Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/339

Rh REFORMATION 321 Cl&menges deplores in the strongest terms the state of the church in his day, a condition of appalling degeneracy, which he ascribes mainly to the increase in wealth and luxury that had followed upon the development of a worldly spirit in its midst. His strictures leave no order or degree of either the ecclesiastical or the monastic life untouched, the overwhelming ostentation of the Curia ; the pride and rapacity of the cardinals, their immorality and addiction to simony ; the prevalence of the same vices among the episcopal order, filled with beardless youths, who, scarcely liberated from the dread of the school- master's ferule, hastened to assume the pastoral office; the lower clergy in general so sunk in vice and sloth that scarcely one in a thousand (" vix inter mille unus ") was to be found living a godly and sober life; the nunneries, which he declares were brothels rather than sanctuaries (" non dico Dei sanctuaria, sed Veneris execranda prostibula "). We can feel no surprise at finding that in the 16th century Clement VII. thought it necessary to place this burning diatribe by a great doctor of the church in the Index Ex- purgatorius. A few years later we find the evils to which Clemenges called attention emphasized by one of the most eminent ecclesiastics of the age, the cardinal Julian Cesarini, when he was endeavouring to dissuade Pope Eugenius IV. from his design of dissolving the council of Basel (see POPEDOM, vol. xix. p. 502). In this letter he affirms that so strongly is popular feeling stirred against the clergy by their neglect of their duties and scandalously immoral lives that there is reason to fear that, if some remedy be not devised, the whole fabric of the Roman Church may be overturned. 1 The complete failure of these successive efforts to bring about any comprehensive measure of church reform is a familiar fact in European history. And not only were the evils which it was sought to abolish suffered to continue with but little abatement, but dissent even from the recog- nized discipline of the church was placed under a ban, and made, in common with dissent from doctrine, an offence punishable with the severest penalties. The mediaeval theory of the Roman hierarchy had indeed been reaffirmed by Eugenius IV. and his successors with a success which seemed almost to preclude the possibility of its ever being again challenged. But the main point here to be noted is that in none of these several efforts in the direction of reform, whether resulting from conciliar or popular action, was the doctrine of the church once called in question. The fate that overtook John Huss and Jerome of Prague appears to have been very generally regarded as a neces- sary example of just rigour in the suppression of heresy. We find, accordingly, that, when in the following century it was sought to associate the efforts of the reformers in the direction of doctrinal change with the efforts of a party within the church itself in the direction of disciplinary reform, the defenders of the traditional Catholic faith challenged the assumed precedent and altogether denied the parallel. " It is," wrote Bossuet in the 17th century, "an obvious illusion; for among all the passages which they adduce there is not one in which those teachers have ever dreamed of changing the belief of the church, of amending its worship, which consisted chiefly in the sacrifice of the mass, or of overthrowing the authority of her prelates and especially that of the pope, all which was the primary design of this new reformation of which Luther was the architect." 2 It is not easy to gainsay the reasonableness of Bossuet's criticism. It was the fundamental theory of the Reformation that it involved the setting aside of the "Dissolutio cleri Alemannise, ex qua laici supra modum irritantur adversus statum ecclesiasticurn . . . inclinatus est arbor ut cadat, nee potest diutius persistere." See JEn. Sylvius, Opera (ed. 1.551), pp. 66, '- 2 (Euvres (1865), ii. 303. development given in mediaeval times to the doctrines and teaching of the early church, and proposed to substitute for these a totally different interpretation, which rejected the successive decisions of councils and popes as arbitrary and erroneous. Such a theory, however, necessarily im- posed on the Reformers the task of proving the validity of their own position, by showing that their repudiation of a practice and of precedents which had been accepted for so many centuries was justified by an appeal to yet more ancient and unquestionable authority. If indeed they failed in so doing, they must look forward to sinking in the estimation of Christendom to the level of heretics, and be prepared to stand before posterity in the same category as the Arians, the Albigenses, the Lollards, and the Hussites, and those other sects which, by their un- warranted assertion of the right of private interpretation, had provoked and incurred the formal condemnation of the church. It is not within the scope of this article to attempt to estimate the justice of the theological argu- ments by which the Reformers sought to vindicate their position ; but there is good reason for concluding that the argumentative powers and personal influence of Luther and Calvin would have failed, just as the efforts of pre- ceding reformers had failed, in effecting the desired result, had not the conditions and circumstances of the age been such as to lend new force to the arguments which they urged in favour of a fundamental change in the standpoint of religious faith. The most notable feature in connexion with traditional belief which challenges our attention at the commence- ment of the 16th century is the manner in which the popedom was becoming less and less in harmony with the spirit of the age, and with those new forces which were now developing in the midst of Teutonism. The intoler- ance of the church in the repression of heresy had become more pronounced and was pressing with increasing rigour on free thought, when, owing to the influences of the New Learning, that thought was everywhere on the point of seeking to break through the traditional trammels ; the corruption of the Curia and of both the regular and the secular clergy, the extension of the temporal power of the pontiffs in Italy, and the extortion of their emissaries in other countries had reached a climax just as, owing to the more independent spirit generated by the consolidation of the nationalities, the ruler and the people in each kingdom or principality were becoming increasingly impatient of the existence of such abuses. A brief consideration of these several features becomes, accordingly, quite indis- pensable, if we wish rightly to comprehend the forces at work in Europe at the time when the Reformers arose to combine them and give them more definite direction. Not a few, and some very memorable, efforts had been Efforts made before the 16th century to bring about a reformation for re - of doctrine, but these had almost invariably been promptly visited with the censure of the church. Long after the " heresies " of the 4th century had died away and after the controversies of the turbulent 9th century such as those on the Eucharist between Paschasius Radbertus and Ratramnus, and on predestination between John Scotus Erigena and Gottschalk had been silenced by the decisions of the pontiffs, we find movements arising, which, how- ever much they differ in other characteristics, all attest the existence of a widespread desire among large sections of the community to revert to a simpler form of religious belief and practice. The Paulicians (or Manichseans of the East), the Albigenses (or Manichaeans of the West), the Waldenses, the Cathari, and the Leonists (or Poor Men of Lyons) sects which made their appearance mainly in the 12th and 13th centuries, and for the most part in Switzerland, Languedoc, and northern France the XX. 41 doctrine.