A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)

by Thomas M. Lindsay

He dwelt with complacency on the thought that he had never longed for ecclesiastical place or power. The Pope had persuaded him to permit himself to be made Cardinal because the Holy See had need of his service. He was conscious with a sort of proud humility that he was generally esteemed the foremost Italian of his generation, that enthusiastic friends spoke of his learning and virtue as “more divine than human.” He thought much more of his position as a Venetian Senator and the trusted counsellor of the Republic, whose constitution he believed to be the embodiment of the best political principles of the time, than he did of his place in the Roman Court. “I for my part, to tell the truth, do not think that the Red Hat is my highest honour,” he was accustomed to say. Such was the leader of the liberal-minded Roman Catholics of Italy, who was asked by the Pope and urgently entreated by the Emperor to visit Germany and end the schism by his persuasions.

Giovanni Picture’s Caraffa, the intimate, the rival and the supplanter of Contarini, belonged to one of the oldest noble families of Naples. His house was intimately allied to the Church, and for more than one hundred years its members had been Archbishops of Naples, and several had been made Cardinals. The boy was destined for the Church. As a child he had longed to enter a cloister, and had once set out to join the Dominicans. His family, however, had other views for him. He was sent when eighteen years of age to the papal court, and was soon almost burdened with marks of distinction and with offices. He had been highly educated while at Naples, and had steeped himself in the New Learning. At the Humanist Courts of Alexander VI. and Julius II. he studied Greek and Hebrew, and became an accomplished theologian besides. In 1504, much against his will, he had been consecrated Bishop of the small diocese of Chieti (Theate), lying in the wild Abruzzi district, almost due east of Rome, on the slopes from the highest spurs of the Apennines to the Adriatic. He found his people demoralised by constant feuds, and the priests worse than their parishioners. Caraffa, determined to reduce his unruly diocese to order, began with persuasion; and finding this of small avail, flogged people and clergy into something like decency by repeated spiritual censures and rigidly enforced excommunications. His methods revealed the man. His talents were of too high an order and his family influence too great to permit him to linger in his uncivilised diocese. He was sent as Nuncio to England and thence to Spain. His visit to the latter country made an indelible impression on his strong nature. His earnest petitions for the independence of his native Naples were contemptuously refused by the young King Charles, and the fierce Neapolitan pursued the Emperor with an undying hatred. But what was more important, his stay in Spain imbued him with the ideas of the Spanish Reformation. He was too much an Italian and too strong a believer in the papal supremacy to adopt the thought of secular interference in the affairs of the Church, but with that exception the Spanish method of renovating the Church took possession of him heart and soul. The germs of fanaticism, hitherto sleeping within him, were awakened to life, and never afterwards slumbered. He sympathised with the projects of Adrian VI., and was a power during his brief pontificate. During the reign of Clement VII. he took little part in public affairs, but all the attempts to put new life into the monastic orders were assisted by him. He viewed with some suspicion the attempt to conciliate the Germans; and the results of Contarini’s dealing with the Protestants at Regensburg filled him with alarm.

Contarini’s attempt to reunite the Church by reconciliation was twenty years too late. It is doubtful whether anyone in Germany save the Emperor had much faith in the uniting influences of a conference. Morone, who had for years represented the Vatican at the Court of Ferdinand of Austria, and who was perpetually urging the Pope to summon a General Council, was afraid ever since Hagenau that conferences benefited the Protestants more than the Romanists. Contarini himself had said that what was needed to overcome the German movement was neither conferences nor discussions about doctrine, but a Reformation in morals. The Curia regarded his mission as a dangerous experiment. They tied his hands as firmly as they could by his letter of instructions: He was to inform the Emperor that no Legate, not even the Pope himself until he had consulted the other nations, could modify the doctrines of the Church for the sake of the Germans; he was to do his utmost to prevent the assembly of a National Council for Germany. He heard from Paris that the French Romanists believed that he was about to betray the Church to the heretics. No one encouraged him except his own circle of immediate friends. The men with whom he was to work, Cardinal de Granvelle and Dr. Eck, were suspicious of him and of his antecedents. Nevertheless his natural and confirmed optimism urged him to the task.

The situation, looked at broadly and from the point of view taken by a contemporary who had made himself acquainted with the theology and constitution of the mediæval Church, was not so hopeless as it must seem to us with the history of what followed to enlighten us. The great mass of mediæval doctrines lay uncodified. They were not codified until the Council of Trent. The extreme claims made by the supporters of a papal absolutism—claims which may be briefly expressed by the sentence: The Church Universal is condensed in the Roman Church, and the Roman Church is represented by the Pope—which had been used to crush the Lutheran movement in its earliest stages, were of recent origin. Curialism could be represented to be almost as much opposed to the mediæval theory of the Church as anything that Luther had brought forward. There was a real via media, if it could only be discovered and defined. The commonplace opinions of men who were sincerely attached to the mediæval conception of the Church, with its claims to catholicity, with its doctrines, usages, ceremonies and hierarchy, could scarcely be better represented than in the declaration said to have been made by Charles V. to his sister Maria, his governor in the Netherlands:

“It happened that on the Vigil of St. John the Baptist the Emperor held a banquet in the garden. Now, when Queen Maria asked him what he thought of doing with the people and with the Confession (the Augsburg) that had been presented, he made reply: ‘Dear Sister, when I was made chief of the Holy Roman Empire, the great complaint reached me that the people who profess this doctrine were more wicked than the devil. But the Bishop of Seville gave me the advice that I should not think of acting tyrannically, but should ascertain whether the doctrine is at variance with the articles of the Christian faith (the Apostles’ Creed). This advice pleased me, and so I find that the people are not so devilish as had been represented; nor is the subject of dispute the Twelve Articles, but a matter lying outside them, which I have therefore handed over to the scholars. If their doctrine had been in conflict with the Twelve Articles I should have been disposed to apply the edge of the sword.’”[660]

The Twelve Articles, as the Apostles’ Creed was called, always occupied a peculiar position in the Western Church. They were believed to contain the whole of the theologia revelata. The great Schoolmen of the most opposite parties (Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus alike) were accustomed to deduce from the Apostles’ Creed fourteen propositions, seven on God and seven on the Incarnation, and to declare that they contained the sum of revealed theology; everything else was natural theology on which men might differ without being considered to have abandoned the essentials of the Christian faith. Charles V. had been taught at first, probably by Aleander’s insistent reiterations, that Luther had denied some portion of this revealed theology; he had come to learn that he had been wrongly informed; therefore conference and adjustment were possible.

Men like Charles V. and Contarini could honestly believe that so far as doctrine was concerned a compromise might be effected.

§ 4. The Conference at Regensburg.

The Diet was opened at Regensburg in February 1541. The Emperor explained his position and intentions. He declared that the most important duty before them was to try to heal the division in religion which was separating Germany into two opposing parties. The one duty of the hour was to endeavour to come to a unanimous decision on religious matters, and to bring about this he proposed to name some peace-loving men who could confer together upon the points in debate. Count Frederick of the Palatinate, brother of the Elector, and Cardinal de Granvelle were nominated presidents: three pronounced Protestants, two pronounced Romanists, and one whose opinions were doubtful, were the assessors; Eck, Gropper, and Pflug were to support the Romanist side, Melanchthon, Bucer, and Pistorius were the speakers for the Protestants. Perhaps the only name that could be objected to was that of Eck; it was impossible to think of him as a man of peace. The Legate Contarini guided everything.