Admiration

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The Carolingian male line lasted in Italy till 875, in Germany till 911, in France till 987. § 141. Alfred the Great, and Education in England. Comp. the Jubilee edition of the Whole Works of Alfred the Great, with Preliminary Essays illustrative of the History, Arts and Manners of the Ninth Century. London, 1858, 2 vols. The biographies of Alfred, quoted on p. 395, and Freemann’s Old English History 1859. In England the beginning of culture was imported with Christianity by Augustin, the first archbishop of Canterbury, who brought with him the Bible, the church books, the writings of Pope Gregory and the doctrines and practices of Roman Christianity; but little progress was made for a century. Among his successors the Greek monk, Theodore of Tarsus (668–690), was most active in promoting education and discipline among the clergy. The most distinguished scholar of the Saxon period is the Venerable Bede (d. 735), who, as already stated, represented all historical, exegetical and general knowledge of his age. Egbert, archbishop of York, founded a flourishing school in York (732), from which proceeded Alcuin, the teacher and friend of Charlemagne. During the invasion of the heathen Danes and Normans many churches, convents and libraries were destroyed, and the clergy itself relapsed into barbarism so that they did not know the meaning of the Latin formulas which they used in public worship. In this period of wild confusion King Alfred the Great (871–901), in his twenty-second year, ascended the throne. He is first in war and first in peace of all the Anglo-Saxon rulers. What Charlemagne was for Germany and France, Alfred was for England. He conquered the forces of the Danes by land and by sea, delivered his country from foreign rule, and introduced a new era of Christian education. He invited scholars from the old British churches in Wales, from Ireland, and the Continent to influential positions. He made collections of choice sentences from the Bible and the fathers. In his thirty-sixth year he learned Latin from Asser, a monk of Wales, who afterwards wrote his biography. He himself, no doubt with the aid of scholars, translated several standard works from Latin into the Anglo-Saxon, and accompanied them with notes, namely a part of the Psalter, Boëthius on the Consolation of Philosophy, Bede’s English Church History, Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Theology, Augustin’s Meditations, the Universal History of Orosius, and Aesop’s Fables. He sent a copy of Gregory’s Pastoral Theology to every diocese for the benefit of the clergy. It is due to his influence chiefly that the Scriptures and service-books at this period were illustrated by so many vernacular glosses. He stood in close connection with the Roman see, as the centre of ecclesiastical unity and civilization. He devoted half of his income to church and school. He founded a school in Oxford similar to the Schola Palatina; but the University of Oxford, like those of Cambridge and Paris, is of much later date (twelfth or thirteenth century). He seems to have conceived even the plan of a general education of the people.837 Amid great physical infirmity (he had the epilepsy), he developed an extraordinary activity during a reign of twenty-nine years, and left an enduring fame for purity, and piety of character and unselfish devotion to the best interests of his people.838 His example of promoting learning in the vernacular language was followed by Aelfric, a grammarian, homilist and hagiographer. He has been identified with the archbishop Aelfric of Canterbury (996–1009), and with the archbishop Aelfric of York (1023–1051), but there are insuperable difficulties in either view. He calls himself simply "monk and priest." He left behind him a series of eighty Anglo-Saxon Homilies for Sundays and great festivals, and another series for Anglo-Saxon Saints’ days, which were used as an authority in the Anglo-Saxon Church.839

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In the 4th session, the Venetian, Marcello, pronounced a eulogy upon Julius which it would be hard to find excelled for fulsome flattery in the annals of oratory. After having borne intolerable cold, so the eulogist declared, and sleepless nights and endured sickness in the interests of the Church, and having driven the French out of Italy, there remained for the pontiff the greater triumphs of peace. Julius must be pastor, shepherd, physician, ruler, administrator and, in a word, another God on earth.839 At the 5th session, held during the pope’s last illness, a bull was read, severely condemning simony at papal elections. The remaining sessions of the council were held under Julius’ successor.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Janssen calls attention to his delight over the gold and silver vessels and other valuables he had received in gifts. My drawers, Erasmus wrote, "are filled with presents, cups, bottles, spoons, watches, some of them of pure gold, and rings too numerous to count." In only one respect, says Janssen, did he go beyond his Italian predecessors in his attack upon the Church. The Italians sneered and ridiculed, but kept their statements free from hypocritical piety, which Erasmus often resorted to after be had driven his dagger into his opponent’s breast.1093 In England, the old Puritan, Tyndale, also gave Erasmus no quarter, but spoke of him as one "whose tongue maketh little gnats great elephants and lifteth up above the stars whosoever giveth him a little exhibition."1094 But no one has ever understood Erasmus and discerned what was his mission better than Luther. That Reformer, who had once called him "our ornament and hope—decus nostrum et spes,"—expressed the whole truth when, in a letter to Oecolampadius, 1523, he said: "Erasmus has done what he was ordained to do. He has introduced the ancient languages in place of the