§ 149.11. Jesuit Influence upon Worship and Superstition.—As Jesuitism itself may be described as in every respect a reproduction in an exaggerated form of the Catholicism of the mediæval papacy, with all its unevangelical and anti-evangelical deterioration, all this showed itself pre-eminently and characteristically in reference to worship and superstition. Above all, this appeared in the mariolatry, in which the doctrine and practice of the Jesuits far outstripped all the extravagances of the Middle Ages. In the scheme of worship recommended and practised by the Jesuits the Divine Trinity was supplanted by a quaternity, in which Mary was assigned her place as the adopted daughter of the Father, mother of the Son, and spouse of the Holy Ghost, and thus her fervent devotees made her worship overshadow that of the three Persons of the Godhead. Along with the worship of Mary the order gave a new impetus to the veneration of St. Ann (§ [57, 2]), whom Thomas de St. Cyrillo in his book, De laudibus b. Annæ, celebrated as “the grandmother of God and mother-in-law of the Holy Ghost.”In like manner it gave an impulse to worship of saints, images, and relics, to processions, pilgrimages, and rosary devotions, as well as to superstitious beliefs about wonder working scapularies, girdles, medals, amulets, and talismans (§ [186, 2]), Ignatius and Xavier-water, endowed with healing properties through contact with the relics or models of these saints. The Jesuits were also making endless discoveries of new miracle legends and relics previously unknown.They originated the worship of the heart of Jesus (§ [156, 6]), renewed the practice of flagellation, gave a new vitality to the indulgence nuisance, and diligently fostered belief in sorcery, demoniacal possession, apparitions of the devil, and exorcism. They also encouraged the silly notions of the people about witches, with all their cruel and horrible consequences (§ [117, 4]). The Jesuit Delrio, with the approval of his order, published, in A.D. 1599, a book with the title, “Disquisitiones Magicæ,” which, as a worthy companion volume to the “Hammer for Witches,” branded as heresy every doubt as to the truth of witchcraft witnessed to by so many infallible popes, and gave a powerful impetus to witch persecutions throughout Roman Catholic countries. That two noble Jesuits, Tanner, who died in A.D. 1632, and Spee, who died in A.D. 1635, are to be numbered among the first opponents of the gross delusion, does not in the very least affect the indictment brought against the order; for Tanner was persecuted on account of his utterances being contrary to the principles of the society, and Spee’s “Cautio Criminalis” could venture into the light only anonymously, and be printed only in a Protestant town (Ruiteln, 1631).

§ 149.12. Educational Methods and Institutions of the Jesuits.—The Jesuit order never interested itself in elementary and popular education. The pulpit and confessional, as well as the founding and control of spiritual brotherhoods and sisterhoods, afforded ample means and opportunities for impressing their influence upon the lower orders of the people. On the other hand, the order laboured unweariedly to secure professorships in gymnasiums, seminaries for priests, and universities, and that, not merely in the department of theology, but also in all the other faculties. By these means and by the founding of regular Jesuit schools they sought to get into their own hands the education of the higher ranks, so as to secure from among them as large a number as possible of members, friends, and protectors. Under the general Aquaviva this movement obtained an authorized directory and rule in the Ratio et institutio studiorum Soc. J., published in A.D. 1586. And very remarkable although thoroughly one-sided, and thus no doubt most effectually realizing the ends desired, were the results which the order gained in the department of Catholic education, which had been thrown into deep shade by the brilliant advances of Protestant scholarship and educational methods. The study of philology had for its almost sole object the acquiring of the Latin language with Ciceronian elegance, but this only produced fluency in writing and speaking. Greek was studied only by the way; and the knowledge of classical antiquities, as well as the arts and sciences generally, with the exception of mathematics, was utterly neglected. But special attention was devoted to rhetoric, and by means of disputations, public lectures, and dramatic representations readiness in speaking and replying was obtained; but freedom of thought and independent culture were rigorously suppressed. The whole course of instruction, as well as the method of tuition, had for its aim the breaking in and subduing of the pupil’s will. Adherence to rigid order, and unconditional obedience to reasonable demands, and a mild discipline, with strict control, and a regular system by which one was set to watch another, were the means used for arousing to the utmost a spirit of emulation and giving a sharp spur to ambition. The course of study which a scholastic of the order had to pass through in the collegiate establishments was divided into the studia inferiora and superiora. The former, consisting of three classes, embraced the Grammatica as a preliminary basis for the two higher classes of the Humanitas and the Rhetorica. The superiora comprised a three years’ course of Aristotelian philosophy, and a four years’ course of scholastic theology upon the Sentences of the Lombard and the Summa of St. Thomas, together with Bible study upon the Vulgate and the original texts, a little Church history, and, as the crown of the whole curriculum, casuistic ethics.

