Contempt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Tithes were abolished at the suggestion of the Due de Chatelet (furious because the Bishop of Chartres had proposed to end hunting-rights). The appropriation and sale of Church lands was virtually unopposed. The bishops told the Pope: ‘Our silence demonstrated how we were inaccessible, personally, to all the temporal interests whose possession had drawn on us hatred and envy.’ The land was sold at high prices, usually to very respectable persons (including, it is thought, the king). The Assembly believed the sales would provide a wide number of people with a stake in the new regime, and they proposed to bind regime and state together by giving the clergy a civil constitution, which, among other things, would rationalize their salaries. Here the deputies grievously miscalculated. What most of the parish clergy wanted was internal democracy within the Church, a system of convocation. Instead, they got a scheme which realigned parish and diocesan boundaries with the new civil ones, swept away cathedral chapters, colleges and benefices without cure of souls, and provided for bishops to be nominated by the electors of departments, and curés by the electors of districts. This was presbyterianism, a return to what was widely assumed to have been the practice of the Apostolic Age. Hardly any priests wanted the new system. Most were opposed, some strongly so; the bishops and higher clergy hated it. The Pope, too, was virtually obliged to oppose it, since all the elected bishops had to do was to write him a letter indicative of unity of faith. It was assumed that Pius VI could be blackmailed into compliance by using his property in Avignon (where the locals had revolted against papal rule) as a bargaining counter. In fact he wrote to the king informing him that the constitution was schismatic, and the king foolishly sat on the letter until the Assembly was too committed to draw back. The second blunder was the failure to consult the clergy before the constitution was framed, or to endeavour to sell it to them afterwards. Instead, the clergy were simply required to take an oath to observe it or face dismissal. Only seven out of a hundred and sixty bishops accepted it; the figures for parochial clergy are incomplete and somewhat confusing, but in general the constitution was accepted in the centre, the Île de France and the south-east, and rejected in Flanders, Artois, Alsace and Brittany. The non-juring areas remain, today, the most fervently Catholic in France. The divisions seem to have existed even in 1791, but the oath reinforced them. Even so, catastrophe might have been averted. Bishop Talleyrand, one of the seven juror bishops, duly consecrated eighty ‘constitutional’ bishops, most of whom were perfectly respectable and some of whom were outstanding; and the Assembly wanted the law to be interpreted liberally, so that non-juring clergy could administer to non-constitutionalist congregations. Unfortunately, enforcement was entrusted to municipalities and local directories of Districts and Departments, many of whom were professional anti-clericals with scores to settle.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  There was Mesmer, who arrived there in 1778, with his theory of animal magnetism as a healing force; he held séances at which social and intellectual leaders joined hands round a bucket of water. Lavater taught that character could be deduced from facial appearance; his rival measured skulls. The Rosicrucians presented apparitions and set up their boxes of tricks in the very room where Voltaire had once bandied rationalism with Frederick the Great. Joseph de Maistre was already working on his mystical theories of right-wing tyranny (Considérations sur la France appeared in 1796); there were gnostics in plenty, like Robespierre’s friend Catherine Theot, and mystics like Saint-Martin, who described himself as ‘official defender of Providence’. Against this background, the new rulers of France set about the removal and replacement of Catholic Christianity. One eye-witness, Mercier, later recorded in his memoirs that if Robespierre had only appeared with an old Bible under his arm, and firmly told the French to become Protestant, he might have succeeded. But the Revolution was not reformist, it was millenarian. It was, in fact, the first modern millenarian revolt. It looked backwards to the Munster of the 1520s, and the Middle Ages, and forward to Karl Marx and Mao Tse-tung. It was also influenced by its own décor, a reflection of the classical revival: thus it had overtones of the Emperor Julian’s pathetic attempts to revivify imperial paganism. Cadet de Vaux erected the first ‘patriotic altar’ in January 1790 at his country house; it had Roman axes and fasces, a pike crowned with a cap of Liberty, a shield with a portrait of Lafayette and verses by Voltaire; the arrangement was widely copied. Such altars were the foci of open-air ceremonies, where oaths of loyalty were sworn, the Te Deum sung, and communal banquets consumed. The designer and régisseur was J-P. David, who staged a huge ceremony in July 1791 to convey the remains of Voltaire to the Panthéon. This raised the issue of the role of religion in state ceremonies, and so in turn the question of civil marriage and secular education. Should not the Revolution, creating a new society, give it a new religion? Many of the revolutionaries were deists. They believed in nature; or, like Rousseau, in direct communication with God without intermediaries. Other elements in their belief were patriotism and the cult of sensibilité – hence Saint-Just’s Temple of Friendship, where every adult was to record the names of his friends once a year, and explain to the magistrates why any had been dropped. Unfortunately, the new cults could not be separated from de-Christianization and the guillotine, which served as it were to terminate awkward arguments in a thoroughly rationalistic manner. On 7 October 1793, a ceremony was held at Rheims in which a local blacksmith smashed the miraculous flask of holy oil used at the coronation. Many of the de-Christianizers were renegades, as in earlier millenarian movements – Fouché had been an Oratorian, Laplanche a Benedictine, Charles a canon of Chartres.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Luther’s mind was limited by national, almost provincial, horizons. He scarcely thought in continental, let alone global terms. He thought ‘the faith of Jews, Turks and Papists is all one thing.’ He was interested in reforming Christians rather than converting pagans. And the Calvinists were preoccupied with the élite. Their faith did not focus on the heathen masses. With some justice Cardinal Bellarmine attacked Protestants for their lack of missionary activity: ‘Heretics are never said to have converted Jews or pagans, but only to have perverted Christians.’ Some Protestants argued that the command of Christ to preach the gospel ceased with the apostles: the offer had been made once and for all, and there was no need to make it again. But this was a minority opinion. Donne’s sermon reflects Anglican orthodoxy. Many of the English seamen and Atlantic traders were pious, even fanatical, Protestants who felt an obligation to proselytize. Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s charter of 1583 refers to the compassion of God ‘for poor infidels, it seeming probable that God hath reserved these gentiles to be introduced into Christian civility by the English nation’. Many early company charters express a similar conviction. But such missions were left in secular and mercantile hands. The Anglican church created no organization; nor did the state. Chaplains were appointed for the benefit of the merchant or settler communities. Conversions served the objects of commerce or were the work of individuals. It was in territories occupied by the Spanish and Portuguese that the missions were taken seriously. The work was undertaken almost entirely by the orders, led by the Franciscans, on the instructions of the crown. Motives were mixed. The authorities needed a docile labour force and a sense of security. Conversion was an element of the conquest, as it had been in eighth-century Europe: the Indians, like the Saxons, were told that their gods had failed them in allowing the Spanish to win. Some of the conquistadores were pious; Cortes had a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, carried her image with him, and her standard; his orders were ‘. . . the first aim of your expedition is to serve God and spread the Christian faith... you must neglect no opportunity to spread the knowledge of the true faith and the church of God among those people who dwell in darkness.’ One of his earliest messages home was to ask for the dispatch of missionaries ‘with as little delay as possible’. On the other hand, Pizarro admitted brutally: ‘I have not come for any such reasons. I have come to take their gold away from them.’ Was it a case of Cortes being hypocritical and Pizarro honest? Medieval Christian soldiers were curious and volatile combinations; often the most savage among them were the most generous in Christian charity and works, as the rise of the Cistercians suggests. The friars were also divided in themselves.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Trade and religion were inextricably mixed, not to say confused. It is not clear whether the Japanese authorities permitted Jesuit evangelism to continue because they feared that, if the Jesuits left, the great ship would no longer call. But they were certainly highly suspicious of western motives, as Valignano realized and warned. On the whole, the Japanese trusted the Jesuits but no one else. Unfortunately, no one else trusted the Jesuits. They needed the profit from their bullion-broking in order to finance their missions in Japan, which were run at a considerable loss. Valignano had drawn up a formal contract in 1578 with the Macao mercantile ring, which had been approved by Pope Gregory XIII – ‘this could not properly be called trade, since it was done out of pure necessity’ (1582). But if the Pope knew the facts he seems to have made little effort to convey them to other interested clerical bodies. The Jesuits were actually in debt; but the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the secular clergy and the Protestants were quite sure the trade had made the Society fabulously rich. Moreover the Dominicans had great influence over the Spanish government, which of course controlled Portuguese possessions after 1580. Although the thrones had been united on the clear understanding that the two empires should be separately administered and independent, in fact the Spanish lay and ecclesiastical authorities, operating from Manila, never recognized an exclusive Portuguese sphere of influence east of Malacca. In 1583 Valignano devoted a whole section of his report to the topic ‘Why it is not convenient that other religious orders should come to Japan’. So far, he argued, the Christians had had a great advantage in Japan because they were under unitary command, whereas the Buddhists were splintered. Admitting the friars would lead to similar splits among the Christians, since experience showed they always ganged up on the Jesuits (as well as quarrelling among themselves). He particularly feared the Spanish Dominicans and Franciscans, and the conquistador methods they and the Spanish army commanders had employed against the Aztecs and the Filippinos. That would be disastrous with the Japanese: ‘Japan is not a place which can be controlled by foreigners . . . and the King of Spain does not and cannot have any power or jurisdiction here. There is no alternative to relying on training the natives in the way they should go, and then leaving them to manage the churches themselves. For this, a single religious order will suffice.’ He added, truthfully: ‘In the past, many of the Japanese lords had a great fear that we [Jesuits] were concocting some evil in Japan, and that if they allowed the conversion of Christians in their fiefs we would afterwards use them to raise a rebellion on behalf of the [Spanish] king who supports us; for they could not understand why these monarchs should spend such vast sums on the mission if it was not with the ultimate intention of seizing their lands. . . .

