The strenuous endeavours put forth by the Roman Catholic church to restrict within the narrowest limits possible the victorious course of the Reformation, and so far as might be to reconquer lost ground, bulk so largely in its sixteenth century movement, that we may review that entire era in its history from the standpoint of the counter-reformation. This development was carried out, on the one hand, by means of increased strengthening and revival, and, on the other hand, by polemics and attack on those without, in this latter case advanced by missions to the heathen and by violent persecution and suppression of Protestantism. The Tridentine Council, A.D. 1545-1547, A.D. 1551, 1552, A.D. 1562, 1563, was devoted to the realization of these ends. The curialistic side of mediæval scholastic Catholicism was again presented as the sole representation of the truth, compacted with iron bands into a rigid system of doctrine, and declared to be incapable in all time to come of any alteration or reform; while at the same time it set aside or modified many of the more flagrant abuses. With two long breaks caused by political considerations, it had completed its work between 1545 and 1563 in twenty-five sessions. The first ten sittings were held A.D. 1545-1547, under Paul III.; the next six in A.D. 1551 and 1552, under Julius III.; and the last nine in A.D. 1562, 1563, under Pius IV.—The old and utterly corrupt monkish orders, which had once formed so powerful a support to the papacy, had not proved capable of surviving the shock of the Reformation. In their place there now arose a new order, that of the Jesuits, which for centuries formed a buttress to the severely shaken papacy, and hemmed in on all sides the further advances of the Protestant movement. Besides this great order there arose a crowd of others, partly new, partly old ones under reformed constitutions, mostly of a practical churchly tendency. The strifes and rivalries that prevailed between the different Protestant sects stirred up with the Romish Church a new and remarkable activity in the scientific study of doctrine; and mysticism flourished again in Spain, and succeeded in reaching there a considerable development.
§ 149.1. The Popes before the Council.—Leo X. (§ [110, 14]) the accomplished, extravagant, luxurious, and frivolous Medici, was succeeded by one who was in every respect diametrically opposed to his predecessor, Hadrian VI., A.D. 1522, 1523, the only pope who for many centuries before down to the present day retained his own honourable Christian name when he ascended the throne of St. Peter. Hadrian Dedel, the son of a poor ship-carpenter of Utrecht, a pious and learned Dominican, had raised himself to a theological professorship in the University of Louvain, when Maximilian I. chose him to be tutor to his grandson, who afterwards became the Emperor Charles V. He was thus put in the way for obtaining the highest offices in the church. He was made Bishop of Tortosa, grand-inquisitor, cardinal, and viceroy of Spain for Charles during his absence. When, after Leo’s death, neither the imperial candidate Julius Medici nor any other of the cardinals present in conclave secured the necessary votes, the imperial commissioner pointed to Hadrian, and so out of the voting box came the name of a new pope whom no one particularly wished. A thoroughly learned, scholastic commentator on the Lombard, pious and strict in his morals even to rigorism, in his domestic economy practising peasant-like simplicity, and saving even to the extent almost of niggardliness; a zealot for the Thomist system of doctrine, but holding in abhorrence the Renaissance, with all its glitter of classical culture, art, and poetry; mourning bitterly over the worldliness and corruption of the papacy, as well as over the unfathomable depravity throughout the church, and firmly resolved to inaugurate a thorough reformation in the head and members (§ [126, 1]),—he seemed in that position and age, and with those surroundings, a Flemish barbarian, who could not even understand Italian, and spoke Latin with an accent intolerable to Roman ears, the greatest anomaly that had ever yet appeared in the history of the popes.The Roman people hated him with a deadly hatred, and Pasquino[428] was inexhaustibly fruitful in stinging epigrams and scurrilous verses on the new pope and his electors. The German reformers were not inclined to view him with favour; for he had previously, in his capacity as grand-inquisitor, condemned, according to Llorente, between 20,000 and 30,000 men under the Spanish Inquisition, and had more than 1,600 burnt alive. Two attempts were made by the