§ 149.15. Art and Poetry.—In the second Dutch school (§ [115, 8]) musical taste was thoroughly depraved, and Church music especially became so artificial, florid, and secularized, that some of the Tridentine fathers in all seriousness proposed that figured music should be completely banished from the church services, at least in the performance of mass. It was when matters had reached this low ebb that Palestrina, Giovanni Pietro Aloisio Sante of Palestrina, appeared as the saviour and regenerator of sacred musical art. He was a scholar of Goudimel, who, before he passed over to the Reformed church (§ [143, 2]), had founded a school of music in Rome. As early as A.D. 1560, in his sacred compositions on Micah vi. 3 ff., which to this day are performed always on Good Friday in the Sistine Chapel, Palestrina secured a firm position as an unsurpassed master of genuine ecclesiastical music. The commission appointed by Pius IV. for the reformation of church music called upon him therefore to submit specimens of his compositions. He produced three masses in A.D. 1565, among which was the celebrated Missa Marcelli, dedicated to his former patron, the deceased pope Marcellus II. With this masterpiece, which represents the highest perfection of Catholic church music, and entitled its author to rank as a prince of musical art, Musicæ princeps, the retention of the figured music in the mass, so keenly contested in the council, was decided upon.—The immense success of the sacred song of the Protestant church as a means for spreading the Reformation constrained the Catholic church, very unwillingly, to seek to counteract this danger by the translation of Latin hymns and the composition of songs of praise in German (§ [115, 7]), as well as by the liberal introduction of them into the public services. Between A.D. 1470 and A.D. 1631 there have been enumerated no fewer than sixty-two collections of German Catholic church hymns. The most important are those of Michael Vehe, Provost of Halle, A.D. 1537; of George Witzel, a renegade Lutheran, A.D. 1550; of John Leisetritt, dean of the cathedral at Budissin, A.D. 1567; and Gregory Corner, Abbot of Gottweih, in his “Great Catholic Hymnbook,” A.D. 1625. Caspar Ulenberg, previously a Lutheran, in A.D. 1582 rendered the psalms of David into German rhyme; and Rutzer Eding published in A.D. 1583 a German mass, with translation of the Latin church hymns. The names of the poets and translators are for the most part unknown. Many a beautiful sacred song, too, is met with among these rich materials, an evidence of what might have been the result if the Catholic church of Germany, instead of having been opposed or only half-hearted, had fostered and encouraged this important part of the Divine service with whole-hearted enthusiasm.—The arts of architecture and painting continued to be still cultivated successfully in the Roman Catholic church (§ [115, 13]). Besides Correggio and Titian, and after them, named with the noble masters of painting, are the two Caracci, uncle and nephew, Domenichino and Guido Reni. Michael Angelo Buonarotti, who died in A.D. 1564 an old man of ninety years, gave expression to the most profound Christian ideas in his works of painting and sculpture. The Renaissance style during the 16th century gave scope for the further application and development of ecclesiastical architecture. The most magnificent church building of the century was the rebuilding of St. Peter’s church at Rome, undertaken by Pope Julius II. in A.D. 1506, which Bramante began and Michael Angelo after his plan carried out. As painter and statuary, Angelo had refused slavishly to follow the traditions of the church in respect of the worship of Mary and the saints, and so, too, as a poet in glowing sonnets he only gave expression to deep sorrow for sin, and his true spiritual faith in the crucified Sin-bearer. His countryman Torquato Tasso, who died in A.D. 1595, in his “Jerusalem Delivered,” celebrated the Christian heroic of mediæval Catholicism. In the history of Spanish poetry, the Christian lyrics of St. Theresa and Luis de Leon are regarded even to this day as unsurpassed in excellence.
