CHAPTER V.
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.[695]
§ 1. The Assembling of the Council.
The General Council, the subject of many negotiations between the Emperor and the Pope, was at last finally fixed to meet at Trent in 1545.[696] The city was the capital of a small episcopal principality, its secular overlord was the Count of the Tyrol, whose deputy resided in the town. It was a frontier place with about a thousand houses, including four or five fine buildings and a large palace of the Prince Bishop. It contained several churches, one of which, Santa Maria Maggiore, was reserved for the meetings of the Council.[697] Its inhabitants were partly Italian and partly German—the two nationalities living in separate quarters and retaining their distinctive customs and dress. It was a small place for such an assembly, and could not furnish adequate accommodation for the crowd of visitors a General Council always involved.
The Papal Legates entered Trent in state on the 13th of March (1545). Heavy showers of rain marred the impressive display. They were received by the local clergy with enthusiasm, and by the populace with an absolute indifference. Months passed before the Council was opened. Few delegates were present when the papal Legates arrived. The representatives of the Emperor and those of Venice came early; Bishops arrived in straggling groups during April and May and the months that followed. The necessary papal Brief did not reach the town till the 11th of December, and the Council was formally opened on the 13th. The long leisurely opening was symptomatic of the history of the Council. Its proceedings were spread over a period of eighteen years:—under Pope Paul III., 1545-47, including Sessions i. to x.; under Pope Julius III., 1551-52, including Sessions xi. to xvi.; under Pope Pius IV., 1562-1563, including Sessions xvii. to xxv.[698]
The Papal Legates were Gian Maria Giocchi, Cardinal del Monte, a Tuscan who had early entered the service of the Roman Curia, a profound jurist and a choleric man of fifty-seven (first President); Marcello Cervini, Cardinal da Santa Croce; and Cardinal Reginald Pole, the Englishman. The three represented the three tendencies which were apparent in ecclesiastical Italy. The first belonged to the party which stood by the old unreformed Curia, and wished no change. Cervini represented the growing section of the Church, which regarded Cardinal Caraffa as their leader. They sought eagerly and earnestly a reform in life and character, especially among the clergy; but refused to make any concessions in doctrines, ceremonies, or institutions to the Protestants. They differed from the more reforming Spanish and French ecclesiastical leaders in their dislike of secular interference, and believed that the Popes should have more rather than less power. Reginald Pole was one of those liberal Roman Catholics of whom Cardinal Contarini was the distinguished leader. He was made a Legate probably to conciliate his associates. He was a man whom most people liked and nobody feared—a harmless, pliant tool in the hands of a diplomatist like Cervini. The new Society of Jesus was represented by Lainez and Salmeron, who went to the Council with the dignity of papal theologians—a title which gave them a special standing and influence.
According to the arrangement come to between the Emperor and the Pope, the Bull summoning the Council declared that it was called for the three purposes of overcoming the religious schism; of reforming the Church; and of calling a united Christendom to a crusade against unbelievers. By general consent the work of the Council was limited to the first two objects. They were stated in terms vague enough to cover real diversity of opinion about the work the Council was expected to do.
Almost all believed that the questions of reforming the Church and dealing with the religious revolt were inseparably connected; but the differences at once emerged when the method of treating the schism was discussed.
Many pious Roman Catholics believed that the Lutheran movement was a divine punishment for the sins of the Church, and that it would disappear if the Church was thoroughly reformed in life and morals. They differed about the agency to be employed to effect the reformation. The Italian party, who followed Cardinal Caraffa, maintained that full powers should be in the hands of the Pope; non-Italians, especially the Spaniards, thought it vain to look for any such reformation so long as the Curia, itself the seat of the greatest corruption, remained unreformed, and contended that the secular authority ought to be allowed more power to put down ecclesiastical scandals.
The Emperor, Charles V., had come to believe that there were no insuperable differences of doctrine between the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics, and that mutual explanations and a real desire to give and take, combined with the removal of scandals which all alike deplored, would heal the schism. He had never seen the gulf which the Lutheran principle of the spiritual priesthood of all believers had created between the Protestants and mediæval doctrines and ceremonies.[699] He persisted in this belief long after the proceedings at Trent had left him hopeless of seeing the reconciliation he had expected brought about by the Council he had done so much to get summoned. The Augsburg Interim (1548) shows what he thought might have been done.[700] He was badly seconded at Trent. The only Bishop who supported his views heartily was Madruzzo, the Prince Bishop of Trent; his representative, Diego de Mendoza, fell ill shortly after the opening of the Council, and his substitute, Francisco de Toledo, did not reach Trent until March 1546.
§ 2. Procedure at the Council.
Tho ablest of the three Legates, Cervini, had a definite plan of procedure before him. He knew thoroughly the need for drastic reforms in the life and morals of the clergy and for purifying the Roman Curia; but, with the memories of Basel and Constance before him, he dreaded above all things a conflict between the Pope and the Council, and he believed that such a quarrel was imminent if the Council itself undertook to reform the Curia. His idea was that the Council ought to employ itself in the useful, even necessary task of codifying the doctrines of the Church, so that all men might discern easily what was the true Catholic faith. While this was being done, opportunity would be given to the Pope himself to reform the Curia—a task which would be rendered easier by the consciousness that he had the sympathy of the Council behind him. He scarcely concealed his opinion that such codification should make no concessions to the Protestants, but would rather show them to be in hopeless antagonism to the Catholic faith. He did not propose any general condemnation of what he thought to be Lutheran errors; but he wished the separate points of doctrine which the Lutherans had raised—Justification, the authority of Holy Scripture, the Sacraments—to be examined carefully and authoritatively defined. In this way heretics would be taught the error of their ways without mentioning names, and without the specific condemnation of individuals. He expounded his plan of procedure to the Council.
