WALDENSES SEEKING THE SCRIPTURES (A.D. 1179).
The Waldenses may be described as representing the general craving of the better class of Christians of their time for a fuller acquaintance with the Scriptures. Peter Waldo, a rich citizen of Lyons, obtained from two friends in the priesthood a copy of the Gospels and a collection of the sayings of the Fathers. He sold all his goods and associated himself with others in search of a higher standard of living than was then met with. They were called the Poor Men of Lyons on one side of the Alps, the Poor Men of Lombardy on the other side. They began on the stock of their acquired knowledge of the Scriptures to preach in the streets, thus diffusing this precious knowledge. They had no intention of opposing the Church; but the bishops of the day foresaw that dangerous knowledge was likely to spread and cause trouble. In 1178 the Archbishop of Lyons forbade their preaching. They tried to get the Pope’s sanction to circulate a translation of the Scriptures. The Pope, after due inquiry, dismissed the deputation and condemned them to absolute silence. This sentence did not convince. There were German and Swiss reformers then rising up, seeking similar ends. The authorities, however, rather hunted them, sometimes as wild beasts, and always subjected them to persecution and outrage, both in France and Savoy. They retired into mountain fastnesses from their persecutors. Milton’s sonnet well immortalises and avenges “these slaughtered saints, whose bones lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.”
A LAWYER FOR A POPE (A.D. 1605).
Pope Paul V. was elected in 1605. He had been a lawyer, and excelled in that profession, and then rose successively through all the grades of ecclesiastical dignity. It was noticed how skilfully he avoided making enemies, and this characteristic marked him out for the supreme dignity. He was chosen Pope unexpectedly, but this only caused him to attribute his good fortune to a direct interposition of the Holy Ghost. He became at once exalted in his own estimation above himself and all his contemporaries as a heaven-born Vicar of Christ. He soon resolved to introduce into ecclesiastical polity the rigour, exactitude, and severity of the civil code. Other Popes signalised their elevation by some act of clemency or grace. He began by striking terror into the bystanders by a severe sentence. A poor author had written a Life of a prior Pope, and compared him to the Emperor Tiberius; but the work was unpublished, and lay only as a manuscript in the author’s desk. The matter came to the ears of this Pope, who, notwithstanding the intercession of ambassadors and princes, ordered the writer to be beheaded one morning on the bridge of St. Angelo, the crime being treated as treason. The same Pope treated as a mortal sin the practice of non-residence in a bishop. He treated decretals as laws of God, and all who disobeyed them as blasphemers. Excommunication was freely launched against petty misdemeanants. He claimed rights of sovereignty over Venice, which for centuries had been in abeyance. He asserted indeed a universal sovereignty, and treated all mankind as sheep who had no business to criticise or question their shepherd. It has been said his overweening arrogance only made the Protestant reaction, then beginning, more prompt and decisive.
CHAPTER XII.
SACRED LEGENDS.
LIVES AND LEGENDS OF SAINTS AND MARTYRS.
In the ninth century the monks busied themselves with collecting, compiling, and reviving biographies and histories of saints and martyrs. Many of the records of monasteries had been pillaged and destroyed by the ravages of the Northmen, and it was necessary and expedient to keep alive the memories of notable saints. Some prominent monks of St. Germains, of Paris, of Notker and St. Gall, devoted themselves to this task, and many narratives, genealogies, and legends were rewritten, embellished, and invented, so as to add to the glory of the Church. In the following century, at a Roman Council in 993, much discussion arose as to the holiness of Ulric, who had died twenty years previously, and of whom many miracles were related, and it was agreed that such as he deserved the veneration of the world, and were true mediators between Christ and mankind. This was said to be the first instance of canonisation, a mode of certifying that a saint was to be held in reverence throughout all Christendom. This mode of canonising was at first used by metropolitans, but in 1153 Pope Alexander III. declared that henceforth the Pope alone was to exercise this imperial power.