pernicious scholastic studies. He will probably die like Moses in the land of Moab .... He has done enough to overcome the evil, but to lead to the land of promise is not, in my judgment, his business." § 70. Humanism in France. Humanism in France found its way from Italy, but did not become a distinct movement until the 16th century was well on its way. Budaeus, 1467–1540, was the chief representative of classical studies; Faber Stapulensis, or, to use his French name, Lefèvre d’Etaples, of Christian culture, 1469–1536, both of them living well into the period of the Reformation.1095 In France, as in Germany, the pursuit of the classics never went to the point of intoxication as it did in Italy. In France, the Renaissance did not reach its maturity till after the Reformation was well advanced in Germany, the time at which the springs of the movement in the Italian peninsula were dried up. On the completion of the 100 years’ war between France and England, the intellectual currents began to start. In 1464, Peter Raoul composed for the duke of Bourgogne a history of Troy. At that time the French still regarded themselves as descendants of Hector. If we except Paris, none of the French universities took part in the movement. Individual writers and printing-presses at Paris, Lyons, Rouen and other cities became its centres and sources. William Fichet and Gaguin are usually looked upon as the first French Humanists. Fichet introduced "the eloquence of Rome" at Paris and set up a press at the Sorbonne. He corresponded with Bessarion and had in his library volumes of Petrarca, Guarino of Verona and other Italians. Gaguin copied and corrected Suetonius in 1468 and other Latin authors. Poggio’s Jest-book and some of Valla’s writings were translated into French.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  present at the burial. Erasmus was the prince of Humanists and the most influential and useful scholar of his age. He ruled with undisputed sway as monarch in the realm of letters. He combined brilliant genius with classical and biblical learning, keen wit and elegant taste. He rarely wrote a dull line. His extensive travels made him a man of the world, a genuine cosmopolitan, and he stood in correspondence with scholars of all countries who consulted him as an oracle. His books had the popularity and circulation of modern novels. When the rumor went abroad that his Colloquies were to be condemned by the Sorbonne, a Paris publisher hurried through the press an edition of 24,000 copies. To the income from his writings and an annuity of 400 gulden which he received as counsellor of Charles V.—a title given him in 1516—were added the constant gifts from patrons and admirers.1084 Had Erasmus confined himself to scholarly labors, though he secured eminence as the first classicist of his age, his influence might have been restricted to his time and his name to a place with the names of Politian of Italy and Budaeus of France, whose works are no longer read. But it was otherwise. His labors had a far-reaching bearing on the future. He was a leading factor in the emancipation of the mind of Europe from the bondage of ignorance and superstition, and he uncovered a lifeless formalism in religion. He unthawed the frost-bitten intellectual soil of Germany. The spirit of historical criticism which Laurentius Valla had shown in the South, he represented north of the Alps, and of Valla he spoke as "unrivalled both in the sharpness of his intelligence and the tenacity of his memory."1085 But the sweep of his influence is due to the mediation of his pupils and admirers, Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Luther. Erasmus’ break with the old mediaeval ecclesiasticism was shown in a fourfold way. He scourged the monks for their ignorance, pride and unchastity, and condemned that ceremonialism in religion which is without heart; he practised the critical method in the treatment of Scripture; he issued the first Greek New Testament; be advocated the translation of the Bible into the languages spoken in his day. In almost every work that he wrote, Erasmus, in a vein of satire or in serious statement, inveighed against the hypocritical pretension of the monkery of his time and against the uselessness of hollow religious rites. In his edition of the New Testament, he frequently returns to these subjects. For example, in a note on Matt. 19:12 he speaks of the priests "who are permitted to fornicate and may freely keep concubines but not have a wife."1086 Nowhere is his satire more keen on the clergy than in the Praise of Folly.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Of all the Reformers Luther is the first. He is so closely identified with the German Reformation that the one would have no meaning without the other. His own history is the formative history of the church which is justly called by his name, and which is the incarnation and perpetuation of his genius. No other Reformer has given his name to the church he reformed, and exercised the same controlling influence over its history. We need not discuss here the advantages and disadvantages of this characteristic difference; we are only concerned with the fact. Martin Luther was born Nov. 10, 1483, an hour before midnight, at Eisleben in Prussian Saxony, where he died, Feb. 18, 1546.111 On the day following he was baptized and received the name of the saint of the day. His parents had recently removed to that town112 from their original home at Mahra near Eisenach in Thuringia, where Boniface had first preached the gospel to the Germans. Six months after Luther’s birth they settled at Mansfeld, the capital of a rich mining district in the Harz mountains, which thus

• From How God Became King (2012)

