, images adored but the true God forsaken — is not a pleasant one, yet it establishes two points of great importance. The fii'st is that the Bishop of Rome had not yet succeeded in compelling iniiversal submission to his jurisdiction ; and the second that he had not yet been able to persuade all the Churches of Christendom to adopt his novel doctrines, aiul follow his peculiar customs. Claude was not left to fight that battle alone, nor was he crushed as he inevitably would have been, had Rome been the domiaiant power it came soon thereafter to be. On the conti'aiy, this Protestant of the ninth centuiy received a large amount of sympathy and support both from bishops and from synods of his time. Agobardus, the Bishop of Lyons, fought by the side of Ids brother of Turin.* In fact, he was as great an iconoclast as Claude himself* The emperor, Louis the Pious (le Debonnaire), summoned a Council (824) of " the most learned and judicious bishops of his realm," says Dupin, to discuss this question. For in that age the emperors summoned sjTiods and appomted bishops. And when the Coimcil had assembled, did it wait till Peter should speak, or a Pajjal allocution had decided the point ? " It knew no other way," saj^s Dupin, " to settle the question, than by determining what they should find upon the most impartial examination to be true, by plain text of Holy Scriptiu-e, and the judgment of the Fathers."' This Coimcil at Paris justified most of the principles for which Claude had contended,' as the great Council at Frankfort (794) had done be- fore it. It is worthy of notice further, as bearing on this point, that only two men stood up publicly to ojjposc Claude during the twenty years he was
^ Allii, pp. 76, 77.
■■ Dupin, Eccles. Hist., cent. 9.
' Albx, chap. 9.
^ Dupin, vol. vii., p. 2; Loud., 1093.
7 Allix, cent. 9.
CLAIM OF THE CHURCH OF ROME AS A CIVILISER.
n
incessantly occupied in this controversy. The first was Dimgulas, a i-echise of tlie Abbey of St. Denis, an Italian, it is believed, and biassed naturally in favour of the opinions of the Pojie ; and the second was Jonas, Bishop of Orleans, who differed from Claude on but the one question of images, and only to the extent of tolerating their use, but condemning as idolatrous their wor.ship — a distinction which it is easy to maintain in theory, but impossible to observe, as experience has demonstrated, in. jiractice. And here let us inteipose an obsei-vation. We speak at times of the signal benefits which the "Church " conferred upon the Gothic nations during the Middle Ages. She put herself in tlie place of a mother to those barljarous tribes ^ she weaned them from the savage usages of their original homes ; she bowed their stubborn necks to the authority of law; she opened their minds to the charms of knowledge and art; and thus laid the foundation of tliose civUised and prosperous communities which have since arisen in the West. But when we so speak it behoves us to specify vdth some distinctness what wo mean by the " Church " to which we ascribe the glory of this service. Is it the Church of Rome, or is it the Church universal of Christendom ? If wc mean the former, the facts of history do not bear
out our conclusion. The CJiurch of Rome was not
then the Church, but only one of many Churches. The slow but beneficent and laborious work of evangelising and civilising the Northern nations, was the joint result of the action of all the Churches — of Northern Italj', of France, of Spain, of Ger- many, of Britain — and each performed its jjart in this great work vntli a measure of success exactly corresponding to the degree in which it retained the pure principles of piimitive Christianity. The Clnirches would have done their task much more efi'eotually and speedily but for the advei'se influence of Rome. She hung upon their rear, by her jjerpetual attempts to bow them to her yoke, and to seduce them from their fii-st pmity to her thinly disguised paganisms. Emphatically, the power that moulded the Gothic nations, and planted among them the seeds of religion and virtue, was Christianity — that same Christianity wliich apostles pi'eached to men in the first age, which all the ignorance and superetition of subsequent times had not qvute extin- guished, and which, with immense toil and sufl'ering dug up from under the heaps of iiibbish that had been piled above it, was anew, in the sixteenth century, given to the world under the name of Protestantism.
CHAPTER VI.
THE WALDENSES — THEIR \ALLEVS.
Submission of the Ohiu'ches of Lombanly to Kouic — The Old Faith maintained in the Mountains— The Waldonsi an Oluu-clies— Question of tlieii- Antiquity— Ai^proach to their Mountains— Arrangement of theii- Valleys— Picture of blended Beauty and Grandeiu-.
When Claude died it can hardly be said that his mantle was taken up by any one. Tlie battle, although not altogether dropiwd, was liencefoi-ward languidly maintained. Before this time not a few Churches beyond the Alps had sid^mitted to the yoke of Rome, and that arrogant power must have felt it not a little humiliating to find her authority withstood on what she might regard as her own territory. She was venerated abroad but contemned at home. Attempts were renewed to induce the Bishops of Milan to accept the episcopal pall, the 1 ladge of spiritual vassalage, from the Pope ; but it was not till the middle of the eleventh ceutmy (1059), under Nicholas II., that these attempts were
successful.' Petrus Damianus, Bishop of Ostia, and Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, were tlispatched by the Pontitt' to receive the sid)mission of the Lombard Churches, and the popular tumults amid which that submission was extorted sufliciently show that the sjjirit of Claude stUl liiigei'ed at the foot of the Alps. Nor did the clergy conceal the regi-et with which they laid their ancient liberties at the feet of a power before which the whole earth was then bowing down ; for the Papal legate, Damianus, informs us that the clergy of Milan maintained in his presence, "That the Ambrosian Church, according
' Baronius, Annal., ann. 1059, torn. li., cols. 276, 277.
24
HISTOKY OF PROTESTANTISM.
to the ancient institutions of the Fathers, was always free, without being subject to the laws of Rome, and that the Pope of Rome had no jm-isdiction over their Church as to the government or con- stitution of it."'
But if the plains were conquered, not so the mountains. A considerable body of Protesters stood out against this deed of submission. Of these some crossed the Alps, descended the Rhine, and raised the standard of o})position in the diocese of Cologne, where they were branded as Manicheans, uid rewarded with the stake. Others retired into the valleys of the Piedmontese Alps, and there maintained their scriptural faith and their ancient independence. What we have just related respcct- mg the dioceses of Milan and Turin settles the question, in our opinion, of the apostolicity of the Churches of the Waldensian valleys. It is not necessaiy to show that missionaries were scut from Rome in the first age to plant Christianity in these valleys, nor is it necessary to show that these Churches have existed as distinct and separate com- munities from early days ; enough that they formed L part, as unquestionably they did, of llie gre;.t
' Petius Damianus, O/iwsf p 5 AlUx, Churches of riedmont,p 113 M'Liic, Hist of Befmm m Itahj , p. 2.
THE VALLEY 01' ANGllOGNA.
ANTIQUITY OF THE WALDENSES.
25
evangelical Churcli of the north of Italy. This is the proof at once of their apostolicity and their in- dependeuce. It attests their descent from apostolic men, if doctrine be the life of Churches. When their co-religionists on the plains entered witliin the pale of the Roman jurisdiction, they retired within the mountains, and, spurning alike the tyrannical yoke and the cori'upt tenets of the Church of the Seven Hills, they preserved in its
on Christendom. There is a singular concurrence of evidence in favour of their high antiquity. Their traditions invariably point to an unbroken descent from the earliest times, as regards their religious belief. The Nobla Leyqon, which dates from the year 1100,' goes to prove that the Wal- denses of Piedmont did not owe their rise to Peter Waldo of Lyons, who did not appear till the latter half of that century (1160). The Nobla Leyqon,
'.STIXUZZO AN
tN:SIAN TEMl'LE.
purity and simplicity the faith their fathers had handed down to them. Rome manifestly was the schismatic, she it was that had abandoned what was once the common faith of Christendom, leaving by that step to all who remained on the old gi-ound the indisputably valid title of the Tnie Church.
Beliind tJiis rampart of mountains, which Pro- vidence, foreseeing the approach of evil days, would almost seem to have reared on purpose, did the remnant of the early apostolic Church of Italy kindle their lamp, and here did that lamp continue to burn all through the Ion" niirht which descended
though a poem, is in reality a confession of f\iith, and could have been composed only after some considerable study of the system of Christianity, in contradistinction to the errore of Rome. How could a Church have arisen with such a docu- ment in her hands ? Or how could these herdsmen and vine-drcssers, shut up in their mountains, have detected the errors against which they bore
' Recent German criticism refers the Nohla Leyr,on to a more recent date, but still one anterior to the Reformation.
26
HISTORY OF PEOTESTANTISM.
testimony, and found their way to tlie truths of which they made open profession in times of dark- ness like these '? If we grant that their i-eligioua beliefs were the heritage of former ages, handed down from an evangelical ancestry, all is plain ; but if we maintain that they were the discovery of the men of those days, we assei-t what approaches almost to a miracle. Their greatest enemies, Claude Seyssel of Turin (1517), and Reyneiius the Jesuit (1250), have admitted their antiquity, and stigmatised them as " the most dangerous of all heretics, because the most ancient."
Rorenco, Prior of St. Roch, Turin (1640), was employed to investigate the origin and antiquity of the Waldenses, and of course had access to all the Waldensian documents in the ducal archives, and being their bitter enemy he may be presumed to have made his repoi-t not more favourable than he could help. Yet he states that " they were not a new sect in the ninth and tenth centuries, and that Claude of Turin must have detached them from the Church in the ninth centuiy."
Witliin the limits of her own laud did God jno- vide a dwelling for this venerable Church. Let us bestow a glance upon the region. As one comes from the south, aci'oss the level plain of Piedmont, while yet nearly a hundred miles off, he sees the Alps rise before him, stretching like a great wall along the horizon. From the g-ates of the morning to those of the setting sun, the mountains run on in a line of towering magnificence. Pasturages and chestnut-forests clothe their base ; eternal snows crown their summits. How varied are their forms ! Some rise strong and massy as castles ; others shoot wp tall and tapering like needles ; while others again run along in serrated lines, their summits torn and cleft by the storms of many thousand winters. At the hour of sunrise, what a glory kindles along the crest of that snowy rampart ! At sunset the spectacle is again renewed, and a line of pyi'es is seen to burn in the evening sky.
Dra\\'ing nearer the hills, on a line about thirty miles west of Turin, there opens before one what seems a great mountain portal. Tliis is the entrance to the Waldensian territor'y. A low hill drawn along in front serves as a defence against all who may come mtli hostile intent, as but too frequently happened in times gone by, while a stupendoiis monolith — the Castelluzzo — shoots up to the clouds, and stands sentinel at the gate of this renowned region. As one approaches La Torre the Castel- luzzo rises higher and higher, and irresistibly fixes the eye by the perfect beauty of its jiillar-like form. But to this mountain a higher interest belongs than any that mere symmetry can give it.
It is indissolubly linked with martyi'-memories, and bon-ows a halo from the achievements of the past. How often, in days of old, was the con- fessor hurled sheer down its awful steep and dashed on the rocks at its foot ! And there, commingled in one ghastly heap, growing ever the bigger and ghastlier sis another and yet another victim was added to it, lay the mangled bodies of pastor and peasant, of mother and child ! It was the tragedies connected with this moiMitain mainly that called forth Milton's well-known sonnet : —
" Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughter'd saints, whose lioiica Lie scattcr'd on the Alpine mountains cold. * * * in Thy book record their groans Who wore Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold, Slain hy the bloody Picdniontese, that roU'd Mother with infant down the rocks. Thcu- moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven."
The new and elegant temple of the Waldenses now rises near the foot of the Castelluzzo.
