CHAPTER V - REFORM MOVEMENTS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY AND THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE
The earlier heresies of the Middle Ages were of importance for their own day and generation only, leaving no permanent imprint on history. The Church was on the whole very successful in combating them, actually securing the destruction of the Albigenses and throughout western Europe generally keeping the danger well in check by the activities of the Holy Office. The story of the Spiritual Franciscans, on the other hand, has a deeper significance, for it is intimately connected with momentous events which betokened the overthrow of the mediæval order, the rooting up of certain fundamental ideas associated with the matured conception of the Civitas Dei. The one feature common to Waldensianism, Catharism and the other early mediæval heresies, which gives them any lasting importance, was their anti-sacerdotalism. Clerical, and in particular papal, pretensions tended to increase after the fall of the Hohenstaufen, which left the papacy triumphant as the result of its long struggle with the empire. The high-water mark of those assertions was reached in 1300, when Boniface VIII declared himself to be not only Pope but also Caesar.[117] By two most important bulls Boniface sought to put his claims into practice, Clericis laicos, which defined the rights of the clergy to immunity from secular taxation, Unam sanctam, which declared unequivocally the absolute supremacy of the pope over the lay power, over every human creature in all respects. The same uncompromising spirit was shown a little later on by John XXII, the oppressor of the Spirituals, an old man of immense vigour and a range of view which embraced even the minute concerns of the secular states of Europe.[118]
Unhappily for itself, the setting forth of the papacy’s highest pretensions was coincident with the maturing of certain forces which tended to render those pretensions null and void. The most important of these was the force of nationality, the growth of nation-states, in particular under the strong royal houses of the Capets and the Angevins respectively in France and England. In such nation-states the papacy was to find a more formidable obstacle to the realization of its temporal ambitions than the Empire had ever presented, especially as they had no such tradition of alliance with the papacy as was the heritage and indeed the technical origin and justification of the Holy Roman Empire.[119] The distinction between the relation of the Pope to the Emperor and the relation of the Pope to the King of France is brought out forcibly in a work entitled ‘An Enquiry touching the Power of the Pope,’ by Peter du Bois, who in the year 1300 published a very remarkable treatise which advocated a modest proposal for uniting the whole of Europe under French sovereignty. The Emperor was dependent upon the Pope, because he had to be confirmed in his office and crowned by the Pope. No such necessity existed in the case of the French King.[120]
Certainly the conduct of Philip IV showed plenty of independence in his relations with the Roman pontiff. When Boniface in 1301 asserted that Philip held his crown of him and summoned him to appear at a council about to be assembled at Rome, the papal bull was solemnly burnt in the French capital. The States-General was then convened to give national expression to a protest against the action of Boniface; and bishops and lesser clergy united with the people as a body, and most important with the lawyers, to address letters of remonstrance to Rome. The civil law directly challenged the canon law.
In England the national feeling against papal exactions and interference was extremely bitter and vociferous under Henry III. Edward I gave a blunt answer to the claims of Clericis laicos in ruling that if the clergy were to be free of the law in respect of its duties they should be free of it also as regards its privileges and its protection, should be outlaws in fact. The stand taken by the French and English kings on the subject of clerical taxation was so firm that Boniface was forced to nullify the bull Clericis laicos by the bull Etsi de statu. Not only the royal will, but popular feeling is evidenced under Edward III by the statutes of Provisors and Praemunire.
While in Germany the imperial dignity had much sunk in credit since the days of the Hohenstaufen, on the other hand the importance of a national sentiment there was revealed in the general support given to Lewis of Bavaria. It is true that he failed in his expedition to Italy, whither the German king journeyed in order to establish his imperial dignity, despite his excommunication by John XXII, by coronation at Rome, but in Italy his forces were recruited by adherents more valuable than armies in the General of the Franciscan Order, Michael of Cesena, and a yet greater Franciscan, William of Ockham. The issue that had been joined was in reality one between papal and national sovereignty; but in the lengthy war of words that ensued upon Lewis’s failure in Italy the controversy appeared to be concerned with the theological question of the poverty of Christ, so that the feud between Spiritual and Conventual became a European question. It now possessed a significance extraneous from, and much wider than, the original cause of quarrel: for in the doctrine of apostolic poverty could be focussed all the widespread anti-sacerdotal feeling which revolted at the secular preoccupations and ambitions of the clergy.