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  we cannot avoid recognizing in the people of Indostan a race of man lamentably degenerate and base; retaining but a feeble sense of moral obligation; yet obstinate in their disregard of what they know to be right, governed by malevolent and licentious passions, strongly exemplifying the effects produced on society by a great and general corruption of manners, and sunk in misery by their vices.’ Here, one feels, there is an almost total confusion between economic, cultural and moral ‘inferiority’. This was very common. The missionaries were not anthropologists or sociologists; they found it exceedingly difficult to think in terms of relative scales of moral values. They did not see European-Christian notions of right and wrong as the indices of a particular culture and society but as absolutes, springing from divine revelation. A man’s conscience was a kind of direct line to the Deity. Everyone had such a thing. The Baptist George Grenfell wrote of the Congo: ‘The chief characteristics of the Bolobo people appear to be drunkenness, immorality and cruelty, out of each of which vice spring actions almost too fearful to describe. In hearing of these, anyone living out here almost gets to feel like calling the people terrible brutes and wretches, rather than poor miserable heathen. The light of their consciences must condemn them in most of their sins.’ Another missionary, Holman Bentley, commented on cannibalism: ‘To this awful depth have these children of the Heavenly Father fallen, until they have indeed become children of the devil. . . . This is how they live up to their light! Again we say, if the light that is in them be darkness, how great is that darkness!’ It was hard indeed for missionaries with such feelings, and they formed by far the majority, to visualize the emergence of a predominantly native clergy, or indeed to visualize natives as fully-fledged Christians at all. They were seen to approximate to Christianity in so far as they successfully imitated European modes of behaviour. Thus missionaries found themselves exporting not so much Christianity as European or western culture – including, of course, its moral culture. The idea of Christianity as a series of matrices, capable of being applied to all societies, and indeed to all individuals, tended to be smothered in the cultural packaging. When it came to selecting native converts for training as clergy – and very few missionaries objected to the idea in principle – the most Europeanized tended to be chosen. Naturally, the influence they had among the unconverted diminished pari passu with their departure from native norms; they were, not unjustly, regarded as poor imitations of European missionaries. Thus experiments in training native clergy were liable to be classified as failures, or as not justifying the amount of trouble and debate they involved. These points are worth a digression because it is important to realize that the methods adopted by the early German missionaries in India, though they became standard, always remained subjects of debate.