The Waldensian valleys ai'e seven in number ; they were more in ancient times, but the limits of the Vaudois territory have undergone rej^eated curtailment, and now only the number we have stated remain, lying between PigneroUo on the east and Monte Viso on the west — that p3ri-amidal hUl which forms so prominent an object fi-om every part of the plain of Piedmont, towering as it does above the surrounding mountains, and, like a horn of silver, cutting the ebon of the firmament.
The fii'st three valleys run out somewhat like the spokes of a wheel, the spot on which we stand — the gateway, namely — being the nave. The firet is Luseriwi, or Valley of Light. It runs right out in a grand gorge of some twelve miles in length by about two in width. It wears a cai-jiet- ing of meadows, which the waters of the Pelico keep ever fresh and bright. A profusion of vines, acacias, and mulberry-trees fleck it with their shadows ; and a wall of lofty moimtains encloses it on either hand. The second is J?ora, or Valley of Dews. It is a vast cup, some fifty miles in cir- cimafei'ence, its sides luxuriantly clothed with meadow and corn-field, with fruit and forest trees, and its rim formed of craggy and spiky mountains, many of them snow-clad. Tlie thii-d is AnrjrogTw^ or Valley of Groans. Of it we shall speak more particularly afterwards. Beyond the extremity o'l the first three valleys are the remaining four, forming, as it were, the rim of the wheel. These last are enclosed in their turn by a line of lofty and craggy moinitains, which fonu a wall of defence around the entire territory. Each valley is a fortress, having its o%vn gate of ingress and
PICTURE OF THE WALDENSIAN VALLEYS.
27
egress, with its caves, and rocks, and mighty (.■hestuut-trees, forming places of retreat and shelter, so that the highest engineering skill could not have better adapted each several valley to its end. It is not less remarkable that, taking all these valleys together, each is so related to each, and the one opens so into the other, that they may be said to fonn one fortr-ess of amazing and match- less strength — wholly impregnable, in fact. All the fortresses of Europe, though combined, would not form a citadel so enormously strong, and so dazzlingly magnificent, as the mountain dwelling of the Vaudois. "Tke Eternal, our God," says Leger, " having destined tliis land to be the theatre of his marvels, and the bulwark of his ark, has, by natural means, most marvellously fortified it." The battle begun in one valley could be continued in another, and carried round the entire territory, till at last the invading foe, ovcr- ])owered by the rocks rolled upon him from the mountains, or assailed by enemies which would start suddenly out of the mist or issue from some unsuspected cave, found retreat impossible, and, cut off in detail, left his bones to whiten the moun- tains he had come to subdue.
These valleys are lovely and fertile, as well as strong. They are watered by numerous torrents, which descend from the snows of the summits. The grassy cai-jjet of their bottom ; the mantling vine and the golden grain of their lower slopes ; the chalets that dot their sides, sweetly embowered amid fruit-trees ; and, higher up, the gi-eat chestnut- forests and the pasture-lands, whei-e the herdsmen keep watch over theii- flocks all through the sum- mer days and the starlit nights : the nodding crags, from which the torrent leaps into the light ; the rivulet, singing with quiet gladness in the shady nook ; the mists, moving grandly among the mountains, now veiling, now revealing their majesty ; and the far-ofi" summits, tipped with sil- ver, to be changed at eve into gleaming gold — make up a picture of blended beauty and grandeur, not equalled perhaps, and certainly not suq^assed, in any other region of the earth.
In the heart of their mountains is situated the most interesting, perhaps, of all their valleys. It was in this retreat, walled round by " hills whose heads touch heaven," that their harhes or pastors, from all their several parishes, were wont to meet in annual synod. It was here that their college stood, and it was here that their missionaries wei-e
trained, and, after ordination, were sent forth to sow the good seed, as qjportunity offered, in other lands. Let us visit this valley. We ascend to it by the long, narrow, and winding Angrogna. Bright meadows enliven its entrance. The moun- tains on either hand are clothed with the vine, the mulberry, and the chestnut. Anon the valley contracts. It becomes rough with projecting rocks, and shady with great trees. A few paces farther, and it expands into a circular basin, feathery with birches, musical with falling waters, environed atop by naked crags, fringed with dark pines, wliile the white peak looks down upon one out of heaven. A little in advance the valley seems shut in by a mountainous wall, drawii right across it ; and beyond, towering sul:)limely upward, is seen an assemblage of snow-clad Alps, amid which is placed the valley we are in quest of, where biu-ned of old the candle of the Waldenses. Some terrible convulsion has rent this mountain from top to bottom, opening a path through it to the valley beyond. We enter the dark chasm, and proceed along on a nan'ow ledge in the mountain's .side, hung half-way between the torrent, which is heard thundering in the abyss below, and the summits which lean over us above. Journeying thus for about two miles, we find the pass begin- ning to widen, the light to break in, and now we arrive at the gate of the Pra.
There opens before us a noble circular valley, its grassy bottom watered by torrents, its sides dotted with dwellings and clothed with corn-fields and pasturages, while a ring of white peaks guards it above. This was the inner sanctuary of the Waldensian temple. Tlie rest of Italy had turned aside to idols, the Waldensian territory alone had been resei-ved for the worehip of the true God. And was it not meet that on its native soil a remnant of the apostolic Churdi of Italy should be main- tained, that Rome and all Christendom niiglit have before their eyes a perpetual monument of what they themselves had once been, and a living witness to testify how far they had departed from their first faith 1. '
' This short description of the Waldensian valleys is drawn from the author's personal obseiTations. We may here be permitted to state that he has, in successive journeys, continued at intervals during the past twenty- five years, travelled over Christendom, and visited all the countries. Popish and Prptestant, of which he will have occasion partioidarly to speak in the coiu:se of tliis liistory.
28
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
CHAPTER VII.
THE WALDENSES THEIR MTSSIONS AND MARTYRDOMS.
Tlieir Synod and College— Their Theological Tenets— Romaunt Version of the Now Testament— The Constitution of their Church— Their Missixjnary Labours— Wide Diifusion of their Tenets— The Stone Smiting the Image.
One would ILkc to have a near view of the barbes 01- pastors, who presided over the school of early Protestant theology that existed here, and to know how it fared with evangelical Christianity in the ages that preceded the Reformation. But the time is remote, and the events are dim. We can but doubtfully glean from a variety of sources the facts necessaiy to form a pictirre of this venerable Church, and even then the picture is not complete. The theology of which this was one of the fountain- heads was not the clear, well-defijied, and com- prehensive system wliich the sixteenth century gave lis; it was only what the faithful men of the Lombard Churches had been able to save from the wreck of primitive Christianity. True religion, being a revelation, was from the beginning com- j)lete and perfect ; nevertheless, in this as in eveiy other branch of knowledge, it is only by patient labour that man is able to extricate and arrange all its parts, and to come into the full possession of truth. The theology taught in fonner ages, in the peak-environed valley in which we have in imagi- nation placed ourselves, was drawn from the Bible. The atoning death and justifying righteousness of Christ was its cardinal truth. This, the Nobla Leyqon and other ancient documents abundantly testify. The Nobla, Leyqon sets forth with toler- able clearness the doctrine of the Trinity, the fall of man, the incarnation of the Son, the per- petual authority of the Decalogue as given by God,' the need of Divine grace in order to good works, the necessity of holiness, the institution of the ministry, the resurrection of the body, and the eternal bliss of heaven.' This creed, its professoi-s exemplified in lives of evangelical virtue. Tlie blamelessness of the Waldenses passed into a pro- verl), so that one more than ordmarily exempt from the vices of his time was sure to bo suspected of being a Vaudes.'
' This disproves the charge of Manicheism brought against them by their enemies.
- Sir Samuel Morland gives the Nobla Leyron in full in his Hisfory of the Churches of the Wcddenses. AIIjt (chap. 18) gives a summary of it.
^ The Nobla Leyi^on has the following passage : — " If there be an honest man, who desires to love God and fear
If doubt there were regarding the tenets of the Waldenses, the charges which their enemies have preferred against them would set that doubt at rest, and make it tolerably certain that they held substantially what the apostles before their day, and the Refoimers after it, taught. The indict- ment against the Waldenses included a formidable list of "heresies." They held that there had been no true Pope since the days of Sylvester ; that temporal offices and dignities were not meet for preachers of the Gospel ; that the Pope's pardons were a cheat ; that purgatory was a fable ; that relics were simply rotten bones which had belonged to one knew not whom ; that to go on pilgrimage served no end, save to empty one's purse ; that flesh might be eaten any day if one's appetite served him ; that holy water was not a whit more eflicacious than i-ain-water ; and that prayer in a barn was just as eflfectual as if offered in a church. They were accused, moreover, of having scoffed at the doctrine of transubstantiation, and of having spoken blasphemously of Rome, as the harlot of the Apocalyjjse.*
There is reason to believe, from recent historical researches, that the Waldenses possessed the New Testament in the vernacular. The " Lingua Ro- mana " or Romaunt tongue was the common lan- guage of the south of Europe from the eighth to the fourteenth centmy. It was the language of the troubadours and of men of letters in the Dark Ages. Into this tongue — the Romamit — was the first translation of the whole of the New Testament made so early as the twelfth century. Tliis fact Dr. Gilly has been at great pains to prove in his work, Tlie Romaunt Version' of the Gospel
Jesus Christ, who wiU neither slander, nor swear, nor lie, nor commit adultery, nor kill, nor steal, nor avenge him- self of his enemies, they presently say of such a one he is a Vaudcs, and worthy of death."
< See a list of numerous heresies and blasphemies charged upon the "Waldenses by the Jesuit Eeynerius, who wrote about the year 1250, and extracted by Allix (chap. 22).
* The Romcmnt Vermtx of the Gospel according to John, from MS. preserved in Trinity College, Dublin, and in the ' Bibliotheque du Roi, Paris. ByWilliam Stephen Gilly, D.D., Canon of Durham, and Vicar of Norham. Lend., 1848.
COLLEGE AND 8YN0DS OF THE WALDEN«ES.
29
according lo John. The siiin of what Dr. Gilly, by a patient investigation into facts, and a great array of liistoric dociunents, maintains, is tliat all the books of the New Testament were translated from the Latin Vulgate into the Romaunt, that this was the first literal version since the fall of the empire, that it was made in the twelfth cen- tury, and was the first translation available for popular use. There were numerous earlier trans- lations, but only of parts of the Word of God, and many of these were rather paraphrases or digests of Scripture than translations, and, moreover, they were so bulky, and by conseqiience so costly, as to be utterly beyond the reach of the common people. This Romaunt version was the first complete and literal translation of the New Testament of Holy Scripture ; it was made, as Dr. GiJly, by a chain of proofs, shows, most probably \inder the super- intendence and at the expense of Peter Waldo of Lyons, not later than 1180, and so is older than any complete version in German, French, Italian, Spanish, or English. This version was widely spread in the south of France, and in the cities of Lombardy. It was in common use among the Waldenses of Piedmont, and it was no small part, doubtless, of the testimony borne to truth by these mountaineers to preserve and circulate it. Of the Romaunt New Testament six copies have come down to our day. A copy is preserved at each of the four following places : Lyons, Grenoble, Zurich, Dublin ; and two copies at Paris. These are small, plain, and portable volumes, contrasting with those splendid and ponderous folios of the Latin Vulgate, pemied in characters of gold and silver, richly illuminated, their bindings decorated -with gems, inviting admiration rather than study, and unfitted by their size and splendour for the use of the jjeople.