§ 149.13. Theological Controversies.

  1. The old controversy about the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin had not by any means obtained a final settlement at Trent.By firmly maintaining the decree on the universality of original sin the Franciscans hoped, with the zealous support of the Jesuits Lainez and Salmeron, to obtain express recognition of the pet doctrine of their order (§ [104, 7]); but, on the other hand, the Dominicans so vehemently protested, that the council, in order to prevent a threatened schism, was obliged to leave the point in dispute undecided, and was satisfied with renewing the constitution of Sixtus IV., of A.D. 1483 (§ [112, 4]), and thus prohibiting the one party from accusing the other of heresy.—Continuation, § [156, 5].
  2. The council for the same reason was just as little able to set at rest the burning controversy between Thomists and Scotists on the doctrine of grace (§ [113, 2]) by issuing any decisive statement on the subject. When the pious and learned professor Michael Baius of Lyons came forward in lectures and writings as a zealous defender of Augustinianism, the Franciscans extracted from his works seventy-six propositions, which were condemned by Pius V., A.D. 1567. And when again the Jesuits came forward in support of the papal verdict, the theological faculty of Lyons in A.D. 1587, took the field and passed censure upon thirty-four Pelagianizing propositions of the Jesuits Leonard Less and John Hamel as opposed to Holy Scripture and St. Augustine. In the following year the Portuguese Jesuit Louis Molina, in his treatise Liberi arbitrii cum gratiæ donis concordia of A.D. 1588, set forth a semi-pelagian modification of the disputed propositions; the Dominicans, with the learned Dominicus Bañez at their head, opposed with a bitter polemic. But now the whole order of the Jesuits stood together as one man on the side of Molina. Besieged from both sides into complaints and demands, Clement VIII., in A.D. 1597, appointed a commission, the so called congregatio de auxiliis, to make a thorough investigation into the matter, and to give an exhaustive report. After this commission had spent ten years in vainly endeavouring to construct a formula which would give satisfaction to both parties, Paul V. dissolved it in A.D. 1607, promised to make known his decision at a more suitable time, and then in A.D. 1611 forbade all further disputings on that question. But after little more than thirty years the controversy broke out again at another place in a far more threatening and dangerous form (§ [156, 5]).