A heavy blow was struck at the overweening claims of the papacy by Philip IV’s attack upon Boniface VIII, and, as it has been said, ‘the drama of Anagni is to be set against the drama of Canossa.’[121] But worse humiliations were to follow, when the papacy was brought under French tutelage by the ‘Babylonish Captivity’ of Avignon. Worse still, to the humiliation was added infamy. The corruption at the new papal court speedily became notorious. It surpassed all previous bounds, and the cost of its luxury and prodigality was defrayed by unparalleled extortion and simony.[122] More powerful than ever, therefore, became the denunciation of the ugly materialism and spiritual decadence of the papacy. The scandal of Avignon was followed by one more deplorable still—the Schism. Christendom was presented with the unedifying sight of successive rival pontiffs, each anathematizing the other and reviling him in terms of vulgar scurrility.[123] No mystic halo could remain undimmed, no sense of reverence unimpaired by a spectacle so profane. The resistance of princely prerogative, the emotion of national resentment against caste privilege and exemption were reinforced by a general consciousness of the violence done to men’s ordinary sense of fitness, a consciousness mirrored in the literature, and particularly the polemics, of the day.
If disgust with the papacy led Dante in his ‘De Monarchia’ to find a solution of the world’s troubles in a revival of the universal empire, of an effective imperial authority, his vision being one of a golden age in the past, in this respect he stood alone, and other writers looked forward to a radical alteration and amendment in the ecclesiastical polity. It was indeed a radical innovation, but it was not so conceived by its authors, who regarded it as the true practice of the Church and were in some cases ready to denounce the Pope as a heretic for disregarding it. The pulpits of the Grey Friars resounded to denunciations of John XXII as a heretic because he clave to earthly possessions and repudiated the doctrine of the poverty of Christ and His Disciples. But indeed the arguments of John’s opponents were often so startling that it is in no way surprising that he with all honesty perceived in them the heretics. Michael of Cesena, in a tract against the errors of the Pope, treated John as a mere heretic, and appealed from him to a General Council representative of the Catholic Church, since a Pope might err both in faith and in conduct, as indeed many had erred before, while the Catholic Church was infallible, and its representative, a General Council, was necessarily endowed with the like infallibility.[124]
Of far greater weight than that of the Franciscan leader was the authority of William of Ockham in recommending the device of a General Council. Only, unlike the former, William of Ockham discerned infallibility in neither Pope nor General Council. All human beings are liable to err, whether individually or collectively, but the ultimate power in the Church must be the Church itself, the whole body of the faithful.[125] In his enormous work, his ‘Dialogus,’ there are contradictions and qualifications which indicate that the author was perplexed by the manifold practical difficulties of the problem of how to reunite Christendom.[126] But as a Spiritual Franciscan he was clear that the Pope had no right to secular property, and as a philosopher preferred the Church Universal itself to its pontiff as the repository of truth.
Of much less influence and reputation in his own lifetime than Ockham, yet of infinitely greater originality, penetration and width of view, astonishingly farseeing and modern in his standpoint, was Marsiglio of Padua. The central argument of his ‘Defensor Pacis’ is that the cause of all the turmoil and disturbance of the world has been the bid for temporal power made by the clergy, and especially the papacy.[127] Christ had definitely stated, ‘My Kingdom is not of this world’; yet the clergy had become utterly immersed in affairs of the earth. Marsiglio equally combatted two sacerdotal contentions—the right to intervene in secular matters in despite of the spiritual office, on the one hand; on the other hand, the right of exemption from the ordinary payments and obligations of citizens in virtue of the same spiritual office. He held that the clergy had one duty only, and that a spiritual duty—to attend to the welfare of the souls of their flock. They had no legitimate claim whatever, in his opinion, to special treatment from the lay authority.[128] Their spiritual character was relative only to their performance of spiritual functions; in so far as they performed any others they were on exactly the same footing as laymen. Their tenure of land should be on precisely the same conditions as that of the laity; the civil obligations of the layman were incumbent upon them also. Similarly, they had no right to special jurisdiction, involving the infliction of the same sort of penalties—fines and imprisonments for example—as appertained to the secular courts. Such jurisdiction was abhorrent to the spirit of the Gospel.[129] To counsel and to warn was within their province; to go beyond that was not. This, according to Marsiglio, applied even to heresy. If a heresy were dangerous to society, it was for the civil authority to deal with it. Merely as wrong opinion it was not punishable at all in this world.[130] While he thus restricted and narrowly defined the functions of the priesthood, Marsiglio in no wise narrowed the conception of the Catholic Church, but rather broadened it. For his outstanding argument is that the clergy have been narrowing that conception by arrogating to themselves a position and powers which belong to the whole community. While perniciously extending the meaning of the word ‘spiritual’ to cover such essentially secular things as property and political power, they have as falsely contracted it to exclude from all control of the Church’s destinies the mass of the laity. They also, although not in orders, are religious men, members of the Church; numerically they are by far the greater part of the Church. Consequently, in a General Council, which is a representative of the entire Christian communion, and not merely a part—the fact of ordination not making the clergy any the less a fragment—in a General Council resides the ultimate authority of the Church.[131]