Romans to assassinate him by dagger and by poison, but neither succeeded. He died, however, after a short pontificate of one and a half years, the last German and indeed the last non-Italian occupant of the papal throne. But the Romans wrote on the house door of his physician, “To the deliverer of the fatherland,” and enjoyed themselves, when the corpse of the deceased pope was laid between those of Pius I. and Pius II., by repeating the feeble pleasantry, “Impius inter Pios.” The jubilation in Rome, however, was extravagant, when by the next conclave a member of the family of the Medici, the illegitimate son of the murdered Julius (§ [110, 11]), the Cardinal Julius Medici, who had been rejected on the former occasion, was now proclaimed under the title of Clement VII., A.D. 1523-1534. The brave Romans did not indeed anticipate that this pope, in consequence of the shiftiness of his policy and the faithlessness of his conduct toward the emperor (§ [126, 6]), to whose favour and influence mainly he owed his own elevation, would reduce their city to a condition of wretchedness and depression such as had never been witnessed since the days of Alaric and Genseric (§ [132, 2]). The position of a pope like Clement, who regarded himself as called upon, not only as church prince to set right the ecclesiastical institutions of the age, which in every department had been thrown into utter confusion by the storms of the German Reformation (§ [126, 2]), but also as a temporal prince to deliver Italy and the States of the church from threatened servitude to Germany and Spain, no less than from France, was one of peculiar difficulty, so that even a much more astute politician than Clement would have found it hardly possible to maintain successfully.
§ 149.2. The Popes of the Time of the Council.—After Clement VII. the papal dignity was conferred upon Alexander Farnese, who took the name of Paul III., A.D. 1534-1549, a man of classical culture and extraordinary cunning. He owed his cardinal’s hat, received some forty years before, to an adulterous intrigue of his sister Julia Orsini with Pope Alexander VI. His entrance upon this ecclesiastical dignity, however, did not lead him to give up his sensual and immoral course of life, and after his elevation to the papal chair he practised nepotism after the example of the Borgias and the Medicis. He was, however, the only pope, at least for a long time, who seemed to be actually in earnest about coming to an understanding on doctrinal points with the German Protestants (§ [139, 23]). He at last summoned the œcumenical council, so long in vain demanded by the emperor, to meet at Mantua on 23rd May, A.D. 1537; but afterwards postponed the opening of it, on account of the Turkish war, until 1st Nov. of that year, and then again until 1st May, A.D. 1538. On the latter day it was to meet at Vicenza, and after this date had elapsed, it was suspended indefinitely. The emperor’s continued insistence upon having a final and properly constituted council in a German city led him to fix upon Trent, where a council was summoned to meet on 1st Nov., A.D. 1542, but the troubles that meanwhile arose with France gave a welcome excuse for further postponement. Persistent pressure on the part of the emperor led to the issuing of a new rescript by the pope on 15th March, A.D. 1545; there was the usual delay because of the failure to secure a sufficient number of orthodox and competent bishops and delegates; and thus at last the council opened at Trent on 13th Dec., A.D. 1545. The skilful management of the council by the Cardinal-legate del Monte, the statement carefully prepared beforehand of the distinctly anti-protestant basis upon which they were to proceed (§ [136, 4]), and the well arranged scheme of the legates to secure its adoption by having the votes reckoned not according to nations, but by individuals (§ [110, 7]), contributed largely during the earlier sessions to neutralize the conciliatory tendencies of the emperor as well as to prevent the possibility of Protestants taking any active share in the proceedings. When the emperor, who had now reached the very summit of his power, forbade the promulgating of these arrangements, the pope declared that he did not think it a convenient and proper thing that the council should be held in a German city; and so, on the pretext of a plague having broken out in Trent, he issued an order at the eighth session that on 11th March, A.D. 1547, it should resume at Bologna. The emperor’s decided protest obliged the German bishops to remain behind in Trent, and the bishops who assembled at Bologna under these circumstances did not venture to continue their proceedings. As the emperor persistently refused to recognise the change of seat, and in consequence the bishops present had one after another left the city, the pope issued a decree in Sept., A.D. 1547, again postponing the meeting indefinitely.