The efforts constantly made to check these abuses produced little result. A Carthusian monk, writing in 1489, deplores the fact that while monasteries were everywhere being reformed, few if any of them maintained their morals, but returned to their old condition immediately on the death of the zealous fathers who had sought to improve them.[1017] That condition is described by a Benedictine Abbot, the celebrated Trithemius, in general terms, as that of dens in which it was a crime to be without sin, their inhabitants for the most part being addicted to all manner of vices, and being monks only in name and vestment.[1018]
That the clergy, as a body, had become a stench in the nostrils of the people is evident from the immense applause which greeted all attacks upon them. In 1476 a rustic prophet arose in the hamlet of Niklaushausen, in the diocese of Wurzburg, who was a fit precursor of Muncer and John of Leyden. John of Niklaushausen was a swineherd, who professed himself inspired by the Virgin Mary. From the Rhine-lands to Misnia, and from Saxony to Bavaria, immense multitudes flocked to hear him, so that at times he preached to crowds of twenty and thirty thousand men. His doctrines were revolutionary, for he denounced oppression both secular and clerical; but he was particularly severe upon the vices of the ecclesiastical body. A special revelation of the Virgin had informed him that God could no longer endure them, and that the world could not, without a speedy reformation, be saved from the divine wrath consequent upon them.[1019] The unfortunate man was seized by the Bishop of Wurzburg; the fanatical zeal of his unarmed followers was easily subdued, and he expiated at the stake his revolt against the powers that were.
Such being the state of ecclesiastical morality throughout Europe, there can be little wonder if reflecting men sought occasionally to reform it in the only rational manner—not by an endless iteration of canons, obsolete as soon as published, or by ingeniously varied penalties, easily evaded or compounded—but by restoring to the minister of Christ the right to indulge legitimately the affections which bigotry might pervert, but could never eradicate. Even as early as the close of the thirteenth century, the high authority of Bishop William Durand had acknowledged the inefficacy of penal legislation, and had suggested the discipline of the Greek church as affording a remedy worthy of consideration.[1020] As the depravity of the church increased, and as the minds of men gradually awoke from the slumber of the dark ages, and shook off the blind reverence for tradition, the suggestion presented itself with renewed force. At the council of Constance Cardinal Zabarella did not hesitate to suggest that if the concubinary practices of the clergy could not be suppressed it would be better to concede to them the privilege of marriage,[1021] and shortly after the failure of the council to effect a reform had became apparent, Guillaume Saignet wrote a tract entitled “Lamentatio ob Cælibatum Sacerdotum” in which he attacked the existing system, and called forth a rejoinder from Gerson. When the council of Bâle was earnestly engaged in the endeavor to restore forgotten discipline, the Emperor Sigismund laid before it a formula of reformation which embraced the restoration of marriage to the clergy. His orator drew a fearful picture of the evils caused by the rule of celibacy—evils acknowledged by every one in the assembly—and urged that as it had produced more injury than benefit, the wiser course would be to follow the example of the Greek church.[1022] A majority of the council assented to the principle, but shrank from the bold step of adopting it. Eugenius IV. had just been forced to acknowledge the legitimacy of the body as an œcumenic council; the strife with the papacy might again break forth at any moment, and it was not politic to venture on innovations too audacious. The conservatives, therefore, skilfully eluded the question by postponing it to a more favorable time, and the postponement was fatal.
One of the most celebrated members of the council, Cardinal Nicholas Tudeschi, surnamed Panormitanus, whose preëminence as an expounder of the canon law won for him the titles of “Canonistarum Princeps” and “Lucerna Juris,” declared that the celibacy of the clergy was not essential to ordination or enjoined by divine law; and he records his unhesitating opinion that the question should be left to the option of the individual—those who had resolution to preserve their purity being the most worthy, while those who had not would be spared the guilt which disgraced them.[1023] So Æneas Sylvius, who as Pius II. filled the pontifical throne from 1458 to 1464, and who knew by experience how easy it was to yield to the temptations of the flesh, is reported to have said that marriage had been denied to priests for good and sufficient reasons, but that still stronger ones now required its restoration.[1024] Indeed, when arguing before the Council of Bâle in favor of the election of Amedeus of Savoy to the papacy, he had not scrupled to declare that a married priesthood would be the salvation of many who were damned in celibacy.[1025] And we have already seen that Eugenius IV., in 1441, and Alexander VI., in 1496, granted permission of marriage to several military orders, as the only mode of removing the scandalous license prevailing among them.
