It shows to what a state of contempt the German Inquisition had fallen, that in this comprehensive measure to restrict the license of the press it seems not to have been even thought of as an instrumentality, and that dependence was placed on the episcopal organization alone. The archbishops, however, were as usual too much engrossed in the temporal concerns of their princely provinces to pay attention to such details, and there is apparently no result to be traced from the effort. The evil continued to increase, and in 1515, at the Council of Lateran, Leo X. endeavored to check it by general regulations still more rigid in a bull which was unanimously approved, except by Alexis, Bishop of Amalfi, who said that he concurred in it as to new books, but not as to old ones. After an allusion to the benefits conferred by the art of printing, the bull proceeded to recite that numerous complaints reached the Holy See that printers in many places printed and sold books translated from the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee, as well as in Latin and the vernaculars, containing errors in faith and pernicious dogmas, and also libels on persons of dignity, whence many scandals had arisen and more were threatened. Therefore forever thereafter no one should be allowed to print any book or writing without a previous examination, to be testified by manual subscription, by the papal vicar and master of the sacred palace in Rome, and in other cities and dioceses by the Inquisition, and the bishop or an expert appointed by him. For neglect of this the punishment was excommunication, the loss of the edition, which was to be burned, a fine of a hundred ducats to the fabric of St. Peters, and suspension from business for a year. Persistent contumacy was further threatened with such penalty as should serve as a warning deterrent to others.[661] The precaution came too late. Except with regard to witches, the machinery of persecution was too thoroughly disorganized to curb the rising tide of human intelligence which speedily swept away all such flimsy barriers. We have seen how prolonged and unsatisfactory was the attempt to silence Reuchlin. The printing-press multiplied indefinitely the satires of Erasmus and Ulric Hutten, and when Luther appeared it scattered far and wide among the people his vigorous attacks on the existing system. It required time and the exigencies of the counter-reformation to perfect a plan by which, in the lands of the Roman obedience, the faithful could be preserved from the insidious poison flowing from the fountain of the printing-press.
CHAPTER IX.
CONCLUSION.
HAVING thus considered with some fulness what the Inquisition accomplished, directly and indirectly, it only remains for us to glance at what it did not do.
The relations of the Greek Church to the Holy See would almost justify the assumption that persecution of heresy, far from being a matter of conscience, was one of expediency, to be enforced or disregarded as the temporal interests of the papacy might dictate. The Greeks were not only schismatics, but heretics, for, as St. Raymond of Pennaforte proved, schism was heresy, as it violated the article of the creed “unam sanctam Catholicam ecclesiam.” We have repeatedly seen that to deny the supremacy of Rome and to disregard its commands was heresy. Boniface VIII., in the bull “Unam sanctam,” proclaimed it to be an article of faith, necessary to salvation, that every human creature is subject to the Roman pontiff, and he especially includes the Greeks in this. Besides this, there was the Procession of the Holy Ghost from both the Father and the Son, in which Charlemagne forced Leo III. to modify the Nicene symbol, and which the Greeks persistently refused to receive, rendering them heretics on a doctrinal point assumed to be of the greatest importance. Yet the Church, when it seemed desirable, could always establish a modus vivendi, and exercise a prudent toleration towards the Greek Church. It was thus in southern Italy, which had been withdrawn from Rome and subjected to Constantinople in the eighth century by Leo the Isaurian during the iconoclastic controversy. In 968 the Patriarch of Constantinople substituted the Greek for the Roman rite in the churches of Apulia and Calabria, and though some resisted, most of them submitted and retained it even after the conquest of Naples by the Normans. Thus in the see of Rossano in 1092, when a Latin bishop was introduced, the people recalcitrated and obtained from Duke Roger permission to retain the Greek rite. This lasted until 1460, when the Observantine Bishop Matteo succeeded in changing it to the Latin rite.[662]
The Greek churches, which long continued to exist throughout the Slavic and Majjar territories, were subjected to greater pressure, though it was fitful and intermittent. In 1204 Andreas II. of Hungary applied to Innocent III. to appoint Latin priors for the Greek monasteries in his dominions. In the settlement of 1233, after the kingdom had been placed under interdict, an oath was exacted of Bela IV. that he would compel all his subjects to render obedience to the Roman Church, and Gregory IX. forthwith summoned him to enforce his promise with regard to the Wallachians, who were addicted to the Greek rite. In 1248 we find Innocent IV. sending Dominicans to Albania to convert the Greeks, and it would indicate that persuasion rather than force was relied upon, when we see these missionaries empowered to grant the ecclesiastics dispensation for all irregularities, including simony. A hundred years later Clement VI. and Innocent VI. were more energetic, and ordered the prelates of the Balkan Peninsula to drive out all schismatics, calling in the aid of the secular arm if necessary. We have already seen how fruitless were the efforts to exterminate the Cathari in these regions, and that the only result of the effort to enforce uniformity of faith was to facilitate the advance of the Turkish conquest.[663]
The possessions of the Crusaders in the Levant offered a more complex problem. Although Innocent III. had protested against the conquest of Constantinople in 1204, when it was successful he was ardent in his recognition of the mysterious wisdom of God in thus overthrowing the Greek heresy, and he took prompt action to secure the utmost advantage to be expected from it. He ordered the crusaders to suspend all priests ordained by Greek bishops, and to provide Latin priests for the churches seized, taking care that their property was not dissipated. A hungry horde of clerics speedily precipitated itself on the new possessions, embarrassing those in charge, and Innocent, in answer to inquiries, advised that only those who brought commendatious letters should be allowed to officiate in public. Thus, in the Latin kingdoms of the East a new hierarchy was imposed upon the churches, but the people were not converted, and an embarrassing situation arose concerning which no clearly defined policy could be preserved.[664]
