History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II (of 2)

His political institutions. In this period, the intellectual greatness of Frederick, and the tendencies of the influences by which he was enveloped, were strikingly manifested. In advance of his age, he devoted himself to the political improvement of Sicily. He instituted representative parliaments; enacted a system of wise laws; asserted the principle of equal rights and equal burdens, and the supremacy of the law over all, even the nobles and the Church. He provided for the toleration of all professions, Jewish and Mohammedan, as well as Christian; emancipated all the serfs of his domains; instituted cheap justice for the poor; forbade private war; regulated commerce – prophetically laying down some of those great principles, which only in our own time have been finally received as true; established markets and fairs; collected large libraries; caused to be translated such works as those of Aristotle and Ptolemy; built menageries for natural history; founded in Naples a great university; patronized the medical college at Salernum; made provisions for the education of promising but indigent youths. All over the land splendid architectural triumphs were created. Under him the Italian language first rose above a patois. Sculpture, painting, and music were patronized. His chancellor is said to have been the author of the oldest sonnet.

In the eye of Rome all this was an abomination. Were human laws to take the precedence of the law of God? Were the clergy to be degraded to a level with the laity? Were the Jew and the Mohammedan to be permitted their infamous rites? Was this new-born product of the insolence of human intellect – this so-called science – to be brought into competition with theology, the heaven-descended? They are denounced. Frederick and his parliaments, his laws and universities, his libraries, his statues, his pictures and sonnets, were denounced. Through all, the ever-watchful eye of the Church discerned the Jew and the Saracen, and held them up to the abhorrence of Europe. But Gregory was not unwilling to show what could be done by himself in the same direction. He caused a compilation of the Decretals to be issued, intrusting the work to one Raymond de Pennaforte, who had attained celebrity as a literary opponent of the Saracens. It is amusing to remark that even this simple work of labour could not be promulgated without the customary embellishments. It was given out that an angel watched over Pennaforte's shoulder all the time he was writing.

Outbreak of his quarrel with the pope, Meantime an unceasing vigilance was maintained against the dangerous results that would necessarily ensue from Frederick's movements. In Rome, many heretics were burned; many condemned to imprisonment for life. The quarrel between the pope and the emperor was resumed; the latter being once more excommunicated, and his body delivered over to Satan for the good of his soul. Again Frederick appealed to all the sovereigns of Christendom. He denounced the pontiff as an unworthy vicar of Christ, "who sits in his court like a merchant, weighing out dispensations for gold – himself writing and signing the bulls, perhaps counting the money. He has but one cause of enmity against me, that I refused to marry to his niece my natural son Enzio, now King of Sardinia." "In the midst of the Church sits a frantic prophet, a man of falsehood, a polluted priest." To this Gregory replied. who rouses Christendom against him. The tenor of his answer may be gathered from its commencement: "Out of the sea a beast is arisen, whose name is written all over 'Blasphemy.'" "He falsely asserts that I am enraged at his refusing his consent to the marriage of my niece with his natural son. He lies more impudently when he says that I have pledged my faith to the Lombards." "In truth, this pestilent king maintains, to use his own words, that the world has been deceived by three impostors – Jesus Christ, Moses, and Mohammed; that of these two died in honour, and the third was hanged on a tree. Even now, he has asserted, distinctly and loudly, that those are fools who aver that God, the Omnipotent Creator of the world, was born of a woman." This was in allusion to the celebrated and mysterious book, "De Tribus Impostoribus," in the authorship of which Frederick was accused of having been concerned.

