§ 119.9. The Waldensians.

  1. The range of the missionary enterprise of the Lombard-German Waldensians was widely extended during the 14th century. At the close of that period it stretched “from western Switzerland across the southern borders of the empire, from the upper and middle Rhine along the Main and through Franconia into Thuringia, from Bohemia up to Brandenburg and Pomerania, and with its last advances reached to Prussia, Poland, Silesia, Hungary, Transylvania, and Galicia.”The anonymous writer of Passau, about A.D. 1260 or 1316, reports from his own knowledge of numerous “Leonists,” who in forty-two communities, with a bishop at Einzinspach, in the diocese of Passau, were in his time the subject of inquisitorial interference, and in theory and practice bore all the characteristic marks of the Lombard Leonists. The same applies to the Austrian Waldensians, of whose persecution in A.D. 1391 we have an account by Peter of Pilichdorf. We may also with equal confidence pronounce the Winkelers, so called from holding their services in secret corners, who about this time appeared in Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia, and the Rhine Provinces, to be Waldensians of the same Lombard type. Their confessors, Winkelers in the narrower sense, were itinerant, celibate, and without fixed abode, carrying on missionary work, and administering the sacrament of penance to their adherents. Although, in order to avoid the attentions of the Inquisition, they took part in the Catholic services, and in case of need confessed to Catholic priests, they were nevertheless traced about A.D. 1400 to Strassburg. Thirty-two of them were thrown into prison, and induced under torture to confess. The Dominicans insisted that they should be immediately burned, but the council was satisfied with banishing them from the city. At a later period the Hussites obtained an influence over them. One of their most notable apostles at this time was Fr. Reiser of Swabia. In his travels he went to Bohemia, attached himself to the Hussites there, received from them priestly ordination, and in A.D. 1433 accompanied their representatives to the Basel Council. Then Procopius procured him a call to a pastorate in the little Bohemian town of Landscron, which, however, he soon abandoned. Encouraged by the reformatory tendency of the council, he now remained for a long time in Basel, then conducted missionary work in Germany, at first on his own account, afterwards at the head of a Taborite mission of twelve agents, in which position he styled himself Fridericus Dei gratia Episcopus fidelium in Romana ecclesia Constantini donationem spernentium. At last, in A.D. 1457, he went to Strassburg, with the intention of there ending his days in peace. But soon after his arrival he was apprehended, and in A.D. 1458, along with his faithful follower, Anna Weiler, put to death at the stake.—On the Waldensians in German Switzerland, and the Inquisition’s oft repeated interference with them, Ochsenbein gives a full report, drawn from original documents, specially full in regard to the great Inquisition trial at Freiburg, in A.D. 1430, consisting of ninety-nine wearisome and detailed examinations. Subsequently terrible persecutions, aiming at their extermination, became still more frequent in Switzerland. Also the Swiss Waldensians already bore unmistakable marks of having been influenced by the Hussites.Finally, Wattenbach has made interesting communications regarding the Waldensians in Pomerania and Brandenburg, based upon a manuscript once in the possession of Flacius, but afterwards supposed to have been lost, discovered again in the Wolfenbüttel library in A.D. 1884, though in a very defective form, which contains the original reports of 443 prosecutions for heresy in Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Thuringia. By far the greatest number of these trials were conducted between A.D. 1373 and 1394, by the Cœlestine provincial Peter, appointed inquisitor by the pope. From A.D. 1383 Stettin was the centre of his inquisitorial activity, and on the conclusion of his work he could boast that during the last two years he had converted to the Catholic faith more than 1,000 Waldensians. The victims of the Inquisition belonged almost exclusively to the peasant and artisan classes. Their objectionable doctrines and opinions are essentially almost the same as those of their ancestors of the 13th century. Although equally with their predecessors they abhorred the practice of the Catholic church, and declared all swearing and slaughter to be mortal sin, they yet in great part, and as it seems even without the application of torture, were persuaded to abjure their heresy, and incurred nothing more than a light penance. They did this, perhaps, only in the hope that their indulgent confessors would absolve them from their sin. The last protocols bring us down to A.D. 1458. Since a great number of these heretics were found again in Brandenburg, the elector caused one of their most distinguished leaders, the tailor Matthew Hagen, and three of his disciples to be taken prisoners to Berlin, and commissioned the Bishop of Brandenburg to investigate the case; but owing to his sickness this duty devolved upon John Cannemann, professor and doctor of theology. The elector was himself present at the trial. The investigation showed that the Waldensians of Brandenburg had evidently been influenced in their opinions by the Bohemian Taborites, and that they were constantly in close communion with them, and Hagen confessed that he had been there ordained by Fr. Ryss or Reiser to the clerical office. When Hagen persistently refused to retract, he was delivered over to the civil authorities for punishment, and was by them executed, probably at the stake. His three companions abjured their heresy, and on submitting to church discipline and wearing clothes marked with the sign of the cross, were pardoned. Cannemann then proceeded to Angermünde, where in the city and surrounding country crowds of such heretics resided; and there he succeeded without great difficulty in bringing them to abjure their errors and accept the Catholic confession.—The Waldensians in Bohemia and Moravia quite voluntarily amalgamated with the “United Brethren” there. The remnants of the German and Swiss Waldensians may have attached themselves to the Reformation of the 16th century, but probably for the most part to the Protestant sects of that age, some joining Schwenkfeld, and still more going with the Anabaptists, to whom they were essentially much more closely related than to Luther or Zwingli.—As to the ultimate fate of the Lombard Waldensians themselves, we know nothing. Probably many of them sought escape from the persecutions which raged against them among the French Waldensians in the valleys of Piedmont.