  These controversies, then, and many others like them, left their mark on the church and its common life. As Christian teachers gradually came to realize that some things were absolutely essential to the faith and others of lesser importance, the things that were essential, but that had been controversial, were listed and agreed upon for the avoidance of doubt. These lists turned into a rule of faith, an agreed-upon shared statement of what Christians believed; and the rule of faith was codified into the great creeds. These creeds, though they too have been controversial from time to time, have functioned for over a millennium and a half as a sign and symbol of Christian faith and life. Where you find this belief, Christians have said, you find the church, the body of Christ, the company of “true believers.” The creeds were dramatic developments within the early church. They stand to this day as a remarkable achievement of brevity, dense clarity, and evocative spiritual power. In the tradition to which I belong, we say the Apostles’ Creed twice a day and the Nicene Creed at every Eucharist or at least on Sundays. And yet. The one thing the creeds do not do—to return to the point I made a minute ago—is to mention anything that Jesus did or said between his birth and his death. Early Christians read and studied the gospels and tried to live by them. Their allegiance to them is not in doubt. But they saw no need to mention the central substance of the gospels in the creeds as well. This has had a massive, and I believe completely unintended, consequence. It is, in fact, one major part of the reason why Christians to this day find it so hard to grasp what the gospels are really trying to say. Take the second article of the short fourth-century statement of faith we know as the Apostles’ Creed: I believe…in Jesus Christ, God’s only son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit; born of the Virgin Mary; Suffered under Pontius Pilate; Was crucified, dead and buried; He descended into hell; On the third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; From thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  should be an upright and honorable man and of much and well-attested learning." Along with chaste literature, he was expected "to imbue the tender minds of his pupils with holy morals and be to them a master, not of grammar only, but of virtue."1110 St. Paul’s has the distinction of being the first grammar-school in England where Greek was taught. The list of its masters was opened by William Lily, one of the few Englishmen of his age capable of teaching Greek. After studying at Oxford, he made a journey to Jerusalem, and returned to England by way of Italy. He died in 1522. By his will, Colet left all his books, "imprinted and in paper," to poor students of the school. As a preacher, the dean of St. Paul’s was both bold and Scriptural. Among his hearers were the Lollards. Colet himself seems to have read Wyclif’s writings as well as other heretical works.1111 Two of his famous sermons were delivered before convocation, 1511, and on Wolsey’s receiving the red hat. The convocation discourse, which has come down to us entire, is a vigorous appeal for clerical reform.1112 The text was taken from Rom. xii:2. "Be ye not conformed to this world but be ye reformed." The pride and ambition of the clergy were set forth and their quest of preferment in Church and state condemned. Some frequented feasts and banquetings and gave themselves to sports and plays, to hunting and hawking.1113 If priests themselves were good, the people in their turn would be good also. "Our goodness," exclaimed the preacher, "would urge them on in the right way far more efficaciously than all your suspensions and excommunications. They should live a good and holy life, be properly learned in the Scriptures and chiefly and above all be filled with the fear of God and the love of the heavenly life." According to the canons of the age, the preacher went beyond the limits of prudence and Fitz-James, bishop of London, cited him for trial but the case was set aside by the archbishop. The charges were that Colet had condemned the worship of images and declared that Peter was a poor man and enjoyed no episcopal revenues and that, in condemning the reading of sermons, Colet had meant to give a thrust to Fitz-James himself, who was addicted to that habit. Latimer, who was at Cambridge about that time, said in a sermon some years later, that, in those days Doctor Colet was in trouble and should have been burned, if God had not turned the king’s heart to the contrary." When Erasmus’ Greek Testament appeared, Colet gave it a hearty welcome. In a letter to the Dutch scholar acknowledging the receipt of a copy, he expressed his regret at not having a sufficient knowledge of Greek to read it and his desire to be his disciple in that tongue.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He paid large sums for literary work, giving Beccadelli 1000 gold guldens for his Hermaphrodita, and Fazio, in addition to his yearly stipend of 500 guldens, 1,500 guldens for his Historia Alphonsi. When he took Manetti to be his secretary, he is reported to have said he would be willing to divide his last crust with scholars. With Nicolas V., 1447–1455, Humanism triumphed at the centre of the Roman Church. He was the first and best pope of the Renaissance and its most liberal supporter. However, Humanism never struck as deep root in Rome as it did in Florence. It was always more or less of an exotic in the papal city.1009 Nicolas caught the spirit of the Renaissance in Florence, where he served as private tutor. For 20 years he acted as the secretary of Cardinal Niccolo Abergati, and travelled in France, England, Burgundy, Germany and Northern Italy. On these journeys he collected rare books, among which were Lactantius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Irenaeus, 12 epistles of Ignatius and an epistle of Polycarp. Many manuscripts he copied with his own hand, and he helped to arrange the books Cosimo collected. His pontificate was a golden era for architects and authors. With the enormous