Provincial synods had now lost almost all their importance, and were rarely held, and then for the most part under the presidency of a papal legate. The cathedral chapters afforded welcome provision for the younger sons of the nobles, who were nothing behind their elder brothers in worldliness of life and conversation. For their own selfish interests they limited the number of members of the chapter, and demanded as a qualification evidence of at least sixteen ancestors. The political significance of the prelates was in France very small, and as champions of the Gallican liberties they were less enthusiastic than the University of Paris and the Parliament. In England they formed an influential order in the State, with carefully defined rights; and in Germany, as princes of the empire, especially the clerical elector princes, their political importance was very great. In Spain, on the other hand, at the end of the 15th century, by the ecclesiastico-political reformation endeavours of Ferdinand “the Catholic” and Isabella (§ [118, 7]), the higher clergy were made completely dependent upon the Crown.
§ 111.1. The Moral Condition of the Clergy was in general very low. The bishops mostly lived in open concubinage. The lower secular clergy followed their example, and had toleration granted by paying a yearly tax to the bishop. The people, distinguishing office and person, made no objection, but rather looked on it as a sort of protection to their wives and daughters from the dangers of the confessional. Especially in Italy, unnatural vice was widely spread among the clergy. At Constance and Basel it was thought to cure such evils by giving permission to priests to marry; but it was feared that the ecclesiastical revenues would be made heritable, and the clergy brought too much under the State.—The mendicant orders were allowed to hear confession everywhere, and when John de Polliaco, a Prussian doctor, maintained that the local clergy only should be taken as confessors, John XXII., in A.D. 1322, pronounced his views heretical.
§ 111.2. The French concordat of A.D. 1516 (§ [110, 14]), which gave the king the right of appointing commendator abbots (§ 85, 5), to almost all the cloisters, induced many of the younger sons of old noble families to take orders, so as to obtain rich sinecures or offices, which they could hold in commendam. They bore a semi-clerical character, and had the title of abbé, which gradually came to be given to all the secular clergy of higher culture and social position. In Italy too it became customary to give the title abbate to the younger clergy of high rank, before receiving ordination.
§ 112. Monastic Orders and Societies.
The corruption of monastic life was becoming more evident from day to day. Immorality, sloth, and unnatural vice only too often found a nursery behind the cloister walls. Monks and nuns of neighbouring convents lived in open sin with one another, so that the author of the book De ruina ecclesia (§ [118, 4, c]) thinks that Virginem velare is the same as Virginem ad scortandum exponere. In the Benedictine order the corruption was most complete. The rich cloisters, after the example of their founder, divided their revenues among their several members (proprietarii). Science was disregarded, and they cared only for good living. The celebrated Scottish cloister (§ [98, 1]) of St. James, at Regensburg, in the 14th century, had a regular tavern within its walls, and there was a current saying, Uxor amissa in monasterio Scotorum quæri debet. The mendicants represented even yet relatively the better side of monasticism, and maintained their character as exponents of theological learning. Only the Carthusians, however, still held fast to the ancient strict discipline of their order.
§ 112.1. The Benedictine Orders.—For the reorganization of this order, which had abandoned itself to good living and luxury, Clement V., at the Council of Vienna, A.D. 1311, issued a set of ordinances which aimed principally at the restoration of monastic discipline and the revival of learning among the monks. But they were of little or no avail. Benedict XII. therefore found it necessary, in A.D. 1336, with the co-operation of distinguished French abbots, to draw up a new constitution for the Benedictines, which after him was called the Benedictina. The houses of Black Friars were to be divided into thirty-six provinces, and each of them was to hold every third year a provincial chapter for conference and determination of cases. In each abbey there should be a daily penitential chapter for maintaining discipline, and an annual chapter for giving a reckoning of accounts. In order to reawaken interest in scientific studies, it was enjoined that from every cloister a number of the abler monks should be maintained at a university, at the cost of the cloister, to study theology and canon law. But the disciplinary prescriptions of the Benedictina were powerless before the attractions of good living, and the proposals for organization were repugnant to the proud independence of monks and abbots. The enactments in favour of scientific pursuits led to better results. The first really successful attempt at reforming the cloisters was made, in A.D. 1435, by the general chapter of the Brothers of the Common Life, who not only dealt with their own institutions, but also with all the Benedictine monasteries throughout the whole of the West. The soul of this movement was Joh. Busch, monk in Windesheim, then prior in various monasteries, and finally provost of Sulte, near Hildesheim, A.D. 1458-1479. The so called Bursfeld Union or Congregation resulted from his intercourse with the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Bursfeld, on the Weser, John of Hagen (ab Andagine). Notwithstanding the bitter hostility of corrupt monks and nuns, there were in a short time seventy-five monasteries under this Bursfeld rule, where the original strictness of the monastic life was enforced. The rule was confirmed by the council of A.D. 1440, and subsequently by Pius II. Most of the cloisters under this rule joined the Lutheran reformation of the 16th century, and Bursfeld itself is at this day the seat of a titular Lutheran abbot.—A new branch of the Benedictine order, the Olivetans, was founded by Bernard Tolomæi. Blindness having obliged him to abandon his teaching of philosophy at Siena, the blessed Virgin restored him his sight; and then, in A.D. 1313, he forsook the world, and withdrew with certain companions into almost inaccessible mountain recesses, ten miles from Siena. Disciples gathered around him from all sides. He built a cloister on a hill, which he called the Mount of Olives, and founded under the Benedictine rule a congregation of the Most Blessed Virgin of the Mount of Olives, which obtained the sanction of John XXII. Tolomæi became its first general, in A.D. 1322, and held the office till his death, caused by infection caught while attending the plague stricken in A.D. 1348. There were new elections of abbots every third year. The Olivetans were zealous worshippers of Mary, and strict ascetics. In several of their cloisters, which numbered as many as one hundred, the study of theology and philosophy was diligently prosecuted. They embraced also an order of nuns, founded by St. Francisca Romana.