The Church of the Alps, in the simplicity of its constitution, may be held to have been a reflection of the Church of the first centmies. The entire territory included hi the Waldensian limits was divided into parishes. In each parish was placed a pastor, who led his flock to the living waters of the Word of God. He preached, he dispensed the Sacraments, he visited the sick, and catechised the young. With him was associated in the govern- ment of his congi-egation a consistory of laymen. The synod met once a year. It was composed of all the pastors, with an equal number of laymen, and its most frequent place of meeting was the secluded mountaiii-engirdled valley at the head of Angi-ogna. Sometimes as many as a hundred and fifty harbes, vnX\\ the same number of lay mcmliors, would assemble. We can imagine them seated — it
may be on the gi'assy slopes of the valley — a vene- rable company of humble, learned, earnest men, presided over by a simple moderator (for liigher ofiice or authority was unknown amongst them), aaid intermitting their deliberations respecting the affairs of then- Churches, and the condition of their flocks, only to ofler their prayers and praises to the Eternal, while the majestic snow-clad peaks looked down upon them from the silent firmament. There needed, verily, no magnificent fane, no blazonry of mystic rites to make their assembly august.
The youth who here sat at the feet of the more venerable and learned of their harbes used as their text-book the Holy Scriptures. And not only did they study the sacred volume ; they were required to commit to memory, and be able accurately to recite, whole Gospels and Epistles. This was a necessary accomplishment on the part of public instructors, in those ages when printing was un- known, ancl copies of the Word of God were rare. Part of their time was occupied in transcribing the Holy Scriptures, or portions of them, which they were to distribute when they went forth as mission- aries. By this, and by other agencies, the seed of the Divine Word was scattered throughout Europe more widely than is connnonly supposed. To this a variety of causes contributed. There was then a general impression that the world was soon to end. Men thought that they saw the prognostications of its dissolution in the disorder into which all things had fallen. The pride, luxury, and profligacy of the clergy led not a few lajnnen to ask if better and more certain guides were not to be had. Many of the troubadours were religious men, whose lays were sermons. The hour of deep and universal slumber liad passed ; the serf was contending with his seigneur for personal freedom, and the city was waging war with the baronial castle for civic and corporate independence. The New Testament — and, as we learn from incidental notices, portions of the Old — coming at this jimcture, in a language undei-stood alike in the court as in the camp, in the city as in the rural hamlet, was welcome to many, and its truths obtained a wider promulgation than perhaps had taken place since the publication of the Vulgate by Jerome.
After passing a certain time in the school of the harbes, it was not uncommon for the Waldensian youth to proceed to the seminaries in the great cities of Lombardy, or to the Sorboime at Paris. There they saw other customs, were initiated into other studies, and had a wider horizon around them than in the seclusion of their native valleys. Man)' of them became exi)ert dialecticians, and often made converts of the rich merchants with
30
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
whom they traded, and the landlords in whose houses they lodged. The priests seldom cared to meet in argument the Waldensian missionary.
To maintain the ta'uth in their o%vn mountains was not the only object of this people. They felt their relations to the rest of Christendom. They
The ocean they did not crass. Their mission field was the realms that lay outspread at the foot of their own mountains. They went forth two and two, concealing their real character under the guise of a secular profession, most commonly that of merchants or pedlars. They carried silks,
WALDENSIAN MISSIONAUIE.S IN GL'ISE OF I'EULAKS.
sought to drive back the darlAiess, and re-conquer the kingdoms which Rome had overwhelmed. They were an evangelistic as well as an evangelical Church. It was an old law among them that all who took orders in their Church should, before being eligible to a home charge, sei-ve three years in the mission field. The youth on whose head the assembled harhes laid tlieii' hands, saw in prospect uut a rich benefice, but a possible martyrdom.
jewellery, and other articles, at that time not easUy purchasable save at distant marts, and they were welcomed as merchants where they would have been spurned as missionaries. The door of the cottage and the portal of the baron's castle stood equally open to them. But their address was mainly shown in vending, without money and -without price, rarer and more valuable merchandise than the gems and silks which had
32
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
procured tliem entrance. They took care to carry ■with tliem, concealed among their wares or about their persons, portions of the Word of God, their own transcription commonly, and to this they would draw the attention of the inmatee. When they saw a desire to j^ossess it, they would freely make a gift of it where the means to purchase were absent.
There was no kingdom of Southern and Centi-al Europe to which these missionaries did not find their way, and where they did not leave traces of their visit in the disciples whom they made. On the west they penetrated into Spain. In Southei'n France they found congenial fellow-labourers in the Albigenses, by whom the seeds of truth wei'e plenti- fully scattered over Dauphine and Languedoc. On the east, descending the Rhine and the Danube, they leavened Germany, Bohemia, and Poland ^ with their doctrines, their track being mai'ked with the edifices for worship and the stakes of martyrdom that arose around their steps. Even the Seven- hilled City they feared not to enter, scattering the seed on ungenial soil, if perchance some of it might take root and grow. Their naked feet and coarse woollen garments made them somewhat marked figures, in the streets of a city that clothed itself in purple and fine linen ; and when their real errand
was discovered, as sometimes chanced, the rulers of Christendom took care to further, in their own way, the springing of the seed, by watei'ing it with the blood of the men who had sowed it.^
Thus did the Bible in those ages, veiling its majesty and its mission, travel silently through Christendom, entering homes and hearts, and there making its abode. From her lofty seat Rome looked cJbwn with contempt upon the Book and its humble bearei-s. She aimed at bowing the necks of kings, thinking if they were obedient meaner mgn would not dare revolt, and so she took little heed of a power which, weak as it seemed, was des- tilled at a fviture day to break in pieces the fabric of her dominion. By-and-by she began to be uneasy, and to have a boding of calamity. The penetrating eye of Innocent III. detected the quarter whence danger was to arise. He .saw in the labours of these humble men the beginning of a movement wliich, if permitted to go on and gather strength, would one day sweep away all that it had taken the toils and intrigues of centuries to achieve. He straightway connnenced those terrible crusades which wasted the sowers but watered the seed, and helped to bring on, at its appointed hour, the cata- strophe wMch he sought to avert.'
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PAUUCI.\NS.
The Paulicians tlie Protesters against the Eastern, as the 'VValdenses against the Western Apostaoy— Their Rise in A.D. 653— Coustantine of Samosata— Their Tenets Scriptural— Constantino Stoned to Death— Simeon Succeeds— Is put to Death— Sergius— His Missionary Travels— Terrible Persecutions— Tlie Paulicians Rise in Arms— Civil War— The Government Triumphs— Dispersion of the Paulicians over the West— They Blend with the Waldenses —Movement in the South of Europe— The Troubadour, the Barbe, and the Bible, the Three Missionaries— Innocent III.— The Crusades.
Besides this central and main body of opposi- tionists to Rome — Protestants before Protestantism — placed here as in an impregnable fortress, iipreared on purpose, in the very centre of Roman Christen-
1 Stranski, apnd Lenfant's Concile de Constance, quoted by Count Valerian Krasinski in his History of the Rise, Pro- gress, and Decline of the Reformation in Poland, vol. i., p. 53; Lond., 1838. Ulyricus Flaccius, in his Caialogus Testixmi Veritatis (Amstelodami, 1679), says: "Pars Valdensium in Germaniam transiit atque apud Bohemos, in Polonia ac Livonia sedem fiiit." Leger says that the Waldenses had, about the year 1210, Churches in Slavonia, Sarmatia, and Livonia. {Histoire G^nfrale des Eqlises Evang^liqiies des Valleys du Piedmont OK Vaudois, vol. ii., pp. 336, 337 ; 1669.)
dom, other communities and individuals ai'ose, and maintained a continuous line of Protestant testimony all along to the sixteenth century. These we .shall compendiously group and rapidly describe. J"irst, there are the Paiilicians. They occupy an
- M'Crie, Hist. Ref. in Italy, p. 4.
' Those who wish to know more of this interesting people than is contained in the above I'apid sketch may consult Leger, Des Eglises Evangi'Uques ; Perrin, Hist, de Vaudois; Reyneiius, Cont. Waldens.; Sir S. Morlaud, History of the Evangelical Churches of Piedmont; Jones, Hist. Waldenses; Rorenco, Narrative; besides a host of more modern wi-itei'S — Gilly, Waldensian Itescarclie:: : Muston, Israel of the Alijs; Monastier, &c. &.e.
PAULICIAN MISSIONARIES AND MARTYRS.
33
analogous place iii tlie East to that wliicli tli'e Waldenses held in the West. Some obscurity rests upon their origin, and additional my.stery has on purpose been cast upon it, but a fair and impartial examination of the matter leaves no doubt that the Paidicians are the remnant that escaped the apos- tacy of the Eastern Church, even as the Waldenses are the remnant saved from the apostacy of the Western Church. Doubt, too, has been thrown upon their religious opinions ; they have been painted as a confederacy of Manicheans, just as the Waldenses were branded as a synagogue of heretics ; but in the former case, as in the latter, an exami- nation of the matter satisfies us that these imputa- tions had no sufficient foundation, that the Paulicians repudiated the errors imputed to them, and that as a body their opinions were in substantial agi'eement with the doctrine of Holy Writ. Nearly all the infonnation we have of them is that which Petrus Siculus, their bitter enemy, has commimicated. He visited them when they were in their most flourish- ing condition, and the accoimt he has given of their distmguishing doctrines sufficiently proves that the Paulicians had rejected the leading errors of the Greek and Roman Churches ; but it fails to show that they had embraced the doctrme of Manes,' or were justly liable to be styled Manicheans.
In A.D. 6.53, a deacon returning from captivity in Syria rested a night in the house of an Armenian named Constantine, who lived in the neighbourhood of Samosata. On the morrow, before taking his departure, he presented his host with a copy of the New Testament. Constantiiie studied the sacred volume. A new light broke upon his mind : the errors of the Greek Church stood clearly revealed, and he instantly resolved to separate himself from so corrupt a communion. He drew others to the study of the Scriptures, and the same light shone into theii- minds which had irradiated his. Sharing his views, they shared with him his secession from the established Church of the Empire. It was the boast of this new party, now grown to consider- able numbers, that they adhered to the SciT[5tures, and especially to the writings of Paul. " I am Sylvanus," said Constantine, " and ye are Macedo- nians," intimating thereby that the Gospel wliich
' Manes taught that there were two principles, or gods, the one good and the other evil ; and that the evil prin- ciple was the creator of this world, and the good of the world to come. Manichcism was employed as a term of compendious condemnation in the East, as Heresy was in the West. It was easier to calumniate these men than to refute them. For such aspersions a very ancient pre- cedent might be pleaded. " He hath a devil and is mad," it was said of the Master. The disciple i.s not above his Lord.
he would teach, and they should learn, was that of Paul ; hence the name of Paulicians, a designa- tion they would not have been ambitious to wear had their doctrine been Manichean."
These disciples multiplied. A congenial soil favoured their increase, for in these same moun- tains, where are placed the sources of the Eviphrates, the Nestorian remnant had found a I'cfuge. The attention of the Government at Constantinople was at length turned to them ; persecution followed. Constantine, whose zeal, constancy, and piety had been amply tested by the labours of twenty-seven years, was stoned to death. From his ashes arose a leader still more powerful. Simeon, an ofticer of the palace who had been sent with a body of troops to superintend his execution, was converted by his mai-tyrdom, and like another Paul after the stoniug of Stephen, began to preach the Paulician faith, which he had once persecuted. Simeon ended his career, as Constantiue had done, by sealing his testimony with his blood ; the stake being planted beside the heap of stones piled above the ashes of Constantine.