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

  In Rome, the bloody pope fanned the feud between the Colonna and the Orsini, and almost succeeded in blotting out the name of the Colonna by assassination and judicial murder. Sixtus has the distinction of having extended the efficacy of indulgences to souls in purgatory. He was most zealous in distributing briefs of indulgence.768 The Spanish Inquisition received his solemn sanction in 1478. Himself a Franciscan, he augmented the privileges of the Franciscan order in a bull which that order calls its great ocean—mare magnum. He canonized the official biographer of Francis d’Assisi, Bonaventura. He issued two bulls with reference to the worship of Mary and the doctrine of the immaculate conception, but he declared her sinlessness from the instant of conception a matter undecided by the Roman Church and the Apostolic see—nondum ab ecclesia romana et apostolica sede decisum.769 In all matters of ritual and outward religion, he was of all men most punctilious. The chronicler, Volterra, abounds in notices of his acts of devotion. Asa patron of art, his name has a high place. He supported Platina with four assistants in cataloguing the archives of the Vatican in three volumes. Such was Sixtus IV., the unblushing promoter of the interests of his relatives, many of them as worthless as they were insolent, the disturber of the peace of Italy, revengeful, and yet the liberal patron of the arts. The enlightened diarist of Rome, Infessura,770 calls the day of the pontiff’s decease that most happy day, the day on which God liberated Christendom from the hand of an impious and iniquitous ruler, who had before him no fear of God nor love of the Christian world nor any charity whatsoever, but was actuated by avarice, the love of vain show and pomp, most cruel and given to sodomy.771 During his reign, were born in obscure places in Saxony and Switzerland two men who were to strike a mighty blow at the papal rule, themselves also of peasant lineage and the coming leaders of the new spiritual movement. § 53. Innocent VIII. 1484–1492. Under Innocent VIII. matters in Rome were, if anything, worse than under his predecessor, Sixtus IV. Innocent was an easy-going man without ideals, incapable of conceiving or carrying out high plans. He was chiefly notable for his open avowal of an illegitimate family and his bull against witchcraft. At Sixtus’ death, wild confusion reigned in Rome. Nobles and cardinals barricaded their residences. Houses were pillaged. The mob held carnival on the streets. The palace of Jerome Riario was sacked. Relief was had by an agreement between the rival families of the Orsini and Colonna to withdraw from the city for a month and Jerome’s renunciation of the castle of S. Angelo, which his wife had defended, for 4,000 ducats. Not till then did the cardinals feel themselves justified in meeting for the election of a new pontiff.

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

  He subscribes himself "Petrus peccator monachus." The letters to the anti-pope Cadalous show his power of sarcasm; he tells him that his very name from cado, to fall, and laov", people, was ominous, that he deserved a triple deposition, that his new crime was adultery and simony of the worst sort, that he had sold his own church (Parma) and bought another, that the church was desecrated to the very top by such adulteries. He prophesied his death within one year, but Cadalous outlived it, and Damiani defended his

