Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/511

Rh EPISCOPACY 491 the Church of Rome as the other countries of the West. With the view, however, of counteracting the growing encroachments of the papacy, it became customary for the Irish bishops, after election by their own chapters, to receive consecration in England, in order that they might renounce in person all claims prejudicial to the English crown made by the Church of Koine. The state of the Church of Ireland during the Middle Ages was one of fierce intestine discord. Its episcopal succession, however, con tinued unbroken. Nor did the Reformation cause any breach in its continuity The Irish parliament in 1536 cast off the papal supremacy and accepted that of the crown. The bishops acquiesced, in the change, and at the acces siou of Elizabeth in 1560 all save two, appointed by Queen Mary, took the oath of supremacy to the queen and conformed to the leformed liturgy. The line was pre served during the storm of the Great Rebellion ; at the Restoration eight of the Irish bishops were still surviving. Of these Bramhall was selected for the primacy, and by him and his suffragans two archbishops and ten bishops were consecrated to the vacant sees in St Patrick s, Dublin, in 1661. The churches of England and Ireland were united by Act of Parliament in 1800. In 1833-34 the episcopate was much curtailed. Two ot the archbishoprics were reduced to bishoprics, and ten of the bishoprics were merged in other sees. Finally, in 1869, the Irish Church was disestablished, and became, like the Episcopal Church of Scotland, an episcopal church existing in the country, not the established church of the country. Through all these changes the episcopal succession has remained unim paired, and the Protestant episcopate can claim to be regarded as the lineal representative of the ancient episco pate of Ireland. The Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland derive their consecration from foreign churches, those of Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and therefore have no direct connexion with the national Irish Church. The churches of Scandinavia, including those of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, were the only Christian bodies which embraced the Lutheran doctrines that preserved an episcopate through the stormy period of the Reformation. Of these, the Church of Sweden alone can put forth a claim to an unbroken succession, nor is this claim quite beyond question. The Scandinavian churches, with their bishops, were originally subject to the see of Hamburg or Bremen, of which their founder, the apostolic Anschar of Corbey (who died 865) was the first occupant In 1104 Lund in Schonen was chosen as tiie seat of a new archiepiscopal see, to which all the Scandinavian kingdoms and dependencies should owe allegiance. The other kingdoms being displeased at their subjection to a Danish prelate, a synod was held at Skenning in 1248, under the presidency of the English cardinal, Nicholas Breakspear, afterwards Hadrian IV., which gave a primate to Norway, the islands, and Greenland, placed at Nidaros (Drontheim), and provided for the erection of a primacy of Sweden, afterwards fixed in 1164 at Upsala. The epis copal system being thus established, the succession was continued in the Scandinavian churches till the Reforma tion, when it was completely interrupted everywhere save in Sweden During that period of disturbance all the Swedish sees became vacant but two, and the bishops of these two soon left the kingdom. The episcopate, however, was preserved by Peter Magnusson, who, when residing as warden of the Swedish hospital of St Bridget in Rome, had been duly elected bishop of the see of Westeraes, and consecrated c. 1524. No official record of his consecration can be discovered, but there is no sufficient reason to doubt the fact ; and it is certain that during his lifetime he was acknowledged as a canonical bishop both by Roman Catho lics and by Protestants. In 1528 Mafiiussou consecrated bishops to fill the vacant sees, and, assisted by one of these, Magnus Sommar, bishop of Strengness, he aftersvards con secrated the Reformer, Lawrence Peterson, as archbishop of Upsala, Sept. 22, 1531. Some doubt has been raised as to the validity of the consecration of Peterson s successor, also named Lawrence Peterson, in 1575, from the insufficiency of the documentary evidence of the consecration of his consecrator, Paul Justin, bishop of Abo. The integrity of the succession has, however, been accepted after searching investigation by men of such learning as Grabe and Routh, and has been formally recognized by the convention of the American Episcopal Church. The number of dioceses in Sweden is now twelve, including the archiepiscopal see of U^psala, by the holder of which the bishops are, as a rule, consecrated. On a vacancy three candidates are nominated by the votes of the clergy of the diocese, of whom one is selected by the king. The succession to the daughter church of Finland, now independent, stands or falls with that of Sweden. 1 The other Scandinavian churches those of Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, though equally episcopal in form, cannot produce any legitimate claim to the episcopal suc cession. The Reformation was at first opposed by the whole episcopate. For this and other political charges, the king, Christian III., in 1536-37 suddenly placed most of the bishops under arrest, and compelled them to resign their sees into his hands, to dispose of as he thought good. On their engaging not to oppose the Reformation they were indisposed to lead, these prelates were presented by him to stalls in cathedral or collegiate churches, and, quietly acquiescing in the new regime, created no schism from the national establishment. They did not, however, take any part in the consecration of their successors, which was per formed by Bugenhagen, Luther s friend and fellow-laboim-r, at Copenhagen, September 2, 1537. The seven ministers on whom Bugenhagen laid hands were called evangelical superintendents, or bishops, and from these the existing succession is derived. Bugenhagen drew up, by the king s command, a scheme of church government for Denmark and Norway. In the latter kingdom the pre -Reformation bishops generally deserted their posts, two, Hans Reff of Opsloe and Geble Pedersen of Bergen, adopted the change and retained their sees. In Iceland the last of the Roman Catholic bishops authorised the first Protestant bishop, ordained at Roeskild, to hold his office in succession to him self. It will be seen that the validity of the episcopal suc cession in these churches is very questionable. But it has never been formally denied by the Church of England, and it has been accepted by Dodwell, Leslie, and Thorndike, and its orders have been recognized by the Indian bishops in the case of missionaries ordained by the Danish Church. Another Protestant episcopal church is that of the Moravians, or, as they prefer to style themselves, the Umtas Fratrum. The Bohemian anti-Reformation swept the church of the Brethren from their original seat to find a refuge in Poland and Prussia. Here their ancient Epis copacy, derived in 1467 from the Austrian Waldenses, was perpetuated in regular succession, until in 1735 one of the two last surviving bishops, Jablonski, with the concurrence of the other, Sitkovius, consecrated David Nitschmann to be the first bishop of the renewed church of the Brethren, established at Herrnhut in Saxony. Two years later, May 20, 1737, Jablonski and Nitschmann consecrated Count 1 The whole subject of the Swedish episcopate and the validity of its succession will be found discussed in a series of papers from which our information is chiefly drawn characterized by fairness and thoroughness of investigation, by the Rev. F. S. May, in the Colonial Church Chronicle for 1861. We are also indebted to Mr May for a clear statement of the history of the episcopate in the other Scandi navian churches, in papers read before the Church Congresses at Not- wich and Southampton.