Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1

by Henry Hallam

[993] Id. p. 147.

Causes of this reaction. 15. This great reaction of the papal religion after the shock it had sustained in the first part of the sixteenth century, ought for ever to restrain that temerity of prediction so frequent in our ears. As women sometimes believe the fashion of last year in dress to be wholly ridiculous, and incapable of being ever again adopted by any one solicitous about her beauty, so those who affect to pronounce on future events are equally confident against the possibility of a resurrection of opinions which the majority have for the time ceased to maintain. In the year 1560, every Protestant in Europe doubtless anticipated the overthrow of popery; the Catholics could have found little else to warrant hope than their trust in Heaven. The late rush of many nations towards democratical opinions has not been so rapid and so general as the change of religion about that period. It is important and interesting to inquire what stemmed this current. We readily acknowledge the prudence, firmness, and unity of purpose, that for the most part distinguished the court of Rome, the obedience of its hierarchy, the severity of intolerant laws, and the searching rigour of the Inquisition, the resolute adherence of great princes to the Catholic faith, the influence of the Jesuits over education; but these either existed before, or would at least not have been sufficient to withstand an overwhelming force of opinion. It must be acknowledged that there was a principle of vitality in that religion, independent of its external strength. By the side of its secular pomp, its relaxation of morality, there had always been an intense flame of zeal and devotion. Superstition it might be in the many, fanaticism in a few; but both of these imply the qualities which, while they subsist, render a religion indestructible. That revival of an ardent zeal, though which the Franciscans had, in the thirteenth century, with some good and much more evil effect, spread a popular enthusiasm over Europe, was once more displayed in counteraction of those new doctrines, that themselves had drawn their life from a similar development of moral emotion.

A rigid party in the church. 16. Even in the court of Leo X., soon after the bursting forth of the Reformation in Saxony, a small body was formed by men of rigid piety, and strenuous for a different species of reform. Sadolet, Caraffa (afterwards Paul IV.), Cajetan, and Contareni, both the latter eminent in the annals of the church, were at the head of this party.[994] Without dwelling on what belongs strictly to ecclesiastical history, it is sufficient to say that they acquired much weight; and while adhering generally to the doctrine of the church (though Contareni, held the Lutheran tenets on justification), aimed steadily at a restoration of moral discipline, and the abolition of every notorious abuse. Several of the regular orders were reformed, while others were instituted, more active in sacerdotal duties than the rest. The Jesuits must be considered as the most perfect type of the rigid party. Whatever may be objected, perhaps not quite so early, to their system of casuistry, whatever want of scrupulousness may have been shown in their conduct, they were men who never swerved from the path of labour, and, it might be, suffering in the cause which they deemed that of God. All self-sacrifice in such circumstances, especially of the highly gifted and accomplished, though the bigot steels his heart and closes his eyes against it, excites the admiration of the unsophisticated part of mankind.

[994] Ranke, i. 133.

Its efforts at Trent. 17. The council of Trent, especially in its later sessions, displayed the antagonist parties in the Roman church, one struggling for lucrative abuses, one anxious to overthrow them. They may be called the Italian and Spanish parties; the first headed by the Pope’s legates, dreading above all things both the reforming spirit of Constance and Basle, and the independence either of princes or of national churches; the other actuated by much of the spirit of those councils, and tending to confirm that independence. The French and German prelates usually sided with the Spanish; and they were together strong enough to establish as a rule, that in every session, a decree for reformation should accompany the declaration of doctrine. The Council, interrupted in 1547 by the measure that Paul III. found it necessary for his own defence against these reformers to adopt, the translation of its sittings to Bologna, with which the Imperial prelates refused to comply, was opened again by Julius III. in 1552; and having been once more suspended in the same year, resumed its labour for the last time under Pius IV. in 1562. It terminated in 1564, when the court of Rome, which, with the Italian prelates, had struggled hard to obstruct the redress of every grievance, compelled the more upright members of the council to let it close, after having effected such a reformation of discipline as they could obtain. That court was certainly successful in the contest, so far as it might be called one, of prerogative against liberty; and partially successful in the preservation of its lesser interests and means of influence. Yet it seems impossible to deny that the effects of the council of Trent were on the whole highly favourable to the church, for whose benefit it was summoned. The Reformation would never have roused the whole north of Europe, had the people seen nothing in it but the technical problems of theology. It was against ambition and cupidity, sluggish ignorance and haughty pomp, that they took up arms. Hence the abolition of many long established abuses by the honest zeal of the Spanish and Cisalpine fathers in that council took away much of the ground on which the prevalent disaffection rested.