Still the Paulicians multiplied ; other leaders arose to fill the place of those who had ftillen, and neither the anathemas of the hierarchy nor tho sword of the State could check their growth. All through the eighth century they continued to flourish. The woi-ship of images was now the fashionable superstition in the Eastern Church, and the Paulicians rendered themselves still more ob- noxious to the Greek authorities, lay and clerical, by the strenuous opposition which they offered to that idolatry of which the Greeks were the great advocates and patrons. This drew upon them yet sorer persecution. It was now, in the end of the eighth century, that the most remarkable perhaps of all their leaders, Sergius, rose to head them, a man of truly missionary spirit and of indomitable energy. Petrus Siculus has given us an account of the conversion of Sergius. We should take it for a satii-e, were it not for the manifest earnestness and
•"Among the prominent charges urged against the Paulicians before the Patriarch of Constantinople in tha eighth century, and by Photius and Petrus Siculus in the ninth, we find the following— that they dishonoured the Viigin Mary, and rejected her worship; denied the life-giving efficacy of the cross, and refused it worsliip ; and gainsaid the awful mystery of the conversion of tho blood of Christ in the Eucharist ; while by others they are branded as the originators of the Iconoclastic heresy and the war against the s.acred images. In the first notice of the sectaries in Western Europe, I mean at Orleans, tliey were similarly accused of treating with con- tempt the woi'ship of martyrs and saints, the sign of the holy cross, and mystery of transubstantiation ; and much the same too at Arras." (Elliott, Horn; ApocalypHcci;, 3rd ed., vol. ii., p. 277.)
34
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
simj)licity of the writer. Sicuhis tells us that Satan appeared to Sergiiis in the shape of an old woman, and asked him why he did not read the New Testa- ment? The tempter proceeded farther to recite portions of Holy Writ, whereby Sergiiis was seduced to read the Scripture, and so perverted to heresy ; and " from sheep," says Siculus, " turned numbers into wolves, and by their means ravaged the sheep- folds of Christ.'
Dviring thirty-four years, and in the course of innumerable journeys, he pi-eached the Gospel from East to West, and converted great numbers of his countrymen. The result was more terrible perse- cutions, which were continued through successive reigns. Foremost in this work we find the Emperor Leo, the Patriarch Nicephorus, and notably the Empress Theodora. Under the latter it was aflirmed, says Gibbon, " that one hundred thousand Pauli- cians were extii-pated by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames." It is admitted by the same historian that the chief guilt of many of those who were thus destroyed lay in their being Iconoclasts. -
The .sanguinary zeal of Theodora kindled a flame which had well-nigh consumed the Empire of the East. The Paulicians, stung by these cruel injuries, now prolonged for two centuries, at last took up arms, as the Waldenses of Piedmont, the Hussites of Bohemia, and the Huguenots of France did in similar circumstances. They placed their camp in the mountains between Sewas and Trebizond, and for tliirty-five years (a.d. 845 — 880) the Empire of Constantinople was afflicted with the calamities of civil war. Repeated victories, won over the troojjs of the emperor, crowned the arms of the Paulicians, and at length the insurgents were joined by the Saracens, who hung on the frontier of the Empire. The flames of battle extended into the heart of Asia ; and as it is impossible to restrain the ravages of the sword when once unsheathed, the Paulicians passed from a righteous defence to an inexcusable revenge. Entire provinces were wasted, opulent cities were sacked, ancient and famous churches were turned into stables, and troops of captives were held to ransom or delivered to the executioner. But it must not be forgotten that the original cause of these manifold miseries was the bigotry of the government and the zeal of the clergy for image- worship. The fortune of war at last declared lu favour of the troops of the emperor, and the insur- gents were driven back into theii- moimtains, where for a century afterwards they enjoyed a partial
' " Multos ex ovibus lupoa fecit, et per eos Christi ovilia dissipavit." (Pet. Sic, Hist. Bib. Pair., vol. ivi., p. 761.)
2 Gibbon, vol. x., p. 177 ; Edin., 1832. Sharon Turner, Hist, of England, vol. v., p. 125; Lond., 1830.
independence, and maintained the profession of their religious faith.
After this, the Paulicians were transported across the Bosphorus, and settled in Thrace.' This removal was begun by the Emperor Constantine Coprony- mus in the middle of the eighth centiu-y, was continued in successive colonies in the ninth, and completed about the end of the tenth. The shadow of the Saracenic woe was already blackening over the Eastern Empire, and God removed his witnesses betimes from the destined scene of judgment. The arrival of the Paulicians in Europe was regarded with favour rather than disapproval. Rome was becoming by her tyranny the terror and by her profligacy the scandal of the West, and men were disposed to welcome whatever promised to throw additional weight into the opposing scale. The Paulicians soon spread themselves over Europe, and though no chronicle recoitls their dispersion, the fact is attested by the sudden and simultaneous outbreak of their opinions in many of the Western countries.* They mingled "with the hosts of the Crusadei-s returning from the Holy Land through Hungary and Germany ; they joined themselves to the caravans of merchants who entered the harbont of Venice and the gates of Lorabardy ; or they followed the Byzantine standard into Southern Italy, and by these various routes settled themselves in the West.^ They incorporated with the pre- existing bodies of oppositionists, and from this time a new life is seen to animate the eflbrts of the Wal- denses of Piedmont, the Albigenses of Southern France, and of others who, in other parts of Europe, revolted by the gi-owing superstitions, had begun to retrace their steps towards the primeval fountains of truth. " Their opinions," says Gibbon, " were silently propagated in Rome, Milan, and the king- doms beyond the Alps. It was soon discovered that many thousand Catholics of every rank, and of either sex, had embraced the Manichean h«resy."°
» Pet. Sic, p. 814.
■• EmericuB, in his Directory for Inquisitors, gives us the following piece of news, namely, that the founder of the Manicheans was a person called Manes, who lived in the diocese of Milan ! (AUix, p. 134.)
' Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. 11, part ii., chap. 5.
^ Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. x., p. 18G. In perusing the chapter (54) which tliis historian has devoted to an account of the Paulicians, one hardly knows whether to be more delighted with his eloquence or amazed at his inconsistency. At one time he speaks of them as the " votaries of St. Paul and of Christ," and at another as the disciples of Manes. And though he says that " the Paulicians sincerely condemned the memory and opinions of the Manichean sect," he goes on to write of them as Manicheans. Tlie historian has too slavishly followed his cluef authority and their bitter enemy, Petrus Siculus.
BEGUN DECADENCE OF ROME.
35
i'rom this point the Paulician stream becomes blended with that of the other early confessoi-s of the Truth. To these we now return.
When we cast onr eyes over Eui-oiie in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, our attention is irresistibly riveted on the south of France. There a great movement is on the eve of breaking out. Cities and provinces are seen rising in revolt against the Church of Rome. Judging from the aspect of things on the surface, one would have inferred that all opposition to Rome had died out. Every succeeding century was deepening the foundations and widening the limits of the Romish Chiirch, and it seemed now as if there awaited her ages of quiet and imchallenged dominion. It is at this moment that her power begins to totter ; and though she will rise higher ere terminating her career, her decadence has already begun, and her fall may be postponed, but cannot be averted. But how do we accoiuat for the powerful movement that begins to show itself at the feot of the Alps, at a moment when, as it seems, every enemy has been vanquished, and Rome has won the battle? To attack her now, seated as we behold her amid vassal kings, obedient nations, and entrenched be- hind a triple rampart of darkness, is surely to invite destruction.
The causes of this movement had been long in silent opei-ation. In fact, this was the very quarter of Christendom whei-e opposition to the growing tyramiy and superstitions of Rome might be ex- pected first to show itself. Hei'e it was that Polycarp and Irenseus had laboured. Over all those goodly plains which the Rhone waters, and in those numerous cities and villages over which the Alps stretch then- shadows, these apostolic men had planted Christianity. Hundreds of thousands of martyi's had here watered it with their blood, and though a thousand years well-nigh had passed since that day, the story of their terrible torments and heroic deaths had not been altogether for- gotten. In the Cottian Alps and the pi-ovince of Languedoc, VigUantius had raised his powerful protest against the errors of liis times. This region was included, as we have seen, in the diocese of Milan, and, as a consequence, it eiyoyed the light which shone on the south of the Alps long after Churches not a few on the north of these mountains were plunged in darkness. In the ninth century Claude of Tui-in had fomid in the Archbishoj) of Lyons, Agobardus, a man willing to entertain his views and to share his conflicts. Since that time the night had deepened here as ever3rwhere else. But still, as may be conceived, there were memories of the past, there were seeds in the soil, which new
forces might quicken and make to spring up. Such a force did now begin to act.
It was, moreover, on this spot, and among these peoples — the best prepared of all the nations of the West — that the Word of Clod was first published in the vernacular. When the Romance version of the New Testament was issued, the people that sat in darkness saw a great light. This wa.s in fact a second gi^'ing of Divine Revelation to the nations of Europe ; for the early Saxon renderings of 2)ortions of Holy Writ had fallen aside and gone utterly into disuse ; and though Jerome's transla- tion, the Vulgate, was still known, it was in Latin, now a dead language, and its use Wiis confined to the priests, who though they possessed it cannot be said to have known it ; for the reverence paid it lay in the rich illuminations of its writing, in the gold and gems of its binding, and the curiously-carved and costly cabinets in which it was locked up, and not in the earnestness with which its pages were studied. Now the nations of Southern Europe coidd read, each in " the tongue wherein he was born," the wonderful works of God.
This inestimable boon they owed to Peter Valdes or Waldo, a rich merchant in Lyons, who had been awakened to serious thought by the sudden death of a companion, according to some, by the chance lay of a travelling troubadour according to others. We can imagine the wonder and joy of these people when this light broke upon them through the clouds that environed them. But we must not picture to ourselves a difl'usion of the Bible, in those ages, at all so wide and rapid as would take place in our day when copies can be so easily multiplied by the printing press. Each copy was laboriously pro- duced by the pen; its price corresponded to the time and labour exjoended in its production ; it had to be carried long distances, often by slow and un- certam conveyances; and, last of all, it had to encounter the frowns and ultimately the prohibitory edicts of a hostile hierarchy. But there were com- pensatory advantages. Difiiculties but tended to whet the desire of the people to obtain the Book, and when once their eyes lighted on its page, its truths made the deeper an impression on their minds. It stood out in its sublimity from the fables on which they had been fed. The conscience felt that a greater than man was addressing it from its JJage. Each copy served scores and hundreds of readers.
Besides, if the mechanical appliances were lacking to those ages, wliich the progi-ess of invention has confen-ed on ours, there existed a living machinery which worked indefatigably. The Bible was sung in the lays of troubadours and minnesmgers. It
36
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
was recited in the sermons of barbes. And these efforts reacted on the Book from which they had sprung, by leading men to the yet more earnest penisal and the yet wider diffusion of it. The Troubadoiu-, the Barbe, and, mightiest of all, the
order, is her yoke, to i:iduce them to join universally in the struggle to break it.
Besides, it happened, as has often been seen at historic crises of the Papacy, that a Pope equal to the occasiou filled the Papal throne. Of remark-
TKOI'IIADOVU AXD 11.\K11E.