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

  The revenues derived from feudal states and princes, called census, were divided equally between the cardinals and the pope’s private treasury. Gregory X., in 1272, was the first to make such a division of the tribute from Sicily, which amounted to 8000 ounces of gold, or about $90,000.204 In the pontificate of John XXII. there is frequent mention of the amounts contributed by Sicily and their equal partition. The sums varied from year to year, and in 1304 it was 3000 ounces of gold. The tribute of Sardinia and Corsica was fixed in 1297 at the annual sum of 2000 marks, and was divided between the two treasuries.205 The papal state and Ferrara yielded uncertain sums, and the tribute of 1000 marks, pledged by John of England, was paid irregularly, and finally abrogated altogether. Peter’s pence, which belongs in this category, was an irregular source of papal income.206 The yearly income of the papal treasury under Clement V. and John XXII. has been estimated at from 200,000 to 250,000 gold florins.207 In 1353 it is known to have been at least 260,000 florins, or more than $600,000 of our money These sources of income were not always sufficient for the expenses of the papal household, and in cases had to be anticipated by loans. The popes borrowed from cardinals, from princes, and from bankers. Urban V. got a loan from his cardinals of 30, 000 gold florins. Gregory XI. got loans of 30,000 florins from the king of Navarre, and 60, 000 from the duke of Anjou. The duke seems to have been a ready lender, and on another occasion loaned Gregory 40,000 florins.208 It was a common thing for bishops and abbots to make loans to enable them to pay the expense of their confirmation. The abbot of St. Albans, in 1290, was assessed 1300 pounds for his servitium, and borrowed 500 of it.209 The habit grew until the time of the Reformation, when the sums borrowed, as in the case of Albrecht, archbishop of Mainz, were enormous. The transactions of the Avignon chancellory called forth loud complaints, even from contemporary apologists for the papacy. Alvarus Pelagius, in his Lament over the Church, wrote: "No poor man can approach the pope. He will call and no one will answer, because he has no money in his purse to pay. Scarcely is a single petition heeded by the pope until it has passed through the hands of middlemen, a corrupt set, bought with bribes, and the officials conspire together to extort more than the rule calls for." In another place he said that whenever he entered into the papal chambers he always found the tables full of gold, and clerics counting and weighing florins.210 Of the Spanish bishops he said that there was scarcely one in a hundred who did not receive money for ordinations and the gift of benefices. Matters grew no better, but rather worse as the fourteenth century advanced.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Hugh of St Victor, in his Rules for Novices, forbids listening with the mouth open, moving the tongue round the lips while working, gesturing, raising the eyebrows while speaking, rolling eyeballs, tossing the head, shaking the hair, smoothing garments, moving the feet unnecessarily, twisting the neck, pulling faces, grinning, wrinkling the nostrils and ‘all contortions of the lips which disfigure the comeliness of a man’s face and the decency of discipline’. Again, for nuns, their bodily posture, for almost any activity, was laid down in detail. Both monks and nuns were scourged for comparatively minor faults, especially for murmuring at correction. For the Brigittine nuns of Syon in Middlesex, corporal punishment was mandatory for any fault, however venial, which a nun failed to report herself, and which was later noted. Five lashes was the norm, ‘but if the default be of the more grievous kind, or she or they show any token of rebellion, the discipliners shall not cease till the abbess chargeth them to cease’. From Syon, too, we have a table of signs for both the sisters and brothers (who lived in separate establishments) which indicates that the rules of silence were enforced. But when the rules multiplied, spirit tended to fly out of the cloister; medieval man was superbly gifted at imposing rules on himself and then defeating their purpose. Giraldus Cambrensis noted, c . 1180, that the Canterbury monks were ‘so profuse in their gesticulations of fingers and hands and arms, and in the whisperings whereby they avoided open speech, wherein all showed a most unedifying levity and license’, that they looked like ‘a company of actors and buffoons’. He thought it would have been better ‘to speak modestly in plain human speech than to use such a dumb garrulity of frivolous signs and hissings’. This is but a tiny example of the contempt which familiarity with the sacred inevitably breeds, and which is inseparable from the religious life. But the root causes of the monastic failure went deeper, and were economic and social. In northern and central Europe, where the Benedictines were strongest and wealthiest, and where the monks’ economic role was most important, they were fully integrated into the tenurial system. The abbot was, and had to behave as, a pillar of feudal society. The big abbeys were nearly always on royal progress-routes, and had to entertain the kings and their courts; later, parliaments or estates-general. Abbots nearly always came from the higher social classes. By the twelfth century they already had their separate establishments, staff and buildings (especially kitchen), from which they dispensed large-scale hospitality to the rich. They were, in fact, in charge of something which was a combination of a luxury hotel and a cultural centre. Of course this role was not, initially, of their choosing. But use by governments of Benedictine abbeys (especially royal foundations) for state purposes goes back to a very early date.

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

  At Innocent VIII.’s death, 23 cardinals entered into the conclave which met in the Sistine chapel. Borgia and Julian Rovere were the leading candidates. They were rivals, and had been candidates for the papal chair before. Everything was to be staked on success in the pending election. Openly and without a blush, ecclesiastical offices and money were offered as the price of the spiritual crown of Christendom. Julian was supported by the king of France, who deposited 200,000 ducats in a Roman bank and 100,000 more in Genoa to secure his election. If Borgia could not outbid him he was, at least, the more shrewd in his manipulations. There were only five cardinals, including Julian, who took nothing. The other members of the sacred college had their price. Monticelli and Soriano were given to Cardinal Orsini and also the see of Cartagena, and the legation to the March; the abbey of Subiaco and its fortresses to Colonna; Civita Castellana and the see of Majorca to Savelli; Nepi to Sclafetanus; the see of Porto to Michïel; and rich benefices to other cardinals. Four mules laden with gold were conducted to the palace of Ascanio Sforza, who also received Rodrigo’s splendid palace and the vice-chancellorship. Even the patriarch of Venice, whose high age—for he had reached 95—might have been expected to lift him above the seduction of filthy lucre, accepted 5,000 ducats. Infessura caustically remarks that Borgia distributed all his goods among the poor.786 The ceremonies of coronation were on a scale which appeared to the contemporaries unparalleled in the history of such occasions. A figure of a bull, the emblem of the Borgias, was erected near the Palazzo di S. Marco on the line of the procession, from whose eyes, nostrils and mouth poured forth water, and from the forehead wine. Rodrigo was 61 years of age, had been cardinal for 37 years, having received that dignity when he was 25. His fond uncle, Calixtus III., had made him archbishop of Valencia, heaped upon him ecclesiastical offices, including the vice-chancellorship, and made him the heir of his personal possessions. His palace was noted for the splendor of its tapestries and carpets and its vessels of gold and silver.787 The new pope possessed conspicuous personal attractions. He was tall and well-formed, and his manners so taking that a contemporary, Gasparino of Verona, speaks of his drawing women to himself more potently than the magnet attracts iron.788 The reproof which his gallantries of other days called forth from Pius II. at Siena has already been referred to.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  They revered him as a god, treated him as a lawgiver, and made him their leader – next, of course, after the man who introduced their cult into the world, and who was crucified in Palestine, whom they still worship.’ Peregrinus may have been more sincere than Lucian gave him credit for: he eventually cremated himself on a funeral pyre at the close of the Olympic Games in 165. It was always difficult to distinguish between the truly inspired, the self-deluded, and the plain criminal. And, inconvenient as individual ecstatics and ‘speakers with tongues’ might be, there was always the more serious danger that they might fall under the spell of an outstanding charismatic and prophet who would constitute a counter-Church. Just as the varieties of gnosticism risked capturing the Church’s personality and absorbing it into a disintegrating mess of sub-Hellenic cults, so the charismatics might submerge the Church’s unitary voice under a Babel of ‘prophecies’. The moment was judged to have come about 170 when Montanus, a successful charismatic who described himself as the Paraclete, was declared an enemy of the Church. Many of his closest followers were women, and they clearly played an outstanding role in his movement – as, indeed, they did in one or two of the Pauline congregations. Montanus was attacked by his enemies for breaking up marriages and then giving these inspired matrons who flocked to join him ecclesiastical offices. Montanism, or rather the efforts to combat it, played a conclusive role in persuading the orthodox to ban the ministry to women. Tertullian, while still an orthodox propagandist, snarled at this subversion of Church order: ‘The impudence of the heretics’ women! They dare to teach, to dispute, to carry out exorcisms, perform cures – perhaps they even baptize.... Of course, nowhere is promotion easier than in a camp of rebels: the mere fact of being there is meritorious!’ In his tract On Baptism and the Veiling of Virgins, he emphatically denied that women could exercise any ministerial functions. There were two lines of attack on the Montanists. On the one hand, they were accused of excessive austerity; thus Hippolytus, putting the orthodox case in his Refutatio omnium haeresium : ‘They introduced novelties in the shape of special fasts and ceremonies, and diets of radishes which they adopted on the inspired advice of their womenfolk.’ But Montanus was also attacked for handling large sums of money, for moving about in an ostentatious manner and for paying stipends to his chief followers. Some of the orthodox smears on him are manifest inventions. Eusebius repeats a tale that Montanus and his chief woman-prophet died as a result of a suicide pact, but he indicates that this is fiction. Many of the accusations levelled merely suggest that the Montanists were behaving like the Church, were in fact the Church in large areas – thus they raised money, paid their clergy and so forth.