His suggestions were by no means universally well received by the delegates. The proposal to leave reforms to the Pope provoked many speeches from the Spanish Bishops, full of bitter reproaches against the Curia; and his conception of codifying the doctrines of the Church with the avowed intention of irrevocably excluding the Lutherans was by no means liked by many.
A great debate took place on Jan. 18th, which revealed to the Legate that probably the majority of the delegates did not favour his proposed course of procedure. Madruzzo, the eloquent Prince Bishop of Trent, and a Cardinal, made a long speech, in which he asserted that the Council should not rashly take for granted that the Lutherans were irreconcilable. They ought to acknowledge frankly that the corrupt morals of the mediæval clergy had done much to cause dissatisfaction and to justify revolt. Let them therefore assume that these evils for which the Church was responsible had produced the schism. Let them invite the Protestants to come among them as brethren. Let them show to those men, who had no doubt erred in doctrine, that the Catholic Church was sincerely anxious to reform the abounding evils in life and morals, and, with this fraternal bond between them, let them reason amicably together about the doctrinal differences which now separated them. The eloquent and large-minded Cardinal condensed the recommendations in his speech in one sentence: “Cum corrupti mores ecclesiasticorum dederint occasionem Lutheranis confingendi falsa dogmata, sublata causa, facilius tolletur effectus; subdens optimum fore, si protestantes ipsos amicabiliter et fraterne literis invitaremus, ut ipsi quoque ad synodum venirent, et se etiam reformari paterentur.”[701] We are told that this speech raised great enthusiasm among the delegates, and that the Legates had some difficulty in preventing its proposal from being universally accepted. At the most they were able to prevent any definite conclusion being come to about the procedure at the close of the sitting. Cervini saw that he could not get his way adopted. He agreed that proposals for reform and for the codification of doctrine should be discussed simultaneously, his knowledge of theological nature telling him that if he once got so many divines engaged in doctrinal discussions two things would surely follow: their eagerness would make them neglect everything else, and their polemical instincts would carry them beyond the point where a conciliation of the Protestants required them to come to a halt. So it happened. The Council found itself committed to a codification and definition of Catholic doctrine. The suggestion of the Bishop of Feltre (Thomas Campeggio) was adopted, that the discussion of doctrines and the proposals for reform should be discussed by two separate Commissions, whose reports should come before the Synod alternately. The Legates obtained a large majority for this course, and the protest of Madruzzo was unavailing.
The decision to attack the question of reform was very unacceptable to the Pope. He went so far as to ask the Legates to get it rescinded; but that was impossible, and he had to content himself with the assurances of Cervini that no real harm would come of it.
This important question being settled, the Council decided upon the details of procedure. The whole Synod was divided into three divisions or Commissions, to each of which allotted work was given. Each question was first of all to be prepared for the section by theologians and canonists, then discussed in the special Commission to which it had been entrusted. If approved there, it was to be brought before a general Congregation of the whole Synod for discussion. If it passed this scrutiny, it was to be promulgated in a solemn session of the Council.
§ 3. Restatement of Doctrines.
It ought to be said, before describing the doctrinal labours of the Council, that the work done at Trent was not to give Conciliar sanction to the whole mass of mediæval doctrinal tradition. There was a thorough revision of doctrinal positions in which a great deal of theology which had been current during the later Middle Ages was verbally rejected, and the rejection was most apparent in that Scotist theology which had been popular before the Reformation, and which had been most strongly attacked by Luther. The Scotist theology, with its theological scepticism, was largely repudiated in name at least—whether its spirit was banished is another question which has to be discussed later. A great many influences unknown during the later Middle Ages pressed consciously and unconsciously upon the divines assembled at Trent and coloured their dogmatic work. Although the avowed intention of the theologians there was to defeat both Humanism and the Reformation, they could not avoid being influenced by both movements. Humanism had led many of them to study the earlier Church Fathers, and they could not escape Augustine in doing so. They were led to him by many paths. The Dominican theologians had begun, quite independently of the Reformation, to study the great theologian of their Order, and Thomas had led them back to Augustine. The Reformation had laid stress on the doctrines of sin, of justification, and of predestination, and had therefore awakened a new interest in them and consequently in Augustine. The New Thomism, with Augustinianism behind it, was a feature of the times, and was the strongest influence at work among the theologians who assembled at Trent. It could not fail to make their doctrinal results take a very different form from the theology which Luther was taught by John Nathin in the Erfurt convent. Christian Mysticism, too, had its revival, especially in Spain and in Italy, and among some of the reconstructed monastic orders. If it had small influence on the doctrines, it worked for a more spiritual conception of the Church. What has been called Curialism, the theory of the omnipotence of the Pope in all things connected with the Church’s life, practice, and beliefs, was also a potent factor with some of the assembled fathers. But above all things the theologians who met at Trent were influenced by the thought and fact of the Lutheran Reformation. This is apparent in the order in which they discussed theological questions, in the subjects they selected and in those they omitted. All these things help us to understand how the theology of the Council of Trent was something peculiar, something by itself, and different both from what may be vaguely called mediæval theology and from that of the modern Church of Rome.[702]
The Council, in its third session, laid the basis of its doctrinal work by reaffirming the Niceo-Constantinopolitan Creed with the filioque clause added, and significantly called it: Symbolum fidei quo sancta ecclesia Romana utitur. This done, it was ready to proceed with the codification and definition of doctrines.
On the 18th of April 1546, the Commission which had to do with the preparation of the subject reported, and the Council proceeded to discuss the sources of theological knowledge or the Rule of Faith. The influence of the Reformation is clearly seen not merely in the priority assigned to this subject, but also in the statement that the “purity of the Gospel” is involved in the decision come to. The opposition to Protestantism was made emphatic by the Council declaring these four things:
It accepted as canonical all the books contained in the Alexandrine Canon (the Septuagint), and therefore the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, and did so heedless of the fact that the editor of the Vulgate (afterwards pronounced authoritative), Jerome, had thought very little of the Apocrypha. The Reformers, in their desire to go back to the earliest and purest sources, had pronounced in favour of the Hebrew Canon; the Council, in spite of Jerome, accepted the common mediæval tradition.