Bible, were the three missionaries that traversed the south of Europe. Disciples were multiplied : congregations were formed : barons, cities, pr'O- vriices, joined the movement. It seemed as if the Reformation was come. Not yet. Rome had not tilled up her cup ; nor had the nations of Europe that full and woeful demonstration they have since received, how crushing to liberty, to knowledge, to
able vigour, of dauntless spirit, and of sanguinary temper. Innocent III. but too truly guessed the character and diAaned the issue of the movement. He sounded the tocsin of persecution. Mail-clad abbots, lordly prelates, " who wielded by turns the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword ;"^ barons and
Gibbon, vol. x., p. 185.
INNOCENT THE THIRD'S PERSECUTIONS.
37
counts ambitious of enlarging their domains, and mobs eager to wi-eak their savage fanaticism on their neighbours, whose persons they hated and whoso goods they coveted, assembled at the Pontifl''s Himimons. Fire and sword speedily did the work
one perished by the racks of the other. In one of those dismal tragedies not fewer than a hundred thousand persons are said to have been destroyed.' Over wide areas not a living thing was left : all were given to the sword. Mounds of ruins and
DOMINICAN MONK AND IXQUISITIONIJH.
of extermination. Where before had been seen .smUmg provinces, flourishing cities, and a niunerous, virtuous, and orderly population, there was now a blackened and silent desert. That nothing might be lacking to carry on this terrible work, Inno- cent III. set up the tribunal of tlie Inquisition. Behind the soldiers of the Cross marched the monks of St. Dominic, and what escaped the sword of the
ashes alone marked the spot where cities and vil- lages had formerly stood. But this violence recoiled in the end on the j)ower which had employed it. It did not extinguish the movement : it b\it made it strike its roots deeper, to spring up again and
' Gerdesius, ffisioj-ia Evangelii Eenovati, torn, i., p. 39 ; GrouingEe, 1744.
38
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
again, and each time with greater vigour and over a wider area, tQl at last it was seen that Rome by these deeds was only preparing for Protestantism a more glorious triumiih, and for herself a more signal overthrow.
But these events are too intimately connected
with the early history of Protestantism, and they too truly depict the genius and policy of that power against which Protestantism found it so hard a matter to struggle into existence, to be jJassed over in silence, or dismissed with a mere general description. We must go a little into detail.
CHAPTER IX.
CRUSADES AGAINST THE ALBIGENSES.
Kome founded on the Dogma of Persecution— Begins to act upon it— Territory of the Albigenses— Innocent III.— Persecuting Edicts of Councils— Crusade preached by the Monks of Citeaux— First Crusade launched— Paradise- Simon de Montfort — Eaymond of Toulouse — His Territories Overrim and Devastated — Crusade against Eaymond Eoger of Beziers — Burning of Ms Towns — Massacre of their Inhabitants — Destraction of the Albigenses.
The torch of persecution was fairly kindled in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Those baleful fires, which had smouldered since the fall of the Empii'e, were now re-lighted, but it must be noted that this was the act not of the State but of the Chiu'ch. Rome had founded her dominion upon the dogma of persecution. She sustained herself " Lord of the conscience." Out of this prolific but pestiferous root came a whole century of fulminat- ing edicts, to be followed by centuries of blazing piles.
It could not be but that this maxim, placed at the foundation of her system, should inspire and mould the whole policy of the Church of Rome. Divine mistress of the conscience and of the faith, she claimed the exclusive right to prescribe to every human being what he was to believe, and to pursue with temporal and spiritual teiTors eveiy form of worship different from her own, till she had chased it out of the world. The tu-st exem- plification, on a great scale, of her office which she gave mankind was the cnisades. As the professors of an impm'e creed, she pronounced sentence of extermination on the Saracens of the Holy Land ; she sent thither some millions of crusaders to execute her ban ; and the lands, cities, and wealth of the slaughtered infidels she bestowed upon her orthodox sons. If it was right to apply this principle to one pagan coimtry, we do not see what shoidd hinder Rome — unless indeed lack of power — sending her crossed missionaries to eveiy land where infidelity and heresy prevailed, emptying them of their evil creed and their evil inhabitants together, and re-peopling them anew wth a pure race from within her own orthodox pale.
But now the fervour of the crusades had begun sensibly to abate. The result had not responded either to the expectations of the Church that had planned them, or to the masses that had carried them out. The golden crowns of Paradise had been all duly bestowed, doubtless, but of course on those of the crusaders only who had fallen ; the suiwivors had as yet inherited little save woimds, poverty, and disease. The Church, too, began to see that the zeal and blood which were being so freely expended on the shores of Asia, might be turned to better account nearer home. The Albigenses and other sects spiinging up at her door were more dangerous foes of the Papacy than the Saracens of the distant East. For a while the Popes saw with comparative indiflerence the gi-owth of these religious commimities ; they dreaded no harm from bodies apparently so insignificant; and even entertained at times the thought of graft- ing them on their own system as separate orders, or as resuscitating and purifying forces. With the advent of Innocent III., however, came a new policy. He perceived that the principles of these communities were wholly alien in then- nature to those of the Papacy, that they never could be made to work in concert -svith it, and that if left to de- velop themselves they would most surely effect its overthrow. Accordingly the cloud of exterminating vengeance which rolled hither and thither in the skies of the world as he was pleased to command, he ordered to halt, to return westward, and discharge its chastisement on the south of Europe.
Let us take a glance at the region which this dreadful tempest is about to smite. The France of those days, instead of formmg an entire monarchy,
PERSECUTING EDICTS OF COUNCILS.
39
was parted into four grand divisions. It is the most southerly of the four, or Narbonne-Gaul, to which oui- attention is now to be turned. This wa.s an ample and goodly territory, stretching from the Dauphuiese Alps on the east to the Pyrenees on the south-west, and comprising the modern pro- vinces of Dauphine, Provence, Languedoc or Gas- cogne. It was watered throughout by the Rhone, which descended upon it from the north, and it was washed along its southern boimdary by the Mediterranean. Occupied by an intelligent popu- lation, it had become mider their skilful husbandry one vast expanse of corn-land and vineyard, of fruit and forest tree. To the riches of the soil were added the wealth of commerce, in which the in- habitants were tempted to engage by the proximity of the sea and the neighbourhood of the Italian republics. Above all, its people were addicted to the pursuits of art and poetry. It was the land of the troubadour. It was farther embellished by the numerous castles of a powerful nobility, who spent their time in elegant festivities and gay tournaments.
But better things than poetry and feats of mimic war flom-ished here. The towns, formed into commimes, and placed under municipal insti- tutions, enjoyed no small measure of fi-eedom. The lively and poetic genius of the people had enabled them to form a language of their own — namely, the Provencal. In richness of vocables, softness of cadence, and pictui-esqueness of idiom, the ProvenQal excelled all the languages of Europe, and promised to become the univei-sal tongue of Christendom. Best of all, a pure Christianity was developing in the region. It was here, on the banks of the Rhone, that Irenajus and the other early apostles of Gaul had laboured, and the seeds which their hands had deposited in its soil, watered by the blood of martyrs who had fought in the firet ranks iu the terriVjle combats of those days, had never wholly perished. Influences of recent birth had helped to quicken these seeds into a second growth. Foremost among these was the translation of the New Testament into the Provencal, the earliest, as we have shown, of all our modem versions of the Scriptures. The barons protected the people in their evangelical sentiments, some because they shared their opinions, others because they found them to be industrious and skilfid cultivators of their lands. A cordial welcome awaited the trou- badour at their castle-gates ; he departed loaded with gifts ; and he enjoyed the baron's protection as he passed on through the cities and villages, con- cealing, not imfrequently, the colporteur and mis- sionaiy under the guise of the songster. The heur
of a great revolt against Rome appeared to bo near. Surrounded by the fostering influences of art, in- telligence, and liberty, primitive Christianity was here powerfully developing itself It seemed verily that the thirteenth and not the sixteenth centuiy would be the date of the Reformation, and that its cradle would be placed not in Germany but in the south of France.
The penetrating ■ and far-seeing eye of Innocent III. saw all this very clearly. Not at the foot of the Alps and the Pyrenees only did he detect a new life : in other countries of Europe, in Italy, in Spain, in Flanders, in Hungary — wherever, in short, dispersion had driven the sectaries, he dis- covered the same feiTuentation below the sur- face, the same incipient revolt against the Papal power. He resolved ^vithout loss of time to grap])le ^vith and crush the movement. He issued an edict enjoining the extermination of all heretics.' Cities woidd be drowned in blood, kingdoms would be laid waste, art and civilisation would perish, and the progress of the world would be rolled back for centuries ; but not otherwise could the movement be arrested, and Rome saved.
A long series of pereecuting edicts and canons paved the way for these horrible butcheries. The Council of Toulouse, in 1119, presided over by Pope Calistus II., pronounced a general excommunication upon all who held the sentiments of the Albigenses, cast them out of the Church, delivered them to the swoid of the State to be punished, and included in the same condemnation all who should afford them defence or protection.- This canon was renewed in the second General Council of Lateran, 1139, under Innocent II.' Each succeeding Council strove to excel its predecessor in its sanguinary and pitiless spirit. The Council of Tours, 1163, under Alexander III., stripped the heretics of their goods, forbade, under peril of excommimication, any to relieve them, and left them to perisli without succour.* The third General Council of Lateran,
' Hardouin, Concil. Avenion. (1209), torn, vi., pars. 2, col. 1986. This edict enjoins bishops, counts, governors of castles, and all men-at-arms to give their aid to enforce spiritual censures against heretics. " Si opus f uerit,' ' continues the edict, "jurare compellat sicut illi de Montepessulano juraverunt, praecipue circa erterminan- dos hsereticos."
- " Tanquam haereticos ab ecclesia Dei pellimus et dam- namus: et per potostates ertcras coerceri praecipimus, defensores quoque ipsorum ejusdem damnationis vinculo donee resipuerint, mancipamus.' ' (Concilium Tolosanum — Hardouin, Acta Concil. et Epistoke Decreiales, torn, vi., pars. 2, p. 1979; Parisiis, 1714.)
3 Acta Concil, tom. vi., pars. 2, p. 1212.
■• "TJbi cogniti fuerint ilUus haeresis sectatores, ne re- ceptaculum quisquam eis in terra sua prsebere, aut prse- sidium imperth'e praesumat. Sed nee in venditione aut
40
HISTORY OF PROTEHTANTlSiM.
1171), under Alexander III., enjoined princes to make war upon them, to take their possessions for a spoil, to reduce their persons to slaveiy, and to withhold from them Christian burial.' The fourth General Comicil of Lateran bears the stem and comprehensive stamp of the man under whom it was held. The Coimcil commanded piinces to take an oath to extirpate heretics from their dominions. Feai-ing that some, from motives of self-interest, miglit hesitate to destroy the more industrious of their subjects, the CouncLL sought to quicken theii- obedience by appealing to their avarice. It made over the heritages of the excommunicated to those who should cany out the sentence pronoimced upon them. Still further to stimulate to this pious work, the Coimcil rewarded a service of forty days in it vnth the same ample indulgences which had aforetime been bestowed on those who served in the distant and dangerous crusades of Syria. If any prince should stUl hold back, he was himself, after a year's grace, to be smitten with excommunication, his vassals were to be loosed from their allegiance, and his lands given to whoever had the wiU or the j)0wer to seize them, after having first purged them of heresy. That this work of extirpation might be thoroughly done, the bishops were empowered to make an annual visitation of then- dioceses, to insti- tute a very close search for heretics, and to extract an oath from the leading inhabitants that they would delate to the ecclesiastics from time to time those among their neighbours and acquamtances who had strayed from the faith.^ It is hardly necessaiy to say that it is Innocent III. who speaks in this Coimcil. It was assembled in his palace of the Lateran in 1215 ; it was one of the most brilliant Councils that ever were convened, being composed of 800 abbots and priors, 400 bishops, besides jjatri- archs, deputies, and ambassadors from all nations. It was opened by Innocent in person, with a dis- course from the words, " With desire have I desired to eat this passorer with yon."