§ 149.16. The Spanish Mystics.—In consequence of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic church was compelled to have recourse to the revivification of the mediæval mysticism from which it had become alienated in life and doctrine, in order by means of it to give that intensity and inward power to the religious life which was now felt to be indispensably necessary without falling away from the church in which alone salvation can be found, and without making surrender to the inanis fiducia hæreticorum. Thus there arose from about the middle of the century, first of all in Spanish cloisters, a new development of mysticism, which, without expressly attacking the “outer way” of the ecclesiastical practice of piety, introduced and recommended a second higher and nobler method, called the “inner way,” because leading to Christian perfection. This consisted in a regular and deeply spiritual exercise in prayer and contemplation, with a decided preference for inward unuttered prayer, with complete mortification of one’s own self-will and absolute self-surrender to the Divine guidance, having for its aim and climax the most blessed rest in fellowship with God. A pious Minorite, St. Peter of Alcantara, gave to this tendency a doctrinal basis by his treatise, De oratione et meditatione, published in A.D. 1545, in which he manifests a most bitter opposition to Protestantism, and a zealous readiness to co-operate in all the horrid cruelties of the Spanish counter-reformation. Its highest point is reached in the famous Carmelite nun of Avila in Old Castile, St. Theresa de Jesus, who died in A.D. 1582, the most celebrated saint of the Spanish church. Introduced by Peter of Alcantara in A.D. 1560 to the profound mysteries of contemplation, and favoured amid the convulsions of her life of prayer with frequent visions of Christ, she undertook, in A.D. 1562, by the founding of a new cloister, to lead her order back to the strict observance of this old rule. The fame of her sanctity soon had spread over all Spain, but all the more did the hatred of the brothers and sisters of her order who favoured the lax observance increase. They even carried the bitterness so far as to get the Inquisition to originate a heretic prosecution against her in A.D. 1579, on the ground of her pretension to have visions, but this was abandoned by command of the king. Among her numerous writings, of which Luis de Leon, in A.D. 1583, issued a complete edition, which have been translated into all the languages of Europe, the “Castillo interior,” i.e. the City of Mansoul, or the seven Residences of the Soul, is the one in which her mysticism is most completely developed. It describes the stages through which the soul must pass in order to become wholly one with God. Her faithful fellow labourer in the reforming of the order, St. John of the Cross, who died in A.D. 1591, in regard to mysticism occupied the same ground with her. His writings, among which the Subida del Monte Carmel, “The Climbing of Mount Carmel,” is the most comprehensive, are not to be compared with those of St. Theresa in the rare witchery of an enchanting style, but are distinguished by solidity and maturity of thought. The brethren of the order opposed to reform showed toward John a far more severe and continuous bitterness than they did toward Theresa. Even in A.D. 1575 he was imprisoned in one of their cloisters, and cruelly ill used. He made his escape indeed in the following year by flight, but only in A.D. 1588 did a papal brief, by a formal establishment of the Congregation of the Barefooted Carmelites, put an end to all oppressions and persecutions. The mysticism recommended by him and St. Theresa found entrance now more and more into the cloisters, not only of the Carmelites, but also of the other orders, and numbered many adherents among the higher and lower clergy, as well as among cultured laymen.—But while on this side the traditional forms and doctrines usual in the practice of piety in the church sank indeed into the background, but were never expressly repudiated or contradicted, there arose upon this same mystical basis numerous sects designated enlightened “Alumbrados,” who went all the length of pouring abuse and contempt upon every kind of church form and doctrine, and thus calling forth down to the 17th century constant persecution from the Inquisition. Theresa was canonized in A.D. 1622, Peter of Alcantara in A.D. 1669, and John of the Cross in A.D. 1726.—Continuation, § 156.