No compromise in doctrine. 18. We should be inclined to infer from the language of some contemporaries, that the council might have proceeded farther with more advantage than danger to their church, by complying with the earnest and repeated solicitations of the Emperor, the Duke of Bavaria, and even the court of France, that the sacramental cup should be restored to the laity, and that the clergy should not be restrained from marriage. Upon this, however, it is not here for us to dilate. The policy of both concessions, but especially of the latter, was always questionable, and has not been demonstrated by the event. In its determinations of doctrine, the council was generally cautious to avoid extremes, and left, in many momentous questions of the controversy, such as the invocation of saints, no small latitude for private opinion. It has been thought by some that they lost sight of this prudence in defining transubstantiation so rigidly as they did in 1551, and thus opposed an obstacle to the conversion of those who would have acquiesced in a more equivocal form of words. But, in truth, no alternative was left upon this point. Transubstantiation had been asserted by a prior council, the Fourth Lateran in 1215, so positively, that to recede would have surrendered the main principle of the Catholic church. And it is also to be remembered, when we judge of what might have been done, as we fancy, with more prudence, that, if there was a good deal of policy in the decisions of the council of Trent, there was no want also of conscientious sincerity; and that whatever we may think of this doctrine, it was one which seemed of fundamental importance to the serious and obedient sons of the church.[995]

[995] A strange notion has been started of late years in England, that the council of Trent made important innovations in the previously established doctrines of the Western Church; an hypothesis so paradoxical in respect to public opinion, and, it must be added, so prodigiously at variance with the known facts of ecclesiastical history, that we cannot but admire the facility with which it has been taken up. It will appear, by reading the accounts of the sessions of the council either in Father Paul, or in any more favourable historian, that even in certain points, such as justification, which had not been clearly laid down before, the Tridentine decrees were mostly conformable with the sense of the majority of those doctors who had obtained the highest reputation; and that upon what are more usually reckoned the distinctive characteristics of the Church of Rome, namely, transubstantiation, purgatory, and invocation of the saints and the Virgin, they assert nothing but what had been so ingrafted into the faith of this part of Europe, as to have been rejected by no one without suspicion or imputation of heresy. Perhaps Erasmus would not have acquiesced with good-will in all the decrees of the council; but was Erasmus deemed orthodox? It is not impossible that the great hurry with which some controversies of considerable importance were dispatched in the last sessions, may have had as much to do with the short and vague phrases employed in respect to them, as the prudence I have attributed to the fathers; but the facts will remain the same on either supposition.

No general council ever contained so many persons of eminent learning and ability as that of Trent; nor is there ground for believing that any other ever investigated the questions before it with so much patience, acuteness, temper, and desire of truth. The early councils, unless they are greatly belied, would not bear comparison in these characteristics. Impartiality and freedom from prejudice no Protestant will attribute to the fathers of Trent; but where will he produce these qualities in an ecclesiastical synod? But it may be said that they had only one leading prejudice, that of determining theological faith according to the tradition of the Catholic church, as handed down to their own age. This one point of authority conceded, I am not aware that they can be proved to have decided wrong, or at least against all reasonable evidence. Let those who have imbibed a different opinion ask themselves whether they have read Sarpi through with any attention, especially as to those sessions of the Tridentine council which preceded its suspension in 1547.

Consultation of Cassander. 19. There is some difficulty in proving for the council of Trent that universality to which its adherents attach an infallible authority. And this was not held to be a matter of course by the great European powers. Even in France the Tridentine decrees, in matters of faith, have not been formally received, though the Gallican church has never called any of them in question; those relating to matters of discipline are distinctly held not obligatory. The Emperor Ferdinand seems to have hesitated about acknowledging the decisions of a council, which had at least failed in the object for which it was professedly summoned—the conciliation of all parties to the church. For we find that even after its close, he referred the chief points in controversy to George Cassander, a German theologian of very moderate sentiments and temper. Cassander wrote, at the emperor’s request, his famous Consultation, wherein he passes in review every article in the Confession of Augsburg, so as to give, if possible, an interpretation consonant to that of the Catholic church. Certain it is that, between Melanchthon’s desire of concord in drawing up the Confession, and that of Cassander in judging of it, no great number of points seem to be left for dispute. In another treatise of Cassander, De Officio Pii Viri in hoc Dissidio Religionis (1561), he holds the same course that Erasmus had done before, blaming those who, on account of the stains in the church, would wholly subvert it, as well as those who erect the pope into a sort of deity, by setting up his authority as an infallible rule of faith. The rule of controversy laid down by Cassander is, Scripture explained by the tradition of the ancient church, which is best to be learned from the writings of those who lived from the age of Constantine to that of Gregory I., because, during that period, the principal articles of faith were most discussed. Dupin observes that the zeal of Cassander for the reunion and peace of the church made him yield too much to the Protestants, and advance some propositions that were too bold. But they were by no means satisfied with his concessions. This treatise was virulently attacked by Calvin, to whom Cassander replied. No one should hesitate to prefer the spirit of Cassander to that of Calvin; but it must be owned that the practical consequence of his advice would have been to check the profession of the reformed religion, leaving amendment to those who had little disposition to amend anything. Nor is it by any means unlikely that this conciliatory scheme, by extenuating disagreements, had a considerable influence in that cessation of the advance of Protestantism, or rather that reaction to which we have lately adverted, and of which more proofs were long afterwards given.

Bigotry of Protestant churches. 20. We ought to reckon also among the principal causes of this change those perpetual disputes, those irreconcileable animosities, that bigotry, above all, and persecuting spirit, which were exhibited in the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches. Each began with a common principle—the necessity of an orthodox faith. But this orthodoxy meant evidently nothing more than their own belief, as opposed to that of their adversaries; a belief acknowledged to be fallible, yet maintained as certain, rejecting authority in one breath, and appealing to it in the next, and claiming to rest on sure proofs of reason and Scripture, which their opponents were ready with just as much confidence to invalidate.