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

by Thomas M. Lindsay

North of the Alps the Index had small effect. It was impotent in lands where the Reformation was firmly established; and in France, papal Germany, and north Italy a class of daring colporteurs carried the prohibited tracts, Bibles, and religious literature throughout the lands.

The tremendous powers of suppression set forth in the Tridentine rules could not avoid doing infinite mischief to thought and scholarship, even if placed in the hands of qualified and well-intentioned men. But the censors were neither capable nor high-minded. Scholars refused the odious task. Commentaries on the Fathers were read by men who knew little Latin, less Greek, and no Hebrew. They were discovered extorting money from unfortunate authors, levying blackmail on booksellers, listening to the whispers of jealous rivals.

So effectually was learning slain in Italy, that when the Popes at the close of the sixteenth century strove to revive the scholarship of the Church and to gather together at Rome a band of men able to defend the Papacy with their pens, these scholars had to work under immense disabilities. Baronius wrote his Annals, and Latini edited the Latin Fathers, both of them ignorant of Greek, and both harassed by the censorship.

Some of the more distinguished leaders of the Counter-Reformation saw the dangers which lurked in this system of pure suppression. The great German Jesuit, Canisius, who did more than any other man for the maintenance and revival of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, pointed out that destruction was powerless to effect permanent good. The people must have books, and the Church ought to supply them. He laboured somewhat successfully to that end.

§ 4. The Society of Jesus and the Counter-Reformation.

Neither the Inquisition nor the Index account for the Counter-Reformation. Repression might stamp out Reformers in southern Europe; but faith, enthusiasm, unselfish and self-denying work were needed to enable the Roman Church to assume the offensive. These were supplied to a large extent by the devoted followers of Ignatius Loyola.

Roman Catholicism reached its ebb during the pontificate of Pius IV. It stood everywhere on the defensive, seeing one stronghold after another pass into the hands of a victorious Protestantism. Pius V., his successor, was the first fighting Pope of the new Roman Catholicism. He had behind him the reorganisation effected by the Council of Trent; the Roman Catholic revival of mediæval piety of which Carlo Borromeo, Philip Neri, and Francis de Sales were distinguished types; the Inquisition and Congregation of the Index; and, above all, the Company of Jesus. Romanism under his leadership boldly assumed the offensive.

In 1564 it seemed as if all Germany might become Protestant. The States which still acknowledged the Papacy were honeycombed with Protestant communities. Bavaria, the Rhine Provinces, the Duchy of Austria itself, were, according to contemporary accounts, more than half-Protestant. Nearly all the seats of learning were Protestant. The Romanist Universities of Vienna and Ingolstadt were almost deserted by students. Under the skilful and enthusiastic leadership of Peter Canisius, the Jesuits were mainly instrumental in changing this state of things. They entered Bavaria and Austria. They appeared there as the heralds and givers of education, and took possession of the rising generation. They established their schools in all the principal centres of population. They were good teachers; they produced school-books of a modern type; the catechism written by Canisius himself was used in all their schools (it transplanted into Romanism the Lutheran system of catechising); they charged no fees; they soon had the instruction of the Roman Catholic children in their hands. The astonished people of town and country districts began to see pilgrimages of boys and girls, conducted like modern Sunday-school treats, led by the good fathers, to visit famous churches, shrines, holy crosses, miraculous wells, etc. The parents were induced to visit the teachers; visits led to the confessional, and the confessional to the directorate. Then followed the discipline of the Spiritual Exercises, usually shortened to suit the capacities of the penitents. Whole districts were led back to the confessional—the parents following the children.

The higher education was not neglected. Jesuit colleges founded at Vienna and Ingolstadt peopled the decaying universities with students, and gave them new life. Student associations, on the model of that founded by Canisius at Köln, were formed, and were affiliated to the Company of Jesus. Pilgrimages of students wended their way to famous shrines; talented young men submitted their souls to the direction of the Jesuit fathers, and shared in the hypnotic trance given by the course of the Spiritual Exercises. A generation of ardent souls was trained for the active service of the Roman Church, and vowed to combat Protestantism to the death.

The Company had another, not less important, field of work. The Peace of Augsburg had left the management of the religion of town or principality in the hands of the ruling secular authority. The maxim, Cujus regio ejus religio, placed the religious convictions of the population of many districts at the mercy of one man. Many Romanist Princes had no wish to persecute, still less to see their principalities depopulated by banishment. Some of them had given guarantees for freedom of conscience and limited rights of worship to their Protestant subjects. The Jesuits set themselves to change this condition of things. They could be charming confessors and still more delightful directors for the obedient sons and daughters of the Papacy. They were invited to take charge of the souls of many of the Princes and especially of the Princesses of Germany. They set themselves to charm, to command, and, lastly, to threaten their penitents. Toleration of Protestants they represented to be the unpardonable sin. They succeeded in many cases in inducing Romanist rulers to withdraw the protection they had hitherto accorded to their Protestant subjects, who, if they stood firm in their faith, had to leave their homes and seek refuge within a Protestant district.