§ 149.17. There were also many noble products of the practical Christian life brought forth in that new departure which Catholicism after the Reformation in the interests of self-preservation had been obliged to undertake. Evidence of this practical endeavour was given in the zealous manner in which home missions were prosecuted. From out of the general body of Catholicism there sprang up a new series of saints, who were quite worthy to rank alongside those of the Middle Ages. Most highly distinguished among these was Charles Borromeo, born A.D. 1538, died A.D. 1584, who, from his position as nephew of Pope Pius IV., and from his high rank in the church as cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, exerted a powerful influence upon the Tridentine Council and the curia, which he used for the removal of many abuses. His life is the realization of the perfect ideal of that of a Catholic pastor and prelate. He also proved himself worthy of being so regarded during the dreadful pestilence that raged in Milan in A.D. 1576.Paul V. canonized him in A.D. 1610, and to this day his tall figure in a colossal statue looks out upon the province of Milan as the patron of the state.[440]—Along with the intensification of the specifically Catholic sentiment awakened in the cloisters by means of the endeavours put forth in the counter-reformation and spreading out from these into the general Catholic community, we meet with a revival of the old zeal for monkish asceticism. The Jesuits especially laboured earnestly for the restoration of the discipline of the lash, brought at an early period into discredit by the extravagances of the Flagellants (§ [116, 3]). And besides these many also of the new and reformed orders gave themselves to further and advance the counter-reformation. Cardinal Borromeo, above referred to, took a lively interest in this mode of spiritual disciplinary exercise. After he had at a council at Milan, in A.D. 1569, given a new organization to the flagellant societies of his diocese, and Pope Gregory XIII., in A.D. 1572, had endowed with a rich indulgence all the associations of that sort, they in a very short time spread again over all Italy. In Rome alone they numbered over a hundred, which, according to their colours, were designated as white, gray, black, red, green, blue, etc. Especially on Good Friday they vied with one another in getting up their flagellant processions on the most magnificent scale. In France they were patronized by Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, and King Henry III. was himself a devoted and enthusiastic member of the order. In Germany, too, the Jesuits brought the flagellants into favour, wherever they could get a footing, especially in the north German cities. The learned Jesuit, Jac. Gretson, in Ingolstadt, in the very beginning of the 17th century, wrote seven elaborate rhetorical controversial tracts, De spontanea disciplinarum s. flagellorum cruce, etc., against the Protestant opponents of the flagellant craze. Afterwards, however, the ardour and zeal for the practice of this discipline cooled down more and more in most of the monkish orders as well as in general society, and local flagellant processions, in which there was generally more of a vain, empty show than of real penitential earnestness, are to be met with now only as occasional displays in Spain and Italy, and in the Romish states of America.
§ 150. Foreign Missions.
The grand discoveries of new continents which had preceded the Reformation age, and the serious losses sustained in European countries, revived the interest in missions throughout the Roman Catholic church. Commercial enterprise and campaigns for the conquest of the world, which were still almost exclusively in the hands of the Catholic states, afforded opportunities for the prosecution of mission work in the New World; and abundant means for carrying it on were furnished by the numerous monkish orders.
§ 150.1. Missions to the Heathen: East Indies and China.—The Portuguese founded the first bishopric in the East Indies, at Goa on the Malabar Coast, in A.D. 1534. Soon thereafter a tribunal of the Inquisition was established alongside of it. The bishop confined his attention to the European immigrants, and the inquisitors applied themselves mainly to secure the destruction of the Thomas-Christians settled there. Neither of them had the remotest idea of doing any properly speaking mission work among the native races. But it was quite different when, in A.D. 1542, Loyola’s companion Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indians, made his appearance as papal nuncio in this wide field along with two other Jesuits. Working with glowing zeal and unparalleled self-denial, he baptized in a short time a hundred thousand, mostly of the low, despised caste of pariahs, going forward certainly with a haste which never allowed him time to make sure that the spiritual fruits should bear any proportion to the outward successes. His unmeasured missionary fervour, to which characteristic expression was given in his saying, Amplius! amplius! impelled him constantly to go on seeking for new fields of labour. From the East Indies he moved on to Japan, and only his death, which occurred in A.D. 1552, hindered him from pushing his way into China.Numerous successors from Loyola’s order undertook the carrying on of his work, and so soon as A.D. 1565 the converts of the East Indies numbered 300,000.[441]—Commerce opened the way for missions into China, where all traces of earlier Christianity (§§ 72, 1; [93, 15]) had already completely vanished, and proud contempt of everything stood in the way of the introduction of any western customs or forms of worship. But the Jesuits, with Matthew Ricci of Ancona at their head, by making use of their knowledge of mathematical, mechanical, and physical science, secured for themselves access even to the court. Ricci at first completely nationalized himself, and then began his missionary enterprise by introducing Christian instructions into his mathematical and astronomical lectures. In order to render the Chinese favourable to the adoption of Christianity, he represented it to be a renewal and restoration of the old doctrine of Confucius. The confession of faith which the new converts before baptism were required to make was confined to an acknowledgment of one God and recognition of the obligation of the ten commandments. And even in worship he tolerated many heathen practices and customs. The mathematical and astronomical writings composed by him in the Chinese language are said to have extended to 150 volumes. The Chinese artillery also stood under his immediate supervision.When he died, in A.D. 1610, the Jesuits had even then formed a network of hundreds of churches spread over a great part of the land.[442]—Continuation, § 156, 11, 12.