—Paul was succeeded by the Cardinal-legate del Monte, who took his place on the papal throne as Julius III., A.D. 1550-1555. He could indulge in nepotism only to a limited extent, but he did in that direction what was possible. Driven to it by necessity, he again opened the Council of Trent on 1st May, A.D. 1551. Protestant delegates were also to be present at it. But without regard to them the council continued to hold firmly by the anti-protestant doctrines (§ [136, 8]). The position of matters was suddenly and unexpectedly changed by the appearance of the Elector Maurice. On the approach of his victorious army the council broke up, after it had at its sixteenth session, on 28th April, A.D. 1552, promulgated articles condemning all the Protestants, and resolved to sist further proceedings for two years.After the death of Julius III., Marcellus II. was elected in his stead, one of the noblest popes of all times, who once exclaimed, that he could not understand how a pope could be happy in the strait-jacket of the all-dominating curialism. He occupied the chair of St. Peter only for twenty-one days. He was succeeded by John Peter Caraffa (§ [139, 23]), as Paul IV., A.D. 1555-1559. He carried on the operations of the Inquisition, reintroduced into Rome at his instigation under Paul III. for the suppression of all Protestant movements, with the most reckless severity and insistency, was unwearied in searching out and burning all heretical books, and protested against the Religious Peace of Augsburg. He also opposed the elevation of Ferdinand I. to the imperial throne, which led the new emperor to issue a decree of state, which concluded with the words: “And every one may from this judge that his holiness, by reason of age or other causes, is no longer in full possession of his senses.” This pope also in the bull, Cum ex apostolatus officio of A.D. 1558, released subjects from the duty of obedience to heretical princes, and urged orthodox rulers to undertake the conquest of their territories. But he also embittered himself among the Roman populace by his inquisitorial tyranny, so that they upon the report of his death destroyed all the buildings of the Inquisition, broke in pieces the papal statues and arms, and under threat of death forced all the members of the Caraffa family to quit the city.—The mild disposition of his successor, Pius IV., A.D. 1560-1565, moderated and reduced, as far as he thought safe, the fanatical violence and narrowness of the Inquisition, and the reforming influence which he allowed to his talented nephew Charles Borromeo over the affairs of the curia bore many excellent fruits. Without much opposition he again opened the Tridentine Council on 18th Jan., A.D. 1562, which now it appeared could be resumed with less danger, beginning with the seventeenth session and ending with the twenty-fifth on the 3rd or 4th Dec., A.D. 1563. Of the 255 persons who throughout took part in it more than two-thirds were Italians. The papal legates domineered without restraint, and it was an open secret that “the Holy Ghost came from Rome to Trent in the despatch box.” In the doctrinal decisions, the mediæval dogmas, with a more decidedly anti-protestant complexion, but with a careful avoidance of points at issue between Franciscans and Dominicans (§ [113, 2]), were set forth, together with a formal condemnation of the opposed doctrines of Protestantism. In the proposals for reformation, decided improvements were introduced in church order and church discipline, in so far as this could be done without prejudice to the interests of the hierarchy. German, Spanish, and especially French bishops, as well as the commissioners for Catholic courts urged at first, in the interests of conciliation and reform, for permission to priests to marry and the granting of the cup to the laity, the limiting of the number of fasts and of the worship of saints, relics, and images, as well as the more extreme hierarchical extravagances. But the legates knew well how to gain time by wily intrigues, to disgust their opponents by exciting subtle theological disputes, and to weary them out with tedious delays; and so when it came at last to the vote, the compact majority of the Italians withstood all opposition that could be shown.At the close of the last session Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine (§ [139, 13]), who from the