A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

by Carlton J. H. Hayes

RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL CONDITIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: The Catholic Church]

The great ecclesiastical organization that had dominated the middle ages was no longer the one church of Europe, but was still the most impressive. Although the Protestant Revolt of the sixteenth century had established independent denominations in the countries of northern Europe, as we have seen in Chapter IV, Roman Catholic Christianity remained the state religion of Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, the Austrian Netherlands, Bavaria, Poland, and several of the Swiss Cantons. Moreover, large sections of the population of Ireland, Bohemia, Hungary, Asia, and America professed Catholic Christianity.

Orthodox Roman Catholics held fast to their faith in dogmas and sacraments and looked for spiritual guidance, correction, and comfort to the regular and secular clergy of their Church. The "secular" hierarchy of pope, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons, did not cease its pious labor "in the world"; nor was there lack of zealous souls willing to forego the pleasures of this world, that they might live holier lives as monks, nuns, or begging friars,— the "regular" clergy.

[Sidenote: Relations of the Catholic Church with Lay States]

In its relations with lay states, the Roman Catholic Church had changed more than in its internal organization. Many Protestant rulers now recognized the pope merely as an Italian prince, [Footnote: The pope, it will be remembered, ruled the central part of Italy as a temporal prince.] and head of an undesirable religious sect—Roman Catholics were either persecuted, or, as in Great Britain, deprived of political and civil rights. The Pope, on the other hand, could hardly regard as friends those who had denied the spiritual mission and confiscated the temporal possessions of the Church.

In Roman Catholic countries, too, the power of the pope had been lessened. The old dispute whether pope or king should control the appointment of bishops, abbots, and other high church officers had at last been settled in favor of the king. The pope consented to recognize royal appointees, provided they were "godly and suitable" men; in return he usually received a fee ("annate") from the newly appointed prelate. Other taxes the pope rarely ventured to levy; but good Roman Catholics continued to pay "Peter's Pence" as a free-will offering, and the bishops occasionally taxed themselves for his benefit. In other ways, also, the power of the Church was curtailed. Royal courts now took cognizance of the greater part of those cases which had once been within the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts;[Footnote: Blasphemy, contempt of religion, and heresy were, however, still matters for church courts.] the right of appeal to the Roman Curia was limited; and the lower clergy might be tried in civil courts. Finally, papal edicts were no longer published in a country without the sanction of the king. These curtailments of papal privilege were doubtless important, but they meant little or nothing to the millions of peasants and humble workmen who heard Mass, were confessed, and received the sacraments as their fathers had done before them.

[Sidenote: Surviving Privileges of the Church]

Besides their incalculable influence over the souls of men, the clergy were an important factor in the civil life of Roman Catholic countries. Education was mostly under their auspices; they conducted the hospitals and relieved the poor. Marriages were void unless solemnized in the orthodox manner, and, in the eye of the law, children born outside of Christian wedlock might not inherit property. Heretics who died unshriven, were denied the privilege of burial in Catholic cemeteries.

Of the exemption of the clergy from taxation, and of the wealth of the Church, we have already spoken, as well as of the high social rank of its prelates—a rank more in keeping with that of wealthy worldly noblemen than with that of devout "servants of the Lord." But we have yet to mention the influence of the Church in suppressing heresy.

In theory the Roman Catholic religion was still obligatory in Catholic states. Uniformity of faith was still considered essential to political unity. Kings still promised at coronation faithfully to extirpate heretical sects. In Spain, during the first half of the eighteenth century hundreds of heretics were condemned by the Inquisition and burned at the stake; only toward the close of the century was there an abatement of religious intolerance. In France, King Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and in the eighteenth century one might have found laws on the French statute-books directing that men who attended Protestant services should be made galley-slaves, that medical aid should be withheld from impenitent heretics, and that writers of irreligious books should suffer death. Such laws were very poorly enforced, however, and active religious persecution was dying out in France in the second half of the eighteenth century. But toleration did not mean equality; full civil and political rights were still denied the several hundred thousand Huguenots in France.