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

  In Scotland, the state of the clergy in pre-Reformation times was probably as low as in any other part of Western Europe.1147 John IV.’s bastard son was appointed bishop of St. Andrews at 16 and the illegitimate sons of James V., 1513–1542, held the five abbeys of Holyrood, Kelso, St. Andrews, Melrose and Coldingham. Bishops lived openly in concubinage and married their daughters into the ranks of the nobility. In the marriage document, certifying the nuptials of Cardinal Beaton’s eldest daughter to the Earl of Crawford, 1546, the cardinal called her his child. On the night of his murder, he is said to have been with his favorite mistress, Marion Ogilvie. Side by side with the decline of the monastic institutions, there prevailed among the monks of the 15th century a most exaggerated notion of the sanctifying influence of the monastic vow. According to Luther, the monks of his day recognized two grades of Christians, the perfect and the imperfect. To the former the monastics belonged. Their vow was regarded as a second baptism which cleared those who received it from all stain, restored them to the divine image and put them in a class with the angels. Luther was encouraged by his superiors to feel, after he had taken the vow, that he was as pure as a child. This second regeneration had been taught by St. Bernard and Thomas Aquinas. Thomas said that it may with reason be affirmed that any one "entering religion," that is, taking the monastic vow, thereby received remission of sins.1148 § 74. Preaching. The two leading preachers of Europe during the last 50 years of the Middle Ages were Jerome Savonarola of Florence and John Geiler of Strassburg. Early in the 15th century, Gerson was led by the ignorance of the clergy to recommend a reduction of preaching,1149 but in the period just before the Reformation there was a noticeable revival of the practice of preaching in Germany and a movement in that direction was felt in England. Erasmus, as a cosmopolitan scholar made an appeal for the function of the pulpit, which went to all portions of Western Europe.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  He thought it was not God’s desire or intention to illuminate the whole in this life. Such agnosticism was abhorrent to the Church shaped by St Augustine, and organized by Gregory VII and Innocent III, to whom the extension of definition and the reinforcement of authority was the only criterion of growth and progress. It was abhorrent to the papacy; but it was also uncongenial to the Protestant reformers. At bottom, Erasmus believed in a moral reform, pure and simple: if the moral spirit of the Church were transformed and illuminated, then all the problems of Christendom, institutional and even doctrinal, would solve themselves in turn; but the Church, in St Paul’s word, had to become a ‘new man’ again first. To Luther, a moral reform was equally urgent. But it would prove meaningless and transitory unless it were able to operate within the context of institutional change and drastic doctrinal corrections. Indeed, moral reform was not only useless but perhaps worse than useless unless we got the theological equations right. We had first to understand how man justified himself to God, and this was a theological problem. The need was not to simplify doctrine, but to get it right – and that meant not less definition, but more. From this basic disagreement, the area of discord widened. If theological definition were not essential, might even be undesirable, it followed naturally that one should not attempt to impose uniformity or force consciences. Erasmus hated the witch-hunting atmosphere engendered by the Inquisition and the endless search for an illusory certainty even about details. ‘Formerly heresy involved only deviation from the gospels, or the articles of faith, or something of similar authority. Nowadays they shout ‘heresy!’ at you for almost anything. Anything that does not please them, or that they do not understand, is heresy. To know Greek is heresy. To pronounce it correctly is heresy.’ This could only lead to endless turmoil. But ‘the works of the mind, and charity, demand universal peace.’ Reformers should be less reckless in demanding change; those who wanted to burn people at the stake should be less intolerant. Both should extend charity to each other. Persecution was an offence against charity. And it was unproductive: ‘Vigorous minds will not suffer compulsion. To exercise compulsion is typical of tyrants; to suffer it, typical of asses.’ In cities where men differed on religion, both sides should keep to their quarters and everyone be left to his conscience until time brought the opportunity for agreement. In the meantime, open sedition should be put down, but manifest abuses corrected; and toleration should be extended until a universal council met and achieved reunification on a new basis of faith.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The card-index affair persuaded the more militant triumphalists in the Vatican that there was in existence a huge international conspiracy to destroy the Roman Catholic Church. It was the piece of evidence for which they had been waiting. Moreover, they believed that the most important part of the conspiracy was within the Church, masquerading as progressive or liberal Catholicism, but in reality linked to freemasonry and atheism. They termed the conspiracy ‘modernism’ and they linked it in particular to the efforts by Catholic scholars to catch up with the German Protestant historians and scriptural exegesists who had dominated biblical and ecclesiastical studies since the end of the eighteenth century. In all essentials, the new campaign was a resumption of the warfare waged by the orthodox scholastic theologians against the Renaissance textual scholars of the Erasmian age, warfare which had eventually degenerated into a witch-hunt. ‘Modernism’ was associated with the study of history which (as we have seen) was really a more dangerous enemy of orthodoxy and triumphalism than science as such. The orthodox had long had their eye on the historians. It was the German ecclesiastical historians, especially those from the Catholic faculty at Tübingen University who, with one exception (he was made a cardinal) condemned the infallibility decree; it was Lord Acton, the English historian, who had tried to organize international opposition to the decree; and it was the five French Catholic Institutes, founded in 1875, with their emphasis on historical studies, which harboured the more adventurous Catholic academics. Of course biblical studies had always been dangerous. Heresies arising from them were as old as Marcion, older indeed than the canon. Many of the most distinguished Renaissance biblical scholars, from Erasmus down, had subsequently had works condemned in Tridentine times. On the other hand, the Catholic Church could not simply abandon biblical studies to the Protestants – that would be to betray the orthodox tradition stretching back to Papias and including all the great doctors of the Church. In 1893, in his encyclical Providentissimus Dei, Leo XIII had issued a severe warning to the more enterprising scholars. ‘All those books,’ he insisted, ‘and those books in their entirety, which the church regards as sacred and canonical were written with all their parts under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Now, far from admitting the coexistence of error, Divine inspiration by itself excludes all error, and that also of necessity, since God, the Supreme Truth, must be incapable of teaching error.’ Taken literally, this astonishing statement virtually imposed a veto on scholarship, since it asserted as dogmatic fact what historical scholarship had already in 1893 demonstrated to be in great part a matter of argument and speculation. The truth is that very few people of importance in the Vatican (or, often, in national hierarchies) knew enough to understand the premises and methodology of modern biblical exegesis and its related disciplines. Like the theologians Erasmus despised, they condemned from ignorance.