opposition had passed over to the majority, cried out, “Anathema to all heretics!” and the prelates answered in full chorus. The pope confirmed the decrees of the council, but forbade on pain of excommunication any exposition of them, as that pertained solely to the papal chair. They found unhesitating acceptance in Italy, Portugal, and Poland, and in Spain in so far as they were agreeable to the laws of the empire.In Germany, Hungary, and France the governments refused to acknowledge them; but the reforming decrees, which could really be recognised as improvements, were willingly accepted, and even the objection to particular conclusions in matters of faith was soon silenced before the sense of the importance of having the thing settled, and securing at any cost the unity of the church.[429]
§ 149.3. The Popes after the Council.—Pius V., A.D. 1566-1572, is the only pope for many centuries before and down to the present time who has been canonized. This was done by Clement XI. in A.D. 1712. He was previously a Dominican and grand-inquisitor, and even as pope continued to live the life of a monk and an ascetic. He strove hard to raise Roman society out of its deep moral degradation, condemned strict Augustinianism in the person of Baius, made more severe the bull In Cæna Domini (§ [117, 3]), and set the Roman Inquisition to work with a fearful activity never before equalled.He also released all the subjects of Queen Elizabeth of England from their oaths of allegiance, threatened the Emperor Maximilian with deposition should he grant religious freedom to the Protestants, and in league with Spain and Venice gained a brilliant naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in A.D. 1571.[430]—Gregory XIII., A.D. 1572-1585, celebrated the Bloody Marriage as a glorious act of faith, produced an improved edition of the Corpus juris canonici, and carried out in A.D. 1582 the calendar reform that had been already moved for at the Tridentine Council. The new or Gregorian Calendar, which passed over at a bound ten days in order to get rid of the divergence that had arisen between the civil or Julian and the natural year, was only after considerable opposition adopted even by Catholic states. The evangelical governments of Germany introduced it only in A.D. 1700, England in A.D. 1752, and Sweden in A.D. 1753; while Russia and all the countries under the dominion of the Greek church continue to this day their adherence to the old Julian Calendar. Gregory’s successor, Sixtus V., A.D. 1585-1590, was the greatest and most powerful of all the popes since the Reformation, not indeed as a spiritual head of the church, but as a statesman and ruler of the Papal States. Sprung from a thoroughly impoverished family, Felix Peretti was as a boy engaged in herding swine. In his tenth year, however, through the influence of his uncle, a Minorite monk, he obtained admission and elementary education in his cloister at Montalto near Ancona. After completing his studies, he distinguished himself as a pulpit orator by his eloquence, as a teacher and writer by his learning, as a consulter to the Inquisition by his zealot devotion to the interests of orthodoxy, as president of various cloisters by the strictness with which he carried out moral reforms, and, after he had passed through all the stages of the monkish hierarchy and risen to be vicar-general of his order, he was elevated by Pius V. to the rank of bishop and cardinal. He now took the name of Cardinal Montalto, and as such obtained great influence in the administration of the curia. The death of his papal patron and the succession of Gregory XIII., who from an earlier experience as joint commissioner with him to Spain entertained a bitter enmity toward him, condemned him to retirement into private life for thirteen years. He spent the period of his enforced quiet in architectural undertakings, laying out of gardens, editing the works of St. Ambrose, in the exercise of deeds of benevolence, exhibiting toward every one by the whole course of his conduct mildness, gentleness, and friendliness, and, notwithstanding occasional sharp and wicked criticisms about the pope, showing a conciliatory spirit toward his traducers. Thus the cardinals became convinced that he would be a gentle, tractable pope, and so they elected him on Gregory’s death to be his successor. There is still a story current regarding him as to how, on the very day of his elevation, he threw away the stick on which, with all the appearance of the feebleness of age, he had up to that time been wont to lean; but it is an undoubted fact, that from that same day he appeared in the guise of an