In these remarkable pronouncements of Marsiglio of Padua are contained the doctrines of democracy and of toleration: so also in the careful allocation of the clergy to purely spiritual functions is contained the suggestion of that precise differentiation between Church and State which perhaps more than anything else marks off modern from mediæval society. The whole conception of the ‘Defensor Pacis’ was revolutionary. No heresy of the Middle Ages had been more dangerously subversive of the whole system of the Catholic Church as it then existed. The perverse absurdities of Catharism and other such half-crazed cults were abhorrent to all sane and healthily-minded men. But the doctrines taught by Marsiglio have commended themselves to many of the most sincere, the most devout and religious of men from his own day to this.[132]
Were these opinions heretical or not? They were declared to be so by John XXII; but amid the warring religious factions of the period it was no easy matter to say what was orthodox and what was not. The controversy regarding mendicancy raged. The Minorites declared Pope John a heretic because he would not agree that mendicancy was enjoined by Scripture. The view of the Pope was shared and soberly argued by Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh. It was not only the worldly cleric necessarily that failed to find warrant for the contentions of the Spirituals in the Bible.[133] A second new tenet of the time—the dogma of the Beatific Vision—John XXII, after first inclining to believe, latterly decided to reject; and in 1331 a certain English Dominican, for daring to assert that the souls of the righteous were immediately wafted into the presence of God and beheld Him without having to wait for the Day of Resurrection, was by the Pope’s orders brought before the Inquisition, and was thrown into gaol. John’s political opponents in Germany and France, together with the Spiritual Franciscans, immediately asserted the truth of the doctrine he had denounced, the French King writing to point out that the Pope’s ruling must seriously invalidate the belief in the invocation of saints and also all pardons and indulgences. John was forced to give way, and on his death-bed affirmed his adhesion to the doctrine of the Beatific Vision. As he did not make a formal recantation, however, of his previous error, Michael of Cesena held him to have died a contumacious heretic.[134] A third new doctrine, a little later on, after considerable and powerful opposition, gained a great triumph mainly through the instrumentality of the University of Paris, which forced Pope Clement VII to acknowledge its truth. This was the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. It had been resolutely condemned by St. Bernard, Peter Lombard, and later by Thomas Aquinas. But the appeal to the popular imagination of Mariolatry was too strong, strong enough even to defeat the decision of the great Doctor. It became inconceivable to the popular imagination, which ever tended to prefer the sweetness and gentleness of the Virgin to the awfulness of the Trinity, to believe that she could have had any connection whatever with sin. In 1387, when a certain Dominican professor at Paris preached a sermon maintaining that the Virgin was conceived in sin, there was a violent uproar, leading to Clement VII’s consenting to declare all those who held this view to be heretics.[135] The confusion as to the definition of orthodoxy and heresy, inevitably produced by the introduction of such new tenets as those just enumerated, was heightened by the decadent unreality of philosophy, when it permitted of the idea of a double truth, one theological, the other philosophical, and rendered it possible for a scholar to assert that even such cardinal doctrines as those of the Trinity, immortality, the resurrection, the efficacy of prayer might be true in theology, yet quite untrue in philosophy.[136] Such a disingenuous compromise put a premium at once upon scepticism and insincerity.
There was one great schoolman living against whom, despite the prolixity and barrenness of much of his logic, no charge of unreality or insincerity can be brought— John Wycliffe. Beneath the dialectical subtleties and sophistries common to all the works of the scholastic philosophers there was in his case a profound sense of the obligation to seek, and a zealous desire to discover, the absolute truth. As with all great thinkers who have left a permanent mark on the history of religious and political opinion, there was in Wycliffe a great moral earnestness, an honest hatred of shams and impurities and all that is ignoble. The scandals of Avignon and the Schism helped to form the creed of Wycliffe, as they did that of the most religiously-minded men of the fourteenth century. His teaching was the moral repercussion of a sensitive and powerful mind flung back from impact against the clerical abuses of the Church. Indeed, as in the case of Marsiglio, so in that of Wycliffe, his attack was primarily on the polity of the Church, only secondly on doctrine. Many of his writings are perfervid denunciations, in the violent language common to mediæval controversialists, of the ill-living, laxity and ostentation of the clergy. His diatribes against successive popes and the institution of the papacy became more and more unmeasured in the choice of epithets. The writings of Wycliffe cannot be taken as a true description of the Church of his time, so great is the allowance that has to be made for the hyperbolical language of furious partizanship.