It declared that in addition to the books of Holy Scripture, it “receives with an equal feeling of piety and reverence the traditions, whether relating to faith or to morals, dictated either orally by Christ or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in continuous succession within the Catholic Church.”[703] The practical effect of this declaration, something entirely novel, was to assert that there was within the Church an infallibly correct mode of interpreting Scripture, and to give the ecclesiastical authorities (whoever they might be) the means of warding off any Protestant attack based upon Holy Scripture alone. The Council were careful to avoid stating who were the guardians of this dogmatic tradition, but in the end it led by easily traced steps to the declaration of Pope Pius IX.: Io sono la tradizione, and placed a decision of a Pope speaking ex cathedra on a level with the Word of God.
It proclaimed that the Vulgate version contained the authoritative text of Holy Scripture. This was also new, and, moreover, in violent opposition to the best usages of the mediæval Church. It cast aside as worse than useless the whole scholarship of the Renaissance both within and outside of the mediæval Church, and, on pretence of consecrating a text of Holy Scripture, reduced it to the state of a mummy, lifeless and unfruitful.[704]
It asserted that every faithful believer must accept the sense of Scripture which the Church teaches, that no one was to oppose the unanimous consensus of the Fathers—and this without defining what the Church is, or who are the Fathers.[705] The whole trend of this decision was to place the authoritative exposition of the Scriptures in the hands of the Pope, although at the time the Council lacked the courage to say so.
It must not be supposed that these decisions were reached without a good deal of discussion. Some members of the Council would have preferred the Hebrew Canon. Nacchianti, Bishop of Chioggia, protested against placing traditions on the same level as Holy Scripture;[706] some wished to distinguish between apostolical traditions and others; but the final decision of the Council was carried by a large majority. The most serious conflict of opinion, however, arose about the clause which declared that the Vulgate version was the only authoritative one. It was held that such a decision entailed the prohibition of using translations of the Scripture in the mother tongue. The Spanish Bishops, in spite of the fact that translations of the Scriptures into Spanish had once been commonly used and their use encouraged, would have had all Bible reading in the mother tongue prohibited. The Germans protested. The debate waxed hot. Madruzzo, of Trent, eloquently declared that to prohibit the translation of the Scriptures into German would be a public scandal. Were children not to be taught the Lord’s Prayer in a language they could understand? A Bull of Pope Paul II. was cited against him. He replied that Popes had erred and were liable to err; but that the Apostle Paul had not erred, and that he had commanded the Scriptures to be read by every one, and that this could not be done unless they were translated. A compromise was suggested, that each country should decide for itself whether it would have translations of the Scriptures or not. In the end, however, the Vulgate was proclaimed the only authentic Word of God.
In the fifth session (June 17th, 1546) and in the sixth session (Jan. 13th, 1547) the Council attacked the subjects of Original Sin and Justification. The Reformation had challenged the Roman Church to say whether it had any spiritual religion at all, or was simply an institution claiming to possess a secret science of salvation through ceremonies which required little or no spiritual life on the part of priests or recipients. The challenge had to be met not merely on account of the Protestants, but because devout Romanists had declared that it must be done. The answer was given in the two doctrines of Original Sin and Justification, as defined at the Council of Trent. They both deserve a much more detailed examination than space permits.
The Legates had felt that the Council as constituted might come to decisions giving room for Protestant doctrine, and pled with the Pope to send them more Italian Bishops, whose votes might counteract the weight of northern opinion (June 2nd, 1546). They were extremely anxious about the way in which the Council might deal with those two doctrines.
The first, the definition of Original Sin, seems to reject strongly that Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism which had marked the later Scholasticism which Luther had been taught in the Erfurt convent. It appears to rest on and to express the evangelical thoughts of Augustine. But a careful examination shows that it is full of ambiguities—intentional loop-holes provided for the retention of the Semi-Pelagian modes of thought. Space forbids our going over them all, but one example may be selected from the first chapter. It is there said that Adam lost the holiness and righteousness in which he had been constituted. Why not created? The phrase may mean created, and all the New Thomists at the Council doubtless read it in that way. By the Fall man lost what Thomas, following Augustine, had called increated righteousness. But the phrase in qua constitutus fucrat could easily be interpreted to mean that what man did lose were the superadded dona supernaturalia whose loss in no way impaired human nature; and, if so interpreted, room is provided for Pelagianism.[707] Again, while the Augustinian doctrine of the Fall seems to be taught, it is added that by Original Sin liberum arbitrium is minime extinctum viribus licet attenuatum, which is Semi-Pelagian.[708] The whole definition closes with a statement that it is not to be applied to the Blessed Virgin, the doctrine about whom has been expressed in the Constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV. of happy memory.[709]
The statement of the Doctrine of Justification is a masterpiece of theological dexterity, and deserves much more consideration than can be given it. The whole treatment of the subject was the cause of considerable anxiety outside the Council. On the one hand, the Emperor Charles V., who was greatly disappointed at the course taken by the Council, and saw the chance of conciliating the Protestants diminishing daily, wished to defer all discussion; while the Pope, bent on making it impossible for the Protestants to return, desired the Council to define this important doctrine in such a way that none of the Reformed could possibly accept it. The Emperor’s wishes were speedily overruled; but it was by no means easy for the Legates to carry out the desires of the Pope. There was a great deal of Evangelical doctrine in the Roman Church which had to be reckoned with. So much existed that at one time it had actually been proposed at the Vatican to approve of the first part of the Augsburg Confession in order to win the Protestants over. The day for such proposals was past; but the New Thomism was a power in the Church, and perhaps the strongest theological force at the Council of Trent, and had to be reckoned with. If the Protestant conception of Justification be treated merely as a doctrine,—which it is not, being really an experience deeper and wider than any form of words can contain,—if it be stated scholastically, then it is possible to express it in propositions which do not perceptibly differ from the doctrine of Justification in the New Thomist theology. At the conference at Regensburg (Ratisbon) in 1541, Contarini was able to draft a statement of the doctrine which commended itself to such opponents as Calvin and Eck.[710] Harnack has remarked that the real difference between the two doctrines appeared in this, that “just on account of the doctrine of Justification the Protestants combated as heretical the usages of the Roman Church, while the Augustinian Thomists could not understand why it should be impossible to unite the two.”[711] But the similarity of statement shows the difficulty of the Legates in guiding the Council to frame a decree which would content the Pope. They were able to accomplish this mainly through the dexterity of the Jesuit Lainez.
