Still, even as late as 1558 the trial of Walter Mill shows that the question was even yet agitated in the controversies between the polemics of the two parties. Mill had been a priest and had married, and the first of the articles of accusation against him was that he asserted the lawfulness of sacerdotal marriage. To this he boldly assented, declaring that he regarded matrimony as a blessed bond, open for all men to enter, find that it were better for priests to marry than to vow chastity and not preserve it, as they were wont to do. Condemned to the stake, the unfortunate old man commanded the sympathies of the people, even in the archiepiscopal town of St. Andrews. No one could be found to act as executioner, until at length one of the servants of the archbishop consented to fill the abhorrent office; but when a rope was sought with which to bind the wretched sufferer to the stake, no one would furnish it, and the tragedy was necessarily postponed. Equally unsuccessful was the next day’s search, until the archbishop, fearing to lose his victim, gave the cords of his own pavilion, and the sentence was carried into effect. Even after the sacrifice, the popular feeling was manifested raising a pile of stones as a monument on the place of torture, and as often as these were cast aside by the priests they were replaced by the people, until the followers of the archbishop carried them off by night, and used them for building.[1315]
These incidents show us that the question received its share of attention in the controversy by which each side endeavored to secure the support of the nation, but it makes no appearance in public negotiations and declarations. Thus, in 1558, when the growing strength of the Lords of the Congregation led the Catholics to offer concessions, which were rejected by the conscious power of the Reformers, there was no allusion to celibacy on either side. In fact, between the respective leaders, the questions were almost purely personal and political; while among the conscientiously religious supporters of either party, opinions were too rigidly defined for argument. Convictions were too divergent and too firm for compromise or concession to be possible, and Catholic and Calvinist grimly recognized, as by a tacit understanding, the alternative of extermination. When the English alliance at last drove the Catholics to the wall, and in July, 1560, there assembled the parliament to which by the Articles of Leith was referred the duty of effecting a settlement of the kingdom, the vanquished party made no struggle against their fate. Such Catholic prelates and lords as took their seats refrained from all debate, and allowed the victors to arrange the temporal and spiritual affairs of the kingdom at their pleasure.
In this settlement, our subject affords a curious comparison between the English and Scotch churches. In the former, at a period even later than this, it was considered necessary to embody a renunciation of celibacy in the organic law, which has been maintained to the present day. In the latter, ecclesiastical marriage had become already so firmly established in the minds of the Reformers that it was accepted as a matter of course, which needed no special confirmation. Although laws were passed prohibiting the Mass and abolishing the supremacy of the pope, none were thought necessary to legalize the marriages of the clergy. Even in Knox’s Confession of Faith, adopted by the parliament on the 17th of July, there is no direct allusion to the matter. The only passage which can be construed as having any bearing upon it occurs in Chapter XIV., when considering “What works are reputed good before God”—“And evill works we affirme not onely those that are expressly done against God’s commandment, but those also that in matters of religion and worshipping of God have no assurance, but the invention and opinion of man, which God from the beginning hath ever rejected, as by the prophet Isaiah and by our Master Christ Jesus we are taught in these words—In vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines which are precepts of Men.”[1316]
Nothing more, in fact, was needed when the triumph of the new ideas was so complete that Knox could exultingly exclaim, “For what Adulterer, what Fornicator, what known Masse-monger or pestilent Papist durst have been seen in publike within any Reformed Town within this Realme before that the Queen arrived?... For while the Papists were so confounded that none within the Realme durst avow the hearing or saying of Masse then the thieves of Tiddisdale durst avow their stouth or stealing in the presence of any upright judge.”[1317] When persecution thus had changed sides, no minister could feel that his nuptials required special authorization. How thoroughly, indeed, they were legitimated is shown by a curious little incident occurring in 1563. A minister named Baron made complaint to the General Assembly that his wife, an English woman named Anne Goodacre, “after great rebellions by her committed,” had left him and taken refuge in England, whereupon he requested the Assembly to have her brought back to him. Spotswood, the Superintendent of Lothian, with Knox and Craig, actually wrote to Archbishop Parker officially asking him to have the woman sought for and sent to Scotland; but Parker, considering it to be an international question and beyond his sphere, prudently referred the request to Secretary Cecil.[1318]
It were foreign to our object to enter into the dark details of Mary’s short and disastrous reign. The intrigues of the camarilla, the boyish weakness of Darnley, the subtlety of Rizzio, and the coarse ambition of Huntley and Bothwell, were alike harmless against the earnest reverence of the people for the new faith; and the expiring struggles of Catholicism were too feeble to give any practical importance to the vain attempts at reaction.
[XXVIII.]
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.