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

  In 1468, Frederick, III. repeated his visit to Rome, accompanied by 600 knights, but the occasion aroused none of the high expectation of the former visit, when the emperor brought with him the Portuguese infanta. There was no glittering pageant, no august papal reception. On receiving the communion in the basilica of St. Peter’s, he received from the pontiff’s hand the bread, but not the "holy blood," which, as the contemporary relates, Paul reserved to himself as an object-lesson against the Bohemians, though it was customary on such occasions to give both the elements. The successor of Charlemagne and Barbarossa was then given a seat at the pope’s side, which was no higher than the pope’s feet.755 Patritius, who describes the scene, remarks that, while the respect paid to the papal dignity had increased, the imperium of the Roman empire had fallen into such decadence that nothing remained of it but its name. Without manifesting any reluctance, the Hapsburg held the pope’s stirrup. Paul was not without artistic tastes, although he condemned the study of the classics in the Roman schools,756 and was pronounced by Platina a great enemy and despiser of learning. He was an ardent collector of precious stones, coins, vases and other curios, and took delight in showing his jewels to Frederick III. Sixtus IV. is said to have found 54 silver chests filled with pearls collected by this pontiff, estimated to be worth 300,000 ducats. The two tiaras, made at his order, contained gems said to have been worth a like amount. At a later time, Cardinal Barbo found in a secret drawer of one of Paul’s chests sapphires valued at 12,000 ducats.757 Platina was probably repeating only a common rumor, when he reports that in the daytime Paul slept and at night kept awake, looking over his jewels. To this diversion the pontiff added sensual pleasures and public amusements.758 He humored the popular taste by restoring heathen elements to the carnival, figures of Bacchus and the fauna, Diana and her nymphs. In the long list of the gayeties of carnival week are mentioned races for young men, for old men and for Jews, as well as races between horses, donkeys and buffaloes. Paul looked down from St. Mark’s and delighted the crowds by furnishing a feast in the square below and throwing down amongst them handfuls of coins. In things of this kind, says Infessura, the pope had his delight.759 He was elaborate in his vestments and, when he appeared in public, was accustomed to paint his face.

