That the monastic orders had profited more than the secular clergy by the Tridentine reformation may well be doubted. Laurent de Peyrinnis, one of the heads of the Order of Minims, in 1668, issued a code of regulations in which he showed that scandal was more dreaded than sin when he promulgated an exemption from excommunication in favor of those brethren who, when about to yield to the temptations of the flesh, or to commit theft, prudently laid aside the monastic habit.[1472] Another celebrated jurist of the same Order bears testimony to the demoralization of his brethren when he declares that if the severe punishments provided for unchastity by the statutes were enforced they would result in the destruction of all the religious congregations.[1473]
In the New World the licentiousness of the priesthood, as might be expected, began to vex the infant church as soon as it was organized among the heathen. The earliest synods and councils which were held contain the customary denunciations of concubinage and prohibitions for ecclesiastics to keep their children in their houses, to celebrate their baptisms and nuptials, and to be assisted by them in the ministry of the altar. Many, as we are informed by the first council of Mexico, held in 1555, brought with them from Spain their concubines under the guise of relatives.[1474] For the most part, however, they formed connections with the natives.
In fact, the institution of slavery and the subject populations among whom its ministers were scattered gave rise to fresh problems, which the church sought perseveringly, but vainly, to solve. Thus, in New Grenada, before the conquest was fairly achieved, Bishop Barrios, of Santafé, held his first synod, in 1556, and there, after premising that the fruits of religion among the Indians depended upon the good example of their pastors, he proceeded to prohibit any priest stationed in an Indian town from having any Indian woman residing in his house; his food was to be cooked by men, or, if this was impossible, his female servant must be a married woman, residing with her husband under another roof[1475]—a provision repeated by the synod of Lima in 1585.[1476] A curious experiment in dealing with the troubles arising from slavery is seen in the Mexican canons, which directed that if an ecclesiastic had children by his slave, the ownership of the woman was to be transferred to the church and the children were to be set free. It will be remembered (p. 178) that in 1022 the church insisted upon the continued servitude of clerical bastards whose mothers were serfs of the church; and the contrast between this and the regulation which proclaimed the freedom of the children as a punishment inflicted upon the father is perhaps the sorriest exhibit that could be made of the character of those who were engaged in spreading the teachings of Christ among the heathen.[1477]
While there can be no doubt that much heroic self-devotion was shown in the efforts made to convert the new subjects of Spain, it is equally unquestionable that a majority of the ecclesiastics who sought the colonies were men of the worst description. The councils held in the several provinces deplore the evil example which they set to their newly converted flocks, and the regulations which were issued time and again against their excesses show the impossibility of keeping them under control. In Peru, for instance, when in 1581 St. Toribio commenced the quarter of a century of labor as Archbishop which worthily won for him the canonization accorded by Benedict XIII. in 1726, two councils had already been held in Lima, one in 1552 and the other in 1567, which had essayed a reformation of morals. He, in turn, lost no time in summoning a provincial council, which assembled in 1583, the decrees of which, in their denunciation of all manner of vices, show how ineffectual the previous efforts had been. The clergy were not disposed to submit tamely to the new restraints which Toribio sought to impose, and, while the active resistance which some of them raised was subdued, the underhand management of others was so far successful that the royal assent to the proceedings of the council was delayed till 1591.[1478] Notwithstanding the activity of Toribio, who, between 1583 and 1604, held three provincial councils and ten diocesan synods, who three times personally visited every portion of his vast archbishopric, and who repeatedly ordered his vicars to send secret reports of concubinary and dissolute priests, he was obliged, in the provincial council of 1601, to content himself with renewing the regulations of 1583, sorrowfully observing that they had received scant obedience, and that consequently the corruption and abuses prevalent among the clergy deprived them of usefulness among their Indian parishioners.[1479] We can thus readily understand the grief with which the honest Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta, a contemporary, after depicting the eager docility with which the natives at first welcomed Christianity, contrasts it with the hatred which sprang up for the very name of Christian when they realized the hopeless wretchedness of their position under their new taskmasters; and the Fray does not conceal the fact that this was partly owing to the character of some of the clergy, while the better ones were disheartened and discharged their trusts mechanically, without expectation of accomplishing good.