sums which the year of Jubilee, 1450, brought to Rome, he was able to carry out his double passion for architecture and literature. In the bank of the Medici alone, 100,000 florins were deposited to the account of the papacy. Nicolas gave worthy scholars employment as transcribers, translators or secretaries, but he made them work night and day. He sent agents to all parts of Italy and to other countries, even to Russia and England, in search of rare books, and had them copied on parchment and luxuriously bound and clasped with silver clasps. He thus collected the works of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Appian, Philo Judaeus, and the Greek Fathers, Eusebius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Cyril and Dionysius the Areopagite. He kindled a feverish enthusiasm for the translation of Greek authors, and was determined to enrich the West with versions of all the surviving monuments of Hellenic literature. As Symonds puts it, Rome became a factory of translations from Greek into Latin. Nicolas paid to Valla 500 scudi for a Latin version of Thucydides and to Guarino 1,500 for his translation of Strabo. He presented to Nicolas Perotti for his translation of Polybius a purse of 500 new papal ducats,—a ducat being the equivalent of 12 francs,—with the remark that the sum was not equal to the author’s merits. He offered 5,000 ducats for the discovery of the Hebrew Matthew and 10,000 gold gulden for a translation of Homer, but in vain; for Marsuppini and Oratius only furnished fragments of the Iliad, and Valla’s translation of the first 16 books was a paraphrase in prose. He gave Manetti, his secretary and biographer, though absent from Rome, a salary of 600 ducats.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  On the other hand, he was offered the red hat by Paul III., 1535, but declined it on account of his age. After the death of Oecolampadius, he returned to Basel, 1535, broken down with the stone and catarrh. The last work on which he was engaged was an edition of Origen. He died calling out, "Oh, Jesus Christ, thou Son of God, have mercy on me," but without priest or extreme unction,—sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus, as the Dominicans of Cologne in their joy and bad Latin expressed it. He was buried in the Protestant cathedral of Basel, carried to the grave, as his friend and admirer, Beatus Rhenanus, informs us, on the shoulders of students. The chief magistrate of the city and all the professors and students were

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  She suffered persecution from Jews and Gentiles, but never retaliated, and made her way to triumph through the power of truth and a holy life sealed by a heroic death.42 2. The change began with the union of church and state under Constantine the Great, in the East, and Charles the Great, in the West. Both these emperors represent the continuation of the old Roman empire under the dominion of the sword and the cross.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Here he labored as minister for twenty-five years, and had a hand in many important movements connected with the Reformation. He attended the colloquy at Marburg (1529); wrote, with Capito, the Confessio Tetrapolitana (1530); brought about an artificial and short-lived armistice between Luther and Zwingli by the Wittenberg Concordia (1536); connived, unfortunately, at the bigamy of Philip of Hesse; and took a leading part, with Melanchthon, in the unsuccessful reformation of Archbishop Herrmann of Cologne (1542). Serious political troubles, and his resistance to the semi-popish Interim, made his stay in Strassburg dangerous, and at last impossible. Melanchthon in Wittenberg, Myconius in Basel, and Calvin in Geneva, offered him an asylum; but be accepted, with his younger colleague Fagius, a call of Cranmer to England (1549). He aided him in his reforms; was highly esteemed by the archbisbop and King Edward VI., and ended his labors as professor of theology in Cambridge. His bones were exhumed in the reign of Bloody Mary (1556), but his memory was honorably restored by Queen Elizabeth (1560). Bucer figures largely in the history of his age as the third (next to Luther and Melanchthon) among the Reformers of Germany, as a learned theologian and diplomatist, and especially as a unionist and peacemaker between the Lutherans and Zwinglians. He forms also a connecting link between Germany and England, and exerted some influence in framing the Anglican standards of doctrine and worship. His motto was: "We believe in Christ, not in the church."763 He impressed his character upon the church of Strassburg, which occupied a middle ground between Wittenberg and Zürich, and gave shelter to Calvin and the Reformed refugees of France. Strict Lutheranism triumphed for a period, but his irenical catholicity revived in the practical pietism of Spener, who was likewise an Alsacian. In recent times the Strassburg professors, under the lead of Dr. Reuss, mediated between the Protestant theology of Germany and that