It has already been observed that the dissolute and unchristian life of the priesthood was one of the efficient causes which led to the success of the Reformation. At an early period in the movement, the Catholic church felt the necessity of purifying itself, if it was to retain the veneration of the people; and the veneration of the people was now not merely a source of revenue, but a condition of the very existence of the stupendous structure reared upon the credulity of ages. As soon as it became clearly apparent that Lutheranism was not to be suppressed by the ordinary machinery, and that it was spreading with a rapidity which portended the worst results, an effort was made to remove the reproach which incorrigible immorality had entailed upon the church. Allusion has been made above to the stringent measures of reform proclaimed by the legate Campeggi at Ratisbon, in 1524, in which he acknowledged that the new heresy had no little excuse in the detestable morals and abandoned lives of the clergy—a truth repeatedly admitted by the ecclesiastical authorities.[1319] His well-meant endeavors had little result, and we have seen that, some years later, Erasmus still urged the abolition of the rule of celibacy as the only practicable mode of removing the scandal.
Not long afterwards the Gallican church made a strenuous effort of the same nature to check the spread of Lutheranism. In 1521, before it had to encounter a hostile heresy, the council of Paris had deplored the pervading corruptions with exceeding candor. The condition of conventual discipline was such as to threaten the very existence of the system, and the customary denunciations of ineradicable abuses were freely published.[1320] In 1528 the Cardinal-legate Duprat, Chancellor of France, held a council in Paris, where he condemned, seriatim, the new doctrines as heresies, and elevated the rule of celibacy to the dignity of a point of faith.[1321] He also caused the adoption of a series of canons designed to remove from the church the disgrace caused by the laxity of clerical morals and manners. The bishops were instructed to enforce the decrees of the councils and of the fathers until concubinage and incontinence should be completely exterminated, and a rule was laid down which would have been eventually effectual if conscientiously carried out. No one was thereafter to be admitted to holy orders without written testimony as to his age and moral character from his parish priest, substantiated by the oaths of two or three approved witnesses.[1322] At the same time similar councils were held at Bourges by the Cardinal Archbishop Tournon, and at Lyons by Claude, Bishop of Macon. To what extent these excellent rules were put in force may be guessed by a description of the French clergy in 1560, as portrayed by Monluc, Bishop of Valence, in a speech before the royal council. The parish priests were for the most part engrossed in worldly pursuits, and had obtained their preferment by illicit means, nor did there seem much prospect of an improvement so long as the prelates were in the habit of bestowing the benefices within their gift on their lackeys, barbers, cooks, and other serving men, rendering the ecclesiastics as a body an object of contempt to the people.[1323] We need, therefore, not be surprised to find in the councils of the period a repetition of all the old injunctions, showing that the maintenance of improper consorts and the disgrace of priestly families were undiminished evils.[1324] This description of the French clergy is most emphatically extended to the whole church in the project for reformation drawn up by order of Paul III. in 1538, and to these evils are attributed the innumerable scandals which afflicted the faithful, as well as the contempt in which the ecclesiastical body was held and the virtual extinction of all reverence for the services of religion.[1325]
In 1530 Clement VII. addressed himself vigorously to the task of putting an end to the scandalous practice of hereditary transmission of benefices, which he describes as almost universal. A special Bull was issued, prohibiting the children of priests or monks from enjoying any preferment in their father’s benefices, and, recognizing that the Roman curia was one of the chief obstacles to all reform, he provided that if he or his successors should grant dispensations permitting such infraction of the canons, they should be considered as issued unwittingly, and be held null and void.[1326] Like so many others, this Bull seems to have been forgotten almost as soon as issued, and the pecuniary needs of the Roman court rendered it unable to abandon so lucrative a source of revenue. Even as soon as 1538 the cardinals to whom Paul III. committed the task of drawing up the project of reformation cautiously intimate that they hear of such dispensations being granted, and to this they attribute a large share of the troubles of the church and the enmity felt towards the Holy See.[1327] This warning passed unheeded, and, as we have seen, in 1559 a Scottish council prayed the queen-regent to use her influence with the pope to prevent dispensations being granted to enable illegitimate children to hold preferment in their father’s benefices,[1328] while in 1562 the frequency and readiness with which such dispensations were still obtained are enumerated in a list of abuses laid before the council of Trent by Sebastian King, of Portugal, as one of the matters requiring reformation by the supreme power of the council.[1329] To this and other similar appeals the papal legates loftily replied that laws were not to be prescribed to the Holy See;[1330] and the motive for the refusal is easily comprehended when we see that in the “Taxes of the Penitentiary” the price for a dispensation admitting the bastard of a priest to holy orders was a ducat and a carlino.[1331]