A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

Afterwards, by the 25 Henry VIII. c. 20, all Papal jurisdiction whatsoever in this matter was entirely taken away: by which it is enacted—That no person shall be presented and nominated to the bishop of Rome, otherwise called the pope, or to the see of Rome, for the office of an archbishop or bishop; but the same shall utterly cease, and be no longer used within this realm.

And the manner and order as well of the election of archbishops and bishops, as of the confirmation of the election and consecration, is clearly enacted and expressed by that statute. By the statute of the 1 Edward VI. c. 2, all bishoprics were made donative, and it has been supposed by some, that the principal intent of this act was to make deans and chapters less necessary, and thereby to prepare the way for a dissolution of them.

But this statute was afterwards repealed, and the matter was brought back again, and still rests upon the statute of the 25th Henry VIII. c. 20.

When a bishop dies, or is translated, the dean and chapter certify the queen thereof in Chancery, and pray leave of the queen to make election. Thereupon the sovereign grants a licence to them under the great seal, to elect the person, whom by her letters missive she has appointed; and they are to choose no other. Within twenty-six days after the receipt of this licence they are to proceed to election, which is done after this manner: the dean and chapter having made their election, must certify it under their common seal to the queen, and to the archbishop of the province, and to the bishop elected; then the queen gives her royal assent under the great seal, directed to the archbishop, commanding him to confirm and consecrate the bishop thus elected. The archbishop subscribes it thus, viz. Fiat confirmatio, and grants a commission to his vicar-general to perform all acts requisite to that purpose. Upon this the vicar-general issues a citation to summon all persons who oppose this election, to appear, &c., which citation (in the province of Canterbury) is affixed by an officer of the Arches, on the door of Bow church, and he makes three proclamations there for the opposers, &c. to appear. After this, the same officer certifies what he has done to the vicar-general; and no person appearing, &c., at the time and place appointed, &c., the proctor for the dean and chapter exhibits the royal assent, and the commission of the archbishop directed to his vicar-general, which are both read, and then accepted by him. Afterwards the proctor exhibits his proxy from the dean and chapter, and presents the newly-elected bishop to the vicar-general, returns the citation, and desires that three proclamations may be made for the opposers to appear; which being done, and none appearing, he desires that they may proceed to confirmation, in pœnam contumaciæ; and this is subscribed by the vicar-general in a schedule, and decreed by him accordingly. Then the proctor exhibits a summary petition, setting forth the whole process of election; in which it is desired that a certain time may be assigned to him to prove it, and this is likewise desired by the vicar-general. Then he exhibits the assent of the queen and archbishop once more, and that certificate which he returned to the vicar-general, and of the affixing the citation on the door of Bow church, and desires a time may be appointed for the final sentence, which is also decreed. Then three proclamations are again made for the opposers to appear, but none coming they are pronounced contumaces; and it is then decreed to proceed to sentence, and this is in another schedule read and subscribed by the vicar-general. On one memorable occasion, see Reg. v. Abp. of Canterbury, Q. B., Jan. 25, 1848, the court of Q. B. pronounced this to be a mere useless form and ceremony. It was a time when political and party feeling ran higher, perhaps, than at any time since the reign of James II., and it is hoped that, should a similar case occur, justice would be done to the Church. Then the bishop elect takes the oath of supremacy, canonical obedience, and that against simony, and then the dean of the Arches reads and subscribes the sentence. The dean and chapter are to certify this election in twenty days after the delivery of the letters missive, or they incur a premunire. And if they refuse to elect, then the queen may nominate a person by her letters patent. So that, to the making a bishop, these things are requisite, viz. election, confirmation, consecration, and investiture. Upon election, the person is only a bishop Nomine, and not In re, for he has no power of jurisdiction before consecration.