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  the same fountain, and labored for the same end, but in different ways. Luther built up the Reformation among the people in the German tongue; Melanchthon gave it methodical shape for scholars by his Latin writings. The former worked in the quarries, and cut the rough blocks of granite; the latter constructed the blocks into a habitable building. Luther expressed a modest self-estimate, and a high estimate of his friend, when he said that his superiority was more "in the rhetorical way," while Melanchthon was "a better logician and reasoner." Melanchthon finished his "Theological Common-Places or Ground-Thoughts (Loci Communes or Loci Theologici), in April, 1521, and sent the proof- sheets to Luther on the Wartburg. They appeared for the first time before the Close of that year.473 This book marks an epoch in the history of theology. It grew out of exegetical lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, the Magna Charta of the evangelical system. It is an exposition of the leading doctrines of sin and grace, repentance and salvation. It is clear, fresh, thoroughly biblical, and practical. Its main object is to show that man cannot be saved by works of the law or by his own merits, but only by the free grace of God in Christ as revealed in the gospel. It presents the living soul of divinity, in striking contrast to the dry bones of degenerate scholasticism with its endless theses, antitheses, definitions, divisions, and subdivisions. The first edition was written in the interest of practical Christianity rather than scientific theology. It is meagre in the range of topics, and defective in execution. It is confined to anthropology and soteriology, and barely mentions the metaphysical doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation, as transcendent mysteries to be adored rather than curiously discussed. It has a polemical hearing against the Romanists, in view of the recent condemnation of Luther by the Sorbonne. It also contains some crude and extreme opinions which the author afterwards abandoned. Altogether in its first shape it was an unripe production, though most remarkable if we consider the youth of the author, who was then only twenty-four years of age. Melanchthon shared at first Luther’s antipathy to scholastic theology; but he learned to distinguish between pure and legitimate scholasticism and a barren formalism, as also between the Aristotelian philosophy itself and the skeleton of it which was worshiped as an idol in the universities at that time. He knew especially the value of Aristotle’s ethics, wrote a commentary on the same (1529), and made important original contributions to the science of Christian ethics in his Philosophiae Moralis Epitome (1535).474 Under his improving hand, the Loci assumed in subsequent editions the proportions of a full, mature, and well-proportioned system, stated in calm, clear, dignified language, freed from polemics against the Sorbonne and contemptuous flings at the schoolmen and Fathers.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Thomas’ works on dogmatic theology and ethics are the most important of his writings. The earliest was a commentary on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard. Here belong Expositions of the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the decalogue, the Angelic salutation, and the sacraments. Thomas gave his first independent systematic treatment of the entire realm of theology in his Compendium theologiae. The subject was presented under the heads of the three cardinal virtues,—faith, hope, and charity. His master-work is his Summa theologica which he did not live to finish and which is supplemented by compilations from the author’s commentary on the Lombard. Thomas also made important contributions to the liturgy and to hymnology. In 1264 at the request of Urban IV., he prepared the office for the festival of Corpus Christi, in which were incorporated the Pange lingua, Lauda Sion, and other hymns.1500 With Augustine and John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas shares the distinction of being one of the three master theological minds of the Western world. What John of Damascus did for the theology of the Greek Church, that Thomas did for the theology of the mediaeval Church. He gave to it its most perfect form. His commanding eminence rests upon his clearness of method and his well-balanced judgment rather than upon his originality of thought.1501 He was not a great scholar and, like Augustine, he knew no Hebrew and little Greek. Abaelard Bonaventura, and Albertus Magnus seem to show a wider familiarity than he with the ancient authors, patristic and profane, but they differ widely. He leaned much upon Albertus Magnus.1502 Albertus had an eye more for the works of nature, Thomas for moral action. As was the case with the other Schoolmen, so Thomas had as his chief authorities Augustine and Aristotle, quoting the latter as "the philosopher." He was in full sympathy with the hierarchical system and the theology of the mediaeval Church and at no point out of accord with them.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Bernard of Clairvaux, according to Abaelard’s pupil, Berengar, cultivated poetic composition from his youth.2092 Five longer religious poems are ascribed to him.2093 From the Rhythmic Song on the name of Christ—Jubilus rhythmicus de nomine Jesu — the Roman Breviary has drawn three hymns, which are used on the festival of the name of Christ. They are:— Jesus, the very thought of thee. Jesus, King most wonderful. O Jesus, thou the beauty art. Jesu, dulcis memoria. Jesu, rex admirabilis. Jesus, decus angelicum. The first of these hymns has been called by Dr. Philip Schaff, "the sweetest and most evangelical hymn of the Middle Ages." The free version of some of the verses by Ray Palmer is the most popular form of Bernard’s poem as used in the American churches. Jesus, thou Joy of loving hearts, Thou Fount of life, thou Light of men, From the best bliss that earth imparts We turn unfilled to thee again. The poem to the Members of Christ’s body on the Cross—Rhythmica oratio ad unum quodlibet membrorum Christi patientis — is a series of devotional poems addressed to the crucified Saviour’s feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and face. From the poem addressed to our Lord’s face—Salve caput cruentatum — John Gerhardt, 1656, took his O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden. O sacred head, now wounded, With grief and shame weighed down. Much as Bernard influenced his own age in other ways, he continues to influence our own effectively and chiefly by his hymns. Bernard of Cluny, d. about 1150, has an enduring name as the author of the most beautiful and widely sung hymn on heaven, "Jerusalem the Golden." He was an inmate of the convent of Cluny when Peter the Venerable was its abbot, 1122–1156. From his probable place of birth, Morlaix, Brittany, he is sometimes called Bernard of Morlaix. Of his career nothing is known. He lives in his poem, "The Contempt of the World"—de contemptu mundi — from which the hymns are taken which go by his name.2094 It contains nearly three thousand lines, and was dedicated to Peter the Venerable. At the side of its glowing descriptions of heaven, which are repetitions, it contains a satire on the follies of the age and the greed of the Roman court.2095 It is written in dactylic hexameters, with leonine and tailed rhyme, and is difficult of translation.