The Age of the Reformation

by Preserved Smith

[Sidenote: The ecclesia Anglicana]

England traveled farthest on the road towards a national church. For three centuries she had been asserting the rights of her government to direct spiritual as well as temporal matters. The Statute of Mortmain [Sidenote: 1279] forbade the alienation of land from the jurisdiction of the civil power by appropriating it to religious persons. The withdrawing of land from the obligation to pay taxes and feudal dues was thus checked. The encroachment of the civil power, both in England and France, was bitterly felt by the popes. Boniface VIII endeavored to stem the flood by the bull Clericis laicos [Sidenote: 1296] forbidding the taxation of clergy by any secular government, and the bull Unam Sanctam [Sidenote: 1302] asserting the universal monarchy of the Roman pontiff in the strongest possible terms. But these exorbitant claims were without effect. The Statute of Provisors [Sidenote: 1351 and 1390] forbade the appointment to English benefices by the pope, and the Statute of Praemunire [Sidenote: 1353 and 1393] took away the right of {42} English subjects to appeal from the courts of their own country to Rome. The success of Wyclif's movement was largely due to his patriotism. Though the signs of strife with the pope were fewer in the fifteenth century, there is no doubt that the national feeling persisted.

[Sidenote: The Gallican Church]

France manifested a spirit of liberty hardly less fierce than that of England. It was the French King Philip the Fair who humiliated Boniface VIII so severely that he died of chagrin. During almost the whole of the fourteenth century the residence of a pope subservient to France at Avignon prevented any difficulties, but no sooner had the Council of Constance restored the head of the unified church to Rome than the old conflict again burst forth. [Sidenote: 1438] The extreme claims of the Gallican church were asserted in the law known as the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, by which the pope was left hardly any right of appointment, of jurisdiction, or of raising revenue in France. The supremacy of a council over the pope was explicitly asserted, as was the right of the civil magistrate to order ecclesiastical affairs in his dominions. When the pontiffs refused to recognize this almost schismatical position taken by France, the Pragmatic Sanction was further fortified by a law sentencing to death any person who should bring into the country a bull repugnant to it. Strenuous efforts of the papacy were directed to secure the repeal of this document, and in 1461 Pius II induced Louis XI to revoke it in return for political concessions in Naples. This action, opposed by the University and Parlement of Paris, proved so unpopular that two years later the Gallican liberties were reasserted in their full extent.

Harmony was established between the interests of the curia and of the French government by the compromise known as the Concordat of Bologna. [Sidenote: 1516] The {43} concessions to the king were so heavy that it was difficult for Leo X to get his cardinals to consent to them. Almost the whole power of appointment, of jurisdiction, and of taxation was put into the royal hands, some stipulations being made against the conferring of benefices on immoral priests and against the frivolous imposition of ecclesiastical punishments. What the pope gained was the abandonment of the assertion made at Bourges of the supremacy of a general council. The Concordat was greeted by a storm of protest in France. The Sorbonne refused to recognize it and appealed at once to a general council. The king, however, had the refractory members arrested and decreed the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction in 1518.

In Italy and Germany the growth of a national state [Sidenote: Italy] was retarded by the fact that one was the seat of the pope, the other of the emperor, each of them claiming a universal authority. Moreover, these two powers were continually at odds. The long investiture strife, culminating in the triumph of Gregory VII at Canossa [Sidenote: 1077] and ending in the Concordat of Worms, [Sidenote: 1122] could not permanently settle the relations of the two. Whereas Aquinas and the Canon Law maintained the superiority of the pope, there were not lacking asserters of the imperial preëminence. William of Occam's argument to prove that the emperor might depose an heretical pope was taken up by Marsiglio of Padua, whose Defender of the Peace [Sidenote: c. 1324] ranks among the ablest of political pamphlets. In order to reduce the power of the pope, whom he called "the great dragon and old serpent," he advanced the civil government to a complete supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. He stated that the only authority in matters of faith was the Bible, with the necessary interpretation given it by a general council composed of both clergy and laymen; that the emperor had the right to convoke and {44} direct this council and to punish all priests, prelates and the supreme pontiff; that the Canon Law had no validity; that no temporal punishment should be visited on heresy save by the state, and no spiritual punishment be valid without the consent of the state.

[Sidenote: Germany]

With such a weapon in their hands the emperors might have taken an even stronger stand than did the kings of England and France but for the lack of unity in their dominions. Germany was divided into a large number of practically independent states. It was in these and not in the empire as a whole that an approach was made to a form of national church, such as was realized after Luther had broken the bondage of Rome. When Duke Rudolph IV of Austria in the fourteenth century stated that he intended to be pope, archbishop, archdeacon and dean in his own land, when the dukes of Bavaria, Saxony and Cleves made similar boasts, they but put in a strong form the program that they in part realized. The princes gradually acquired the right of patronage to church benefices, and they permitted no bulls to be published, no indulgences sold, without their permission. The Free Cities acted in much the same way. The authority of the German states over their own spiritualities was no innovation of the heresy of Wittenberg.

For all Germany's internal division there was a certain national consciousness, due to the common language. In no point were the people more agreed than in their opposition to the rule of the Italian Curia. [Sidenote: 1382] At one time the monasteries of Cologne signed a compact to resist Gregory XI in a proposed levy of tithes, stating that, "in consequence of the exactions by which the Papal Court burdens the clergy the Apostolic See has fallen into contempt and the Catholic faith in these parts seems to be seriously imperiled." Again, {45} a Knight of the Teutonic Order in Prussia [Sidenote: 1430] wrote: "Greed reigns supreme in the Roman Court, and day by day finds new devices and artifices for extorting money from Germany under pretext of ecclesiastical fees. Hence arise much outcry, complaint and heart-burning. . . . Many questions about the papacy will be answered, or else obedience will ultimately be entirely renounced to escape from these outrageous exactions of the Italians."

The relief expected from the Council of Basle failed, and abuses were only made worse by a compact between Frederick III and Nicholas V, known as the Concordat of Vienna. [Sidenote: 1448] This treaty was by no means comparable with the English and French legislation, but was merely a division of the spoils between the two supreme rulers at the expense of the people. The power of appointment to high ecclesiastical positions was divided, annates were confirmed, and in general a considerable increase of the authority of the Curia was established.