§ 112.2. The Franciscans.—At the Council of Vienna, in A.D. 1312, Clement V. renewed the decree of Nicholas III., and by the constitution Exivi de paradiso decided in favour of the stricter view (§ [98, 4]), but ordered all rigorists to submit to their order. But neither this nor the solemn ratification of his predecessor’s decisions by John XXII. in A.D. 1317 put an end to the division. The contention was now of a twofold kind. The Spirituals confined their opposition to a rigoristic interpretation of the vow of poverty. The Fraticelli carried their opposition into many other departments. They exaggerated the demand of poverty to the utmost, but also repudiated the primacy of the pope, the jurisdiction of bishops, the admissibility of oaths, etc. In the south of France within a few years 115 of them had perished at the stake; and the Spirituals also suffered severely.—The Dominicans were the cause of a new split in the Seraphic order. The Inquisition at Narbonne had, in A.D. 1321, condemned to the stake a Beghard who had affirmed, what to the Dominicans seemed a heretical proposition, that Christ and the apostles had neither personal nor common property. The Franciscans, who, on the plea of a pretended transference of their property to the pope, claimed to be without possessions, pronounced that proposition orthodox, and the Dominicans complained to John XXII. He pronounced in favour of the Dominicans, and declared the Franciscans’ transference of property illusory; and finding this decision contrary to decrees of previous popes, he asserted the right of any pontiff to reverse the findings of his predecessors. The Franciscans were driven more and more into open revolt against the pope. They made common cause with the persecuted Spirituals, and like them sought support from the Italian Ghibellines and the emperor, Louis the Bavarian (§ [110, 3]). The pope summoned their general, Michael of Cesena, to Avignon; and while detaining him there sought unsuccessfully to obtain his deposition by the general synod of the order. Michael, with two like-minded brothers, William Occam (§ [113, 3]) and Bonagratia of Bergamo, escaped to Pisa in a ship of war, which the emperor sent for them in A.D. 1328. There, in the name of his order, he appealed to an œcumenical council to have the papal excommunication and deposition annulled which had now been issued against him. After the disastrous Italian campaign in A.D. 1330, the excommunicated churchmen accompanied the emperor to Munich, where they conducted a literary defence of their rights and privileges, and charged the pope with a multitude of heresies. Michael died at Munich, in A.D. 1342.—After the overthrow of the schismatic Minorite pope, Nicholas V. (§ [110, 3]), the opposition soon gave in its submission. But to the end of his life John XXII. was a bloody persecutor of all schismatical Franciscans, who showed a fanatical love of martyrdom, rather than abate one iota of their opposition to the possession of property.
§ 112.3. The strict and lax tendencies were brought to light in connection with successive attempts at reformation. In A.D. 1368 Paolucci of Foligni founded the fraternity of Sandal-wearers, which embraced the remnants of the Cœlestine eremites (§ [98, 4]). This strict rule was soon modified so as to admit of the possession of immovable property and living together in conventual establishments. Those who adhered rigidly to the original requirements as to seclusion, asceticism, and dress were now called Observants and the more lax Conventuals. Crossing the Alps in A.D. 1388, they spread through Europe, converting heretics and heathens. Both sections received papal encouragement. Their leader for forty years was John of Capistrano, born A.D. 1386, died A.D. 1456, who inspired all their movements, and as a preacher gathered hundreds of thousands around him. His predecessor in office, Bernardino of Siena, who died in A.D. 1444, was canonized after a hard fight in A.D. 1450. John was deputed by the pope in that same year to proceed to Austria and Germany to convert the Hussites and preach a crusade against the Turks.His greatest feat was the repulse, in A.D. 1456, of the Turks, under Mohammed II., before Belgrade, ascribed to him and his crusade, which delivered Hungary, Germany, and indeed the whole West, from threatened subjection to the Moslem yoke. Capistrano died three months afterwards. Notwithstanding all the efforts of his followers, his beatification was not secured till A.D. 1690, and the decree of canonization was not obtained till A.D. 1724.—Continuation § [149, 6].