The pontiff had touched the right chord. The begging friars, in all directions, added to the accusations. "He has spoken of the Host as a mummery; he has asked how many gods might be made out of a corn-field; he has affirmed that, if the princes of the world would stand by him, he would easily make for mankind a better faith and a better rule of life; he has laid down the infidel maxim that 'God expects not a man to believe anything that cannot be demonstrated by reason.'" The opinion of Christendom rose against Frederick; its sentiment of piety was shocked. The pontiff proceeded to depose him, and offered his crown to Robert of France. Frederick uses his Saracen troops. But the Mussulman troops of the emperor were too much for the begging friars of the pope. His Saracens were marching across Italy in all directions. The pontiff himself would have inevitably fallen into the hands of his mortal enemy had he not found a deliverance in death, A.D. 1241. Frederick had declared that he would not respect his sacred person, but, if victorious, would teach him the absolute supremacy of the temporal power. It was plain that he had no intention of respecting a religion which he had not hesitated to denounce as "a mere absurdity."

Whatever may have been the intention of Innocent IV. – who, after the short pontificate of Celestine IV. and an interval, succeeded – he was borne into the same policy by the irresistible force of circumstances. The deadly quarrel with the emperor was renewed. To escape his wrath, Innocent fled to France, and there in safety called the Council of Lyons. In a sermon, he renewed all the old accusations – the heresy and sacrilege – the peopling of Italian cities with Saracens, for the purpose of overturning the Vicar of Christ with those infidels – the friendship with the Sultan of Egypt – the African courtesans – the perjuries and blasphemies. Excommunication of Frederick. Then was proclaimed the sentence of excommunication and deposition. The pope and the bishops inverted the torches they held in their hands until they went out, uttering the malediction, "So may he be extinguished." Again the emperor appealed to Europe, but this time in vain. Europe would not forgive him his blasphemy. Misfortunes crowded upon him; his friends forsook him; his favourite son, Enzio, was taken prisoner; and he never smiled again after detecting his intimate, Pietro de Vinea, whom he had raised from beggary, in promising the monks that he would poison him. The day had been carried by a resort to all means justifiable and unjustifiable, good and evil. For thirty years Frederick had combated the Church and the Guelph party, but he sunk in the conflict at last. When Innocent heard of the death of his foe, he might doubtless well think that what he had once asserted had at last become true: "We are no mere mortal man; we have the place of God upon earth." The triumph at his death. In his address to the clergy of Sicily he exclaimed, "Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad; for the lightning and tempest wherewith God Almighty has so long menaced your heads have been changed by the death of this man into refreshing zephyrs and fertilizing dews." This is that superhuman vengeance which hesitates not to strike the corpse of a man. Rome never forgives him who has told her of her impostures face to face; she never forgives him who has touched her goods.

Power of the Church at this moment. The Saracenic influences had thus found an expression in the South of France and in Sicily, involving many classes of society, from the Poor Men of Lyons to the Emperor of Germany; but in both places they were overcome by the admirable organization and unscrupulous vigour of the Church. She handled her weapons with singular dexterity, and contrived to extract victory out of humiliation and defeat. As always since the days of Constantine, she had partisans in every city, in every village, in every family. And now it might have appeared that the blow she had thus delivered was final, and that the world, in contentment, must submit to her will. She had again succeeded in putting her iron heel on the neck of knowledge, had invoked against it the hatred of Christendom, and reviled it as the monstrous but legitimate issue of the detested Mohammedanism.

Vitality of Frederick's principles. But the fate of men is by no means an indication of the fate of principles. The fall of the Emperor Frederick was not followed by the destruction of the influences he represented. These not only survived him, but were destined, in the end, to overcome the power which had transiently overthrown them. We are now entering on the history of a period which offers not only exterior opposition to the current doctrines, but, what is more ominous, interior mutiny. Notwithstanding the awful persecutions in the South of France – notwithstanding the establishment of auricular confession as a detective means, and the Inquisition as a weapon of punishment – notwithstanding the influence of the French king, St. Louis, canonized by the grateful Church – heresy, instead of being extirpated, extended itself among the laity, and even spread among the ecclesiastical ranks. St. Louis. St. Louis, the representative of the hierarchical party, gathers influence only from the circumstance of his relations with the Church, of whose interests he was a fanatical supporter. So far as the affairs of his people were concerned, he can hardly be looked upon as anything better than a simpleton. His reliance for checking the threatened spread of heresy was a resort to violence – the faggot and the sword. In his opinion, "A man ought never to dispute with a misbeliever except with his sword, which he ought to drive into the heretic's entrails as far as he can." It was the signal glory of his reign that he secured for France that inestimable relic, the crown of thorns. His superstition, This peerless memento of our Saviour's passion he purchased in Constantinople for an immense sum. But France was doubly and enviably enriched; for the Abbey of St. Denys was in possession of another, known to be equally authentic! Besides the crown, he also secured the sponge that was dipped in vinegar; the lance of the Roman soldier; also the swaddling-clothes in which the Saviour had first lain in the manger; the rod of Moses; and part of the skull of John the Baptist. These treasures he deposited in the "Holy Chapel" of Paris.