The constructive doctrine of Wycliffe is derived from his idea of Lordship. His theology is given a feudal structure, which cumbrously overweights it with technicalities and analogies of interest only to a feudal age. The whole of human society is conceived as holding from God, the suzerain of all creation. The essential characteristic which Wycliffe ascribed to it brings out of this feudal nomenclature no mere analogy but a pregnant idea. Wycliffe postulated a fundamental distinction between spiritual and earthly tenure. The feudal system on earth was one of many gradations between the supreme overlord, the king, and the humblest holder of land. But between God and His subjects there were no such gradations: each man held directly of God.[137] The consequences of this statement were radical. For one thing it was reinforced by the contention that dominion was founded in grace only (there was no other lawful claim to rule or possession) and that no man living in sin had any right to any gift of God, whether that gift be spiritual or secular in nature. For all other persons the right to such gifts was equal. Thus the only test to a man’s right to possession was a moral test.[138] These principles and their applications, elaborated in a work of immense length, ‘Of Civil Lordship,’ lead logically, on their political side, to Communism: while, on the religious side, they involve a democratic theory of the spiritual equality of all Christians, which was subversive of the claims of the priesthood, for whom the belief in the absence of any ‘mediation’ between God and man left no function.[139]
On the one hand, community of goods was regarded as essential to Christians; on the other—even more notably than in Marsiglio—the laity were accorded a novel and prominent place in the Christian fellowship. Clerical property was an abuse and the clergy ought to live on alms, tithes being recognized as such.[140] Wycliffe did not exaggerate the theory of clerical poverty; he did insist that the clergy must live simply and possess nothing superfluous to ordinary needs.[141] In accordance with the theory of ‘grace’ or merit it was laid down that such wealth as the clergy did enjoy should be taken away from the undeserving. Such money could with greater profit be given to the poor. It was for the secular power to deprive the unworthy clerk of his possessions.[142] This teaching regarding ecclesiastical property, the disposal of which he virtually assigned to the laity, was perhaps the most obnoxious element in Wycliffe’s general scheme in the eyes of the Church in his day.[143]
For the regeneration of the Church Wycliffe turned from the hierarchy to the laity. That which makes a man a member of the Church is his own personal sanctity, and the Church therefore consists of those predestined to salvation, of none others.[144] The mere fact of being a pope or a cardinal, for example, is nothing. The Church can dispense with bad popes.[145] They are antichrist. Per contra, a layman might be pope, however unlearned, even if unordained, so long as God had chosen him.[146] It is not man’s appointment, but God’s choosing—that is to say, spiritual excellence—that matters.
The extraordinarily radical character of these theories is obvious. They were subversive of the whole contemporary conception of the character of the Church. For a universal society Wycliffe substituted a small body of the elect. In all this he was emphasizing the spiritual nature of religion, as an inward force, the possession of the individual soul. Confession, he declared, was superfluous for the contrite;[147] no man could be excommunicated unless he had first been excommunicated by himself, and no prelate ought ever to excommunicate anyone unless he knew that he had already been excommunicated by God.[148]
Like Luther after him, then, Wycliffe insisted upon the inner reality of religion, of which the individual is conscious in the depths of his own being. Like Luther also he insisted on the necessity of appeal direct to the Scriptures, as to the supreme authority for the Christian life. As he looked to the laity to reform the Church, so it was necessary that they should be well acquainted with its text. The translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue became, therefore, an integral part of Wycliffe’s scheme. There were extant in Wycliffe’s day portions of the Scriptures in the vernacular.[149] He conceived the idea of translating all. Probably he himself translated only the Gospels, or perhaps the whole of the New Testament; one of his disciples did the translation of the Old Testament, and may have completed most of it before Wycliffe’s own death.[150] The significance of this great undertaking lies partly in its completeness; but even more in the intention with which it was adopted. The laity must be able to read the actual text of the Scriptures for themselves without the glosses of traditional interpretation and theologians’ exegesis, so that they may know the gospel in its simplicity and view the realities of religion clearly for themselves. To the Bible in the vernacular as such the Church had no objection, but there must be proper safeguards. The people must be taught how to read the Scriptures with understanding by their spiritual masters. The gospel of Christ had been entrusted to the clergy for them to ‘administer gently’ to the laity. Wycliffe’s method meant that the ‘gospel pearl’ was ‘cast forth and trodden down by swine.’[151]
Wycliffe was an idealist, and confessedly his entire conception of the Church and Society is an ideal conception. In spite of its curiously matter-of-fact feudal foundations, Wycliffe’s structure is not of the earth, but Utopian. His conclusions were indeed whittled down by certain important qualifications. Thus, although all men were ideally equal, the existing mode of society and government was sanctioned by God; and it was therefore unlawful to seek to gain by force the equality of possession which flagrantly did not exist—so that Wycliffe’s communism, in so far as it was not spiritual only, was purely anticipatory of a new order in the future; so also it was unlawful to challenge the right to rule of the civil lord on the ground of personal unworthiness, for his power also is sanctioned. As Wycliffe put it in a celebrated phrase, ‘God ought to obey the Devil.’[152] Thus while the ideal theory of dominion ‘founded in grace’ is suggestive of antinomianism and revolution, Wycliffe’s practical teachings were marked by devotion to the existing temporal order. On the other hand, it is not surprising that both opponents and followers should have tended to fasten upon the former aspects of his tenets and give to them a revolutionary interpretation. And indeed the truly significant part of Wycliffite doctrine is revolutionary in the emphasis that it lays upon the individual; and as time went on both the logic of events and the logic of the beliefs to which controversy drove him rendered Wycliffe more and more unequivocal in the essential radicalism of his attitude.