altogether different man. Cold and reserved, crafty and farseeing in his schemes, recklessly and unhesitatingly determined even to the utmost extremes of harshness in carrying out his devices, greedy and insatiable in amassing treasures, parsimonious toward his dependants and in his own housekeeping, but lavish in his expenditure on great buildings for the adornment of the eternal city and for its public weal. He delivered the States of the Church from the power of the bandits, who had occasioned unspeakable confusion and introduced throughout these dominions a reign of terror. By a series of draconic laws, which were carried out in the execution of many hundreds without respect of person, he spread an indescribable fear among all evil-doers, and secured to the city and the state a security of life and property that had been hitherto unknown. In theological controversies he kept himself for the most part neutral, but in the persecution of heretics at home and abroad there was no remission of his earlier zeal. In the political movements of his time he took a most active share, and the fact that the interests of the Papal States lay nearer to his heart than the interests of the church had the most important and far reaching consequences for the future developments of State and church in Europe. That the Hapsburg universal sovereignty aspired after by Philip II. of Spain threatened also the independence of the Papal States and the political significance of the papacy was perceived by him very distinctly; but he did not perceive, or at least would not admit, that the success of this scheme would have been the one certain way to secure the utter extinction of Protestantism and the restoration of the absolute unity of the church. This was the reason why he was only half-hearted in supporting Philip in the war against the Protestant Elizabeth of England, and also so lukewarm toward the Catholic league of the Guises in France that wrought in the direction of Spanish interests. He did indeed succeed in weakening the Spanish power in Italy and in hindering Spanish aggressions in France, but at the same time he failed through these very devices in obtaining a victory over Protestantism in England and in the Netherlands, while the weakness of the German Hapsburgs over against the German Protestant princes was in great part the result of his policy.The Roman populace, excited against him, not so much by his severity as by the heavy taxes laid upon them, broke down after his death the statue which the senate had erected to his memory in the capitol.[431] The next three popes, who had all been elected in the Spanish interest, died soon after one another. Urban VIII. had a pontificate of only twelve days; Gregory XIV. reigned for ten months; and Innocent IX. survived only for two months. Then Clement VIII., A.D. 1592-1605, ascended the papal throne, his pontificate in respect of civil and ecclesiastical polity, “a weak copy of that of Sixtus.” His successor, Leo XI., died after he had occupied the chair for twenty-seven days.—Continuation, § 155, 1.
§ 149.4. Papal Infallibility.—The counter-reformation during this period exerted itself in bringing again into the foreground the assertion of the infallibility of the pope, which had been postponed or set to one side during the previous century (§ [110, 15]). The noble Hadrian VI. indeed had, in his scholastic work, Quæstiones de sacramentis, of A.D. 1516, reissued during his pontificate, laid it down as beyond all doubt that even the popes in matters of faith might err and often had erred, “plures enim fuerunt pontifices Rom. hæretici.” On the other hand, Leo X., in the bull issued against Luther, had distinctly affirmed that the popes of Rome had never erred in their decrees and bulls. Gregory XIII. declared in A.D. 1584, that all papal bulls which contained disciplinary decisions on points of order were infallible. Sixtus V., in the bull Æternus ille, with which he issued his unfortunate edition of the Vulgate in A.D. 1589, claimed for the popes the right of infallibly deciding upon the correctness of the readings of the biblical text; but he hastened by the recalling or suppressing of the bull to have the mistake covered in oblivion. Bellarmine taught that the pope is infallible only when he speaks ex cathedra; i.e. defines a dogma and prescribes it for the belief of all Christendom. But when, in spite of all the efforts of the Jesuit general Lainez, no final decision was come to at Trent upon the question as to whether or how far the pope was to be regarded as infallible, the matter remained undefined and uncertain for more than three centuries (§ 187, 3).