[Sidenote: Summary of Weaknesses in the Catholic Church]

The strength of the Roman Catholic Church in the eighteenth century was impaired by four circumstances: (1) the existence of bitterly antagonistic Protestant sects; (2) the growth of royal power and of the sentiment of nationalism, at the expense of papal power and of internationalism; (3) the indolence and worldliness of some of the prelates; and (4) the presence of internal dissensions. The first three circumstances should be clear from what has already been said, but a word of explanation is necessary about the fourth.

[Sidenote: Jansenism]

The first of these dissensions arose concerning the teachings of a certain Flemish bishop by the name of Cornelius Janssen (1585-1638), [Footnote: Janssen is commonly cited by the Latin version of his name— Jansenius.] whose followers, known as Jansenists, had possessed themselves of a sort of hermitage and nunnery at Port-Royal in the vicinity of Paris. Jansenism found a number of earnest disciples and able exponents, whose educational work and reforming zeal brought them into conflict with the Jesuits. The Jesuits accused the Jansenists of heresy, affirming that Janssen's doctrine of conversion-by-the-will-of- God was in last analysis practically Calvin's predestination. For some years the controversy raged. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), a famous mathematician and experimenter in physics, defended the Jansenists eloquently and learnedly, but Jesuits had the ear of Louis XIV and broke up the little colony at Port-Royal. Four years later the pope issued a famous bull, called "Unigenitus" (1713), definitively condemning Jansenist doctrines as heretical; but the sect still lived on, especially in Holland, and "Unigenitus" was disliked by many orthodox Roman Catholics, who thought its condemnations too sweeping and too severe.

[Sidenote: Febronianism]

A second dispute, questioning the authority of the papacy, centered in a German theologian [Footnote: Johann Nikolaus von Hoatheim, auxiliary bishop of Trier. His famous work was published in 1763.] who wrote under the Latin name of Febronius. Febronianism was an attempted revival of the conciliar movement of the fifteenth century and closely resembled "Gallicanism," as the movement in favor of the "Liberties of the Gallican Church" was called. These "Liberties" had been formulated in a French declaration of 1682 and involved two major claims: (1) that the pope had no right to depose or otherwise to interfere with temporal monarchs, and (2) that in spiritual affairs the general council of bishops (cumenical council) was superior to the sovereign pontiff. This twofold movement towards nationalism and representative church government was most strongly controverted by the Jesuits, who took their stand on the assertion that the pope was supreme in all things. By the opponents of the Jesuits, this looking "beyond the mountains" to the Roman Curia for ultimate authority was called Ultramontanism (beyond-the-mountainism). In almost every Catholic country of Europe the struggle between Ultramontanism and Febronianism aroused controversy, and the nature of papal supremacy remained a mooted point well into the nineteenth century.

[Sidenote: Suppression of the Jesuit Order]

Towards the close of the eighteenth century Ultramontanism received a serious though temporary setback by the suppression of the Jesuits (1773). For over two centuries members of the Society of Jesus had been famed as schoolmasters, preachers, controversialists, and missionaries; but in the eighteenth century the order became increasingly involved in temporal business; its power and wealth were abused; its political entanglements incurred the resentment of reforming royal ministers; and some of its missionaries became scandalously lax in their doctrines. The result was the suppression of the order, first in Portugal (1759), then in other countries, and finally altogether by a papal decree of 1773. [Footnote: In Russia, where the order of suppression was not enforced, the Jesuits kept their corporate organization. Subsequently, on 7 August, 1814, the entire society was restored by papal bull, and is now in a flourishing condition in many countries.]

[Sidenote: The Anglican Church]

We shall next consider the Anglican Church, whose complete independence from the papacy, it will be remembered, was established by Henry VIII of England, and whose doctrinal position had been defined in the Thirty-nine Articles of Elizabeth's reign. It was the state Church of England, Ireland, and Wales, and had scattering adherents in Scotland and in the British colonies. Like the Roman Catholic Church in France, the Anglican Church enjoyed in the British Isles, excepting Scotland, special privileges, great wealth, and the collection of tithes from Anglicans and non-Anglicans alike. It was intensely national, independent of papal control or other foreign influence, and patriotic in spirit. It retained a hierarchical government similar to that of the Roman Catholics. As in France, the bishops were inclined to use the emoluments without doing the work of their office, while the country curates were very poor.

