The new Pope did not lack sympathisers in Italy when he began his task of cleansing the Augean stables without turning the torrent of revolution through them. Cardinal Carvajal welcomed him in a speech which expressed his own ideas if it displeased his colleagues in whose name he was supposed to speak. A memorial drafted by Egidio, General of the Augustinian Eremites, was presented to him, which practically embodied the reforms the new Pope wished to see accomplished.[652] His programme was as extensive as it was thorough. A large part of it may be compared with the reforms sketched in Luther’s Address to the Nobility of the German Nation. He disapproved of the way in which prebends were taken from foundations within national Churches to swell the incomes of Roman Cardinals. He disliked the whole system of papal reservations, indults,[653] exemptions, expectances, which under the fostering care of Pope John XXII. had converted the Curia into a great machine for raking in money from every corner of western Europe.[654] He disapproved of the system of encouraging complainants to pass over the episcopal courts of their own lands and bring their cases at once before the papal court. But every one of these reforms would cut off a source of revenue. It meant that hundreds of hungry Italian Humanists would lose their pensions, and that as many pens would lampoon the Holy Father who was intent on taking bread from his children. It meant that hundreds of ecclesiastical lawyers who had invested their savings in purchasing places in the Curia, would find themselves reduced to penury. It meant that the incomes of the Princes of the Church would shrink in an incalculable manner. Adrian set himself to show such men how to meet the changes in prospect. He brought his old Flemish peasant housekeeper with him to Rome, contented himself with the simple dishes she cooked for him, and lived the life of an anchorite in a corner of his vast palace on the Vatican hill; but in this case example did not seem better than precept. It had seemed so easy to the simple-minded Dutch scholar to reform the Church; everything was provided for in the Canon Law, whose regulations had only to be put in force. His Spanish experience had confirmed him in the possibility of the task. But at Rome he found a system of Rules of Chancery which could not be set aside all at once; there was no convenient Inquisition so organised that it could clear all objectors out of his path; no secular power always ready to support a reforming Churchman.
Where was he to begin? The whole practice of Indulgences appeared to be what was most in need of reform. Its abuses had kindled the storm in Germany. To purge them away would show how much in earnest he was. He knew the subject well. He had written upon it, and therefore had studied it from all sides. Rightly understood, Indulgences were precious things. They showed how a merciful God had empowered His Church to declare that He pardoned sins freely; and, besides, they proclaimed, as no other usage of the Church did, the brotherhood of all believers, within which the stronger could help the weaker, and the holier the more sinful, and all could fulfil the law of Christ by bearing each other’s burdens. Only it was to be remembered that every pardon required a heart unfeignedly penitent, and the sordid taint of money must be got rid of. But—there was always a “but” for poor Adrian—it was shown to him that the papal court could not possibly pay its way without the money which came in so easily from the sale of Indulgences. He was baffled at the very start; checks, for the most part quite unexpected, thwarted every effort. He was like a man in a nightmare, set in a thicket of thorns, where no hewing could set him free, clothes torn, limbs bleeding, till at last he sank exhausted, welcoming the death which freed him from his impossible task. Adrian was the distinguished martyr of the Spanish Reformation. History has dwelt upon his failures; they were only too manifest. It has derided his simplicity in sending Chieregati to Germany with the confession that the Curia was the source of most of the evils which beset the mediæval Church, and at the same time demanding the death of Luther, who had been the first to show the fact in such a way that all men could see it. It has said little of the success that came in due time. Chieregati was unable to overcome the deeply rooted Evangelical Reformation in Germany. But his mission and the honest statement that the Curia was the seat of evil in the Church, date the beginnings of a reaction, of a genuine Romanist party with a vague idea of reforms on mediæval lines. It must be taken as the starting-point of the Counter-Reformation in Germany. Adrian’s example, too, did much to encourage the few spiritually minded Churchmen in Italy, and its effects can be seen in the revival of a zeal to purify the Church which arose during the pontificate of Paul III.
CHAPTER III.
ITALIAN LIBERAL ROMAN CATHOLICS AND THEIR CONCEPTION OF A REFORMATION.[655]
§ 1. The Religious Condition of Italy.
Italy is the land which next to Spain is the most important for the Counter-Reformation. While we can trace in Spain and in Germany a certain solidarity of religious movement, the spiritual conditions of Italy during the first half of the sixteenth century were as manifold as its political conditions. It is impossible to speak of the Italians as a whole. Italy had been the land of the Renaissance, but that great intellectual movement had never rooted itself deeply in the people as it had done in Germany, France, or England.
The Italian peasantry were a class apart from the burghers as they were nowhere else. Their religion was usually a thinly veiled paganism, a belief in the omnipresence of spirits, good and bad, to be thanked, propitiated, coaxed or compelled by use of charms, amulets, spells, and ceremonies. The gods of their pagan ancestors had been replaced by local saints, and received the same kind of worship. To fight for their faith had never been a tradition with them as with the Spaniards; they were not troubled by any continuous sense of sin as were the people of the northern nations; but they had an intense fear of the supernatural, and their faith in the priest, who could stand between them and the terrors of the unseen, was boundless. Goodness touched them as it does all men. But the immorality of their religious guides did not embarrass them; a bad priest had as powerful spells as a good one. The only kind of Christianity which seemed able to impress them and hold them was that of Francis of Assisi. He was the highest embodiment of the Christian spirit for the Italian peasantry; the impression he had made upon the people of the Peninsula was enduring; the wandering revivalist preacher who lived as Francis had done always made the deepest impression. John of Capistrano owed much of his power to the fact that he remained always the Abruzzi peasant. During the whole of the period of the Renaissance the peasantry and the clergy who served the village chapels were regarded by those above them with a scorn that degenerated into hatred. We may search in vain through the whole of the literature of the time for the thought that any attempt ought to be made to lead them to a deeper faith and a purer life. The whole of the peasant population of Italy were believed to be beneath the level of desire for something better than what the religious life of the times gave.[656]
The towns presented an entirely different picture. There was a solidarity binding together all the civic population. The ordinary division of ranks, made by greater or less possession of wealth or by social standing, existed, but it did not prevent a common mode of thinking. We can trace the same thoughts among artisans, small shopkeepers, rich merchants, and the patricians of the towns. No country presented so many varieties of local character as Italy; but the inhabitants of Venice or Florence, Milan, Naples, however else they might differ, were all on the same spiritual level. They thought much about religion; they took the moral degradation of the Church and of the clergy to heart; they longed to see some improvement, if it was only within their own city. They were clearsighted enough to trace the mischief to the influence of the Roman Curia, and their belief in the hopelessness of reforming the evil Court gives a settled despondency to their thought which appears in most of the Chronicles. The external side of religion was inextricably interwoven with their city life. The civic rulers had always something to do with the churches, monasteries, and other ecclesiastical foundations within their walls. They had no great interest in doctrine; what they wanted was a real improvement in the moral living of clergy and of people. When an Italian town was blessed with a good and pious Bishop, it is touching to see how the whole population rallied round him.