Anti-sacerdotalism led Wycliffe later on to attack a doctrine to which the clergy owed much of their hold upon the popular mind, whence largely came the peculiar veneration in which they were held—the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The miracle of the mass obtained a special note of awesome mystery from that doctrine; and to the ignorant or superstitious mind it was natural to regard those who by the simple pronunciation of the prayer of consecration could transform bread and wine into the body and blood of the Blessed Lord as miracle-workers. For the orthodox philosophy of Wycliffe’s day, Nominalism, there was little difficulty in believing in such a transformation. Wycliffe was a realist, and to him the nominalist position seemed untenable altogether. In the days of Abelard, and again in those of Thomas Aquinas, Realism had been the orthodox philosophy, and Aquinas in demonstrating that the abstract and general truths of Christianity were acceptable to the reason did the Church of his day a great service. But another realist had come after him, who had most trenchantly attacked St. Thomas, destroying all the reasonableness of the great Doctor’s philosophic structure, and emphatically ousting the reason and substituting the authority of the Church as the only sure guide in the sacred mysteries of religion, the only sure foundation of faith. There were action and reaction in the abstract thought of the Middle Ages, as indeed there have ever been in history. The reaction against the Realism of St. Thomas, apparent in Duns Scotus, grew intenser when the principles of Ockham became the popular, and were recognized as the orthodox, principles of Christian theology. It could easily be shown that Realism was apt to lead to exaggerations either heretical or absurd, very apt to end in Pantheism.[153] The fact of the matter was that either school of the scholastic philosophy might be productive of heresy, by laying especial emphasis on one particular aspect of truth to the exclusion of others; that different generations, changing subtly in mental outlook and spiritual temperament, are susceptible to different phases of truth. It is not a matter of Yea or Nay, but simply a varying stress of mode or fashion. But we do not look for recognition of such a fact on the part of any mediæval controversialist. There are no half lights and compromises with them; they have each his own vision of truth, and bitterly assail their opponents as enemies of the light.
So Wycliffe, beginning with a standpoint which could be shared, and in fact was shared, by many of the most orthodox Catholics of his time, growing as he went on more profoundly conscious of, and convinced of, the rightness of his essential principles, became less and less compromising, more and more the opponent not only of practices but of the doctrines with which such practices were associated. He became urgent against the reigning nominalist creed, but most especially against its theories of the Sacrament. For him space and time, matter and form were objective realities. The bread and wine were not a part of Christ and could not become so; they remained bread and wine in substance and could never be anything else, only Christ was present in them.[154] The doctrine of identification between the bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ was pernicious.[155] Nothing could be more horrible than the notion that a priest had the ability to ‘make’ God daily.[156] The language of the service of the Eucharist was not literal, but figurative.[157] The literal interpretation was an invitation to mere idolatry, an encouragement to the ignorant to worship the Host itself.[158] Christ indeed was present in the Sacrament, and the bread and wine were not merely commemorative symbols; on the other hand, there was no miraculous transformation of the elements. This is very much the same theory as Luther’s doctrine of Consubstantiation. Wycliffe united with it the tenet that a priest living in mortal sin could not consecrate.[159]
The extent and nature of the influence of Wycliffitism in England is a difficult and somewhat controversial question.[160] The translation of the Bible certainly had its permanent influence; and the device of the Poor Preachers spread the new doctrines further afield than would have been possible in those days only with the aid of lecture, sermon and treatise. Wycliffe’s character does not appear to have been such as to have enabled him to become the leader of a great popular movement. He was too much of a schoolman; his method was too academic.[161] But the preachers—not to be thought of as crude, semi-educated men, for they were mostly clerks of Oxford, who had studied under Wycliffe—touched a wider public than their master himself reached. Clearly in popularizing, they also exaggerated his doctrines, making them more downright, more practical, more mundane, emphasizing their social tendencies, those communistic elements which had a natural popular appeal.
The Lollards prospered greatly at the first, being particularly successful in the capital itself, Norwich, Bristol, Leicester, Northampton and the larger towns generally. The protection of John of Gaunt and other nobles helped them, while Wycliffe’s denunciation of the friars met with the support of public opinion generally.[162] There seemed a prospect of Wycliffitism becoming really widespread. But separatist tendencies soon showed themselves, and already in 1392 Lollards in the diocese of Salisbury were undertaking ordinations. The Lollards, then, soon showed a tendency to develop into a separate sect, and their hold on the country and their national influence decayed with extraordinary suddenness. This was partly due to the fact that the movement had owed much to the purely ephemeral factor of John of Gaunt’s support; partly to the fact that the favour that its social teachings had won among the peasants was more than counterbalanced by the conservative apprehensions of the larger population who viewed the activities of such men as John Ball with dismay; partly to the fact that the movement produced sharp divisions in families, between father and son, master and servant, and this sort of thing could not last beyond a generation.[163] Extremists took possession of Lollardy and it began to betray a distinct iconoclastic character. But the orthodox zeal of Henry IV and Henry V forced it very much underground, and there were a number of recantations.[164] Lollardy survived into the days of the Tudors, in small communities in country districts, such as the Chilterns, and there was certainly a measure of Wycliffite leaven in the nation; but it is going too far to discover in Lollardy a direct and potent influence in bringing about the English Reformation.