§ 150.2. Japan.—Xavier had here, chiefly on account of his defective acquaintance with the language, relatively speaking only a very small measure of success. But other Jesuits followed in his footsteps, and enjoyed the most brilliant success; so that in A.D. 1581 there were already more than two hundred churches and about 150,000 Christians in the land, of whom many belonged to the old feudal nobility, the daimios, while some were even imperial princes. This distinguished success was greatly owing, on the one hand, to the favour of the then military commander-in-chief Nobunaga, who greeted the advance of Christianity as a welcome means for undermining the influence of the Buddhist bonzes, which had become supreme, and, on the other hand, to the abundance of money put by Portugal and Spain at the disposal of the Jesuits, which they used as well in the adorning of the Catholic services as in the bestowing of liberal gifts upon the converts. It was, however, chiefly owing to the close and essential relationship between the Romish ritual and constitution and those of Buddhism, which rendered the transition from the one to the other by no means very difficult. Then everything that had gone to secure for Buddhism in Japan a superiority over the simple old national Sintuism or ancestor-worship, as well as everything that the Japanese Buddhists had been wont to regard as indispensable requisites of worship, the elegance of the temples, altars glittering with bright colours blending together, theatrical display in the vestments for their priests, grand solemn processions and masses, incense, images, statues and rosaries, a hierarchical system, the tonsure, celibacy, cloisters for monks and nuns, worship of saints and images, pilgrimages, etc., was given them in even an exaggerated degree in Jesuit Christianity. The zealous neophytes from among the daimios effectually backed up the preaching of the Jesuit fathers by fire and sword. They compelled the subjects of their provinces to go over to the Christian religion, banished or put to death those who proved refractory, and overthrew the Buddhist temples and cloisters. In A.D. 1582 they sent an embassy of four young noblemen to Europe to pay homage to the pope. After they had received the most flattering reception in Madrid from Philip II., and in Rome from Gregory XIII. and Sixtus V., they returned to their own home in A.D. 1590, accompanied by seventeen Jesuit priests, who were soon followed by whole crowds of mendicant friars. By the close of the century the number of native Christians had increased to 600,000. But meanwhile the axe was already being laid at the root of the tree that had thriven so wondrously. Nobunaga’s successor Hidejoshi found occasion, in A.D. 1587, to issue a decree banishing from the country all foreign missionaries. The Jesuits were wise enough to cease at once all public preaching, but the begging monks treated the decree with contempt and open defiance.In consequence of this six Franciscans and seventeen Japanese converts of theirs, and along with them also three Jesuits, were arrested at Nagasaki and there crucified (§ 156, 11). Soon afterwards Hidejoshi died. One of his generals, Ijejasu, to whom he had assigned the regency during the minority of his six year old son, assumed the sovereign power to himself. A civil war was the result, and in A.D. 1600 his opponents, among whom were certain Christian daimios, were conquered in a bloody battle. Ijejasu persuaded the mikado to give him the hereditary rank of shiogun, i.e. field-marshal of the empire; and his successors down to the revolution of A.D. 1867 (§ 182, 5), as military vice-emperors alongside of the really powerless mikado, had all the power of government in their own hands.Thus were corrupting elements introduced which led to the complete overthrow of the Japanese church.[443]