§ 119.9A.

  1. The remnants of the French Waldensians and their lay adherents down to the beginning of the 14th century had for the most part settled in the remote and little cultivated valleys on both sides of the Cottian Alps. This settlement, which bore the character of an assembly as well as that of an isolation, now rendered indispensable the organization of an independent congregational order, such as had never been attempted before. In the arrangements of this community, not only was the question of clerical rank simplified by the combination of the order of bishop or majoralis with that of the presbyter, to which combined office was given the honourable designation of “barbe,” uncle, and instead of the hitherto annual tenure of this office was introduced a life tenure, but also to the laity was assigned a share in the church government at their synod meetings. A bull of John XXII., of A.D. 1332, informs us that then in the Piedmontese valleys ita creverunt et multiplicati sunt hæretici, præcipue de secta Waldensium, quod frequenter congregationes per modum capitali facere inibi præsumpserunt, in quibus aliquando 500 Valdenses fuerunt insimul congregati; yet certainly not merely clergy, as among the earlier congregations on the yearly tenure. The great, yea, extraordinarily great, number of the Waldensians in the Piedmontese valleys is proved by this, that from thence, since A.D. 1340, flourishing colonies of Waldensians were transplanted into Calabria and Apulia with the connivance of the larger proprietors in those parts. Those who had settled on the western side, in the province of Dauphiné, succumbed completely in A.D. 1545 to the oft repeated persecutions. The colonies of southern Italy, however, seem long to have led a quiet and little disturbed life under the protection of the territorial princes, until their adoption of Protestant views called down upon them the attention of the Inquisition, and led to their utter extermination in A.D. 1561. On the other hand, the Waldensians of Piedmont, in spite of continuous oppression and frequently renewed persecution, maintained their existence down to the present day. When in the beginning of the 15th century their residence came under the sway of the Duke of Savoy, the persecutions began, and lasted down to A.D. 1477, when a crusade for their extermination was summoned by Innocent VIII., which ended in the utter rout of the crusading army by Savoy and France. They had now a long period of repose, till their adoption of Protestant views in the 16th century anew awakened against them the horrors of persecution. In this time of rest brotherly intercourse was cultivated between the Waldensian groups and the Bohemian Brethren, who had hitherto maintained relations only with the German Waldensians.This movement originated with the Bohemians. Even at an earlier date, these, inspired by the wish to seek abroad what they could not obtain at home, namely, communion with a church free from Romish corruptions, had made a voyage of discovery in the east, which yielded no result. Now, in A.D. 1497, they determined to make another similar search, under the leadership of Luke of Prague, in the primitive haunts of the Waldensians in France and Italy. The deputies went forth, beginning with the south of France, and the remnants of the French communities in their settlements among the Piedmontese Alps. More detailed reports of their intercourse with these no longer exist, but it cannot be doubted that there was a mutual interchange of religious writings. It is a question therefore that has been much discussed as to which party was the chief gainer by this interchange. But it can now be no longer questioned that the Waldensians, as those who were far less advanced in the direction of the evangelical reformation, learnt much from the Bohemians, and by transferring it into their own literature, secured it as their permanent property.

§ 119.10. The Dutch Reformers sprang mostly from the Brothers of the Common Life (§ [112, 9]).