The influence of Wycliffe was deeper and more lasting and vital outside England than within it—for there is a clear and very important connection between Wycliffitism and Husitism in Bohemia. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to regard Wycliffe as the sole parent of the movement inaugurated by Hus; for Hus had forerunners in Bohemia itself, earnest reformers, such as Conrad Waldhäuser, John Militz Kremsier, and Matthias of Janow.[165] The two former were never accused of harbouring heretical opinions; they were simply protestants against clerical abuses. Matthias of Janow, on the other hand, was definitely interested in dogma, a professed theologian. He was notable in appealing directly to the simple people of Christ in his denunciation of the invocation of Saints and his insistence on the administration of the Communion in both kinds to the laity.[166]
The beginnings of the religious movement in Bohemia centre in the drama of the University of Prague, the struggle between the German and native parties—a national struggle which had its significant philosophic counterpart, for Teutonic Nominalism warred against Czech Realism. The struggle was decided in favour of the native party by the famous proclamation of Wenzel, which led to the German exodus from the University. The departure of the German scholars from Prague was a momentous event. Hus and Jerome of Prague had been expounding the doctrines of Wycliffe; the German majority had pronounced these heretical. Wenzel’s decision was therefore a triumph at once for Bohemian nationalism and for the reforming Husite party, a victory for Realism—for heresy. Hus’s satisfaction was great.[167] It was not only the religious issue that appealed to him strongly: he was an intense patriot as well as a religious reformer. The spread of the Husite doctrines, however, naturally received a considerable impetus. The association of certain religious opinions with those national aspirations, to which the revolution at the University had given so marked an encouragement, inevitably converted Husitism into a popular movement. The cause of Husitism and the cause of Bohemian nationalism became so completely dovetailed the one into the other that they were inseparable.
Hus received a papal summons to appear at Bologna to answer for his heretical opinions, which were making Husitism an European question, a dangerous problem to the Church, as serious as Waldensianism and Catharism had been.[168] Hus did not go, appealing from the Pope to Christ. The opinions of the great Bohemian leader were not original; and indeed his greatness is much more moral than intellectual. Starting his career solely as a protestant against sacerdotal abuses, he was led by the influence of the doctrines of Wycliffe, which the close association between England and Bohemia at the time made familiar in the latter country, into adopting many of the tenets of the Oxford heresiarch.[169] His ‘De Ecclesia’ is little more than a translation of Wycliffe. On the whole, he remained distinctly more orthodox than his master. His writings abound in denunciations of the worldliness of the clergy, in particular of the papacy; denunciations of simony (which is heresy), of the claim of the papacy to overlordship of the Church, based on no better foundation than the death of St. Peter in Rome.[170] Heresy, he also declared, was not triable by the Church.[171] But the really fundamental article of his questionable doctrines was his conception of Predestination. Here he was following Augustine; but he was under the influence of Wycliffe’s idea of ‘dominion founded in grace,’ which gave the right of lordship and possession only to the elect.[172] This principle, involving the position that only the ‘rule of the saints’ is legitimate, had clearly a dangerous tendency, subversive of law and order in an imperfect world, both in the secular and the ecclesiastical spheres. Yet the principal element of danger in Husitism was the simple fact of its success. So serious was this that when the remarkable attempt was made to heal the wounds of Christendom by means of General Councils, the fathers aimed at dealing with the problem of heresy together with those of the restoration of the unity, which had been broken by the Schism, and the reform of clerical abuses.