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

  The conclaves of 1484 and 1492 have been pronounced by high catholic authority among the "saddest in the history of the papacy."772 Into the conclave of 1484, 25 cardinals entered, 21 of them Italians. Our chief account is from the hand of the diarist, Burchard, who was present as one of the officials. His description goes into the smallest details. A protocol was again adopted, which every cardinal promised in a solemn formula to observe, if elected pope. Its first stipulation was that 100 ducats should be paid monthly to members of the sacred college, whose yearly income from benefices might not reach the sum of 4,000 ducats (about 200,000 francs in our present money). Then followed provisions for the continuance of the crusade against the Turks, the reform of the Roman curia in head and members, the appointment of no cardinal under 30 for any cause whatever, the advancement of not more than a single relative of the reigning pontiff to the sacred college and the restriction of its membership to 24.773 Rodrigo Borgia fully counted upon being elected and, in expectation of that event, had barricaded his palace against being looted. Large bribes, even to the gift of his palace, were offered by him for the coveted prize of the papacy. Cardinal Barbo had 10 votes and, when it seemed likely that he would be the successful candidate, Julian Rovere and Borgia, renouncing their aspirations, combined their forces, and during the night, went from cell to cell, securing by promises of benefices and money the votes of all but six of the cardinals. According to Burchard, the pope about to be elected sat up all night signing promises. The next morning the two cardinals aroused the six whom they had not disturbed, exclaiming, "Come, let us make a pope." "Who?" they said. "Cardinal Cibo." "How is that?" they asked. "While you were drowsy with sleep, we gathered all the votes except yours," was the reply.

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

  Boccaccio’s Latin works are mostly compilations from ancient mythology—De genealogia deorum — and biography, and also treat the subject of geography—De montium, silvarum, lacuum et marium nominibus. In his De claris mulieribus, he gave the biographies of 104 distinguished women, including Eve, the fictitious popess, Johanna, and Queen Johanna of Naples, who was still living. His most popular work is the Decamerone, the Ten Days’ Book—which in later years he would have destroyed or purged of its immoral and frivolous elements. It is his poetry in prose and may be called a Commedia Humana, as contrasted with Dante’s Commedia Divina. It contains 100 stories, told by ten young persons, seven ladies and three men of Florence, during the pestilence of 1348. After listening to a description of the horrors of the plague, the reader is transferred to a beautiful garden, several miles from the city, where the members of the company, amid laughter and tears, relate the stories which range from moral tales to indecent love intrigues. One of the well-known stories is of the Jew, Abraham, who, refusing to comply with the appeals to turn Christian, went to Rome to study the question for himself. Finding the priestly morals most corrupt, cardinals with concubines and revelling in riches and luxury, he concluded Christianity must have a divine origin, or it would not have survived when the centre of Christendom was so rotten, and he offered himself for baptism. The Decamerone reveals a low state of morals among priests and monks as well as laymen and women. It derides marriage, the confessional, the hypocrisy of monkery and the worship of relics. The employment of wit and raillery against ecclesiastical institutions was a new element in literature, and Boccaccio wrote in a language the people understood. No wonder that the Council of Trent condemned the work for its immoralities, and still more for its anticlerical and antimonastic ridicule; but it could not prevent its circulation. A curious expurgated edition, authorized by the pope, appeared in Florence in 1573, which retained the indecencies, the impure personages, but substituted laymen for the priests and monks, thus saving the honor of the Church.1004 Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio led the way to a recognition of the worth of man’s natural endowment by depicting the passions of his heart. To them also it belonged to have an ardent love for nature and to reproduce it in description. Thus Petrarca described the mountains and the gulfs of the sea as well as Rome, Naples and other Italian places where he loved to be.1005 His description of his delight in ascending a mountain near Vaucluse, it has been suggested, was the first of its kind in literature. In these respects, the appreciation of man and the world, they stood at the opening of the new era. § 64. Progress and Patrons of Classical Studies in the 15th Century.

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

  Ad Dialogum Silvestri Prierati de potestate papae responsio. In Löscher, II. 3; Weim. ed. I., 647–686, II. 48–56. German translation in Walch, XVIII. l20– 200. Pope Leo X. was disposed to ignore the Wittenberg movement as a contemptible monkish quarrel; but when it threatened to become dangerous, he tried to make the German monk harmless by the exercise of his power. He is reported to have said first, "Brother Martin is a man of fine genius, and this outbreak is a mere squabble of envious monks;" but afterwards, "It is a drunken German who wrote the Theses; when sober he will change his mind." Three months after the appearance of the Theses, he directed the vicar-general of the Augustinian Order to quiet down the restless monk. In March, 1518, he found it necessary to appoint a commission of inquiry under the direction of the learned Dominican Silvester Mazzolini, called from his birthplace Prierio or Prierias (also Prieras), who was master of the sacred palace and professor of theology. Prierias came to the conclusion that Luther was an ignorant and blasphemous arch-heretic, and hastily wrote a Latin dialogue against his Theses, hoping to crush him by subtile scholastic distinctions, and the weight of papal authority (June, 1518). He identified the Pope with the Church of Rome, and the Church of Rome with the Church universal, and denounced every departure from it as a heresy. He said of Luther’s Theses, that they bite like a cur. Luther republished the Dialogue with a reply, in which he called it "sufficiently supercilious, and thoroughly Italian and Thomistic "(August, 1518). Prierias answered with a Replica (November, 1518). Luther republished it likewise, with a brief preface, and sent it to Prierias with the advice not to make himself any more ridiculous by writing books. The effect of this controversy was to widen the breach. In the mean time Luther’s fate had already been decided. The Roman hierarchy could no more tolerate such a dangerous man than the Jewish hierarchy could tolerate Christ and the apostles. On the 7th of August, 1518, he was cited to appear in Rome within sixty days to recant his heresies. On the 23d of the same month, the Pope demanded of the Elector Frederick the Wise, that he should deliver up this "child of the Devil" to the papal legate. But the Elector, who was one of the most powerful and esteemed princes of Germany, felt unwilling to sacrifice the shining light of his beloved university, and arranged a peaceful interview with the papal legate at the Diet of Augsburg on promise of kind treatment and safe return. § 35. Luther and Cajetan. October, 1518. The transactions at Augsburg were published by Luther in December, 1518, and are printed in Löscher, II. 435–492; 527–551; in Walch, XV. 636 sqq.; in the Weim. ed., II. 1–40. Luther’s Letters in De Wette, I. 147–167. Comp. Kahnis, I. 215–235; Köstlin, I. 204–238 (and his shorter biogr., Eng. trans., p. 108).