In its relations with others, the Anglican Church was not very liberal. In England, Protestant (Calvinistic) Dissenters had been granted liberty of worship in 1689 (Toleration Act) but still they might not hold civil, military, or political office without the special dispensation of Parliament. Baptism, registration of births and deaths, and marriage could be performed legally only by Anglican clergymen. Non-Anglicans were barred from Oxford and could take no degree at Cambridge University.

Worst of all was the lot of the Roman Catholics. In England they had practically no civil, political, or religious rights. By a law of 1700 [Footnote: Repealed in 1778, but on condition that Roman Catholics should deny the temporal power of the pope and his right to depose kings.] the Roman Catholic must abjure the Mass or lose his property, and priests celebrating Mass were liable to life imprisonment. In Ireland the communicants of the "Church of Ireland" (Anglican) constituted a very small minority, [Footnote: Even in the nineteenth century, there were only about 500,000 Anglicans out of a population of somewhat less than 6,000,000.] while the native Roman Catholics, comprising over four-fifths of the population, were not only seriously hindered from exercising their own religion, not only deprived of their political rights, not only made subservient to the economic interests of the Protestants, but actually forced to pay the tithe to support English bishops and curates, who too often lived in England, since their parishioners were all Roman Catholics.

[Sidenote: Protestant Sects in England: Baptists]

The Dissenters from the Anglican Church embraced many different creeds.
We have already spoken of the Calvinistic Presbyterians and
Separatists. Besides these, several new sects had appeared. The Baptist
Church was a seventeenth-century off-shoot of Separatism. To
Calvinistic theology and Congregational Church government, the Baptists
had added a belief in adult baptism, immersion, and religious liberty.

[Sidenote: Unitarians]

A group of persons who denied the divinity of Christ, thereby departing widely from usual Protestantism as well as from traditional Catholicism, came into some prominence in the eighteenth century through secessions from the Anglican Church and through the preaching of the scientist Joseph Priestley, and gradually assumed the name of Unitarians. It was not until 1844 that the sect obtained complete religious liberty in England.

[Sidenote: Quakers]

A most remarkable departure from conventional forms was made under the leadership of George Fox, the son of a weaver, whose followers, loosely organized as the Society of Friends, were often derisively called Quakers, because they insisted that true religion was accompanied by deep emotions and quakings of spirit. Although severely persecuted, [Footnote: In 1685 as many as 1460 Quakers lay in English prisons.] the Quakers grew to be influential at home, and in the colonies, where they founded Pennsylvania (1681). Their refusal to take oaths, their quaint "thee" and "thou," their simple and somber costumes, and their habit of sitting silent in religious meeting until the spirit should move a member to speak, made them a most picturesque body. Professional ministers and the ceremonial observance of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, they held to be forms destructive of spontaneous religion. War, they said, gave free rein to un-Christian cruelty, selfishness, and greed; and, therefore, they would not fight. They were also vigorous opponents of negro slavery.

[Sidenote: Methodists]

The Methodist movement did not come until the eighteenth century. By the year 1740, a group of earnest Oxford students had won the nickname of "Methodists" by their abstinence from frivolous amusements and their methodical cultivation of fervor, piety, and charity. Their leader, John Wesley (1703-1791), was a man of remarkable energy, rising at four in the morning, filling every moment with work, living frugally on £28 a year, visiting prisons, and exhorting his companions to piety. The Methodist leaders were very devout and orthodox Anglicans, but they were so anxious "to spread Scriptural Holiness over the land" that they preached in open fields as well as in churches. Wesley and other great orators appealed to the emotions of thousands of miners, prisoners, and ignorant weavers, and often moved them to tears. It is said that John Wesley preached more than 40,000 sermons.

