§ 148.3. Italian and other Antitrinitarians before Socinus.—Claudius of Savoy in A.D. 1534, at Bern, brought forward the idea that Christ is to be called God only because the fulness of the Divine Spirit has been communicated to Him. He was on this account expelled from that city, and soon after even from Basel, and was very coldly received at Wittenberg. He retracted before a synod at Lausanne in A.D. 1537, afterwards played the part of a popular agitator at Augsburg, and was regarded in Memmingen down to A.D. 1550 as a prophet. After that no further trace of him is found.—Closely connected with the previously named Tiziano, by bonds of friendship and of spiritual affinity, and subsequently also with Lælius Socinus, was the Sicilian exile from his native land, Camillo Renato. In A.D. 1545 he obtained at Chiavenna in Veltlin, which then belonged to the country of the Grisons, a situation as a private tutor, and soon became highly respected. He by-and-by, however, involved himself in a violent controversy with the evangelical pastor there, Agostino Mainardo, about the sacraments, which led to his being excommunicated by the Grison synod in A.D. 1550. The central point in his theology is the doctrine of predestination. Only the elect are by God’s Spirit awakened into life, and while the children of the Spirit only slumber in death, and in the resurrection assume a renewed, purely spiritual form of being, the soul of the non-elect die just like their bodies. Although a decided opponent of infant baptism, he did not go so far as to insist upon rebaptism, because he depreciated baptism generally as a mere outward sign, and therefore not necessary. And although he carefully avoided any express repudiation of the doctrine of the Trinity, it can scarcely be doubted that he and all his friends and followers favoured antitrinitarian views.—Matthew Gribaldo, a jurist of Padua, the physician George Blandrata of Saluzzo in Piedmont, and Valentine Gentilis of Calabria, fugitives from their native lands, took up a position of hostility to Calvin in Geneva after Servetus’ death. When Calvin proposed to have them brought before a legal tribunal Gribaldo and Blandrata retired from Geneva and went to Poland. Only Gentilis remained, and he subscribed a confession of faith which Calvin laid before him, but soon declared that he could not continue to hold by it, and set forth as consistent with Scripture doctrine the opinion that the Father as Essentiator is not a person in the Godhead, but the whole substance of the Godhead, and that the Son as Essentiatus proceeding from Him, is only the perfect reflex and highest image of the one deity of the Father. Having been cast into prison and condemned to death he retracted once again, and then withdrew also to Poland.Subsequently, however, he returned to Switzerland, was arrested at Bern, and beheaded as an apostate in A.D. 1566.[424] Blandrata had meanwhile betaken himself to Transylvania, was there appointed physician to the prince, secured the interest of Zapolya II. and many of the nobles for his Unitarianism, so that public recognition was given to it as a fourth confessional form of religion. According to the doctrine set forth by him worship is rendered to Jesus as the man endowed by God with grace beyond all others and raised to universal dominion. But in A.D. 1588 he was murdered by his own nephew, who had remained a Catholic, as he had not patience to wait for his death in order to secure possession of his property. Besides Blandrata we may also mention as one of the chief founders of the Unitarian sect in Transylvania Franz Davidis of Clausenburg. From A.D. 1552 Lutheran pastor, he became a Calvinist in A.D. 1564, and was made a Reformed superintendent, and, at Blandrata’s recommendation, Zapolya’s court preacher. He then openly attached himself by word and writing to the Unitarians, and became, in A.D. 1571, first Unitarian superintendent of Transylvania. On account of his opposing the doctrine of the supernatural conception of Christ and His right to be worshipped, he was repudiated by Blandrata, and was, in A.D. 1579, condemned by Prince Christopher Bathori, as a blasphemer and enemy of Christ, to imprisonment for life. After three months he died in prison.—The Italian Antitrinitarians who had fled to Poland attached themselves there to the Reformed church, and secured many followers not only among the nobles, but also among the Reformed clergy. At their head in Cracow stood the pastor Gregor Pauli, and in Princzov George Schomann. At the Synod of Patrikaw, in A.D. 1562, they first appeared as a close phalanx, making a regular attempt to have the doctrine of the Trinity set aside. Their attack, however, was repelled. A royal edict of A.D. 1564 enacted that all Italian Antitrinitarians should be banished, and a second synod at Patrikaw, in A.D. 1565, excommunicated all their followers. A final endeavour to arrive at a mutual understanding by means of yet another religious conference, while a diet was summoned in connection with this matter at Patrikaw, led to no successful result. From this time forth the Polish Antitrinitarians, who have generally been called Arians, occupy a distinct position as a separate religious denomination.—In the Reformed church of the Palatinate, too, this Unitarian movement ended in an equally tragical scene. The pastor Adam Neuser and the Reformed inspector John Sylvanus took their place about A.D. 1570 along with the Transylvanian Unitarians. During an investigation into their doctrinal views, a manuscript written out by Sylvanus in his own hand was found: “A Confessional Statement against the Tripersonal Idol and the Two Natures of Christ.” He was beheaded in A.D. 1572 in the market-place of Heidelberg. Neuser fled to Transylvania, and at a subsequent period went over to Mohammedanism.—Out of the Italian infidelity of this age probably also arose that renewal of an idea that had already appeared during the Middle Ages (§ [96, 19]) in the book De tribus impostoribus, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed. Of a similar tendency is the Colloquium Heptaplomeres of the French jurist Jean Bodin (§ [117, 4]), who died in A.D. 1597. He was one of seven freethinking Venetian scholars who carried on a discussion upon religion, in which he maintained that deficiencies and mistakes are inherent in the same degree in all positive religions. But an ideal deism is commended as the true religion.