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Adolf Hitler’s state appeals to the church: the church must obey the appeal.’ Otto Dibelius, in a broadcast to America two days after the first anti-Jewish measures, appeared to justify them, and claimed the boycott of Jewish businesses was conducted ‘in conditions of complete law and order’, as though that was the whole point. In the summer of 1933, the offices of the Prussian Evangelical Church were taken over as a prelude to setting up a state protestant church directly aligned to the party. But this Hitler did not want. He had the church officers reinstated. Unlike Mussolini, he was unwilling to be burdened with a state church. He refused the German Christian organization any status in his regime; and he declined to give Hossenfelder any office, or even to receive him. He disliked Christians, not least those prepared to grovel at his feet. On 14 July 1933, at a cabinet meeting, Hitler expressed satisfaction, as well he might, at the progress of events over the whole of the ‘Christian front’, especially the concordat. He was delighted that the Vatican had ‘abandoned the Christian labour unions’, and he ordered the publication of the proposed sterilization law to be held up until the concordant was actually signed on 20 July. Meanwhile, at the Protestant Church elections, with the help of the Nazi propaganda machine, the German Christians won an overwhelming victory. Their motto was: ‘The Swastika on our breasts, the Cross in our hearts.’ At synods, the pastors dressed in Nazi uniforms, and Nazi hymns were sung. Nazis, some picked by Hitler, were installed as bishops, and the synods passed Aryan legislation. Hitler chose Ludwig Muller as ‘Reich Bishop’, and he was duly elected; in his acceptance speech he referred to Hitler and the Nazis as ‘presents from God’; on the same occasion, Pastor Leutheuser intoned: ‘Christ has come to us through Adolf Hitler.... We know today the Saviour has come.... We have only one task, be German, not be Christian.’ Actually, this last injunction more or less represented Hitler’s own position. He gave no further encouragement to the group. They aroused hostility among the anti-Christian Nazis, and they went against his policy of having no other official centres of power. Moreover, he did not trust the discretion of his Evanglical admirers. In November 1933, at a mass-meeting in the Berlin Sports Palace, presided over by Bishop Muller, Dr Reinhold Krause called for ‘a purge of the Old Testament with its Jewish morality of rewards, and its stories of cattledealers and concubines’; he also urged the censorship of the New Testament, and the removal of ‘the whole theology of the Rabbi Paul’ – instead a ‘heroic Jesus’ was to be proclaimed. This speech provoked a number of pastors into joining a semi-opposition group called the Pastors’ Emergency League, formed by Martin Neimoller. Hitler was annoyed, and thereafter did not attempt to work directly through a Christian movement. The enthusiasm had always been on their side, rather than his.

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

  If the pope has power to absolve unconditionally, he should exercise his power to excuse the sins of all men. The English Reformer further declared that, to the Christian priest it was given, to do no more than announce the forgiveness of sins just as the old priests pronounced a man a leper or cured of leprosy, but it was not possible for him to effect a cure. He spoke of, the fond fantasy of spiritual treasure in heaven, that each pope is made dispenser of the treasure at his own will, a thing dreamed of without ground."1323 Such power would make the pope master of the saints and Christ himself. He condemned the idea that the pope could "clear men of pain and sin both in this world and the other, so that, when they die, they flee to heaven without pain. This is for blind men to lead blind men and both to fall into the lake." As for the pardoning of sin for money, that would imply that righteousness may be bought and sold. Wyclif gave it as a report, that Urban VI. had granted an indulgence for 2,000 years.1324 Indulgences found an assailant in Erasmus, howbeit a genial assailant. In his Praise of Folly, he spoke of the "cheat of pardons and indulgences." These lead the priests to compute the time of each soul’s residence in purgatory and to assign them a longer or shorter continuance according as the people purchase more or fewer of these salable exemptions. By this easy way of purchasing pardon any notorious highwayman, any plundering bandit or any bribe-taking judge may for a part of their unjust gains secure atonement for perjuries, lusts, bloodsheds, debaucheries and other gross impieties and, having paid off arrears, begin upon a new score. The popular idea was no doubt stated by Tyndale in answer to Sir Thomas More when he said, that "men might quench almost the terrible fire of hell for three halfpence."1325 It is fair to say that, while the last popes of the Middle Ages granted a great number of indulgences, the exact expression, "from guilt and penalty," does not occur in any of the extant papal copies1326 although some of their expressions seem fully to imply the exemption from guilt. Likewise, it must be said that they also contain the usual expressions for penitence as a condition of receiving the grace—"being truly penitent and confessing their sins"—vere poenitentibus et confessio. Indulgences in the last century of the Middle Ages were given for all sorts of benevolent purposes, crusades against the Turks, the building of churches and hospitals, in connection with relics, for the rebuilding of a town desolated by fire, as Brüx, for bridges and for the repair of dikes, such an indulgence being asked by Charles V. The benefits were received by the payment of money and a portion of the receipts, from 33% to 50%, was expected to go to Rome.