The discussion showed how deeply the division ran. Some theologians were prepared to accept the purely Lutheran view that Justification was by Faith alone. They were in a small minority, and were noisily interrupted. One of them, Thomas de San Felicio, Bishop of La Cava, and a Neapolitan, came to blows with a Greek Bishop. The debate then centred round the mediating view of the doctrine, which Contarini had advocated in his Tractatus de Justificatione, and which may be said to represent the position of the New Thomists. It seemed to commend itself to a majority of the delegates. The leader of the party was Girolamo Seripando (1493-1553), since 1539 the General of the Augustinian Eremites, the Order to which Luther had belonged.[712] He distinguished between an imputed and an inherent righteousness, a distinction corresponding to that between prevenient and co-operating grace, and to some extent not unlike that between Justification and Sanctification in later Protestant theology. In the former, the imputed righteousness of Christ, lay the only hope for man; inherent righteousness was based upon the imputed, and was useless without it. The learning and candour of Seripando were conspicuous; his pleading seemed about to carry the Council with him, when Lainez intervened to save the situation for the strictly papal party. The Jesuit theologian accepted the distinction made between imputed and inherent righteousness; he even admitted that the former was alone efficacious in Justification; but he alleged that in practice at least the two kinds of righteousness touched each other, and that it would be dangerous to practical theology to consider them as wholly distinct. His clear plausible reasoning had great effect, and the ambiguities of his address are reflected in the looseness of the definitions in the decree.
The definition of the doctrine of Justification which was adopted by the Council is very lengthy. It contains sixteen chapters followed by thirty-three canons. It naturally divides into three divisions—chapters i.-ix. describing what Justification is; chapters x.-xiii. the increase of Justification; and chapters xiv.—xvi. the restoration of Justification when it is lost. Almost every chapter includes grave ambiguities.
The first section is the most important. It begins with statements which are in themselves evangelical. All men have come under the power of sin, and are unable to deliver themselves either by their strength of nature or by the aid of the letter of the law of Moses.[713] Our Heavenly Father sent His Son and set Him forth as the propitiator through faith in His blood for our sins.[714] It is then said that all do not accept the benefits of Christ’s death, although He died for all, but only those to whom the merit of His passion is communicated; and this statement is followed by a rather confused sentence which suggests but commits no one to the Augustinian doctrine of election.[715] This is followed up by saying that Justification is the translation from that condition in which man is born into a condition of grace through Jesus Christ our Saviour; and it is added that this translation, in the Gospel dispensation, does not happen apart from Baptism or the wish to be baptized.[716] In spite of some ambiguities, these first four chapters have quite an Evangelical ring about them; but with the fifth a change begins. While some sentences seem to maintain the Evangelical ideas previously stated, room is distinctly made for Pelagian work-righteousness. It is said, for example, that Justification is wrought through the gratia præveniens or vocatio in which adults are called apart from any merit of their own; but then it is added that the end of this calling is that sinners may be disposed, by God’s inciting and aiding grace, to convert themselves in order to their own justification by freely assenting to and co-operating with the grace of God.[717] This was the suggestion of Lainez. The good disposition into which sinners are to be brought is said to consist of several things, of which the first is faith—defined to be a belief that the contents of the divine revelation are true. In the two successive chapters faith is declared to be only the beginning of Justification; and Justification itself, in flat contradiction to what had been said previously, is no longer a translation from one state to another; it becomes the actual and gradual conversion of a sinner into a righteous man. It is scarcely necessary to pursue the definitions further. It is sufficient to say that the theologians of Trent do not seem to have the faintest idea of what the Reformers meant by faith, and never appear to see that there is such a thing as religious experience.
The second and third sections of the decree treating of the increase of Justification and of its renewal in the Sacrament of Penance, were drafted still more emphatically in an anti-evangelical spirit, though here and there they show concessions to the Augustinian feeling in the Church. The result was that the Pope obtained what he wanted, a definition which made reconciliation with the Protestants impossible. The New Thomists were able to secure a sufficient amount of Augustinian theology in the decree to render Jansenism possible in the future; while the prevailing Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism foreshadowed its overthrow by Jesuit theology.
While these theological definitions were being discussed and framed, the Council also occupied itself with matters of reform. They began to make regulations about preaching and catechising, and this led them insensibly to the question of exemptions from episcopal control. The Popes had for some centuries been trying to weaken the authority of the Bishops, by placing the regular clergy or monks beyond the control of the Bishops within whose diocese their convents stood, and this exemption had been the occasion of many ecclesiastical disorders. The discussion was long and excited. It ended in a compromise.