§ 149.5. The Prophecy of St. Malachi.—In his book “Lignum Vitæ,” published at Venice in A.D. 1595, the Benedictine Wion made public for the first time a prophecy ascribed to St. Malachi, Archbishop of Armagh, who died in A.D. 1148, in which all the popes from Cœlestine II., in A.D. 1143, down to the end of the world, embracing in all one hundred and eleven, are characterized by short descriptive sketches. He also issued a paper purporting to be written by the Dominican Ciaconius, who died in A.D. 1599, the author of a history of the popes, which, however, in many particulars does not harmonize with this document. In this additional fragment we have short and frequent characterizations of the first seventy-four popes, reaching down to Urban VII., in A.D. 1590. The devices for the most part correctly represent the coat of arms, the name, the birthplace, the monkish order, etc., of the several popes; but these in every case are derived from the history of the man before he ascended the papal throne. On the other hand, the devices used to designate the three succeeding popes down to A.D. 1595 are utterly inapplicable and arbitrary. The same is true in almost every case of attempts to characterize the later popes. It can therefore be regarded as only the result of a chance coincidence, if now and again there should seem to be some fair measure of correspondence. Thus No. 83, Montium custos, describes Alexander VII., whose arms show six mountains; No. 100, De balneis Etruriæ, answers to Gregory XVI., who belonged to a Tuscan cloister; and No. 102, Lumen in cœlo, designates Leo XIII., who has a star in his coat of arms. If after Leo’s death, as Harnack remarks, a German pope were possible, No. 103, Ignis ardens, might be most exactly realized by the election of the Cardinal Hohenlohe.Still more striking, though breaking through the principle that is rigidly followed with respect to the earlier numbers from 1 to 74, is the way in which under No. 96, Peregrinus apostolicus, ridicule is cast upon the misfortune of Pius VI. (§ 165, 10, 13); and in No. 101 Crux de cruce is applied to Pius IX. (§ 184, 2, 3). Upon the whole, there can be no doubt that the composition of the document belongs to A.D. 1590, and indeed to the period during which the conclave sat for almost two months after the death of Urban VII., and that the author, though unsuccessfully, endeavoured to influence the cardinals in their election by making it appear that the appointment of Cardinal Simoncelli of Orvieto, i.e. Urbs vetus, with the device, De antiquitate urbis, had been thus divinely indicated. He chose the name of St. Malachi, because his friend and biographer, St. Bernard, had ascribed to him the gift of prophecy. His series of popes had, therefore, to begin with a contemporary of St. Malachi; and since the author must speak of him as a pope that has yet to be elected, he gives designations to him, and to all who follow down to his own times, which point exclusively to characteristics and relations belonging to them before their election to the papal dignity. Weingarten thinks that Wion himself is author both of the prophecy and of its explanatory appendix, but Harnack has given weighty reasons for questioning this conclusion.
§ 149.6. Reformation of Old Monkish Orders.
- The controversies that prevailed within the ranks of the Franciscans (§ [112, 3]) were finally put to rest by Pope Leo X. in A.D. 1517. The Conventuals and Observants were allowed to choose respectively their own independent general, and from that time forth maintained on equal terms a more peaceful relation to one another. The general of the Observants, however, who were in number, influence, and reputation greatly the superior, boasted of pre-eminence over his Conventual colleague. Although all Observants under him formed a close and thoroughly united society, there were still distinguished within the same regular, strict, and most strict Observants. Among the regulars the most prominent were the Cordeliers of France, so called because they were girt merely with a cord; to the strict belonged the Barefooted monks; and to the most strict the Alcantarines, founded by Peter of Alcantara in Spain. The founder of the Capuchins was the Italian Observant Minorite Matth. de Bassi. As he reported that St. Francis had worn a cowl with long sharp peak or capouch, and soon thereafter saw the saint himself in a vision dressed in such a garb, he withdrew from his cloister, went to Rome, and obtained from Clement VII., in A.D. 1526, the right of restoring the capouch. Falling out with the Observants over this, his followers attached themselves, in A.D. 1528, to the Conventuals as an independent congregation with their own vicar-general. The unusual style of dress produced a sensation. Whenever one of the brethren appeared the gutter children would run after him, crying out in mockery, Capucino. But the name that was given in reproach they accepted as a title of honour. Their self-denying benevolence upon the outbreak of the pestilence in Italy in A.D. 1528 soon won high reputation to the order, and secured its further spread. In consequence of their vicar-general, Bernardino Ochino (§ [139, 24]), going over to the Reformed church, the order came for a long time into disrepute. Thoroughly characteristic of them was their utter deficiency in scientific culture, which often went the length of a relapse in utter rudeness and vulgarity, and debased their preaching into burlesque “capuchinades.”
- A reformation of the Carmelites was brought about by St. Theresa de Jesus in A.D. 1562. The restored order bore the name of the “Shoeless Carmelites,” and its members distinguished themselves as teachers of the young and in works of charity.Alongside of her, as restorer of the male Carmelites, stood the pious mystic John of the Cross.[432]
- A reformed congregation of Cistercians was founded in A.D. 1586 by Jean de la Barrière, abbot of the monastery of Feuillans [Feuillants]. The mode of life of these Feuillants was so severe that fourteen brothers sank under the burden within a short time, and this led to the modification of the rules in A.D. 1595. The founder was called by Henry III. to establish a monastery near Paris. He continued faithful to the king after he had withdrawn from the league, and thus drew down upon himself the hatred of the fanatical Catholic members of the order to such a degree that they deposed and banished him in A.D. 1592. A later commission of inquiry, however, under Cardinal Bellarmine pronounced him innocent.