§ 150.3. America.—The desire to spread Christ’s kingdom was not by any means the smallest among the impulses that contributed to Christopher Columbus’ enthusiasm for the discovery of new countries; but the greediness, cruelty, and animosity of the Spanish conquerors, who had less interest in converting the natives into Christians than in reducing them to slavery, was a terrible hindrance to the Christianizing of the New World. The Christian missionaries indeed most emphatically, but with only a small measure of success, defended the human rights of the ill-used Indians. The noble Mexican bishop, Bartholomew de las Casas, in particular wrought unweariedly, devoting his whole life, A.D. 1474 to A.D. 1566, to the sacred task, not only of instructing the Indians, but also of saving them from the hands of his greedy and bloodthirsty fellow countrymen. Six times he journeyed to Spain in order to use personal influence in high quarters for ameliorating the lot of his protégés, and he was obliged to undertake a seventh journey in order to justify himself and repel the violent accusations of his enemies. Even in A.D. 1517 Charles V. had, at the bishop’s entreaty, granted personal liberty to the Indians, but at the same time gave permission to the Spanish colonists to introduce African negro slaves for the laborious work in the mines and on the plantations. The enslaving of the natives, however, was still continued, and only in A.D. 1547 were vigorous measures taken to secure the suppression of the practice, after many millions of Indians had been already sacrificed. So far as the Spanish dominion extended Christianity also spread, and was established by means of the Inquisition.—In South America the Portuguese held sway in the rich and as yet little known empire of Brazil. In A.D. 1549 King John III. sent thither a Jesuit mission, with Emanuel Nobreya at its head.Amid unspeakable hardships they won over the native cannibals to Christianity and civilization.[444]
§ 150.4. The newly awakened missionary zeal of the church made an attempt also upon the schismatical Churches of the East. The enterprise, however, was even moderately successful only in reference to a portion of the Persian and East Indian Nestorians (§ 72, 1), who in Persia were called Syrian or Chaldæan Christians, because of the language which they used in their liturgy, and in India Thomas-Christians, because they professed to have had the Apostle Thomas as their founder. They had their origin really, in A.D. 1551, in Mesopotamia, in consequence of a double episcopal election there. The one party chose a priest Sulakas, whom Pope Julius III. had consecrated priest under the name of John, but the other party refused to acknowledge him. The Archbishop Alexius Menezius also became involved in these controversies, and succeeded in getting the former party to recognise the Roman primacy and accept the Catholic doctrine; while, on the other hand, Rome permitted the retention of its ancient ritual and form of constitution. These united Nestorians were now called by way of eminence Chaldæan Christians. Their chief, chosen by themselves and approved by the pope, was called Bishop of Babylon, but had his residence at Mosul in Mesopotamia. The Thomas-Christians of India, however, proved much more troublesome. But even they were obliged, after a long, protracted struggle, at a synod at Diampur in A.D. 1599, to abjure the Nestorian heresy. All Syrian books were burnt, and a new Malabar liturgy in accordance with the Romish type was introduced.—The existence of an independent Jacobite Christian church in Abyssinia (§ 64, 1) first became known in Europe in the beginning of the sixteenth century through Portuguese commercial and diplomatic missions. The Abyssinian sultan, David, in A.D. 1514, upon promise of Portuguese help, of which he stood in need because of the aggressions of the neighbouring Mohammadan [Mohammedan] states, agreed to receive the physician Bermudez as Catholic patriarch. But the next sultan, Claudius, expelled him from his land. In A.D. 1562 Jesuit missionaries began to settle in the country; but Claudius denounced them as Arians, and wished the people to have nothing to do with them. As the result of a friendly communication from the Coptic patriarch, Paul V., in the beginning of the 17th century, sent the Jesuit Rodriguez into Egypt. The patriarch accepted the rich presents which the Jesuit brought with him, and then made him return home without having gained the object of his mission.