When the decree on Justification was settled, the Council, guided by the Legates, proceeded to discuss the doctrine of the Sacraments, with the intention of still more thoroughly preventing any doctrinal reconciliation with the Protestants. This action called forth remonstrances from the Emperor, whose successes at the time in Germany were alarming the Pope, and making him anxious to withdraw the Council from Germany altogether. He sent orders to the Legates to endeavour to persuade the members at Trent to vote for a transfer to Bologna, where the papal influence would be stronger, and where it would be easier to pack the Synod with a pliant Italian majority. A pretext was found in the appearance of the plague at Trent; and although a strong minority, headed by Madruzzo of Trent, opposed the scheme, the majority (38 to 14) decided that they must leave Trent and establish themselves at the Italian city. The Spanish Bishops, however, remained at Trent awaiting the Emperor’s orders.
Charles V. had suffered many disappointments from the Council he had laboured to summon, and this action made him lose all patience. He ordered the Spanish Bishops not to leave Trent; the Diet of Augsburg refused to recognise the prelates who had gone to Bologna as the General Council. After much hesitation, Pope Paul III. felt compelled to suspend the proceedings of the Council at Bologna (September 17th, 1549). This ended the first part of the sittings of the Council.
§ 4. Second Meeting of the Council.
Pope Paul III. died November 10th, 1549. At the Conclave which followed, the Cardinal del Monte, the senior Legate of the Council, was chosen Pope, and took the title of Julius III. (February 7th, 1550). He and the Emperor soon came to an agreement that the Council should return to Trent. It accordingly reopened there on May 1st, 1551. The Cardinal Marcello Crescentio was appointed sole Legate, and two assistants, the Archbishop of Siponto and the Bishop of Verona, were entitled Nuncios. The second meeting of the Council did not promise well. The Pope had agreed that something was to be done to conciliate the Protestants, and that it should be left an open question whether the preceding decisions of the Council might not be revised. But before its assembly the policy of the Pope again ran counter to that of the Emperor, and the Protestants had ceased to expect much. The delegates themselves showed little eagerness to come to the place of meeting. The Council was forced to adjourn, and it was not until the 1st of September that it began its work.
The earlier proceedings showed that there was little hope of conciliatory measures. There was no attempt to revise these former decisions, and the Council began its work of codifying doctrine and reformation at the place where it had dropped it.
During the later months of the first meeting, the question of the Sacraments had been under discussion, and so far as the second meeting is concerned it may be said that the whole of its theological work was confined to this subject.
Little pains were taken to conciliate the Protestants. The decisions arrived at pass over in contemptuous silence all the Protestant contendings. The relations of the Sacraments to the Word and Promises of God, and to the faith of the recipient, are not explained. The thirteen Canons which sum up the doctrine of the Sacraments in general, and the anathemas with which they conclude, are the protest of the Council against the whole Protestant movement.
This did not prevent the Council being confronted with great difficulties in their definitions—difficulties which arose from the opposition between the earlier and more Evangelical Thomist and the later Scotist and Nominalist theology. It would almost appear that the fathers of Trent despaired of harmonising the multitude of Scholastic theories on the nature of the Sacraments in general. They did not venture on constructing a decree, but contented themselves for the most part with merely negative definitions. They declare that there are seven Sacraments, neither more nor fewer, all positively instituted by Christ. They sever the intimate connection between faith and the Sacraments, attributing to them a secret and mysterious power. They practically deny the universal priesthood of believers (Can. 10). Perhaps the most important Canon is the last: “If any one shall say that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church, commonly used in the solemn administration of the Sacraments, may be contemned, or without sin omitted at pleasure by the ministrants, or be changed by any pastor of the churches into other new ones: let him be anathema” (Can. 13). It enables us to see how, while not going beyond the verbal limits of the definitions of the Thomist theology, the Council provided room for subsequent aberrations of doctrine by raising the use and wont of the Roman Church to the level of dogma.
In their definitions of the single Sacraments the Council could and did found on the Decretum pro Armenis of the Council of Florence (1439), incorporated in the Bull Exultate Deo of Pope Eugenius IV. The real substance of the definition of Baptism is found in that Canon (3), which declares that “the Roman Church, which is the mother and mistress of all Churches, has the true doctrine of the Sacrament of Baptism.” The common practice for the Bishop to confirm, an historical testimony to the original position of Bishops as pastors of congregations, is elevated to the rank of a dogma. The decree and canons on the Eucharist are a dexterous dove-tailing of sentences making a mosaic of differing scholastic theories. One detail only need concern us. Most of the theologians present wished the denial of the cup to the laity to be elevated into a dogma, and a decree was actually prepared. But the secular princes and a widespread public opinion made the theologians hesitate, and the question was settled in a late meeting (Session xxi., July 16th, 1562) in a dexterously ambiguous way. It was declared that “from the beginning of the Christian religion the use of both species has not been unfrequent,” but it was added that no one of the laity was permitted to demand the cup ex Dei præcepto, or to believe that the Church was not acting according to just and weighty reasons when it was refused, or that the “whole and entire Christ” was not received “under either species alone.” Few statements have been made in such defiance of history as this decree, with its corresponding canons, when one and another practice of the mediæval Church are said to have existed from the beginning.
The decree on Penance is one of the most carefully constructed and least ambiguous. It is a real codification of Scholastic doctrine. On one portion only was there need for dexterous manipulation, and it received it. The immoral conception of attrition was verbally abandoned and really retained. Contrition, which is godly sorrow, is declared to be necessary; and attrition is declared to be only a salutary preparation. But the real distinction thus established is at once cancelled by calling attrition an imperfect contrition, by distinguishing between contrition itself and a more perfect contrition—contrition perfected by love; and place is provided for the reintroduction of the immoral conceptions of the later Scotist theologians.[718]
When the theological decrees and canons of the Council of Trent are read carefully in the light of past Scholastic controversies and of varying principles at work in the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth century, it is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion that while the older and more Evangelical Thomist theology gained a verbal recognition, the real victory lay with the Scotist party now represented by the Jesuits. On one side of its activity, the general tendency of Scotist theology had been to produce what was called “theological Scepticism”—a state of mind which was compelled to dissent intellectually from most of the great doctrines of the mediæval Church, and at the same time to accept them on the external authority of the Church—to show that there were no really permanent principles in dogmatic, and that there was need everywhere for reference to a permanent and external source of authority who could be no other than the Roman Pontiff.