[1480] This condition of morals did not improve with time. In his official report of 1736, the Marques del Castel-Fuerte, Viceroy of Peru, remarks that the greater portion of those of Spanish blood born in the colonies embraced an ecclesiastical life, as offering an easier and more assured career than any other. Surrounded by their Indian subjects, the pastors lived in luxury and license, which their superiors did little or nothing to check. In 1728 the civil power was ordered to make an investigation into the morals of the priesthood, and especially to designate those whose concubinage was open and notorious—an invasion of the sacred immunities of the church which provoked a storm against the secular authorities, although only an examination was proposed, and there was no attempt to be made of conviction or punishment.[1481]
That the monastic establishments shared in the general dissoluteness we may fairly conclude when we see the precautions which St. Toribio found necessary to preserve the purity of the spouses of Christ. Thus one regulation provides that no ecclesiastic shall visit a nun without a written permission, to be granted only by the Archbishop himself, or his Provisor; and so little confidence did he feel in the guardians whom he himself appointed, that he directs that the official visitors who inspected the nunneries should not enter them without some special and urgent reason.[1482]
A curious rule adopted by the first council of Mexico in 1555 shows how much more scandal was dreaded than sin. In order, as it says, to avert danger and infamy from the clerical order and from married women, it prohibits the Fiscal, or prosecuting officer, from taking cognizance of cases of adultery committed by ecclesiastics, unless the husband be a consenting party, or the adulterer makes public boast of it, or the fact is so notorious that it cannot be passed over in silence; and even when action thus is not to be avoided, in no case is the name of the woman to be mentioned in the proceedings. The Provisors, however, are not forbidden to take notice of such crimes, but are allowed to settle them, if they can, with all due discretion.[1483] As might be expected these regulations, by giving practical immunity, led to an increase in crime, and the third council of Mexico in 1585 tells us that many of the clergy indulged in it, in preference to ordinary concubinage, in the confidence that they would not be prosecuted; but the amended rule adopted by the Council to meet this trouble differs so little from its predecessors, that we may reasonably doubt whether it was followed by any diminution in the evil.[1484] And this, judging from Rivera’s notes to his edition of 1859, is the existing state of ecclesiastical law in Mexico,[1485] although the Tridentine canon specially orders the Episcopal Ordinaries to proceed ex officio in all such cases, even of laymen.[1486]
The church of the post-Tridentine period began to find a darker and more dangerous sin attract closer attention than of old, and call for more serious efforts to prevent its offending the awakened consciousness of the faithful. The power of the confessional, one of the most effective instrumentalities invented by the ingenuity of man for enslaving the human mind, was peculiarly liable to abuse in sexual relations. No one can be familiar with the hideous suggestiveness of the penitentials without recognizing how fearfully frequent must be the temptations arising between confessor and penitent, while their respective relations render seduction comparatively easy, and unspeakably atrocious.[1487] To deprive such relations of danger requires the confessor to be gifted with rare purity and holiness, and when these functions were confided to men such as those who composed the sacerdotal body, as we have seen it throughout the Middle Ages, the result was inevitable.
The scandals of the confessional were no new source of tribulation to the church and the people. No sooner had the early custom of public and lay confession tended to fall into the hands of the priesthood than it was found necessary to call attention to the dangers thence arising. The first council of Toledo, in 398, forbids any familiarity between the virgins dedicated to God and their confessors.[1488] About the year 500, Symmachus calls attention to the spiritual affinity contracted between the confessor and his penitent, rendering the latter his daughter; he alludes to Silvester as having denounced guilty relations between them, and proceeds to decree not only deposition in such cases, but life-long penitence.[1489] As sacerdotal confession gradually became customary, a decretal was forged—whether to give additional authority to the practice, or to impress upon the minds of confessors the necessity of prudence—by which the name of Celestin I. was used for a regulation confiscating all the possessions of the female delinquent and confining her in a monastery for life, while the seducer was warned that such sin with his spiritual daughter amounted to a grave case of adultery, for which he must be deposed and undergo penance for twelve years, provided, always, that the facts had become known to the people,[1490] thus indicating that scandal rather than sin was the danger most dreaded.