§ 112.4. The Dominicans.—The Dominicans, as they interpreted the vow of poverty only of personal and not of common property, soon lost the character of a mendicant order.—One of their most distinguished members was St. Catharine of Siena, who died in A.D. 1380, in her thirty-third year. Having taken the vow of chastity as a child, living only on bread and herbs, for a time only on the eucharistic elements, she was in vision affianced to Christ as His bride, and received His heart instead of her own. She felt the pains of Christ’s wounds, and, like St. Dominic, lashed herself thrice a day with an iron chain. She gained unexampled fame, and along with St. Bridget procured the return of the pope from Avignon to Rome.—The controversy of the Dominicans with the Franciscans over the immaculata conceptio (§ [104, 7]) was conducted in the most passionate manner. The visions of St. Catherine favoured the Dominican, those of St. Bridget the Franciscan views; during the schism the French popes favoured the former, the Roman popes the latter. The Franciscan view gained for the time the ascendency. The University of Paris sustained it in A.D. 1387, and made its confession a condition of receiving academic rank. The Dominican Torquemada combated this doctrine, in A.D. 1437, in his able Tractatus de veritate Conceptionis B. V. In A.D. 1439, the Council of Basel, which was then regarded as schismatical, sanctioned the Franciscan doctrine. Sixtus IV., who had previously, as general of the Franciscans, supported the views of his order in a special treatise, authorized the celebration of the festival referred to, but in A.D. 1483 forbade controversy on either side. A comedy with a very tragical conclusion was enacted at Bern, in connection with this matter in A.D. 1509. The Dominicans there deceived a simple tailor called Jetzer, who joined them as a novice, with pretended visions and revelation of the Virgin, and burned upon him with a hot iron the wound prints of the Saviour, and caused an image of the mother of God to weep tears of blood over the godless doctrine of the Franciscans. When the base trick was discovered, the prior and three monks had to atone for their conduct by death at the stake. (Continuation § [149, 13].) A new controversy between the two orders broke out in A.D. 1462, at Brescia. There, on Easter Day of that year, the Franciscan Jacob of Marchia in his preaching said that the blood of Christ shed upon the cross, until its reassumption by the resurrection, was outside of the hypostatic union with the Logos, and therefore as such was not the subject of adoration. The grand-inquisitor, Jacob of Brescia, pronounced this heretical, and at Christmas, A.D. 1463, a three days’ disputation was held between three Dominicans and as many Minorites before pope and cardinals, which yielded no result. Pius II. reserved judgment, and never gave his decision.
§ 112.5. The Augustinians.—In A.D. 1432, Zolter, at the call of the general of the Augustinians, reorganized the order, and in A.D. 1438 Pius II. gave a constitution to the Observants. The “Union of the Five Convents” founded by him in Saxony and Franconia, with Magdeburg as its centre, formed the nucleus of regular Augustinian Observants, which had Andrew Proles of Dresden as their vicar-general for a second time in A.D. 1473. Notwithstanding bitter opposition, the union spread through all Germany, even to the Netherlands. In A.D. 1475 the general of the order at Rome took offence at Proles for looking directly to the apostolic see, and not to him, for his authority. He therefore abolished the institution of vicars, insisted that all Observants should return to their allegiance to the provincials, and make full restitution of all the cloisters which they had appropriated, and empowered the provincial of Saxony to imprison and excommunicate Proles and his party, in case of their refusal. Proles did not submit, and when the ban was issued appealed directly to the pope. A papal commission in A.D. 1477 decided that all Observant cloisters placed by the duke under the pope’s protection should so continue, confirmed all their privileges, and annulled all mandates and anathemas issued against Proles and his followers. With redoubled energy and zeal Proles now wrought for the extension and consolidation of the congregation until A.D. 1503, when he resigned office in his 74th year, and soon after died. He was one of the worthiest and most pious men in the German Church of his time; but Flacius is quite mistaken when he describes him as a precursor of Luther, an evangelical martyr and witness for the truth in the sense of the Reformation of the 16th century. Energetic and devoted as he was in prosecuting his reformation, he gave himself purely to the correcting of the morals of the monks and restoring discipline; but in zeal for the doctrine of merits, the institution of indulgences, mariolatry, saint and image worship, and in devotion to the papacy, he and his congregation were by no means in advance of the age.