§ 149.7. New Orders for Home Missions.
- The Theatines had their origin in an association of pious priests at Theate, which Cajetan, at the advice of John Peter Caraffa, bishop of that place, afterwards Pope Paul IV., constituted into an order. In A.D. 1524, having been organized as clerici regulares, they chose to live not by begging but by depending on Divine providence, i.e. on gifts bestowed without asking, and came to be of importance as a training school for the higher clergy. Their statutes expressly required of them to instruct the people by frequent preaching, to attend to the bodies and souls of the sick, to seek the spiritual good of criminals, and to labour for the overthrow of heresy.
- The Barnabites, also a society of regular clergy, founded by Antonio Maria Zaccaria at Milan, and confirmed by Clement VII. in A.D. 1533. They assigned to themselves the duty of devoting their whole life to works of mercy, pastoral care, education of the young, preaching, hearing confession, and conducting missions. They took the name Barnabites from the church of St. Barnabas, which was given over to them. To them was also attached the order of Angelicals, founded by Louisa Torelli, Countess Guastalla, a rich lady who was widowed for the second time in her twenty-fifth year, and confirmed by Paul III. in A.D. 1534. At first they accompanied the Barnabites on their missions, and wrought for the conversion of women, while the Barnabites devoted their attention to the men. Subsequently, however, on account of loose behaviour, they were obliged to keep within their convents. Each of the nuns in addition to her own name took that of the order, Angelica, which was intended to remind her of her obligation to keep herself pure as the angels.
- The congregation of the Somaskians, or regular clergy of St. Majolus, trace their origin from Jerome Emiliani of Somascho, a town of Lombardy. While serving as an officer in the army, a thoroughly careless man of the world, he happened to be cast into prison. In his gloomy cell he repented of his past sinful life, and made his escape, it is said, by the assistance of the blessed Virgin, in a manner similar to that recorded in Acts v. 19. Some years after, in A.D. 1518, he entered holy orders, and now devoted his whole life to a self-denying practice of benevolence, by founding orphanages and training schools, asylums for fallen women, etc. In order to secure support, instruction, and pastoral care for his numerous and varied dependants, he joined with himself several like-minded clergymen in A.D. 1532, and formed a benevolent society. Its richly blessed activity extended over all northern Italy as far down as Rome, and was not arrested even by the founder’s early death in A.D. 1537. Pius V. in A.D. 1568 prescribed to the society the rule of St. Augustine, and on the ground of this raised it into an order of St. Majolus, so called from a church gifted to it at Pavia by St. Charles Borromeo.
- The Brothers of Charity, in Spain called Hospitallers, in France Frères de Charité, were originally a secular fraternity for giving gratuitous attention to the sick, which was founded in Granada, in A.D. 1540, by a Portuguese, Juan Ciudad, poor in goods but rich in love, to whom his bishop gave the honourable title John of God, Juan di Dios, and who was canonized by Pope Alexander VIII. in A.D. 1690.[433] After Pius V. had in A.D. 1572 given the order the character of a monkish order by putting its members under the rule of St. Augustine, it soon spread over Italy, France, Germany, and Poland. Its cloisters were arranged as well-equipped hospitals for the destitute sick, without distinction of religious confession, so that their studies were directed even more to the medical than to the theological sciences.
- The Ursuline Nuns, founded in A.D. 1537 by a pious virgin, Angela Merici of Brescia, for affording help to needy sufferers of every sort, but especially for the education of girls.
- The Priests of the Oratory, or the Order of the Holy Trinity, founded by St. Philip Neri of Florence in A.D. 1548, a saint of the most profound piety, possessed at the same time with a bright and genial humour.They combined works of charity with exercises of common prayer and Bible study, which they conducted in the oratory of a hospital erected by them.[434]—Continuation, § 156, 7.