and crusade. Under the papal auspices, St. Louis determined on a crusade; and nothing, except what we have already mentioned, can better show his mental imbecility than his disregard of all suitable arrangements for it. He thought that, provided the troops could be made to lead a religious life, all would go well; that the Lord would fight his own battles, and that no provisions of a military or worldly kind were needed. In such a pious reliance on the support of God, he reached Egypt with his expedition in June, A.D. 1249. The ever-conspicuous valour of the French troops could maintain itself in the battle-field, but not against pestilence and famine. Its total failure. In March of the following year, as might have been foreseen, King Louis was the prisoner of the Sultan, and was only spared the indignity of being carried about as a public spectacle in the Mohammedan towns by a ransom, at first fixed at a million of Byzantines, but by the merciful Sultan voluntarily reduced one fifth. Still, for a time, Louis lingered in the East, apparently stupefied by considering how God could in this manner have abandoned a man who had come to his help. Never was there a crusade with a more shameful end.

The Inquisition attempts to arrest the intellectual revolt. Notwithstanding the support of St. Louis in his own dominions, the intellectual revolt spread in every direction, and that not only in France, but throughout all Catholic Europe. In vain the Inquisition exerted all its terrors – and what could be more terrible than its form of procedure? It sat in secret; no witness, no advocate was present; the accused was simply informed that he was charged with heresy, it was not said by whom. He was made to swear that he would tell the truth as regarded himself, and also respecting other persons, whether parents, children, friends, strangers. If he resisted he was committed to a solitary dungeon, dark and poisonous; his food was diminished; everything was done to drive him into insanity. Then the familiars of the Holy Office, or others in its interests, were by degrees to work upon him to extort confession as to himself or accusations against others. But this fearful tribunal did not fail to draw upon itself the indignation of men. Its victims, condemned for heresy, were perishing in all directions. The usual apparatus of death, the stake and faggots, had become unsuited to its wholesale and remorseless vengeance. The convicts were so numerous as to require pens made of stakes and filled with straw. Burnings of heretics. It was thus that, before the Archbishop of Rheims and seventeen other prelates, one hundred and eighty-three heretics, together with their pastor, were burned alive. Such outrages against humanity cannot be perpetrated without bringing in the end retribution. In other countries the rising indignation was exasperated by local causes; in England, for instance, by the continual intrusion of Italian ecclesiastics into the richest benefices. Some of them were mere boys; many were non-residents; some had not so much as seen the country from which they drew their ample wealth. The Archbishop of York was excommunicated, with torches and bells, because he would not bestow the abundant revenues of his Church on persons from beyond the Alps; but for all this "he was blessed by the people." The archbishopric of Canterbury was held, A.D. 1241, by Boniface of Savoy, to whom had been granted by the pope the first-fruits of all the benefices in his province. His rapacity was boundless. From all the ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical establishments under his control he extorted enormous sums. Some, who, like the Dean of St. Paul's, resisted him, were excommunicated; some, like the aged Sub-prior of St. Bartholomew's, were knocked down by his own hand. Of a military turn – he often wore a cuirass under his robes – he joined his brother, the Archbishop of Lyons, who was besieging Turin, and wasted the revenues of his see in England in intrigues and petty military enterprises against his enemies in Italy.