  1. John Pupper of Goch in Cleves, prior of a cloister founded by him at Mecheln, died A.D. 1475. His works show him to have been a man of deep spirituality. Love, which leads to the true freedom of sons of God, is the material, the sole authority of Scripture is the formal, principle of his theology, which rests on a purely Augustinian foundation. He contends against the doctrine of righteousness by works, the meritoriousness of vows, etc.
  2. John Ruchrath of Wesel, professor in Erfurt, afterwards preacher at Mainz and Worms, died in A.D. 1481. On the basis of a strictly Augustinian theology he opposed the papal systems of anathemas and indulgences, and preached powerfully salvation by Jesus Christ only. For the church doctrine of transubstantiation he substituted one of impanation. He spiritualized the doctrine of the church. Against the ecclesiastical injunction of fasts, he wrote De jejunio; against indulgences, De indulgentiis; against the hierarchy, De potestate ecclesiastica. The Dominicans of Mainz accused and condemned him as a heretic in A.D. 1479. The old man, bent down with age and sickness, was forced to recant, and to burn his writings, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life in a monastery.
  3. John Wessel of Gröningen was a scholar of the Brothers of the Common Life at Zwoll, where Thomas à Kempis exerted a powerful influence over him. He taught in Cologne, Lyons, Paris, and Heidelberg, and then retired to the cloister of Agnes Mount, near Zwoll, where he died in A.D. 1489. His friends called him Lux mundi. Scholastic dialectics, mystical depths, and rich classical culture were in him united with a clear and accurate knowledge of science. Luther says of him: “Had I read Wessel before, my enemies would have said, Luther has taken everything from Wessel, so thoroughly do our ideas agree.” His views are in harmony with Luther’s, especially in what he teaches of Holy Scripture, the universal priesthood of Christians, indulgence, repentance, faith, and justification. He taught that not only popes but even councils may err and have erred; excommunication has merely outward efficacy, indulgence has to do only with ecclesiastical penalties, and God alone can forgive sins; our justification rests on Christ’s righteousness and God’s free grace. Purgatory meant for him nothing more than the intermediate position between earthly imperfection and heavenly perfection, which is attained only through various stages. The protection of powerful friends saved him from the persecution of the Inquisition. Many of his works were destroyed by the diligence of the mendicant friars.The most important of his extant writings is the Farrago, a collection of short treatises.[351]
  4. The priest of Rostock, Nicholas Russ, in the end of the 15th century, deserves honourable mention alongside of these Dutchmen. Living in intimate relations with Bohemian Waldensians, he was subjected to many indignities, and died a fugitive in Livonia. He wrote in the Dutch language a tract against the hierarchy, indulgences, worship of saints and relics, etc., which was translated into German by Flacius. A copy of it was found in Rostock library in A.D. 1850. It is entitled, “Of the Rope or of the Three Strings.” The rope that will raise man from the depths of his corruption must be made up of the three strings, faith, hope, and love. These three strings are described in succession, and so the book forms a complete compendium of Christian faith and life, with a sharp polemic against the debased church doctrine and morals of the age.