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Marsiglius quotes repeatedly such passages as "My kingdom is not of this world," John 18:36, and "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things which are God’s," Matt. 22:21. These passages and others, such as John 6:15, 19:11, Luke 12:14, Matt. 17:27, Rom. 13, he opposes to texts which were falsely interpreted to the advantage of the hierarchy, such as Matt. 16:19, Luke 22:38, John 21:15–17. If we overlook his doctrine of the supremacy of the state over the Church, the Paduan’s views correspond closely with those held in Protestant Christendom to-day. Christ, he said, excluded his Apostles, disciples, and bishops or presbyters from all earthly dominion, both by his example and his words.147 The abiding principles of the Defensor are the final authority of the Scriptures, the parity of the priesthood and its obligation to civil law, the human origin of the papacy, the exclusively spiritual nature of priestly functions, and the body of Christian people in the state or Church as the ultimate source of authority on earth. Marsiglius has been called by Catholic historians the forerunner of Luther and Calvin.148 He has also been called by one of them the "exciting genius of modern revolution."149 Both of these statements are not without truth. His programme was not a scheme of reform. It was a proclamation of complete change such as the sixteenth century witnessed. A note in a Turin manuscript represents Gerson as saying that the book is wonderfully well grounded and that the author was most expert in Aristotle and also in theology, and went to the roots of things.150 The tractarian of Padua and Thomas Aquinas were only 50 years apart. But the difference between the searching epigrams of the one and the slow, orderly argument of the other is as wide as the East is from the West, the directness of modern thought from the cumbersome method of mediaeval scholasticism. It never occurred to Thomas Aquinas to think out beyond the narrow enclosure of Scripture interpretation built up by other Schoolmen and mediaeval popes. He buttressed up the regime he found realized before him. He used the old misinterpretations of Scripture and produced no new idea on government. Marsiglius, independent of the despotism of ecclesiastical dogma, went back to the free and elastic principles of the Apostolic Church government. He broke the moulds in which the ecclesiastical thinking of centuries had been cast, and departed from Augustine in claiming for heretics a rational and humane treatment. The time may yet come when the Italian people will follow him as the herald of a still better order than that which they have, and set aside the sacerdotal theory of the Christian ministry as an invention of man.151

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Next to Francis d’Assisi, the most celebrated of the Italian saints is Catherine of Siena—Caterina da Siena—1347–1380. With Elizabeth of Thuringia, who lived more than a century before her, she is the most eminent of the holy women of the Middle Ages whom the Church has canonized. Her fame depends upon her single-hearted piety and her efforts to advance the interests of the Church and her nation. She left no order to encourage the reverence for her name. She was the most public of all the women of the Middle Ages in Italy, and yet she passed unscathed and without a taint through streets and in courts. Now, as the daughter of an humble citizen of Siena, she ministers to the poor and the sick: now, as the prophetess of heaven, she appeals to the conscience of popes and of commonwealths. Her native Sienese have sanctified her with the fragrant name la beata poplana, the blessed daughter of the people. Although much in her career, as it has been handed down by her confessor and biographer, may seem to be legendary, and although the hysterical element may not be altogether wanting from her piety, she yet deserves and will have the admiration of all men who are moved by the sight of a noble enthusiasm. It would require a fanatical severity to read the account of her unwearied efforts and the letters, into which she equally poured the fire of her soul, without feeling that the Sienese saint was a very remarkable woman, the Florence Nightingale of her time or more, "one of the most wonderful women that have ever lived," as her most recent English biographer has pronounced her. Or, shall we join Gregorovius, the thorough student of mediaeval Rome, in saying, "Catherine’s figure flits like that of an angel: through the darkness of her time, over which her gracious genius sheds a soft radiance. Her life is more worthy and assuredly a more human subject for history than the lives of the popes of her age."366 Catherine Benincasa was the twenty-third of a family of twenty-five children. Her twin sister, Giovanna, died in infancy. Her father was a dyer in prosperous circumstances. Her mother, Monna Lapa, survived the daughter. Catherine treated her with filial respect, wrote her letters, several of which are extant, and had her with her on journeys and in Rome during her last days there. Catherine had no school training, and her knowledge of reading and writing she acquired after she was grown up.