§ 148.4. The Two Socini and the Socinians.—Lælius Socinus, member of a celebrated family of lawyers in Siena, and himself a lawyer, became convinced at an early period that the Romish system of doctrine was not in accordance with Scripture. In order to reach an assured and certain knowledge of the truth, he learnt the original languages in which Scripture was written, by travelling made the acquaintance of the most celebrated theologians in Switzerland, Germany, and Poland, and wrought out for himself a complete and consistent theory of Unitarian belief. He died in Zürich in A.D. 1562 in his thirty-seventh year. His nephew, Faustus Socinus, born at Siena in A.D. 1539, was from his early days trained by personal intercourse and epistolary correspondence with his uncle, and adopted similar views. He was obliged in A.D. 1559 to make his escape to Lyons, but returned in A.D. 1562 to Italy, where for twelve years he was loaded with honours and offices at the court of the Grand-duke Francis de Medici. In order that he might carry on his studies undisturbed, he retired in A.D. 1574 to Basel, from whence in A.D. 1578, at Blandrata’s request, he proceeded to Transylvania to combat Davidis’ refusal of adoration to Christ. In the following year he went to Poland in order to unite, if possible, the various sections of the Unitarians in that country. At Cracow they insisted that he should allow them to rebaptize him, and when he firmly refused they declined to admit him to the communion table. But the decision of his character, his unwearied endeavours to secure peace and union, as well as the superiority of his theological scholarship, in the end won for his ideas a complete victory over the opposing party strifes. He succeeded gradually in expelling from the ranks of the Polish Antitrinitarians non-adorationism as well as Anabaptism, and all their ethical, social, and chiliastic outgrowths, and finally at the Synod of Racau, in A.D. 1603, he secured recognition for his own theological views as he had developed them in disputations and in writings. Persecutions and ill-treatment on the part of the Catholics were not wanting; as, e.g., in A.D. 1594 by the Catholic soldiers, and in A.D. 1598 by the Catholic students at Cracow, who dragged him from a sick-bed on Ascension Day, drew him half naked through the city, beat him till the blood flowed, and would have drowned him had not a Catholic professor delivered him out of their hands. He died in A.D. 1604.—The chief symbol of the Socinian denomination is the Racovian Catechism, published in the Polish language in A.D. 1605. Socinus himself, in company with several others, compiled it, mainly from an earlier short treatise, Relig. christ. brevissima institutio.It was subsequently translated into Latin and also into German.[425]—The Socinian system of doctrine therein set forth is essentially as follows: The Scriptures are the only source of knowledge of saving truth, and as God’s word Scripture can contain nothing that is in contradiction to reason. But the doctrine of the Trinity contradicts the Bible and reason; God is only one Person. Jesus was a mere man, but endowed with Divine powers for the accomplishment of salvation, and as a reward for his perfect obedience raised to Divine majesty, entrusted with authority to judge the living and the dead, so that to him also Divine homage should be paid. The Holy Spirit is only a power or attribute of God. The image of God in men consisted merely in dominion over the creatures. Man was by nature mortal, but had he remained without sin he would by the supernatural operation of God have entered into eternal life without death. There is no such thing as original sin, but only hereditary evil and an inherited inclination toward what is bad, which, however, does not include in it any guilt. The idea of a Divine foreknowledge of human action is to be rejected, because it would lead to the acceptance of the idea of an absolute predestination. Redemption consists in this, that Christ by life and teaching pointed out the better way; and God rewards every one who pursues this better way with the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. The death of Christ was no atoning sacrifice, but merely attached a seal to the teaching of Christ and formed for him a pathway to Divine glory. Conversion must begin by the exercise of one’s own powers, but can be perfected only through the assistance of the Holy Spirit. The sacraments are only ceremonies, which may even be dispensed with, though it is more becoming to retain them as old and beautiful customs. The immortality of the pious Christian is conditioned and made possible by the resurrection of Christ. But the ungodly, along with the devil and his angels, are annihilated; and because in this their punishment consists, Holy Scripture designates the annihilation as eternal death and eternal condemnation.There is no resurrection of the flesh; the living indeed have their bodies restored in the resurrection; but these are not fleshly, but, as Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians xv., spiritual.[426]—Continuation, § [163, 1].
IV. The Counter-Reformation.
§ 149. The Internal Strengthening and Revival of the Catholic Church.[427]
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]).