The Curialist position, that the Universal Church was represented by the Roman Church, and that the Roman Church was, as it were, condensed in the Pope, was not confined to the sphere of jurisdiction only. It had its theological side. Scripture, it was held, was to be interpreted according to the tradition of the Church, and the Pope alone was able to determine what that tradition really was. Hence, the more indefinite theology was, the fewer permanent principles it contained, the more indispensable became the papal authority, and the more thoroughly religion could be identified with a blind unreasoning submission to the Church identified as the Pope. This had been the thought of Ignatius Loyola; the training of the mind to such a state of absolute submission had been the motive in his Spiritual Exercises and the Jesuit theologians at the Council, Lainez and Salmeron, did very much to secure the practical victory won by Scotist theology, in spite of the fact that the phrases of the decrees came from the theology of their opponents.
The second meeting of the Council of Trent ended on April 28th, 1552. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) showed that the Protestants had acquired a separate legal standing within the Empire, and most people thought that the work of the Council had been wasted. Things were as if it had never been in existence. Pope Paul III. died on March 24th, 1555, and the Conclave elected Cervini, who took the title of Marcellus II. The new Pope survived his elevation only three weeks. He was succeeded by Cardinal Caraffa, Paul IV., and the Counter-Reformation began in earnest.
Paul IV., hater of Spaniards as he was, was the embodiment of the Spanish idea of what a reformation should be. He believed that the work of reform could be done better by the Pope himself than by any Council, and he set to work with the thoroughness which characterised him. There was to be no tampering with the doctrines, usages, or institutions of the mediæval Church. Heresy and Schism were to be crushed by the Inquisition, and the spread of new ideas was to be prevented by the strict examination of all books, and the destruction of those which contained what the Pope conceived to be unwholesome for the minds or morals of mankind. But the Church needed to be reformed thoroughly; the lives of the clergy, and especially of the higher clergy, had to be amended; and abuses which had crept into administration had to be set right.
For some time any real reformation was retarded by the influence of his nephews, who played on the old Pontiff’s hatred of the Spaniards, and easily persuaded him that his first duty was to expel the Spaniards from the Italian peninsula. But the evil deeds of these near kinsmen gradually reached his ears. In an assembly of the Inquisition, held in 1559, he was told by Cardinal Pacheco that “reform must begin with us.” The old man retired to his apartments, instituted a searching inquiry into the conduct of his nephews, and within a month had deprived them of all their offices and emoluments, and banished them from Rome. Free from this family embarrasment, the Pope prosecuted vigorously his plans for reformation. The secular administration of the States of the Church was thoroughly purified. A Congregation was appointed to examine, classify, and remedy ecclesiastical abuses. Many of the abuses of the Curia were swept away. The Jesuits taught him, although he had no great love for the Order, that spiritual services should not be sold for money. He prohibited taking fees for marriage dispensations. He was a stern censor of the morals of the higher clergy. Under his brief rule Rome became respectable if not virtuous. He restored some of the privileges of the Bishops which had been absorbed by the Papacy. All the while his zeal for purity of doctrine made him urge on the Inquisition and the Index to use their terrible powers. He spared no one. Cardinal Morone, one of the few survivals of the liberal Roman Catholics, was imprisoned, and the suppression of all liberal ideas was sternly prosecuted.[719]
§ 5. Third Meeting of the Council.
Paul IV. died on the 18th of August 1559. He was succeeded by Giovanni de’ Medici (Dec. 26th, 1559), a man of a very different type of character, who took the title of Pius IV. The new Pope was by training a lawyer rather than a theologian, and a man skilled in diplomacy. He recognised, as none of his predecessors had done, the difficulties which confronted the Church of Rome. The Lutheran Church had won political recognition in Germany. Scandinavia and Denmark were hopelessly lost. England had become Protestant, and Scotland was almost sure to follow the example of her more powerful neighbour. The Low Countries could not be coerced by Philip and Alva. More than half of German Switzerland had declared for the Reformation. Geneva had become a Protestant fortress, and Calvin’s opinions were gaming ground all over French Switzerland. France was hopelessly divided. Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland were alienated from Rome, and might soon revolt altogether. The Pope was convinced that a General Council was necessary to reunite the forces still on the side of the Roman Catholic Church. He saw that it was vain to expect to do this without coming to terms with the Romanist sovereigns. It was the age of autocracy. He pleaded for an alliance of autocrats to confront and withstand the Protestant revolution. He tried to persuade the Emperor (now Ferdinand), Francis II. of France, and Philip of Spain that the independent rule of Bishops was one side of the feudalism which was hostile to monarchy, and that the Pope and the Kings ought to work together. His representations had some effect as time went on.
A papal Bull (Nov. 29th, 1560) summoned a Council at Trent on April 6th, 1561. Five Legates were appointed to preside, at their head Ercole di Gonzaga, Cardinal of Mantua. They reached Trent on the 16th of April (1561), and were received by Ludovico Madruzzo, who had succeeded his uncle, the Cardinal, in the bishopric. The delegates came slowly. The first session (xviith) was not held till Jan. 18th, 1562, and was unimportant. The real work began at the second session (xviiith), held on Feb. 26th (1562).
The Protestants had been invited to attend, but it was well known that they would not; the assembly represented the Roman Catholic Powers, and them alone. Its object was not to conciliate the Protestants, but to organise the Romanist Church. The various Roman Catholic Powers, however, had different ideas of what ought to be involved in such a reorganisation.