The Methodist preachers gradually became estranged from the Anglican Church, established themselves as a new dissenting sect, and dropped much of the Anglican ritual. The influence of their preaching was very marked, however, and many orthodox Anglican clergymen traveled about preaching to the lower classes. This "evangelical movement" is significant because it showed that a new class of industrial workers had grown up without benefit of the church or protection of the state. We shall subsequently hear more of them in connection with the events of the Industrial Revolution.

[Sidenote: Lutheran Churches on the Continent]

In the eighteenth century, Lutheranism was the state religion of Denmark (including Norway), Sweden, and of several German states, notably Prussia, Saxony, and Brunswick. The Lutheran churches retained much of the old ritual and episcopal government. Ecclesiastical lands, however, had been secularized, and Lutheran pastors were supported by free-will offerings and state subventions. In Prussia, [Footnote: Later, in 1817, the Lutherans and Calvinists of Prussia were brought together, under royal pressure, to form the "Evangelical Church." According to the king, this was not a fusion of the two Protestant faiths, but merely an external union.] Denmark, and Sweden the church recognized the king as its summus episcopus or supreme head.

[Sidenote: Reformed Churches]

Zwinglian and Calvinistic churches were usually called "Reformed" or "Presbyterian" and represented a more radical deviation than Lutheranism from Roman Catholic theology and ritual, holding the Lord's Supper to be but a commemorative ceremony, doing away with altar- lights, crucifixes, and set prayers, and governing themselves by synods of priests or presbyters. In the eighteenth century Presbyterianism was still the established religion of Scotland, and of the Dutch Netherlands. In France the Huguenots, in Switzerland the French- speaking Calvinists and German-speaking Zwinglians, and numerous congregations in southern Germany still represented the Reformed Church of Calvin and Zwingli. [Footnote: For the Orthodox Church in Russia, see above, pp. 122, 372, 380. Some reforms in the ritual had been introduced by a certain Nikon, a patriarch of the seventeenth century.]

[Sidenote: Growth of Skepticism. Deism]

One of the most noteworthy features of the eighteenth century was the appearance of a large number of doubters of Christianity. In the comparatively long history of the Christian Church, there had often been reformers, who attacked specific doctrines or abuses, but never before, with the possible exception of Italian humanists of the fifteenth century, [Footnote: See above, pp. 124, 182 ff.] had there been such a considerable and influential number who ventured to assail the very foundations of the Christian belief. During the last quarter of the seventeenth century, a number of English philosophers, imbued with enthusiasm for the discovery of scientific laws, went on to apply the newer scientific methods to religion. They claimed that the Bible was untrustworthy, that the dogmas and ceremonies of the churches were useless if not actually harmful, and that true religion was quite natural in man and independent of miraculous revelation. God, they asserted, had created the universe and established laws for it. He would not upset these laws to answer the foolish prayers of a puny human being. Men served God best by discounting miracles, discrediting "superstition," and living in accordance with natural law. Just what this law was, they left largely to the common sense of each man to determine. As a result, the positive side of Deism, as the body of the new teachings was called, was lost in vagueness, and the negative side —the mere denial of orthodox Christianity—became uppermost in men's minds.

Deism was important in several ways, especially for France, whence it was carried from England. (1) For a large part of the most intelligent and influential classes, it destroyed reverence for the Church, and prepared the way for the religious experiments of the French Revolution. (2) It gave an impetus to philosophers who evolved great systems and exhibited wonderful ingenuity and confidence in formulating laws which would explain the why, what, whence, and whither of human life. (3) While casting doubt on the efficacy of particular religions, it demanded toleration for all. (4) Finally, it was responsible for a great increase of indifference to religion. People too lazy or too ignorant to understand the philosophic basis of Deism, used the arguments of Deists in justification of their contempt for religion, and to many people disbelief and intelligence seemed to be synonymous. We have considered Deism here for its significant bearing on the religious situation in the eighteenth century. In the following section we shall see how it was part and parcel of the scientific and intellectual spirit of the times.