§ 149.14. Theological Literature.—Various kinds of expedients were tried in order thoroughly to secure the establishment of the Tridentine system of belief. Paul IV. had as early as A.D. 1499 drawn up a list of prohibited books, which was again ratified at Trent in A.D. 1562, and has been since then continued and enlarged through some forty editions as the Index librorum prohibitorum et expurgandorum (with the note, donec corrigatur).Pius V. founded in A.D. 1571 a special “Congregation of the Index,” for looking after this business.[439] The Professio fidei Tridentinæ of A.D. 1564, and the Catechismus Romanus of A.D. 1566, were issued as authentic statements of the Tridentine doctrine; and in A.D. 1588 a permanent congregation was instituted for the explaining of that system in all cases of dispute that might arise. Also the new Breviarium Romanum of A.D. 1568 (§ [56, 2]), as well as the Missale Romanum of A.D. 1570, served the same end. In A.D. 1566 Pius V. had appointed a commission, the so called Correctores Romani, for the preparing of a new edition of the Corpus juris canonici, which Gregory XIII. issued as the only authentic form in A.D. 1582. Sixtus V. published in A.D. 1589 a new edition of the Vulgate, Editio Sixtina, and, notwithstanding its numerous errata, often only pasted over or scratched out, pronounced it authentic. Clement VIII., however, issued a much altered revision, Editio Clementina, in A.D. 1592, and strictly forbade any alteration of it, but was induced himself to send out next year a second edition, which was guilty of this very fault. Meanwhile Roman Catholics and scholars began, in spite of the Tridentine decree as to the authenticity of the Vulgate, to give diligent attention to the study of the original text of Holy Scripture. The Dominican Santes Pagninus of Lucca, who died in A.D. 1541, a pupil of Savonarola, after careful study of all rabbinical aids, produced a Hebrew lexicon in A.D. 1529, a Hebrew grammar in A.D. 1528, a literally exact rendering of the Old and the New Testaments from the original texts, upon which he was engaged for thirty years, an introduction, with a thorough treatment of the tropical language of Scripture, and commentaries on the Pentateuch and Psalms. The literal meaning was with him palea, folium, cortex; the mystical, triticum, fructus, nucleus suavissimus. More importance was attached to the historical sense by the Dominican Sixtus of Siena, by birth a Jew, who died in A.D. 1569. His Bibliotheca sancta is an introduction to Holy Scripture extremely credible for that age. The Roman Inquisition condemned him to death because of heretical expressions in that work, especially with regard to the deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament; but Pius V. pardoned him, after he had prevailed upon him to retract. The Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who died in A.D. 1621, in his Ll. IV. de verbo Dei controverted the Protestant principle, Scriptura scripturæ interpres. Jerome Emser bitterly inveighed against Luther’s translation of the Bible, and, in A.D. 1527, set over against it an attempted translation of his own, which, however, is nothing more than a reprint of Luther’s, with the changes necessary in consequence of following the Vulgate and unimportant transpositions and alterations of words. The same barefaced impudence was practised by John Dietenberger of Mainz, in whose pretended rendering of the Old Testament of A.D. 1534, the translation of Luther and Leo Judä is followed almost word for word. John Eck of Ingolstadt produced, in A.D. 1537, a translation of the Bible from the Vulgate in the most wretched German, without the least consultation of the original text. On the other hand, the Augustinian monk Luis de Leon, who died in A.D. 1591, was not only celebrated as a learned and brilliant exegete, but also distinguished as a poet and prose writer of the first rank in the national literature of Spain. He was thrown into the prison of the Spanish Inquisition because of a translation and exposition of the Song of Songs in the mystico-ecclesiastical sense, circulated only in manuscript, and because of his depreciation of the Vulgate; and only after a five years’ confinement, during which he narrowly escaped the hands of the hangman, was he set free. The learned Spaniard Arias Montanus, under the patronage of King Philip II., edited the Antwerp polyglott in eight vols. folio, with learned notes and excursuses, in A.D. 1569 ff. The number of exegetes who now gave decided prominence to the literal sense became very considerable toward the end of the century. The most notable of these are Arias Montanus, who died in A.D. 1598, having commented on almost the whole Bible; the Jesuit John Maldonatus, who died in A.D. 1583, on the four gospels; John Mariana, who died in A.D. 1624, Scholia in V. et N.T.; Nich. Serrarius, who died in A.D. 1609, on the Old and New Testaments; and also William Estius of Douay, who died in A.D. 1613, on the New Testament epistles.—In the department of dogmatics the old traditional method was still followed by commenting on the Lombard. The most important schoolman of the age was the Spanish Jesuit Francis Suarez. In A.D. 1528 Berth. Pirstinger, Bishop of Chiemsee, under the title “Tewtsche Theologey,” wrote a complete handbook of theology in the High German dialect, which had completely emancipated itself from the scholastic forms (§ [125, 5]). John Eck also produced a rival work to Melanchthon’s Loci, the Enchiridion locorum communium, which within fifty years passed through forty-six editions. But of much greater importance are the Loci theologici of the Spanish Dominican Melch. Canus, who died in A.D. 1550, which were published at Salamanca in A.D. 1563. They consist not so much of a system of doctrines properly so called, as rather of comprehensive and learned preliminary investigations about the sources, principles, method, and fundamental ideas of dogmatics. He rejects the charge of absolute perversity brought against scholasticism, but grants that the method should be simplified, and what is good in it preserved. For instructions in higher and lower schools the two catechisms of the first German Jesuit provincial, Petrus [Peter] Canisius (§ [161, 1]), Cat. major of A.D. 1554, and Cat. parvus of A.D. 1566, were epoch-making. They were circulated in numberless editions and translations,—the Little Catechism being printed more than 500 times,—and used for two centuries in all the Catholic schools in Germany; and even yet they are held in high esteem. Among the Catholic polemical writers, Cardinal Bellarmine occupies beyond dispute the foremost rank. His Disputationes de controversiis chr. fidei adv. hujus temp. hæreticos, A.D. 1588-1593, are in many respects unsurpassed even to this day. Before him William Lindanus, Bishop of Ghent, author of Panoplia evangelica (Colon., A.D. 1563), and the Jesuit Francis Coster of Mechlin, author of Enchiridion controversiarum (Colon., A.D. 1585), had won a great reputation among their own party as disputants against Protestantism. The services rendered to church history by Cardinal Baronius have already been referred to under § [5, 2].

§ 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.