This question of the power of the pope to dispense with the necessity of celibacy seems to have attracted some attention about this period. In 1505, Geoffroy Boussard, afterwards Chancellor of the University of Paris, published a tract wherein he argued that priestly continence was simply a human and not a divine ordinance, and that the pope was fully empowered to relax the rule in special cases, though he could not abolish wholly an institution of such long continuance which had received the assent of so many holy fathers and general councils. At the same time, one of his arguments in favor of its enforcement shows how little respect was left in the minds of all thinking men for the claims of the church to veneration. He quotes Bonaventura to the effect that if bishops and archbishops had license to marry they would rob the church of all its property, and none would be left for the poor, for, he adds, “since already they seize the goods of the church for the benefit of distant relatives, what would they not do if they had legitimate children of their own?”[1026]
When the advantages and the necessity of celibacy thus were doubted by the highest authorities in the church, it is no wonder if those who were disposed to question the traditions of the past were led to reject it altogether. In 1479 John Burckhardt, of Oberwesel, graduate of Tubingen, and Doctor of Theology, in his capacity of preacher at Worms, openly disseminated doctrines which differed in the main but little from those of Wickliffe and Huss. He denied the authority of popes, councils, and the fathers of the church to regulate matters either of faith or discipline. The Scripture was the only standard, and no one had a right to interpret it for his brethren. The received observances of religion, prayers, fasts, indulgences, were all swept away, and universal liberty of conscience proclaimed to all. Of course, sacerdotal celibacy shared the same fate, as a superstitious observance, contrived by papal ingenuity in opposition to evangelical simplicity.[1027] Thus his intrepid logic far outstripped the views of his predecessors, and Luther afterwards acknowledged the similarity between his teachings and those of John of Oberwesel. Yet he had not the spirit of martyrdom, and the Inquisition speedily forced him to a recantation, which was of little avail, for he soon after perished miserably in the dungeon in which he had been thrust.[1028]
Still more remarkable as an indication of the growing spirit of independence was an event which in July, 1485, disturbed the stagnation of the centre of theological orthodoxy—the Sorbonne. A certain Jean Laillier, priest and licentiate in theology, aspiring to the doctorate, prepared his thesis or “Sorbonique,” in which he broached various propositions savoring strongly of extreme Lollardry. He denied the supremacy of the pope, and indeed reduced the hierarchy to the level of simple priesthood; he rejected confession, absolution, and indulgences; he refused to acknowledge the authority of tradition and legends, and insisted that the fasts enjoined by the church had no claim to observance. Celibacy was not likely to escape so audacious an inquirer, and accordingly, among his postulates were three, declaring that a priest clandestinely married required no penitence; that the Eastern clergy committed no sin in marrying, nor would the priests of the Western church, if they were to follow the example; and that celibacy originated in 1073, in the decretals of Gregory VII., whose power to introduce the rule he more than questioned. The Sorbonne, as might be anticipated, refused the doctorate to so rank a heretic, and Laillier had the boldness not only to preach his doctrines publicly, but even to appeal to the Parlement for the purpose of forcing his admission to the Sorbonne. The Parlement referred the matter to the Bishop of Paris and to the Inquisitor; Laillier’s audacity failed him, and he agreed to recant.[1029] In Poland, too, there were symptoms of similar revolt against the established ordinances of the church, as shown in a book published at Cracow in 1504, “De Matrimonia Sacerdotum.”[1030]
The corruption of the church establishment, in fact, had reached a point which the dawning enlightenment of the age could not much longer endure. The power which had been intrusted to it, when it was the only representative of culture and progress, had been devoted to selfish purposes, and had become the instrument of unmitigated oppression in all the details of daily life. The immunity which had been necessary to its existence through centuries of anarchy had become the shield of unimaginable vices. The wealth, so freely lavished upon it by the veneration of Christendom, was wasted in the vilest excesses. All efforts at reformation from within had failed; all attempts at reformation from without had been successfully crushed and sternly punished. Intoxicated with centuries of domination, the muttered thunders of growing popular discontent were unheeded, and its claims to spiritual and temporal authority were asserted with increasing vehemence, while its corruptions were daily displayed before the people with more careless cynicism. There appeared to be no desire on the part of the great body of the clergy to make even a pretence of the virtue and piety on which were based their claims for reverence, while the laity were daily growing less reverent, were rising in intelligence, and were becoming more inclined to question where their fathers had been content to believe. Such a complication could have but one result.