Strictly speaking, all schismatics and heretics were under ipso facto excommunication, but this could be disregarded if it was politic to do so, as when, in 1244, Innocent IV., in sending Dominican missionaries to the Greeks, Jacobines, Nestorians, and other heretics of the East, gave full authority to participate with them in all the offices of religion. Where the Greek churches were independent efforts were made to win them over by persuasion and negotiation, as in the mission sent in 1233 by Gregory IX. to Germanus, Patriarch of Nicæa, and in 1247 by Innocent IV. to the Russians; but when these endeavors failed there was no hesitation in resorting to force, and the disappointed Gregory preached a crusade for the purpose of reducing the schismatics to obedience. So, in 1267, when the measureless ambition of Charles of Anjou, inflamed by the conquest of Naples, dreamed of reconquering Constantinople, his treaty with the titular emperor, Baldwin II., recites the uniting of the Eastern Empire with the Church of Rome as the impelling motive. Charles’s enterprise was postponed by the submission of Michael Palæologus at the Council of Lyons in 1274, but this only stirred up rebellion among his subjects; Michael Comnenus was placed at the head of the party sustaining the national church, and war broke out in 1279. Although Charles hastened to take advantage of this, the Sicilian Vespers, in 1283, gave him ample occupation at home, and his projects were, perforce, laid aside.[665]
In the territories subjected to Latin domination the conditions were somewhat different. It was impossible to uproot the native Church, and the two rites were necessarily permitted to coexist, with alternations of tolerance and persecution, of persuasion and coercion. In 1303 Benedict XI., when ordering the Dominican prior of Hungary to send missionaries to Albania and other provinces, speaks of the Latin churches and monasteries in a manner to show that the two rites were allowed side by side, and only intrusions of the Greeks were to be resisted. Documents which chance to have been preserved concerning the kingdom of Cyprus illustrate the perplexities of the situation and the varying policy pursued. In 1216 Innocent III. reduced the bishoprics of the island from fourteen to four—Nicosia, Famagosta, Limisso, and Baffo—and provided in each a Greek and Latin bishop for the respective rites, which was an admission of equality in orthodoxy. Forty years later we find the Greek monasteries subjected to the Latin Archbishop of Nicosia, and there seems to have been some ascendency claimed by the Latin prelates, for in 1250 the Greek archbishop petitioned Innocent IV. for permission to reconstitute the fourteen sees and consecrate bishops to fill them; that they should all be independent of the Archbishop of Nicosia, and that all Greeks and Syrians be subjected to them and not to the Latins. This prayer was rejected. Alexander IV. gave an express power of supervision to the Latin prelates, which naturally led to quarrels, and at times the Greeks were treated as heretics by zealous churchmen and by those whose authority was set at nought, as we learn from some appeals to Boniface VIII. in 1295. John XXII. energetically endeavored to extirpate certain heresies and heretical practices of the Greeks, but seems to have allowed the regular observance of their rites. Yet about the same time Bernard Gui, in his collection of inquisitorial formulas, gives two forms of abjuration of the Greek errors and reconciliation from the excommunication pronounced by the canons against the schismatic Greeks, showing that the inquisitors of the West were accustomed to lay hold of any unlucky Greek who might be found in the Mediterranean ports of France. Their fate was doubtless the same in Aragon, for Eymerich does not hesitate to qualify them as heretics. The persecuting spirit grew, for about 1350 the Council of Nicosia, although it allowed the four Greek bishops of Cyprus to remain, still ordered all to be denounced as heretics who did not hold Rome to be the head of all churches and the pope to be the earthly vicar of Christ, and in 1351 a proclamation was issued ordering all Greeks to confess once a year to a Latin priest and to take the sacrament according to the Latin rite. If this was enforced, it must have provided the Inquisition with abundant victims, for in 1407 Gregory XII. defined that any Greek who reverted to schism after participating in orthodox sacraments was a relapsed, and he ordered the inquisitor Elias Petit to punish him as such, calling in if necessary the aid of the secular arm.[666]
The Venetians, when masters of Crete, endeavored to starve out the Greek Church by forbidding any bishop of that rite to enter the island, and any inhabitant to go to Constantinople for ordination. Yet, in 1373, Gregory XI. learned with grief that a bishop had succeeded in landing, and that ordination was constantly sought by Cretans in Constantinople. He appealed to the Doge, Andrea Contareni, to have the wholesome laws enforced, but to little purpose, for in 1375 he announced that nearly all the inhabitants were schismatics, and that nearly all the cures were in the hands of Greek priests, to whom he offered the alternative of immediate conversion or ejection.[667]
Efforts so spasmodic were of course unavailing. So far from suppressing the Greek Church it was found that many Catholics living in a schismatic population became perverts. To this, in 1449, Nicholas V. called the attention of the inquisitor of the Greek province, telling him that although the Oriental rite was praiseworthy, it must be kept distinct from the Latin, and that all such cases must be coerced, even if the assistance of the secular arm was necessary. There was scant encouragement for the Inquisition in those lands, however, for when, in 1490, Innocent VIII. appointed Frà Vincenzo de’ Reboni as Inquisitor of Cyprus, where there were many heretics, and ordered the Bishops of Nicosia, Famagosta, and Baffo each to give him a prebend for his support, there was so energetic a remonstrance from the prelates that Innocent withdrew the demand. From all this it is evident that in its relations with the Greek Church Rome was governed by policy; that it could exercise toleration whenever the occasion demanded, and that the Inquisition was practically quiescent in its dealings with these heretic populations, although their heresy was of a dye so much deeper than that of many sectaries who were ruthlessly exterminated.[668]