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  The strongest passage on this subject is found in Irenaeus, who, in contending against the heretics, mentions, besides prophecies and miraculous cures of demoniacs, even the raising of the dead among contemporary events taking place in the Catholic church;113 but he specifies no particular case or name; and it should be remembered also, that his youth still bordered almost on the Johannean age. 4. The moral effect of Christianity upon the heart and life of its professors. The Christian religion has not only taught the purest and sublimest code of morals ever known among men, but actually exhibited it in the life sufferings, and death of its founder and true followers. All the apologists, from the author of the Epistle to Diognetus down to Origen, Cyprian, and Augustin, bring out in strong colors the infinite superiority of Christian ethics over the heathen, and their testimony is fully corroborated by the practical fruits of the church, as we shall have occasion more fully to show in another chapter. "They think us senseless," says Justin, "because we worship this Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, as God next to the Father. But they would not say so, if they knew the mystery of the cross. By its fruits they may know it. We, who once lived in debauchery, now study chastity; we, who dealt in sorceries, have consecrated ourselves to the good, the increate God; we, who loved money and possessions above all things else, now devote our property freely to the general good, and give to every needy one; we, who fought and killed each other, now pray for our enemies; those who persecute us in hatred, we kindly try to appease, in the hope that they may share the same blessings which we enjoy."114 5. The rapid spread of Christianity by purely moral means, and in spite of the greatest external obstacles, yea, the bitter persecution of Jews and Gentiles. The anonymous apologetic Epistle to Diognetus which belongs to the literature of the Apostolic Fathers, already thus urges this point: "Do you not see the Christians exposed to wild beasts, that they may be persuaded to deny the Lord, and yet not overcome? Do you not see that the more of them are punished, the greater becomes the number of the rest? This does not seem to be the work of man: this is the power of God; these are the evidences of his manifestation."115 Justin Martyr and Tertullian frequently go on in a similar strain. Origen makes good use of this argument against Celsus, and thinks that so great a success as Christianity met among Greeks and barbarians, learned and unlearned persons in so short a time, without any force or other worldly means, and in view of the united opposition of emperors, senate, governors, generals, priests, and people, can only be rationally accounted for on the ground of an extraordinary providence of God and the divine nature of Christ. 6.

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  This was felt even in that age by the more enlightened divines. Alcuin, who represents the English school of missionaries, and who expresses in his letters great respect and admiration for Charlemagne, modestly protested, though without effect, against this wholesale conversion by force, and asked him rather to make peace with the "abominable" people of the Saxons. He properly held that the heathen should first be instructed before they are required to be baptized and to pay tithes; that water-baptism without faith was of no use; that baptism implies three visible things, namely, the priest, the body, and the water, and three invisible things, namely, the Spirit, the soul, and faith; that the Holy Spirit regenerates the soul by faith; that faith is a free act which cannot be enforced; that instruction, persuasion, love and self-denial are the only proper means for converting the heathen.125 Charlemagne relaxed somewhat the severity of his laws or capitularies after the year 797. He founded eight bishoprics among the Saxons: Osnabrück, Münster, Minden, Paderborn, Verden, Bremen, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt. From these bishoprics and the parochial churches grouped around them, and from monasteries such as Fulda, proceeded those higher and nobler influences which acted on the mind and heart. The first monument of real Christianity among the Saxons is the "Heliand" (Heiland, i.e., Healer, Saviour) or a harmony of the Gospels. It is a religious epos strongly resembling the older work of the Anglo-Saxon Caedmon on the Passion and Resurrection. From this it no doubt derived its inspiration. For since Bonifacius there was a lively intercourse between the church of England and the church in Germany, and the language of the two countries was at that time essentially the same. In both works Christ appears as the youthful hero of the human race, the divine conqueror of the world and the devil, and the Christians as his faithful knights and warriors. The Heliand was composed in the ninth century by one or more poets whose language points to Westphalia as their home. The doctrine is free from the worship of saints, the glorification of Peter, and from ascetic excesses, but mixed somewhat with mythological reminiscences. Vilmar calls it the only real Christian epos, and a wonderful creation of the German genius.126 A little later (about 870) Otfried, a Franconian, educated at Fulda and St. Gall, produced another poetic harmony of the Gospels, which is one of the chief monuments of old high German literature. It is a life of Christ from his birth to the ascension, and ends with a description of the judgment. It consists of fifteen thousand rhymed lines in strophes of four lines.