§ 119.11. An Italian Reformer.—Jerome Savonarola, born A.D. 1452, monk and from A.D. 1481 prior of the Dominican cloister of San Marco in Florence, was from A.D. 1489 in high repute in that city as an eloquent and passionate preacher of repentance, with even reckless boldness declaiming against the depravity of clergy and laity, princes and people. With his whole soul a Dominican, and as such an enthusiastic admirer of Thomas, practising rigid self-discipline by fasts and flagellations, he was led by the study of Augustine and Scripture to a pure and profound knowledge of the evangelical doctrine of salvation, which he sought, not in the merits and intercession of the saints, nor in the performance of good works, but only in the grace of God and justification through faith in the crucified Saviour of sinners. But with this he combined a prophetic-apocalyptic theory, according to which he thought himself called and fitted by Divine inspiration, like the prophets of the Old Testament, to grapple with the political problems of the age. And, in fact, he made many a hardened sinner tremble by revealing contemplated secret sins, and many of his political prophecies seem to have been fulfilled with surprising accuracy. Thus he prophesied the death of Innocent VIII. in A.D. 1492, and proclaimed the speedy overthrow of the house of the Medici in Florence, as well as the punishment of other Italian tyrants and the thorough reformation of the church by a foreign king crossing the Alps with a powerful army. And lo, in the following year, the king of France, Charles VIII., crossed the Alps to enforce his claims upon Naples and force from the pope recognition of the Basel reforms; the Medici were banished from Florence, and Naples unresistingly fell into the hands of the French. Thus the ascetic monk of San Marco became the man of the people, who now began with ruthless energy to carry out, not only moral and religious reformatory notions, but also his political ideal of a democratic kingdom of God. In vain did Alexander VI. seek by offer of a cardinal’s hat to win over the demagogical prophet and reformer; he only replied, “I desire no other red hat than that coloured by the blood of martyrdom.” In vain did the pope insist that he should appear before him at Rome; in vain did he forbid him the pulpit, from which he so powerfully moved the people. An attempt to restore the Medici also failed. At the carnival in A.D. 1497 Savonarola proved the supremacy of his influence over the people by persuading them, instead of the usual buffoonery, to make a bonfire of the articles of luxury and vanity. But already the political movements were turning out unfavourably, and his utterances were beginning to lose their reputation as true prophecies. Charles VIII. had been compelled to quit Italy in A.D. 1495, and Savonarola’s assurances of his speedy return were still unfulfilled. Popular favour vacillated, while the nobles and the libertine youth were roused to the utmost bitterness against him. The Franciscans, as members of a rival order, were his sworn enemies. The papal ban was pronounced against him in A.D. 1497, and the city was put under the interdict. A monk of his cloister, Fra Domenico Pescia, offered to pass the ordeal of fire in behalf of his master, if any of his opponents would submit to the same trial. A Franciscan declared himself ready to do so, and all arrangements were made. But when Domenico insisted upon taking with him a consecrated host, the trial did not come off, to the great disappointment of a people devotedly fond of shows. A fanatical mob took the prophet prisoner. His bitterest enemies were his judges, who, after torture had extorted from him a confession of false prophecy most repugnant to his inmost convictions, condemned him to death by fire as a deceiver of the people and a heretic. On 23rd May, A.D. 1498, he was, along with Domenico and another monk, hung upon a gallows and then burned. The believing joy with which he endured death deepened the reverence of an ever-increasing band of adherents, who proclaimed him saint and martyr. His portrait in the cell once occupied by him, painted by Fra Bartolomeo, surrounded with the halo of a saint, shows the veneration in which he was held by his generation and by his order. His numerous sermons represent to us his burning oratory. His chief work is his Triumphus crucis of A.D. 1497, an eloquent and thoughtful vindication of Christianity against the half pagan scepticism of the Renaissance, then dominant in Florence and at the court. An exposition of the 51st Psalm, written in prison and not completed, works out, with a clearness and precision never before attained, the doctrine of justification by faith.It was on this account republished by Luther in A.D. 1523.[352]

§ 120. The Revival of Learning.

The classical literature of Greek, and especially of Roman, antiquity was during the Middle Ages in the West by no means so completely unknown and unstudied as is commonly supposed. Rulers like Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Alfred the Great, and the German Ottos encouraged its study. Such scholars as Erigena, Gerbert, Barnard Sylvester, John of Salisbury, Roger Bacon, etc., were relatively well acquainted with it. Moorish learning from Spain and intercourse with Byzantine scholars spread classical culture during the 12th and 13th centuries, and the Hohenstaufen rulers were its eager and liberal patrons. In the 14th century the founders of a national Italian literature, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, earnestly cultivated and encouraged classical studies. But an extraordinary revival of interest in such pursuits took place during the 15th century. The meeting of Greeks and Italians at the Council of Florence in A.D. 1439 (§ [67, 6]) gave the first impulse, while the Turkish invasion and the downfall of Constantinople in A.D. 1453 gave it the finishing touch. Immense numbers of Byzantine scholars fled to Italy, and were accorded an enthusiastic reception at the Vatican and in the houses of the Medici. With the aid of printing, invented about A.D. 1450, the treasures of classical antiquity were made accessible to all. From the time of this immigration, too, classical studies took an altogether new direction. During the Middle Ages they were made almost exclusively to subserve ecclesiastical and theological ends, but now they were conducted in a thoroughly independent spirit, for the purpose of universal human culture. This “humanism” emancipated itself from the service of the church, assumed toward Christianity for the most part an attitude of lofty indifference, and often lost itself in a vain worship of pagan antiquity. Faith was mocked at as well as superstition; sacred history and Greek mythology were treated alike. The youths of all European countries, thirsting for knowledge, crossed the Alps, to draw from the fresh springs of the Italian academies, and took home with them the new ideas, transplanting into distant lands in a modified form the libertinism of the new paganism that had now over-run Italy.