We camiot pursue farther this series of terrific edicts, which runs on till the end of the century and into the next. Each is like that which went before it, save only that it surpasses it in cnielty and terror. The fearful pillagings and massacrings which instantly followed in the south of France, and which were re-enacted in follomng centuries in all the countries of Christendom, were but too
emptione aliqua cum eis omnino coinmeroium habeatur : ut solatio saltern hiimanitatis amisso, ab errore vise suEe resipiscere compellantui-.' ' — Hardouin, Acta Condi,, torn. vi., p. 1597.
' Ihid., can. 27, De Hsereticis, p. 1684
2 Ihid., torn, vii., can. 3, pp. 19—23.
faithful transcripts, both in spirit and letter, of these ecclesiastical enactments. Meanwhile, we must note that it is out of the chair of the Pope — out of the dogma that the Chiuxh is mistress of the conscience — that this river of blood is seen to flow.
Three years was this storm in gathering. Its fii-st heralds were the monks of Citeaux, sent abroad by Innocent III. in 1206 to preach the crusade throughout France and the adjoining kingdoms. There followed St. Dominic and his band, who travelled on foot, two and two, with full jjowers from the Pope to search out heretics, dispute with them, and set a mark on those who were to be burned when opportimity should offer.' In this mission of inqriisition we see the first begin- nings of a tribunal which came afterwards to bear the terrible name of the " Inquisition." These gave themselves to the work with an ardour which had not been equalled since the times of Peter the Hermit. The fiery orators of the Vatican but too easily succeeded in kindling the fanaticism of the masses. War was at all times the delight of the peoples among whom this mission was discharged ; but to engage in this war what dazzling temjjta- tions were held out ! The foes they were to march against were accursed of God and the Church. To shed theii- blood was to wash away their own sins — it was to atone for all the vices and crimes of a lifetime. And then to think of the dwellings of the Albigenses, replenished with elegances and stored with wealth, and of their fields blooming -with the richest cultivation, all to become the lawful spoil of the crossed invader ! But this was only a first instalment of a great and brilliant recompense in the future. They had the word of the Pope that at the moment of death they should find the angels prepared to cany them aloft, the gates of Paradise open for then- entrance, and the crowns and de- lights of the upper world waitmg their choice. The cnisader of the previous century had to buy forgiveness with a great sum : he had to cross the sea, to face the Saracen, to linger out years amid unknown toils and perils, and to return — if he should ever return — with broken health and ruined fortune. But now a campaign of forty days in one's own country, involving no hardship and very little risk, was all that was demanded for one's eternal sal- vation. Never before had Paradise been so cheap !
The preparations for this war of extermination went on throughout the years 1207 and 1208. Like the mutterings of the distant thunder or the hoarse roar of ocean when the tempest is rising, the dreadful sounds filled Europe, and their echoes reached the doomed provinces, where they were heard with terror. In the spring of 1209 tliese
CRUSADE AGAINST THE ALBIGENSES.
41
armed fanatics were ready to march.' One body bad assembled at Lyons. Led by Arnold, Abbot of Citeaux and legate of the Pope, it descended by the valley of the Rhone. A second army gathered in the Agenois under the Archbishop of Bordeaux. A third horde of militant pilgrims marshalled in the north, the subjects of Philip Augustus, and at their head marched the Bishop of Puy." The near neighboiu'S of the Albigenses rose in a body, and swelled this already overgro^vn host The chief director of this sacred war was the Papal legate, the Abbot of Citeaux. Its chief military commander was Simon de Montfort, Eai-1 of Leicester, a French nobleman, wlio had practised war and learned cruelty in the cnisades of the Holy Land. In putting himself at the head of these crossed and fanaticised hordes he was influenced, it is believed, Huite as much by a covetous greed of the ample and rich tei-ritories of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, as by hatred of the here.sy that Raymond was sus- pected of protecting. The number of crusaders who now put themselves in motion is variously estimated at from .50,000 to 500,000. The former is the reckoning of the Abbot of Vaux Cernay, the Popish chronicler of the war ; but his calculation, says Sismondi, does not include " the ignorant and fonatical multitude which followed each preacher, armed with scythes and clubs, and jiromised to themselves that if they were not in a condition to combat the knights of Languedoc, they might, at least, be able to murder the women and children of the heretics." '
This overwhelming host precipitated itself upon the estates of Raymond VI., Count of Touloiise. Seeing the .storm approach, he was seized with dread, wrote submissive letters to Rome, and offered to accept whatever terms the Papal legate might please to dictate. As the price of his recon- ciliation, he had to deliver up to the Pojje seven of his strongest towns, to appear at the door of the Church, where the dead body of the legate Castel- neau, who had been murdered in his dominions, lay, and to be there beaten with rods.* Next, a rope was put about his neck, and he was dragged by the legate to the tomb of the friar, in the presence of several bishops and an immense multi- tude of spectators. After all this, he was obliged to take the cross, and join with those who were seizing and phmdering his cities, massacring liis subjects, and cari-jang fire and sword throughout
' Sismondi, Hist, of Crusades, p. 28.
- Petri Vallis, Cern. Hist. Alhigens., cap. 16, p. 571. Sismondi, p. 30. ' Sismondi, p. 2f). * Hardouin, Condi. Mont'd., torn, vi., pars. 2, p. col. 1980.
his territories. Stung by these humiliations and calamities, he again changed sides. But his resolu- tion to brave the Papal wi-ath came too late. He was agaiir .smitten ^\'ith interdict ; his possessions were given to Simon de Montfort, and in the end he saw himself reft of all."*
Among the piiuces of the region now visited with this devastating scourge, the next in rank and influence to the Count of Toulouse was the young Raymond Roger, Viscount of Bezier-s. Every day this horde of murderers drew neai-er and nearer to his territories. Submission would only invite destruction. He hastened to put his kingdom into a posture of defence. His vassals were numerous and valiant, their fortified castles covered the face of the country ; of his to^vns, two, Beziers and Carcassonne, were of great size and strength, and he judged that in these circumstances it was not too rash to hope to turn the brunt of the impending temjjest. He called round him his armed knights, and told them that his purpose was to fight : many of them were Papists, as he himself was ; but he pointed to the character of the hordes that were approaching, who made it their sole business to drown the earth in blood, without much distinction whether it was Catholic or Albigensian blood that they spilled. His knights applauded the resolution of theii' young and brave liege lord.
The castles were ganisoned and provisioned, the peasantry of the suri-ounding districts gathered into them, and the cities were provided against a siege. Placing in Beziers a number of valiant knights, and telling the inhabitants that their only hope of safety lay in making a stout defence, Raymond shut himself up in Carcassonne, and waited the approach of the army of crusaders. Onward came the host : before them a smiling country, in their rear a piteous picture of devastation — battered castles, the blackened walls and towers of silent cities, homesteads in ashes, and a desert scathed with fii-e and stained with blood.
In the middle of July, 1209, the three bodies of crusaders arrived, and sat down under the walls of Beziers. The stoutest heart among its citizens quailed, as they sui-veyed from the ramparts this host that seemed to cover the face of the earth. " So great was the assemblage," says the old chronicle, " both of tents and pavilions, that it appeared as if all the world was collected there."" Astonished but not daimted, the men of Beziers made a rash upon the jjilgi'ims before thej' should have time to fortify their encampment. It was all
* Hardouin, Condi. Lateran. iv., torn, vii., p. 79. " Historia de los Faicts d' Armas de Tolosa, pp. 9, 10 ; quoted by Sismondi, p. 35.
42
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
in vain. Tlie assault was repelled, and the crasaders, miiigling -with the citizens as they hurried back to the town in broken crowds, entered the gates along with them, and Beziers was in their hands before they had even foniied the jjlan of attack. The knights inquired of the Papal legate, the Abbot of Citeaux, how they might distinguish the Catholics from the heretics. Arnold at once cut the knot which time did not suffice to loess by the following
assassins. Tlie wretched citizens were slaughtered in a trice. Their dead bodies covered the floor of the church ; they were piled in heaps roimd the altar ; their lilood flowed in torrents at the door. " Seven thousand dead bodies," says Sismondi, " were counted in the Magdalen alone. When the crusaders had massacred the last living creature in Beziers, and had pillaged the houses of all that they thought worth carrying oft', tliey set tire to
VIEW OF TorLOUSE.
reply, which has since become famous : " Kill all ! kill all ! The Lord will know his own." '
The bloody work now began. The ordinaiy population of Beziers was some 15,000; at this moment it could not be less than four times its usual number, for being the capital of the province, and a place of great strength, the inhalntants of the coiuitry and the open villages had been collected into it. The multitude, when they saw that the city was taken, fled to the churches, and began to toll the bells by way of supplication. They but the sooner drew npon themselves the swords of the
' Caesar, Hiesferbachiensis, lib. v., cap. 21. In Bibliotheca Patrum Cisterdensium, tOPi. ii., p. 139. Sismondi, p. 36.
the city in every part at once, and reduced it to a •i'ast funeral pile. Not a house remained standing, not one human being alive. Historians difi'er as to the number of victims. The Abbot of Citeaux, feeling some shame for the butchery which he had ordered, in his letter to Innocent III. reduces it to 1.5,000 ; others make it amount to G0,000."^
The teriible fate which had overtaken Beziers — in one day converted into a mound of ruins dreary and silent as any on the plain of Chaldea — told the other towns and villages the destiny that awaited
- Hist. Gen. de Languedoc, lib. xxi., cap. 57. p. 1C9. Historia de los Faicts d'Armas de Tolosa, p. 10. Sismondi, p. 37.
44
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM.
them. The inhabitants, terror-stricken, fled to the woods and caves. Even the strong castles were left tenantless, their defendei-s deeming it vain to think of oj)posing so furious and over- whelming a host. Pillaging, burning, and massa- cring as they had a mind, the crusaders advanced to Carcassonne, where they arrived on the 1st of August. The city stood on the right bank of the Aude; its fortifications were strong, its garrison numerous and brave, and the young count, Raymond Roger, was at their head. The assailants advanced to the walls, but met a stout resistance. The de- fenders poured upon them streams of boiling water and oil, and ci-iished them with great stones and jjrojeotiles. The attack was again and again re- newed, but was as often repulsed. Meanwhile the forty days' service was drawing to an end, and bands of crusaders, having fuliilled their term and earned heaven, were departing to their homes. The Papal legate, seeing the host melting away, judged it perfectly right to call wiles to the aid of his arms. Holding out to Raymond Roger the hope of an honourable capitulation, and swearing to respect his liberty, Arnold induced the viscount, with 300 of his knights, to present himself at his
tent. "The latter," says Sismondi, "profoundly penetrated with the maxim of Innocent III., that 'to keep faith with those that have it not is an oftence against the faith,' caused the young viscount to be arrested, with all the knights who had followed him."