In the time of the Saxons, as indeed was generally the case throughout Europe, all bishops and abbots sat in state councils, by reason of their office, as they were spiritual persons, and not upon account of any tenures; but after the Conquest the abbots sat there by virtue of their tenures, and the bishops in a double capacity, as bishops and likewise as barons by tenure. When, in the 11th year of Henry II., Archbishop Becket was condemned in parliament, there was a dispute who should pronounce the sentence, whether a bishop, or a temporal lord: those who desired that a bishop should do it, alleged that they were ecclesiastical persons, and that it was one of their own order who was condemned; but the bishops replied, that this was not a spiritual but a secular judgment; and that they did not sit there merely as bishops, but as barons; and told the House of Peers, Nos barones, vos barones pares hic sumus. In the very year before, in the tenth of Henry II., it was declared by the Constitutions of Clarendon, that bishops, and all other persons who hold of the king in capite, have their possessions of him sicut baroniam, et sicut cæteri barones, debent interesse judiciis curiæ regis, &c.; and that they ought to sit there likewise as bishops; that is, not as mere spiritual persons, vested with a power only to ordain and confirm, &c., but as they are the governors of the Church. It is for this reason that, on the vacancy of a bishopric, the guardian of the spiritualities is summoned to the parliament in the room of the bishop; and the new bishops of Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Oxford, and Peterborough, which were made by Henry VIII., and the bishops of Ripon and Manchester, have no baronies, and yet they sit in parliament as bishops of those sees by the king’s writ. This view of the case is confirmed by the analogy of Scotland, where the bishops sat in parliament as representing the spirituality, one of the estates of the realm. The bishops of Ireland were, from the time of the submission of that country to Henry II., elected exactly as in England, under the king’s licence, and by virtue of a congé d’élire directed to the chapters. The statute of provisors was in force in Ireland as well as England; and although, from the unsettled state of the country, irregular elections occasionally took place in distant provinces, it can be clearly shown that this was in consequence of the weakness of the Crown, and in contradiction to the law. (See Ware’s Irish Bishops, passim, and Cotton’s Facti Ecclesiæ Hibern.) The right of election was taken away from the chapters, as in England, in the reign of Henry VIII., and never restored. The Irish bishops are, in consequence, still nominated, as their English brethren were till Queen Elizabeth’s reign, by letters patent.

BLASPHEMY. (From the Greek word, βλασφημέω, quasi βλάπτω τὴν φήμην.) An injury to the reputation of any, but now used almost exclusively to designate that which derogates from the honour of God, whether by detracting from his person or attributes, or by attributing to the creature what is due to God alone.

Blasphemy is a crime both in the civil and canon law, and is punishable both by the statute and common law of England.

The sin of blasphemy incurred the public censure of the primitive Christian Church. They distinguished blasphemy into three sorts. 1. The blasphemy of apostates, whom the heathen persecutors obliged, not only to deny, but to curse Christ. 2. The blasphemy of heretics, and other profane Christians. 3. The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. The first sort we find mentioned in Pliny, who, giving Trajan an account of some Christians, whom the persecutions of his times had made to apostatize, tells him, they all worshipped his images, and the images of the gods, and cursed Jesus Christ. And that this was the common way of renouncing their religion, appears from the demand of the proconsul to Polycarp, and Polycarp’s answer. He bid him revile Christ: to which Polycarp replied; “These eighty-six years I have served him, and he never did me any harm; how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?”—These blasphemers, as having added blasphemy to apostasy, were reckoned among the apostates, and punished as such, to the highest degree of ecclesiastical censure.—Bingham, Origin. Eccles. b. xvi. ch. 7, § 1. Plin. Ep. 97, lib. x. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. cap. 15.

The second sort of blasphemers were such as made profession of the Christian religion, but yet, either by impious doctrines or profane discourses, derogated from the majesty and honour of God and his holy religion. This sense of blasphemy included every kind of heresy; whence the same punishment the Church had appointed for heretics, was the lot of this kind of blasphemers. And that in this notion of blasphemy they included all impious and profane language, appears from Synesius’s treatment of Andronicus, governor of Ptolemais. He was contented to admonish him for his other crimes; but, when he added blasphemy to them, saying, no one should escape his hands, though he laid hold of the very foot of Christ, Synesius thought it high time to proceed to anathemas and excommunication.—Bingham, ibid. § 2.

The third sort of blasphemy was that against the Holy Ghost: concerning which the opinions of the ancients varied. Some applied it to the sin of lapsing into idolatry and apostasy, and denying Christ in time of persecution. Others made it to consist in denying Christ to be God; in which sense Hilary charges the Arians with sinning against the Holy Ghost. Origen thought that whoever, after having received the gifts of the Holy Ghost by baptism, afterwards ran into sin, was guilty of the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. Athanasius refutes this notion, and delivers his own opinion in the following manner. “The Pharisees, in our Saviour’s time, and the Arians, in our own, running into the same madness, denied the real Word to be incarnate, and ascribed the works of the Godhead to the devil and his angels.—They put the devil in the place of God—which was the same thing as if they had said, that the world was made by Beelzebub, that the sun rose at his command, and the stars moved by his direction.—For this reason Christ declared their sin unpardonable, and their punishment inevitable and eternal.” St. Ambrose likewise defines this sin to be a denying the Divinity of Christ. There are others, who make it to consist in denying the Divinity of the Holy Ghost. Epiphanius calls these blasphemers πνευματόμαχοι, “fighters against the Holy Ghost.” Others, again, place this sin in a perverse and malicious ascribing the operations of the Holy Spirit to the power of the devil; and that against express knowledge and conviction of conscience.