The Emperor knew that there were many lukewarm Protestants on the one hand and many disaffected Romanists on the other. He believed that the former could be won back and the latter confirmed by some serious modifications in the usages of the Church. His scheme of reform, set down in his instructions to his Ambassadors, was very extensive. It included the permission to give the cup to the laity, marriage of the priests, mitigation of the prescribed fasts, the use of some of the ecclesiastical revenues to provide schools for the poor, a revision of the service books in the sense of purging them of many of their legends, singing German hymns in public worship, the publication of a good and simple catechism for the instruction of the young, a reformation of the cloisters, and a reduction of the powers of the Roman Pontiff according to the ideas of the Council of Constance. These reforms, earnestly pressed by the Emperor in letters, had the support of almost all the German Roman Catholics.
The French Bishops, headed by the Cardinal Lorraine, supported the German demands. They were especially anxious for the granting the cup to the laity, the administration of the Sacraments in French, French hymns snug in public worship, and that the celebration of the Mass should always be accompanied by instruction and a sermon. They also pressed for a limitation of the powers of the Pope, according to the decisions of the Council of Basel.
The Spanish Bishops, on the other hand, were thoroughly opposed to any change in ecclesiastical doctrine or usages. They did not wish the cup given to the laity; they abhorred clerical marriage; they protested against the idea of the services or any part of them in the mother tongue. But they desired a thorough reformation of the Curia, of the whole system of dispensations; they wished a limitation of the powers of the Pope, and to see the Bishops of the Church restored to their ancient privileges.
France and Germany desired that the Council should be considered a new Synod; Spain and the Pope meant it to be simply a continuation of the former sessions at Trent.
These difficulties might well have daunted the Pope; but the suave diplomatist faced the situation, trusting mainly to his own abilities to carry matters through to a successful issue. He knew that he must have command of the Council, and to that end several resolutions were passed mainly by the adroit generalship of the Legates. It was practically, if not formally, resolved that the Synod should be simply a continuation of that Council which had begun at Trent in 1545. This got rid at once of a great deal of difficult doctrinal discussion, and provided that all dogmas had to be discussed on the lines laid down in previous sessions. It was decreed that no proxies should be allowed. This enabled the Pope to keep up a constant majority of Italian Bishops, who outnumbered those of all other nations put together. By a clever ruse the Council was induced to vote that the papal Legates alone should have the privilege of proposing resolutions to the Council. This made it impossible to bring before the Council any matter to which the Pope had objection.
The Pope knew well, however, that it mattered little what conclusions the Council came to, if its decisions were to be repudiated by the Roman Catholic Powers. He therefore carried on elaborate negotiations with the Emperor and the Kings of Spain and France while the Council was sitting, and arranged with them the wording of the decrees to be adopted. His tactics, which never varied during the whole period of the Council, and which were finally crowned with success, were simple. He maintained at all costs a numerical majority in the Synod ready to vote as he directed. This was done by systematic drafts of Italian Bishops to Trent. Many of the poorer ones were subsidised through Cardinal Simonetta, whose business it was to see that the mechanical majority was kept up, and to direct it how to vote. His Legates had the exclusive right of proposing resolutions; couriers took the proposals drafted by the various Congregations to Rome, and the Pope revised them there before they were laid before the whole Council to be voted upon; spies informed him what were the objections of the French, Spanish, or German Bishops, and the Pope was diligent to bring all manner of influences to bear upon them to incline them to his mind; if he failed, he prevented the proposals being laid before the Council until he had consulted and bargained with the monarchs through special agents. The papal post-bags, containing proposed decrees or canons, went the round of the European Courts before they were presented to the Council, and the Bishops spoke and voted upon what had been already settled behind their backs and without their knowledge.
In spite of all this dexterous manipulation, the Council, composed of so many jarring elements, did not work very smoothly. The papal diplomacy sometimes increased the disturbances. Men chafed under the thought that they were only puppets, and that the matters they had been called together to discuss were already irrevocably settled.
“Better never to have come here at all,” said a Spanish Bishop, “than to be reduced to mere spectators.” Few ecclesiastical assemblies have seen stormier scenes than took place during these later sittings of the Council of Trent.
In the end, the papal diplomacy prevailed. His conciliatory manner helped Pius through difficulties in which another would have failed. No man was readier to give way in things which he did not consider essential, and what he promised he scrupulously performed. The success of the last meeting of the Council was due to bargaining and dexterous persuasion. When the critical point arrived, and it seemed as if the Council must fall to pieces, his agents, Morone and Peter Canisius, the great German Jesuit, won Ferdinand over to the Pope’s side. Similar persuasive diplomacy secured the influence of the Cardinal of Lorraine. Even Philip of Spain was brought to see that the Spanish Bishops were asking too much.
It must also be remembered that while Pius IV. refused to tolerate any loss of papal rights or privileges, he consented to and did his best to carry out numberless salutary reforms; and that the Council of Trent not only reorganised, but greatly purified the Roman Church. Almost all that was good in the reformation wrought by his predecessor Paul IV. was made part of the Tridentine regulations.
The special matter in dispute between the Pope and the great majority of non-Italian Bishops concerned the relations in which the Bishops of the Catholic Church stood to the Bishop of Rome, whom all acknowledged as their head. The Spanish, French, and German Bishops were strongly opposed to that doctrine of papal supremacy which had been assiduously taught by the canonists of the Roman Curia for at least two centuries, and which was called curialism. Curialism taught that the Pope was lord of the Church in the sense that all the clergy were his servants, and that Bishops in particular were mere assistants whom he had appointed for the purpose of oversight to act as his vicars. Whatever powers of jurisdiction they possessed came from him, and from him alone. The opposite conception, that insisted on at Trent by the northern and Spanish Bishops, that maintained at the great Councils of Constance and Basel, was that every Bishop had his power directly from Christ, and that the Pope, while he was the representative of the unity of the Church, and therefore to be recognised as its head, was only a primus inter pares, and subject to the episcopate as a whole in Council assembled. The question kept cropping up in almost all the discussions in the Council which turned on reform. It began as early as the fifth session (June 17th, 1546) and went on intermittently; but it positively raged in the later sessions.