Mutiny arising in the Church. Not among the laity alone was there indignation against such a state of things. Mutiny broke out in the ranks of the Church. It was not that among the humbler classes the sentiment of piety had become diminished. The Shepherds and Flagellants. The Shepherds, under the leadership of the Master of Hungary, passed by tens of thousands through France to excite the clergy to arouse for the rescue of good King Louis, in bondage among the Mussulmen. They asserted that they were commissioned by the Virgin, and were fed miraculously by the Master. Originating in Italy, the Flagellants also passed, two by two, through every city, scourging themselves for thirty-three days in memory of the years of our Lord. These dismal enthusiasts emulated each other, and were rivals of the mendicant friars in their hatred of the clergy. The mendicant friars are affected. The mendicants were beginning to justify that hesitation which Innocent displayed when he was first importuned to authorize them. The papacy had reaped from these orders much good; it was now to gather a fearful evil. They had come to be learned men instead of ferocious bigots. They were now, indeed, among the most cultivated men of their times. They had taken possession of many of the seats of learning. In the University of Paris, out of twelve chairs of theology, three only were occupied by the regular clergy. The mendicant friars had entered into the dangerous paths of heresy. They became involved in that fermenting leaven that had come from Spain, and among them revolt broke out.

Rome prohibits the study of science. With an unerring instinct, Rome traced the insurrection to its true source. We have only to look at the measures taken by the popes to understand their opinion. Thus Innocent III., A.D. 1215, regulated, by his legate, the schools of Paris, permitting the study of the Dialectics of Aristotle, but forbidding his physical and metaphysical works and their commentaries. These had come through an Arabic channel. A rescript of Gregory XI., A.D. 1231, interdicts those on natural philosophy until they had been purified by the theologians of the Church. These regulations were confirmed by Clement IV. A.D. 1265.

CHAPTER III

THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST – (Continued)

OVERTHROW OF THE ITALIAN SYSTEM BY THE COMBINED INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL ATTACK

Progress of Irreligion among the mendicant Orders. – Publication of heretical Books. – The Everlasting Gospel and the Comment on the Apocalypse.

Conflict between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII. – Outrage upon and death of the Pope.

The French King removes the Papacy from Rome to Avignon. – Post-mortem Trial of the Pope for Atheism and Immorality. – Causes and Consequences of the Atheism of the Pope.

The Templars fall into Infidelity. – Their Trial, Conviction, and Punishment.

Immoralities of the Papal Court at Avignon. – Its return to Rome. – Causes of the great Schism. – Disorganization of the Italian System. – Decomposition of the Papacy. – Three Popes.

The Council of Constance attempts to convert the papal Autocracy into a constitutional Monarchy. – It murders John Huss and Jerome of Prague. – Pontificate of Nicolas V. – End of the intellectual influence of the Italian System.