When the garrison saw that their leader had been imprisoned, they resolved, along ^vith the inhabitants, to make their escape overnight by a secret passage known only to themselves — a cavern three leagues in length, extending from Carcassonne to tJie towers of Cabardes. The crusaders were as- tonished on the morrow, when not a man could be seen upon the walls ; and still more mortified was the Papal legate to find that his prey had escaped him, for his purpose was to make a bonfire of the city, with every man, woman, and child within it. But if this greater revenge was now out of his reach, he did not disdain a smaller one still in his power. He collected a body of some 450 persons, partly fugitives from Carcassonne whom he had captured, and partly the 300 knights who had accompanied the viscount, and of these he burned 400 alive and the remaining 50 he handed. ^
CHAPTER X.
ERECTION OP TRIBUNAL OF INQUISITION.
The Crusades still continued in the Albigensian Territory— Council of Toulouse, 1229— Organises the Inquisition- Condemns the Reading of the Bible in the Vernacular— Gregory IX., 1233, further perfects the Organisation of the Inquisition, and commits it to the Dominicans — Tlae Crusades continued under the form of the Inquisition — These Butcheries the deliberate Act of Eome— Revived and Sanctioned by her in our own day — Protestantism of Thirteenth Century Crushed — Not alone— Final Ends.
The mam object of the crusades was now accom- plished. The j)i-incipalities of Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, and Raymond Roger, Viscount of Beziei's, had been " purged " and made over to that faithful son of the Church, Simon de Montfort. The lands of the Count of Foix were likewise over- run, and joined with the neighbouring provinces in a common desolation. The Viscount of Narboniie contrived to avoid a visit of the crusaders, but at the price of becoming himself the Grand Inquisi- tor of his dominions, and purging them with laws even more rigorous than the Church demanded.^
1 Hidoire de Languedoc^ lib. Sismondi, p. 43i
xxi., cap. 58, p. 169.
The twenty years that followed were devoted to the cruel work of rooting out any seeds of heresy that might possibly yet remain in the soU. Every year a cloud of monks issued from the convents of Citeaux, and, taking possession of the pulpits, preached a new crusade. For the same easy ser- vice they offered the same prodigious reward — Paradise — and the consequence was, that every year a new wave of fanatics gathered and rolled toward the devoted provinces. The villages and the woods were searched, and some gleanmgs, left from the harvests of previous years, were found
- Sismondi, History of the Ctlisades cujainst tlie Alhigenses, pp. 40—43,
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE INQUISITION.
45
and made food for the gibbets and stakes that in such dismal aiTay covered the face of the country. The firat instigators of these terrible proceedings — Innocent III., Simon de Montfort., the Abljot of Citeaux — soon passed from the scene, but the tragedies they had begun went on. In the lands which the Albigenses — now all but extinct — had once peopled, and which they had so greatly en- riched by their industry and adorned by their art, blood never ceased to flow nor the flames to devour their victims.
It would be remote from the object of our history to enter here into details, but we must dwell a little on the events of 1229. This year a Council was held at Toulouse, under the Papal leg^ate, the Cardinal of St. Angelo. The foundation of the Inquisition had already been laid. Innocent III. and St. Dominic share between them the merit of this good woi-k.' In the year of the fourth Lateran, 1215, St. Dominic received the Pontiflf's commission to judge and deliver to punishment apostate and relapsed and obstinate heretics.- This was the Inquisition, though lacking as yet its fiiU organisa- tion and equipment. That St. Dominic died before it was completed alters not the question touching his connection with its authorship, though of late a vindication of him has been attempted on this ground, only by shifting the guilt to his Church. The fact remains that St. Dominic accompanied the armies of Simon de Montfort, that he delivered the Albigenses to the secular judge to be jiut to death — in short, worked the Inquisition so far as it had received shape and form in his day. But the Council of Toulouse still further perfected the organisation and developed the workmg of this terril^le tribunal. It erected iu'every city a council of Inquisitors consisting of one priest and three laymen,' whose business it was to search for heretics in towns, houses, cellars, and other lurking-places, as also in caves, woods, and fields, and to denoinioe them to the bishops, lords, or their bailifis. Oiice discovered, a summary but dreadful ordeal conducted them to the stake. The houses of heretics were to be razed to their foundations, and the ground on which they stood condemned and confiscated — for heresy, like the leprosy, polluted the very stones, and timber, and soil. Lords were held responsible for the orthodoxy of their estates, and so far also for those of their neighbours. If remiss in their search, the sharp admonition of the Church soon
' Condi. Lateran. iv., can. 8, De Inquisitionibus. Hardouin, torn, vii., col. 26.
- Malvenda, ann. 1215; Alb. Butler, 76. Turner, Bist. Eng., vol. v., p. 1*3; ed. 1830.
3 Hardouin, Concilia, torn, vii., p. 175.
quickened their diligence. A last \n\l and testa- ment was of no validity unless a priest had been by when it was made. A physician suspected was forbidden to practise. All above the age of foui-teen were required on oath to abjure heresy, and to aid in the search for heretics.* As a fitting appendage to those tyrannical acts, and a sure and lasting evidence of the real source whence that thing called heresy, on the extirpation of wliich they were so intent, was deiived, the same Council condemned the reading of the Holy Scriptures. " We prohibit," says the fourteenth canon, " the laics from having the books of the Old and New Testament, unless it be at most that any one wishes to have, fi'om devotion, a psalter, a breviary for the Divine offices, or the hours of the blessed Mary; but we forbid them in the most express manner to have the above books translated into the vulgar tongue."*
In 1233, Pope Gregory IX. issued a bull, by which he confided the working of the Inquisition to the Dominicans." He appointed his legate, the Bishop of Tournay, to carry out the bull in the way of completing the organisation of that tribunal which has since become the terror of Christendom, and which has caused to perish such a prodigious number of human beings. In discharge of his commission the bishoj) named two Dominicans in Toulouse, and two in each city of the pi'ovince, to form the Tribunal of the Faith ;' and soon, under the warm patronage of Saint Louis (Louis IX.) of France, this court was extended to the whole kingdom. An instiiiction was at the same time furnished to the Inquisitors, ' in which the bishop enumerated the errors of the heretics. The docu- ment bears undesigned testimony to the Scriptural faith of the men whom the newly-erected court was meant to root out. " In the exposition made by the Bishop of Tournay, of the errors of the Albi- genses," says Sismoudi, " we find nearly all the ]irinciples upon which Luther and Calvin founded the Reformation of the sixteenth centuiy." '
If the crusades were now at an end as hitherto waged, they were continued under the more dread- ful foi-m of the Inquisition. We say more dreadful form, for not so terrible was the crusader's sword as the Inquisitor's rack, and to die fighting in the open field or on the ramparts of the beleaguered
■* Concilium Tolosanum, cap. 1, p. 428. Sismondi, 220.
•' Labbe, Condi. Tolosan., torn, xi., p'. 427. Fleury, Hist. Ecdes., lib. kxix., n. 58.
•^ Percini, Historia Inquisit. Tholosana:. Mosheim, vol. i., p. 341; Glas. edit., 18.31.
<■ Hist, de Langucdoc, lib. xxiv., cap. 87, p. 394. Sismondi, 243.
" Hist, of Crusades against the AUiigenses, j). 243.
46
HISTORY OF TROTESTANTISM.
city, was a fate less horrible tlian to expire amid prolonged and excruciating tortures in the dun- geons of the " Holy Office." The tempests of the crusades, however terrible, had yet their- in- termissions ; they burst, passed away, and left a breathing-space between iheii- explosions. Not so the Inquisition. It worked bn and on, day and night, century after century, with a regularity that was appalling. With steady march it extended its area, till at last it embraced almost all the countries of Europe, and kept piUng up its dead year by year in ever larger and ghastlier heaps.
These awful tragedies were the sole and deliberate acts of the Church of Rome. She planned them in solemn council, she enunciated them in dogma and canon, and in execiiting them she claimed to act as the vicegerent of Heaven, who had power to save or to destroy nations. Never can that Church be in faii'er circumstances than she was then for displaying her true genius, and showing what she holds to be her real rights. She was in the noon of her power ; she was free from all coercion whether of force or of fear ; she could afford to be magnanimous and tolerant were it possible she ever could be so ; yet the sword was the only argument she condescended to employ. She blew the trumpet of vengeance, summoned to arms the half of Europe, and crushed the rising forces of reason and religion under an avalanche of savage fanaticism. In our own day all these horrible deeds have been reviewed, ratified, and sanctioned by the same Church that six centuries ago enacted them : first in the Sijllabus of 1864, which expressly vindicates the ground on which these crusades were done — namely, that the Church of Rome possesses the supremacy of both powers, the spiritual and the temporal ; that she has the right to employ both swords in the extirpation of heresy ; that in the exercise of this right in the past she never exceeded by a haii-'s breadth her just prerogatives, and that what she has done aforetime she may do in time to come, as often as occasion shall require and opportunity may serve. And, secondly, they have been indorsed over again by the decree of Infallibility, which declares that the Popes who planned, ordered, and by their bishops and monks executed all these crimes, were in these, as in all their other official acts, infallibly guided by inspiration. The plea that it was the thirteenth century when these hor- rible butcheries wei'e committed, every one sees to be wholly inadmissible. An mfaUible Church has
no need to wait for the coming of the lights of philosophy and science. Her sun is always in the zenith. The thirteenth and the nineteenth centuiy are the same to her, for she is just as infaUible in the one as in the other.
So fell, smitten down by this terrible blow, to rise no more in the same age and among the same people, the Protestantism of the thirteenth century. It did not perish alone. All the regenerative forces of a social and intellectual kind which Pro- testantism even at that early stage had evoked were rooted out along with it. Letters had begun to refine, liberty to emancipate, art to beautify, and commerce to enrich the region, but all were swept away by a vengeful power that was regard- less of what it destroyed, j^rovided only it reached its end in the extirpation of Protestantism. How changed the region from what it once was ! There the song of the troubadour was heard no more. No more was the gallant knight seen riding forth to display his prowess in the gay tournament ; no more were the cheerful voices of the reaper and grape- gatherer heard in the fields. The rich harvests of the region were ti'odden into the dust, its frait- ful vines and flourishmg olive-trees were torn up ; hamlet and city were swept away ; ruins, blood, and ashes covered the face of this now purified land.
But Rome was not able, with all her violence, to arrest the movement of the human mind. So far as it was religious, she but scattered the sparks to break out on a wider area at a future day ; and so far as it was intellectual, she but forced it into another channel. Instead of Albigensianism, Scholasticism now arose in France, which, after flourishing for some centuries in the schools of Paris, passed into the Scejstical Philosophy, and that again, in our day, into Atheistic Communism. It will be curious if in the future the progeny should cross the path of the parent.
It turned out that this enforced halt of three centuries, after all, resulted only in the goal being more quickly reached. While the movement paused, instrumentalities of prodigious power, im- known to that age, were being prepared to give quicker transmission and widei- diflusion to the Divine principle when next it shovild show itself. And, further, a more robust and capable stock than the Romanesque — namely, the Teutonic — was si- lently gi-owing up, destined to receive the heavenly graft, and to shoot forth on every side larger boughs, to cover Christendom with their shadow and solace it with then- fruits.
TRE DOiLMA Oi' TliAiN^UBSTANTIATlUN.
•17
CHAPTER XL
PROTESTANTS BEFORE PROTESTANTISM.