§ 120.1. Italian Humanists.—Italy was the cradle of humanism, the Greeks who settled there (§ [62, 1], [2]), its fathers. The first Greek who appeared as a teacher in Italy was Emmanuel Chrysoloras, in A.D. 1396. After the Council of Florence, Bessarion and Gemisthus Pletho settled there, both ardent adherents of the Platonic philosophy, for which they created an enthusiasm throughout all Italy. From A.D. 1453 Greek littérateurs came in crowds.From their schools classical culture and pagan ideas spread through the land. This paganism penetrated even the highest ranks of the hierarchy. Leo X.[353] is credited with saying, “How many fables about Christ have been used by us and ours through all these centuries is very well known.” It may not be literally authentic, but it accurately expresses the spirit of the papal court. Leo’s private secretary, Cardinal Bembo, gave a mythological version of Christianity in classical Latin. Christ he styled “Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter,” the Holy Spirit “the breath of the celestial Zephyr,” and repentance was with him a Deos superosque manesque placare. Even during the council of Florence Pletho had expressed the opinion that Christianity would soon develop into a universal religion not far removed from classical paganism; and when Pletho died, Bessarion comforted his sons by saying that the deceased had ascended into the pure heavenly spheres, and had joined the Olympic gods in mystic Bacchus dances. In the halls of the Medici there flourished a new Platonic school, which put Plato’s philosophy above Christianity. Alongside of it arose a new peripatetic school, whose representative, Peter Pompanazzo [Pomponazzo], who died A.D. 1526, openly declared that from the philosophical point of view the immortality of the soul is more than doubtful.The celebrated Florentine statesman and historian Macchiavelli,[354] who died A.D. 1527, taught the princes of Italy in his “Prince,” in direct contradiction to Dante’s idealistic “Monarchia,” a realistic polity which was completely emancipated from Christianity and every system of morality, and presented the monster Cæsar Borgia (§ [110, 12]) as a pattern of an energetic prince, consistently labouring for the end he had in view. Looseness of morals went hand in hand with laxity in religion. Obscene poems and pictures circulated among the humanists, and their practice was not behind their theory. Poggio’s lewd facetiæ, as well as Boccadelli’s indecent epigrams, fascinated the cultured Christian world as much by their lascivious contents as by their classical style. From the dialogues of Laurentius Valla on lust and the true good, which were meant to extol the superiority of Christian morals over those of the Epicureans and Stoics, comes the saying that the Greek courtesans were more in favour than the Christian nuns. The highly gifted poet, Pietro Aretino, in his poetical prose writings reached the utmost pitch of obscenity. He was called “the divine Aretino,” and not only Charles V. and Francis I. honoured him with presents and pensions, but also Leo X., Clement VIII., and even Paul III. showed him their esteem and favour. In their published works the Italian humanists generally ignored rather than contested the church and its doctrines and morality. But Laurentius Valla, who died A.D. 1457, ventured in his Adnotationes in N.T. freely to find fault with and correct the Vulgate. He did even more, for he pronounced the Donation of Constantine (§ [87, 4]) a forgery, and poured forth bitter invectives against the cupidity of the papacy. He also denied the genuineness of the correspondence of Christ with Abgarus [Abgar] (§ [13, 2]), as well as that of the Areopagite writings (§ [47, 11]) and questioned if the Apostles’ Creed was the work of the apostles (§ [35, 2]). The Inquisition sought to get hold of him, but Nicholas V. (§ [110, 10]) frustrated the attempt and showed him kindness. With all his classical culture, however, Valla retained no small reverence for Christianity. In a still higher degree is this true of John Picus, Prince of Mirandola, the phœnix of that age, celebrated as a miracle of learning and culture, who united in himself all the nobler strivings of the present and the past. When a youth of twenty-one he nailed up at Rome nine hundred theses from all departments of knowledge. The proposed disputation did not then come off, because many of those theses gave rise to charges of heresy, from which he was cleared only by Alexander VI. in A.D. 1493. The combination of all sciences and the reconciliation of all systems of philosophy among themselves and with revelation on the basis of the Cabbala was the main point in his endeavours. He has wrought out this idea in his Heptaplus, in which, by means of a sevenfold sense of Scripture, he succeeds in deducing all the wisdom of the world from the first chapter of Genesis. He died in A.D. 1494, in the thirty-first year of his age. In the last year of his life, renouncing the world and its glory, he set himself with all his powers to the study of Scripture, and meant to go from land to land preaching the Cross of Christ. His intentions were frustrated by death. His saying is a very characteristic one: Philosophia veritatem quærit, theologia invenit, religio possidet.