"The Everlasting Gospel." About the close of the twelfth century appeared among the mendicant friars that ominous work, which, under the title of "The Everlasting Gospel," struck terror into the Latin hierarchy. It was affirmed that an angel had brought it from heaven, engraven on copper plates, and had given it to a priest called Cyril, who delivered it to the Abbot Joachim. Introduction to it by the General of the Franciscans. The abbot had been dead about fifty years, when there was put forth, A.D. 1250, a true exposition of the tendency of his book, under the form of an introduction, by John of Parma, the general of the Franciscans, as was universally suspected or alleged. Notwithstanding its heresy, the work displayed an enlarged and masterly conception of the historical progress of humanity. In this introduction, John of Parma pointed out that the Abbot Joachim, who had not only performed a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but had been reverenced as a prophet, received as of unimpeachable orthodoxy, and canonized, had accepted as his fundamental position that Roman Christianity had done its work, and had now come to its inevitable termination. He proceeded to show that there are epochs or ages in the Divine government of the world; that, during the Jewish dispensation, it had been under the immediate influence of God the Father; during the Christian dispensation, it had been under that of God the Son; and that the time had now arrived when it would be under the influence of God the Holy Ghost; that, in the coming ages, there would be no longer any need of faith, but that all things would be according to wisdom and reason. It was the ushering in of a new time. So spake, with needful obscurity, the Abbot Joachim, and so, more plainly, the General of the Franciscans in his Introduction. "The Everlasting Gospel" was declared by its adherents to have supplanted the New Testament, as that had supplanted the Old – these three books constituting a threefold revelation, answering to the Trinity of the Godhead. At once there was a cry from the whole hierarchy. Attempts to destroy the book. The Pope, Alexander IV., without delay, took measures for the destruction of the book. Whoever kept or concealed a copy was excommunicated. But among the lower mendicants – the Spiritualists, as they were termed – the work was held in the most devout repute. With them it had taken the place of the Holy Scriptures. The Comment on the Apocalypse. So far from being suppressed, it was followed, in about forty years, A.D. 1297, by the Comment on the Apocalypse, by John Peter Oliva, who, in Sicily, had accepted the three epochs or ages, and divided the middle one – the Christian – into seven stages: the age of the Apostles; that of the Martyrs; that of Heresies; that of Hermits; that of the Monastic System; that of the overthrow of Anti-Christ, and that of the coming Millennium. He agreed with his predecessors in the impending abolition of Roman Christianity, stigmatized that Church as the purple harlot, and with them affirmed that the pope and all his hierarchy had become superfluous and obsolete – "their work was done, their doom sealed." Spread of these doctrines among ecclesiastics. His zealous followers declared that the sacraments of the Church were now all useless, those administering them having no longer any jurisdiction. The burning of thousands of these "Fratricelli" by the Inquisition was altogether inadequate to suppress them. Eventually, when the Reformation occurred, they mingled among the followers of Luther.

Approaching difficulties of the Church. To the internal and doctrinal troubles thus befalling the Church, material and foreign ones of the most vital importance were soon added. The true reason of the difficulties into which the papacy was falling was now coming conspicuously into light. It was absolutely necessary that money should be drawn to Rome, and the sovereigns of the Western kingdoms, France and England, from which it had hitherto been largely obtained, were determined that it should be so no longer. They had equally urgent need themselves of all that could be extorted. In France, even by St. Louis, it was enacted that the papal power in the election of the clergy should be restrained; and, complaining of the drain of money from the kingdom to Rome, he applied the effectual remedy of prohibiting any such assessments or taxations for the future.

Peter Morrone becomes pope. We have now reached the pontificate of Boniface VIII., an epoch in the intellectual history of Europe. Under the title of Celestine V. a visionary hermit had been raised to the papacy – visionary, for Peter Morrone (such was his name) had long been indulged in apparitions of angels and the sounds of phantom bells in the air. Peter was escorted from his cell to his supreme position by admiring crowds; but it very soon became apparent that the life of an anchorite is not a preparation for the duties of a pope. The conclave of cardinals had elected him, not from any impression of his suitableness, but because they were evenly balanced in two parties, neither of which would give way. They were therefore driven to a temporary and available election. But scarcely had this been done when his incapacity became conspicuous and his removal imperative. Celestine V. terrified into abdication. It is said that the friends of Benedetto Gaetani, the ablest of the cardinals, through a hole perforated in the pope's chamber wall, at midnight, in a hollow voice, warned him that he retained his dignity at the peril of his soul, and in the name of God commanded him to abdicate. And so, in spite of all importunity, he did. His abdication was considered by many pious persons as striking a death-blow at papal infallibility.

The miracle of Loretto. It was during his pontificate that the miracle of Loretto occurred. The house inhabited by the Virgin immediately after her conception had been converted on the death of the Holy Family into a chapel, and St. Luke had presented to it an image, carved by his own hands, still known as our Lady of Loretto. Some angels chancing to be at Nazareth when the Saracen conquerors approached, fearing that the sacred relic might fall into their possession, took the house bodily in their hands, and, carrying it through the air, after several halts, finally deposited it at Loretto in Italy.