The Conciliar movement—a serious and important attempt to reform the Church from within—was brought about by the labours of certain moderate reformers, of whom Gerson, Peter D’Ailly and Zabarella are the most notable. Dietrich Niem represents a German influence; but the main source of inspiration was the University of Paris, firmly orthodox and nominalist and immensely influential. In 1394 the University invited its members to send in opinions as to the best means of ending the Schism. Thousands of answers were received; but the most outstanding members of the University were convinced that the summoning of a General Council was the only expedient that gave any hope of success. The ideas of Marsiglio and Ockham—more especially the latter—had borne fruit, and an age in which the idea of representation was ‘in the air’ decided to apply the principle to the Church for the urgent practical purpose of removing a notorious scandal. The apologia for the scheme is to be found in the writings of Gerson and D’Ailly, and of Niem, if Niem is indeed the author of the tractate, ‘De modis uniendi et reformandi Ecclesiam.’[173] The plenitudo potestatis of the Church resided in its whole body, as represented in a General Council.[174] With the assent of such a council, the Church could even dispense with a pope.[175] It was legitimate for the civil authority to summon a General Council. It was easy to cite the practice of Roman Emperors to that effect.[176] Christ, urged representatives of the University of Paris to the French king, had submitted to the authority of His mother and Joseph. Was the Pope greater than Christ that he should not submit to the authority of his mother, the Church?[177] The proposition, so worded, seemed mildly reasonable, certainly most orthodox. In truth it was a democratic innovation of the utmost significance. ‘Pisa,’ wrote Gregorovius, referring to the first of the series of councils which provide the chief interest of the opening years of the fifteenth century, ‘was the first real step towards the deliverance of the world from the papal hierarchy; it was already the Reformation’; while the decree of the second and most important of the councils, that of Constance, in which it declared its superiority to the Pope, has been pronounced to be ‘probably the most revolutionary official document in the history of the world.’[178] When brought up against the glaring abuse of the papal schism it was not only Wycliffe and Hus and their followers that became revolutionaries; Gerson, D’Ailly, Niem and their adherents became revolutionaries also. In the reforming programmes of Wycliffe and Hus there was much that might have been expected to gain the sympathies of the fathers who met at Constance: yet they condemned both as heretics and consigned Hus and Jerome of Prague to the flames.
The explanation is easy enough. It was precisely because their scheme was revolutionary that the cardinals and other clergy assembled at Constance were so anxious to make it clear to Christendom that such revolutionary practice was perfectly compatible with strict orthodoxy regarding the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, that they were the guardians of the unity and continuity of the essential life and identity of the Church. A proof of this was urgently needed to safeguard a position which had precarious elements. The opportunity of dealing with Hus would probably have been welcomed for that reason alone. As to the fact of Wycliffe and Hus being dangerous heretics the fathers assembled at Constance had no doubt whatever. Zealous for the reform of clerical abuses as many of them were, they could only see in the invectives against the hierarchy and the doctrines concerning Predestination and the Eucharist, in which the English and the Bohemian teachers indulged, an attack upon the whole edifice of the Catholic Church.[179] Reconstruction they might desire; but the specific of Wycliffe and Hus seemed to be extensive demolition preparatory to the creation of a new structure. Hus, therefore, came to Constance as one ‘suspect of heresy,’ virtually pre-condemned.
He answered the Council’s summons, relying upon the security of Sigismund’s celebrated safe-conduct, expecting to take part in a public debate, to receive a fair and courteous hearing for his defence of his theological views. Instead he found himself treated as a criminal, thrown into prison, to answer a formidable indictment before judges who were also prosecutors. The Council virtually resolved itself into an inquisitorial court and followed inquisitorial methods of procedure. Compared indeed with an ordinary trial by the Inquisition that of Hus was remarkably lenient. He had powerful friends and the undertaking of Sigismund counted for something, although certainly not very much.
Sigismund has been arraigned as a monster of turpitude for allowing Hus to be tried, condemned and executed after he had granted him a safe-conduct. It is certain that Hus, while clearly apprehensive of what might ensue from his bold step of entering the stronghold of his enemies, had implicit confidence in Sigismund’s protection, and when despite the security promised by the man who was both Emperor and president of the Council, Hus was consigned to the stake, at first sight unmitigated baseness on the part of Sigismund would appear to be the only explanation.[180] If he cannot be entirely exonerated, on the other hand, it is quite clear he never had any idea of protecting a heretic, and that he was overruled by the Council, who, arguing from the customary rules regarding heretics, could legitimately maintain that no guarantee could have any validity whatever in the case of one suspected of heresy, that Sigismund’s safe-conduct might certainly apply to the empire and secular states, might be valid while Hus was on his journey, but had no validity as regards the Church. The heretic or a man suspect of heresy could enjoy neither rights nor privileges. This was good law, both ecclesiastical and civil; and once granted that the Council must regard Hus as suspect of heresy, it was legally unanswerable.[181]