Berengarius— The First Opponent of Transubstantiation — Numerous Councils Condemn him— His Recantation — The Mai'tyrs of Orleans — Theii' Confession^Their Condemnation and Martyrdom — Peter do Bruys and the Petro- brusians— Henry — Effects of his Eloquence— St. Bernard sent to Oppose him— Henry Apprehended — His Fate unknown— Ai-nold of Brescia— Birth and Education— His Picture of Ms Times— His Scheme of Eeform— Inveighs against the Wealth of the Hierarchy--His Popularity— Condemned by Innocent II. and Banished from Italy — Returns on the Pope's Death— Labours Ten Years in Kome— Demands the Separation of the Temporal and Spiritual Authority— Adrian IV.— Ho Supi^resses the Movement— Ai'nold is Burned.
In piu'suing to an end the Mstoiy of the Albigensiau crusades, we have been carried somewhat beyond theVpoint of time at which we had an-ived. We now' return. A succession of lights which shine out at intervals amid the darkness of the ages guide our eye onward. In the middle of the eleventh century appears Berengarius of Tours in France. He is the first public opponent of tran- substantiation.' A century had now passed since the monk, Paschasius Eadbertiis, had hatched that astounding dogma. In an age of knowledge such a tenet would have subjected its author to the sus- picion of Imiacy, but in times of darkness like those in which this opinion first isstied from the convent of Corbel, the more mysterious the doc- trine the more likely was it to find believers. The words of Scripture, "this is my body," torn from their context and held up before the eyes of ignorant men, seemed to give some countenance to the tenet. Besides, it was the interest of the priesthood to believe it, and to make others believe it too ; for the gift of working a prodigy like this invested them with a superhuman power, and gave them immense reverence in the eyes of the people. The battle that Berengarius now opened enables lis to judge of the wide extent which the belief in transubstantiation had already acquired. Everywhere in France, in Germany, in Italy, we tuid a commotion arising on the appearance of its opponent. We see bishops bestii'ring them- selves to oppose his "impious and sacrilegious" heresy, and numerous Councils convoked to con- demn it. The CouncU of Vercelli in 1049, under Leo IX., which was attended by many foreign prelates, condemned it, and in doing so condemned also, as Berengarius maintained, the doctrine of
' John Duns Scotus had previously published his book attacking and refuting the then comparatively new and strange idea of Paschasius, even that by the words of consecration the bread and wine in the Eucharist became the real and veritable flesh and blood of Christ.
Ambrose, of Augustine, and of Jerome. There followed a succession of Councils : at Paris, 1050 ; atToui-s, 1055; at Rome, 1059; at Rouen, 1063; at Poictiers, 1075 ; and again at Rome, 1078 : at all of which the opinions of Berengarius were discussed and condemned.- This shows us ho^v eager Rome was to establish the fiction of Pascha- sius, and the alarm she felt lest the adherents of Berengarius should multiply, and her dogma be extinguished before it had time to establish itself. Twice did Berengarius appear before the famous Hildebrand : fii'st in the Council of Tours, where Hildebrand filled the post of Papal legate ; and secondly at the Council of Rome, where he presided as Gregory VII.
The piety of Berengarius was admitted, his eloquence was great, but his courage was not equal to his genius and convictions. When brought face to faee with the stake he shrunk from the fii-e. A second and a thii'd time did he recant his opinions ; he even sealed his recantation, according to Diipin, with his subscription and oath.* But no sooner was he back again in France than he began pub- lishing his old ojiinions anew. Numbers in all the countries of Christendom, who had not accepted the fiction of Paschasius, broke silence, emboldened by the stand made by Berengaiius, and declared themselves of the same sentiments. Matthew of Westminster (1087) says, "that Bei'engaiius of Tours, being fallen into heresy, had already almost coiTupted all the French, Italians, and English."* His great opponent was Lanfranc, Ai-chbishop of Canterbury, who attacked him not on the head of transubstantiation only, but as guilty of all the heresies of the Waldenses, and as maintaining with them that the Church remained with them alone, and that Rome was " the congi-egation of the
- Dupin, Heel. Hist., cent. 11. Concil., torn. x. ; edit. Lab., p. 379. 2 Dupin, Eccl. Hist., cent. 11, chap, i., p. 9. 4 Allix, p. 122.
THE MARTYRS OF ORLEANS.
49
wicked, and the seat of Satan."' Brrengarivis died in his bed (1088), expressing deep sorrow for the weakness and dissinmlation which had tarnished his testimony for the truth. " His followers," says iMosheim, " were numerous, as his fame was illus- trious."'
We come to a nobler band. At Orleans there
hy a feigned disciple named Arefaste. Craving to be instructed in the things of God, he seemed to listen not with the ear only, but -with the heart also, as the two canons discoursed to him of the corniption of human nature and the renewal of the Spirit, of the A'anity of praying to the saints, and the folly of thinking to find sah'ation in baptism, or the
flourished, in the be- ginning of the eleventh century, two canons, Stejjhen and Lesoie, distinguished by their rank, revered for their learning, and Ijeloved for their numerous alms-givings. Taught of the Spirit and the Word, these men cherished in secret the faith of the first ages. They were betrayed
literal flesh of Chi-ist in the Eucharist. His earnestness seemed to become yet greater when they promised him that if, forsaking these "broken cis- terns," he would come \—^-:rz- to tlie Saviour himself,
he should have living water to drink, and celestial bread to eat, and, filled ^vith " the treasures of
' Among other works Berengarius published a com- mentary on the Apocalypse; this may perhaps explain liis phraseology.
■ Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. 11, part ii., chap. 3, sec. 18. In a foot-note Mosheim quotes the following woi-ds as decisive of Berengarius' sentiments, that Christ's body is only spirituaVy present in the Sacrament, and that the
bread and wine are only symbols:— "The true body of Christ is set forth in the Supper; but spiritual to the inner man. The incorruptible, uncontaminated, and indestructible body of Christ is to be spiritually eaten [spiritttaliter manducori^ by those only who are members of Christ." (Berengai-ius' Letter to Almannus in Mar- tene's Thesavi:, torn, ii., p. 109 )
50
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM,
wisdom and knowledge," would never know want again. Arefaste heard these things, and returned with his report to those who had sent him. A Council of the bishops of Orleans was immediately- summoned, presided over by King Robert of France. The two canons were brought before it. The pre- tended disciple now became the accuser.' The canons confessed boldly the truth which they had long held ; the arguments and threats of the Coimcil were alike powerless to change then- belief, or to shake their resolution. " As to the burning threatened," says one, " they made light of it even as if joersuaded that they would come out of it unhurt."^ Wearied, it would seem, with the futile reasonings of their enemies, and desirous of bring- ing the matter to an issue, they gave then- final answer thus — " You may say these things to tho.se whose taste is earthly, and who believe the figments of men written on parchment. But to us who have the law written on the inner man by the Holy Spiiit, and savour nothing but what we learn from God, the Creator of all, ye speak things vain and unworthy of the Deity. Put therefore an end to your words ! Do with us even as you wish. Even now we see om- King reigning in the heavenly jilaces, who with his right hand is conducting us to immortal triumphs and heavenly joys.""
They were condemned as Manicheaus. Had they been so indeed, Rome would have visited them with contempt, not -with pei-secution. She was too wise to pursue with fire and sword a thing so shadowy as Manicheism, which she knew could do her no manner of harm. The power that confronted her in these two canons and their disciples came from another sphere, hence the rage with which she assailed it. These two martyi-s were not alone in their death. Of the citizens of Orleans there •Were ten,* some say twelve, who shared theii- faith, and who were willing to share their stake.' They were first stripjied of their clerical vestments, then buffeted like their Master, then smitten -svith rods ; the queen, who was present, setting the example in these acts of ^dolence by striking one of them, and putting out his eye. Finally, they were led outside the city, where a great fire had been
' Dupin, Eccles. Hist., cent. 11, chap. 13.
- Eodulphus Glaber, a monk of Dijon, who wrote a liistory of the occiu-rence.
^ " Jam Regem nosti-um in coelestibus regtlantem vide- mus ; qui ad immortales triumphos dertrA siiA nos suble- Vat, dans superna gaudia." {CharHlary of St. Pim-re en ValVe at Chartres.)
^ Hard., Acta Condi., torn, vi., p. 822.
* Mosheim, Eccles. Hist., vol. i., p. 270. Dupin, Eccles. Hist., cent. 11, chap. 13.
kindled to consume tliem. They entered the flames ■with a smile upon their faces." Together this littlo company of fourteen stood at the stake, and when the fire had set them free, together they mounted into the sky ; and if they smiled when they entered the flames, how much more when they passed in at the eternal gates ! They were burned in the year 1022. So far as the light of history .serves ns, theii'S were the first stakes planted in France since the era of primitive persecutions.' Illustrious pioneers ! They go, but they leave their inefiace- able traces on the road, that the hundreds and thousands of their countrymen who are to follow may not faint, when called to pass through the same toiments to the same everlasting joys.
We next mention Peter de Bniys, who appeared in the following century (the twelfth), because it enables us to indicate the rise of, and explain the name borne by, the Petrobrussians. Their foundei-, who laboured in the provinces of Dauphine, Pro- vence, and Languedoc, taught no novelties of doctrine ; he trod, touching the faith, in the steps of apostolic men, even as Felix Neff', five centuries later, followed in his. After twenty years of mis- sionary laboiu's, Peter de Bruys was seized and burned to death (1126)' in the town of St. Giles, near Toulouse. The leading tenets professed by his followers, the Petrobrussians, as we learn from the accusations of then- enemies, were — that bap- tism avails not without faith ; that Christ is only spii'itually present in the Sacrament ; that prayers and alms profit not dead men ; that purgatory is a mere invention ; and that the Church is not made up of cemented stones, but of believing men. This identifies them, in their religious creed, with the Waldenses ; and if further evidence were wanted of tliis, we have it in the treatise which Peter de Clugny published against them, in which he accuses them of having fallen into those errors which have
^ " Ridentes in medio ignis." (Hard., Acta Coticil., torn. vi., p. 822.)
7 Gibbon has mistakenly recorded their martyrdom as that of Manicheans. Of the trial and deaths of these mai'tyrs, four contemporaneous accounts have come down to us. In addition to the one referred to above, tliero is the biographical relation of Arefaste, their betrayer, a knight of Eouen; there is the chronicle of Ademar, a monk of St. Martial, who lived at the time of the Council; and there is the narrative of John, a monk of Fleury, near Orleans, written probably within a few weeks of the transaction. Accounts, taken from these original documents, are given in Baronius' Annals (tom. xi., col. 60, 61; Colon, ed.) and Hai-douin's Councils.
' Mosheim says 1130. Bossuet, Faber, and others have assigned to Peter de Bruys a Paulician or Eastern oiigin. We are inclined to connect liim with the Western or Waldensian confessors. '
ARNOLD OF BRESCIA.
51
sho^vn such an inveterate tendency to spring up amid the perpetual snows and icy torrents of the Alps.'
When Peter de Bruys had finished his couree he was succeeded by a preacher of the name of Henri, an Italian by birth, who also gave his name to his followers — the Henricians. Henri, who enjoyed a high repute for sanctity, wielded a most command- ing eloquence. The enchantment of his voice was enough, said his enemies, a little envious, to melt the very stones. It performed what may perhaps be accounted a still greater feat ; it brought, accord- ing to an eye-witness, the very priests to his feet, . dissolved in tears. Beginning at Lausanne, Henri ti-a\ersed the south of France, the entire pojnilation gathering round him wherever he came, and listen- ing to his sermons. " His orations were powerful but noxious," said his foes, " as if a whole legion of demons had been speaking through his mouth." St, Bernard was sent to check the spiritual pesti- lence that was desolating the region, and he an-ived not a moment too soon, if we may judge from his picture of the state of things which he found there.