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  of England.776 The Landgrave was the first prince who took advantage of the recess of the Diet of Speier, Aug. 27, 1526, and construed it into a legal permission for the introduction of the Reformation into his own territory. For this purpose he convened a synod in the little Hessian town of Homberg.777 It consisted of the clergy, the nobility, and the representatives of cities, and was held Oct. 20–22, 1526. He himself was present, and his chancellor Feige presided over the deliberations. The synod is remarkable for a premature scheme of democratic church government and discipline, which failed for the time, but contained fruitful germs for the future and for other countries. It was suggested by the disputations which had been held at Zürich for the introduction of the Zwinglican Reformation. The leading spirit of this synod was Francis Lambert of Avignon (1487–1530), the first French monk converted to Protestantism and one of the secondary reformers. He had been formerly a distinguished and efficient traveling preacher of the Franciscan order in the South of France. But he could find no peace in severe ascetic exercises; and, when he became acquainted with some tracts of Luther in a French translation, he took advantage of a commission of his convent to deliver letters to a superior of his order in Germany, and left his native land never to return. He traveled on a mule through Geneva, Bern, Zürich, Basel, Eisenach, to Wittenberg, as a seeker after light on the great question of the day. He was half converted by Zwingli in a public disputation (July, 1522), and more fully by Luther in Wittenberg, where he arrived in January, 1523. Luther, who was often deceived by unworthy ex-priests and ex- monks, distrusted him at first, but became convinced of his integrity, and aided him.778 At his request Lambert delivered exegetical lectures in the university, translated reformatory tracts into French and Italian, and published a book in defense of his leaving the convent (February, 1523), and a commentary on the rule of the Minorites to which Luther wrote a preface (March, 1523). He advocated the transformation of convents into schools. He married a Saxon maiden (July 15, 1523), anticipating herein the Reformer, and lived with her happily, but in great poverty, which obliged him to beg for assistance. He spent over a year in Wittenberg; but, finding no prospect of a permanent situation on account of his ignorance of the German language, he suddenly left for Metz, against the advice of Luther and Melanchthon, on invitation of a few secret friends of the Reformation (March 24, 1524). He addressed a letter to the king of France to gain him for the Reformation, and announced a public disputation; but the clergy prevented it, and the magistrate

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  It remained for the council to terminate the schism of years by electing a new pontiff and to proceed to the discussions of Church reforms. At the fortieth session, Oct. 30, 1417, it was decided to postpone the second item until after the election of the new pope. In fixing this order of business, the cardinals had a large influence. There was a time in the history of the council when they were disparaged. Tracts were written against them, and the king at one time, so it was rumored, proposed to seize them all.316 But that time was past; they had kept united, and their influence had steadily grown. The papal vacancy was filled, Nov. 11, 1417, by the election of Cardinal Oddo Colonna, who took the name of Martin V. The election was consummated in the Kaufhaus, the central commercial building of Constance, which is still standing. Fifty-three electors participated, 6 deputies from each of the 5 nations, and 23 cardinals. The building was walled up with boards and divided into cells for the electors. Entrance was had by a single door, and the three keys were given, one to the king, one to the chapter of Constance, and one to the council. When it became apparent that an election was likely to be greatly delayed, the Germans determined to join the Italians in voting for an Italian to avoid suspicion that advantage was taken of the synod’s location on German soil. The Germans then secured the co-operation of the English, and finally the French and Spaniards also yielded.317 The pope-elect was thus the creature of the council. The Western Church was again unified under one head. But for the deep-seated conviction of centuries, the office of the universal papacy would scarcely have survived the strain of the schism.318 Oddo Colonna, the only member of his distinguished house who has worn the tiara, was a subdeacon at the time of his election. Even more hastily than Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, was he rushed through the ordination of deacon, Nov. 12, of priest, Nov. 13, and bishop, Nov. 14. He was consecrated pope a week later, Nov. 21, Sigismund kissing his toe. In the procession, the bridles of Martin’s horse were held by Sigismund and Frederick the Hohenzollern, lately created margrave of Brandenburg. The margrave had paid Sigismund 250,000 marks as the price of his elevation, a sum which the king used to defray the expenses of his visit to Benedict.