The trial resolved itself into a dialectical duel between Hus and Cardinal D’Ailly, with divers interruptions and at times uproar. Against the uproar, with which his statements were sometimes greeted, Hus strongly protested; and the proceedings would appear to have been more seemly subsequently.[182] He was accused of a large number of doctrinal errors and of such absurdities as that of claiming to be a person of the Trinity.[183] Generally speaking, the object of his prosecutors was to show that his opinions were identical with those of Wycliffe, which had already been condemned as heretical by the Council. It was easy enough to show that Hus had inveighed against the organization and practices of the Church as then existing; it was not so easy to convict him of heretical dogma. From the first Hus’s attitude was perfectly consistent. He wished to argue his thesis; but that not being allowed, he declared himself perfectly willing to abjure all tenets which he had at any time avowed if the Council proved them from Scripture to have been erroneous, but he strongly protested against the ascription to him of statements he had never made and interpretations that he had never intended.[184] The Council, on the other hand, contended that it was the duty of the suspect heretic to put himself unreservedly in the hands of the Council, making an entire submission to their ruling and a complete abjuration of all the heresies with which he was charged. One doctor told him that if the Council told him he had only one eye, though he knew he had two, he ought to agree that it was so. Hus replied: ‘If the whole world told me so, so long as I have the use of my reason, I could not say so without resisting my conscience.’ It is right to add that the doctor subsequently withdrew his remark, agreeing that he had not used a very good illustration.[185]
Where Hus gave his enemies their best opportunity was in his teaching with regard to the predestined. He had declared that no man living in a state of mortal sin had any right to exercise authority. By this ruling Sigismund himself would have been excluded. Apart from that, as has been said already, the doctrine was undeniably of perilous implication. The King of the Romans could appreciate the seriousness of the political application at all events. He pertinently reminded Hus of the truth that no man lives without sin.[186] But the decisive factor in the trial of Hus proved eventually to be his absolute sincerity. He refused to be false to himself, to commit perjury in order to save his life. ‘Serene Prince,’ said he to Sigismund, ‘I do not want to cling to any error, and I am perfectly willing to submit to the determination of the Council. But I may not offend God and my conscience by saying that I hold heresies that I have never held.’[187] As he put it again in a letter written shortly before his death, ‘Assuredly it is fitting for me rather to die than to flee a momentary penalty to fall into the Lord’s hand and afterwards, perchance, into everlasting fire and shame. And because I have appealed to Christ Jesus, the most potent and just of all judges, committing my cause to Him, therefore I stand by His judgment and sentence, knowing that He will judge every man not on false and erroneous evidence but on the true facts and merits of his case.’[188] Hus died a martyr for no specific theological dogma, heretical or otherwise, but for the noblest cause for which a man can ever die—sincerity to the truth that is in him.
After the condemnation and burning of Hus, the Council proceeded to the trial of Jerome of Prague, who after a recantation repented of it and elected to die like his greater comrade. The proceedings against him were marked by great heat and acrimony, for he had made many personal enemies. Moreover, controversialist passions, which had indeed been apparent in the trial of Hus—for Hus was condemned as much because he was a realist as anything—flared up with still greater violence. Among the interested spectators of the death at the stake of Jerome of Prague was the great Italian humanist, Poggio. Much struck by the martyr’s eloquence and genius, he thought it was a great pity that he should have turned his attention to heretical ideas, and half pityingly, half uncomprehendingly, wondered that a man should be willing to die merely for the sake of an opinion.
This chance connection between Jerome, the ardent scholastic reformer, and Poggio, the cynical forerunner of the New Learning—between the old order and the new, is remarkable and prophetic. The movement towards change, which Jerome of Prague represented, whether it was a conservative movement as interpreted by Gerson and D’Ailly, or radical as it became in the hands of Wycliffe and Hus, definitely failed. The mediæval system had indeed been challenged by that movement, which had resulted from the glaring scandals of Avignon and the papal Schism; but the system, though severely shaken, yet remained; and pontiffs such as Martin V, Eugenius IV and Pius II were able by politic means to bolster it up through a restoration of influence, mainly of a temporal nature, to the Papacy. The Conciliar method of ecclesiastical reform failed for a variety of reasons—partly because of defects in organization and policy, still more because of a natural failure to recognize the great significance of national differences and the need, or at least the demand, for variety of treatment as between states, which produced the Pragmatic Sanctions of Bourges and Mainz, of the years 1438 and 1439 respectively; yet more, precisely because the attempted reforms were not sufficiently far-reaching and thorough in character, a tinkering, not a renewal.
The movements of Wycliffe and Hus were also abortive of really direct results. Lollardy certainly lived on, but, as has been already noted, probably did not have any considerable influence among the various forces which brought about the English Reformation. The influence of Hus in Bohemian history is far greater and the triumphs of Ziska and Prokop in the wars that are known after the name of the great heresiarch won national and religious independence for the Czechs up to the time of the battle of the White Mountain in the Thirty Years War. It is true also that Luther expressed his own indebtedness to Hus, declaring, ‘We have all been Husites without knowing it.’ Nevertheless, the decisive influences which brought about the complete overthrow of the mediæval system and the substitution of the modern belong to the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. These influences were the humanism, which in its Italian form became critical, pagan, drawing its influence from the Greek world to which all the ‘ages of faith’ had been as an opaque curtain; which in its German form had a theological bias and a moral aim, as interpreted by Reuchlin and the school of Deventer. The other influence was the apotheosis of a cynical nationalism, whose exponent is Machiavelli, which produced the secularization of politics and the segregation of Church and State.
It is, therefore, fanciful and erroneous to trace back the causes of the Reformation and the break-down of the mediæval world-state to the mediæval heresies and movements of reform.[189] On the other hand, to ignore them would be equally mistaken. They had a minor effect, but it was not insignificant. It may be the violence of the storm that rends and tears away the structure; yet its havoc has been aided by the almost unseen, unheeded shifting of the sands.