The question was raised on its practical side. One of the standing abuses in the mediæval Church was the non-residence of Bishops. The Council was passionately called upon by the Spanish and northern Bishops to declare that residence was a necessary thing, and unanimously responded that it was. Their function was the oversight of their dioceses, and this could only be done when they were resident. But how was this to be enforced? To compel the Bishops to reside within their dioceses would depopulate the Court of Rome, and make it very much poorer. Bishops from every country in Europe were attached to the Roman Court, and their stipends, drawn from the countries in which their Sees lay, were spent in Rome, and aided the magnificence of the papal entourage. The reformers felt that a theoretical question lay behind the practical, and insisted that the oversight and therefore the residence of Bishops was de jure divino and not merely de lege ecclesiastica—something enjoined by God, and therefore beyond alteration by the Pope. Behind this lay the thought, first introduced by Cyprian, that every Bishop was within his congregation or diocese the Vicar of Christ, and in the last resort responsible to Him alone. Thus the old conciliar conception, maintained at Constance and at Basel, faced the curial at Trent; and both were too powerful to give way entirely. In spite of his Italian majority, the Pope could not get a majority for a direct negative denying the de jure divino theory. At the final vote, sixty-six fathers declared for the de jure divino theory, while seventy-one either rejected it altogether or voted for remitting it to the decision of the Pope. The Pope dared not make use of the liberty of decision thus accorded to him by a majority of five. If he did he would then be left to face the European Roman Catholic Courts of Germany, France, and Spain—all of whom supported the conciliar view. Thus the theoretical question was left undecided at Trent, but the papal diplomacy prevailed to the extent of creating a bias in favour of curialist ideas, which left the Pope in a stronger position as regards the episcopate than any other General Council had ever placed him in.
The prominence given to the Roman (i.e. the papal) Church throughout the decisions of the Council, beginning with the way in which the Constantinopolitan (Nicene) Creed was affirmed;[720] the insertion of the phrase His own Vicar upon earth;[721] the injunction that Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and all others who of right and custom ought to be present at a provincial council ... promise and profess true obedience to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff;[722] the 10th clause in the Professio Fidei Tridentinæ: “I acknowledge the holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church for the mother and mistress of all Churches; and I promise and swear true obedience to the Bishop of Rome, successor to St. Peter, Prince of Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ”; the way in which the Council at its last session (Dec. 4th, 1563) left entirely in the Pope’s hands the confirmation of its decrees and the measures to be used for carrying them out; and above all its calm acquiescence in the Bull Benedictus Deus (Jan. 24th, 1564), in which Pope Pius IV. reserved the exposition of its decrees to himself[723]—all testify to the triumph of curialist ideas at the Council of Trent. The Roman Catholic Church had become, in a sense never before universally accepted, the “Pope’s House.”
This Council, so eagerly demanded, so greatly protracted, twice dissolved, buffeted by storms in the political world, exposed, even in its later sessions, to many a danger, ended in the general contentment of the Roman Catholic peoples. When the prelates met together for the last time on the 4th of December 1563, ancient opponents embraced, and traces of tears were seen in many of the old eyes.
It had done three things for the Roman Catholic Church. It had provided a compact system of doctrine, stript of many of the vagaries of Scholasticism, and yet opposed to Protestant teaching. Romanism had an intellectual basis of its own to rest on. It had rebuilt the hierarchy on what may be called almost a new foundation, and made it symmetrical. It had laid down a scheme of reformation which, if only carried out by succeeding Pontiffs, would free the Church from many of the crying evils which had given such strength to the Protestant movement. It had insisted on and made provisions for an educated clergy—perhaps the greatest need of the Roman Church in the middle of the sixteenth century.
All this was largely due to the man who ruled in Rome. Pope Pius IV., sprung from the shrewd Italian middle-class, caring little for theology, by no means distinguished for piety, had seen what the Church needed, and by deft diplomacy had obtained it. A stronger man would have snapped the threads which tied all parties together; one more zealous would have lacked his infinite patience; a deeply pious man could scarcely have employed the means he continually used. He was magnificently assisted by the new Company of Jesus. No theologians had so much influence at Trent as Lainez and Salmeron; the Council would have broken down altogether but for the aid given by Canisius to Morone in his negotiations with the Emperor.
Pius IV. was not slow to fulfil the promises he had made to sovereigns and Council. The Breviary and the Missal were revised, as Ferdinand had requested. Ecclesiastical music was purified. Exertions were made to establish colleges and theological seminaries. But a sterner Pontiff was needed to guide the battle against the growing Protestantism. He was found in the next, Pope Pius V.
The influence of Cardinal Borromeo, the pious nephew of Pius IV., was powerful in the Conclave, and was exerted to procure the election of Michele Ghislieri, Cardinal of Alessandria, who took the name of Pius V. The new Pontiff had entered a Dominican convent when fourteen years of age, and had given himself up heart and soul to the strictest life his Order enjoined. He had all the zeal for strict orthodoxy which characterised the Dominicans, an asceticism which never spared himself, and a detestation of the immoralities and irregularities which too often disgraced the lives of ecclesiastics. He carried the habits of the cloister with him into the Vatican. He never missed attendance at the prescribed services of the Church, and in his devotion there was no trace of hypocrisy. He was a Pope to lead the new Romanism, with its intense hatred of heresy, its determination to reform the moral life, and its contempt for the Renaissance and all its works. Philip II. of Spain sent a special letter of congratulation to Cardinal Borromeo to thank him for his efforts in the Conclave.
The new Pontiff believed, heart and soul, in repression. He meant to fight the Reformation by the Inquisition and the Index; and these two instruments were unsparingly used.