Preface
- "If in this I have appeared to dwell too exclusively on the faults and wrong-doings of the church, it has arisen from no lack of appreciation of the services rendered to humanity by the organization which in all ages has assumed for itself the monopoly of the heritage of Christ. Yet if we ask what would have been the condition of the world if that organization had not succeeded in bearing the ark of Christianity through the wilderness of the first fifteen centuries, in summing up the benefits which man has derived through the church, we may also not unreasonably inquire how much greater would have been our advance in all that renders us worthy of the precepts of the Gospel had that church always been true to its momentous trust." p. iii
The Church and the Carolingians
- "The turbulent ambition of Lothair and his two brothers, their hatred of their step-mother Judith, and their envy of their half-brother, Charles le Chauve, the youngest, best, and most beloved of the children of Louis, filled the rest of his miserable reign with open war or secret intrigues. His death added fresh fuel to the flame, and until the exhausted combatants swore a hollow truce at the Treaty of Verdun, in 843, the empire was a scene of universal confusion. This parricidal and fratricidal strife, continuing with scanty intermission until the close of the century, reduced the royal power to a shadow. Truth, faith, loyalty, patriotism, all the virtues which lend stability to governments, seemed unknown. Everywhere the chiefs and deputies of the nominal monarch, striving for independence and heredity authority, were bartering their allegiance, and wringing fresh concessions from the infatuated brethren, as the price of their fidelity or of their treachery. The only element of universal anarchy lacking was supplied by the external enemies of the empire. Invited by ceaseless civil conflict, on every side the Northmen poured in upon the unguarded coasts, ascended the rivers, and gathering confidence from almost uninterrupted success, ravaged every portion of France and of the fertile Rhinelands. On the West the Bretons, on the East the Wends and Serbs, on the South the active and unsparing Saracens, released from the terror of the invincible Charles, revenged the wrongs and the humiliations of generations. Factions in the council, discord in the court, cowardice or treachery in the field, could offer inadequate resistance to the only power which maintained its unity, which understood its aims, and which perused its purposes with energy and consistency. Nor is it surprising that the people, ground to the dust by the senseless quarrels of their rulers, exposed alike to the unchecked tyranny of their immediate masters, the devastations of neighborhood wars, and the hideous barbarities of pagan pirates -- the people to whom civil government was known only as an instrument of oppression, and never as a means of defense or redress -- should turn in despair to the church as the only source of consolation in the present or of hope in the future, should welcome any change which tended to elevate the spiritual power at the expense of the temporal, and should give eager credit to the doctrine which taught that the Vicegerent of Christ and his ministers were paramount over those who had so woefully abused their trust." pp. 44-45
The False Decretals
- "In this remolding of European institutions, so necessary to the interests of Christianity and civilization, one of the most efficient agencies was the collection of canons known as the False Decretals. Forgery was not by any means a novel expedient to the church. From the earliest times orthodox and heretics had rivaled each other in the manufacturer of whatever documents were necessary to substantiate their respective positions whether in faith or discipline, and the student of history finds the difficulty of his task perpetually heightened by the doubtful nature of the evidence adduced by one party or another with all the earnestness of conviction. This tendency to fabrication was conspicuously a characteristic of the papal court, which was constantly under the necessity of manufacturing testimony to prove the antiquity of its continually enlarging pretensions." p. 46
- "It is certain that about the middle of the [ninth] century a great and silent revolution in the relations between the church and state commenced, and it may fairly be assumed that these new canons were the instrument with which the ecclesiastical party worked upon the general popular readiness to submit to such a change of masters." p. 53
- "It is not the least of the troubles of an infallible church that it cannot decently abandon any position once assumed. Having received the False Decretals as genuine, and having based upon them its claims to universal temporal supremacy, when it was obliged to abandon the defense of the forgeries it was placed in a shockingly false position. To have endorsed a lie, from the ninth to the eighteenth century, was bad enough, but to give up the fruits of that lie, so industriously turned to profitable account, was more than could be reasonably expected of human nature, and accordingly we have been authoritatively informed even within the last few years that the church claims still as its undoubted right all the power and prerogative that it ever enjoyed or exercised." p. 59
The Church and the State
- "Charlemagne, concentrating in his own person both the Roman and Frankish traditions, issued his rescripts on ecclesiastical matters with fully as much authority as when legislating for concerns purely secular." p. 62
- "Thus, throughout the whole body of the capitularies, political and clerical regulations are so intimately mingled that separation is almost impossible, showing that no thought of distinguishing them existed at the period, and that no doubt was entertained of the competency of the crown with regard to either.
We have already seen that the Roman pontiffs were the subjects of Charlemagne, submitting themselves without remonstrance to his jurisdiction. The church accepted his sovereignty, and it was exercised impartially over all ranks of the hierarchy." pp. 62-63
- "The recognition of the immunity of the ecclesiastical body from all liability to the secular tribunals was one of the principal incidents in this revolution. It forms so curious an episode in the history of legislation, that its proper consideration would carry us too far from our present subject, and it, therefore is treated at length in a subsequent essay more at length than would be suitable here. Suffice it, therefore, for the present, to say that, in defiance of all precedent, the clergy successfully emancipated themselves from the jurisdiction of the secular power, and established the principle that an ecclesiastic could only be tried by ecclesiastics and be judged by ecclesiastical law. Not content even with this, an attempt was made to establish the superiority of the church in another manner by claiming for it inviolable sanctity, so that the humblest clerk could not even be accused by a layman. This principle was too monstrous to be successful even in that age of ignorance, and the canons which express it in the most unqualified manner are mingled with others whose careful enumeration of the causes of incompetency in witnesses shows that the more general regulations were rejected by the common sense of mankind." pp. 69-70
- "The inviolability thus claimed for the clerical office was not left entirely to theoretical declarations of principle. Charlemagne had been induced to adopt one of the canons of the fabricated council of Rome under Sylvester, according to which it was decreed that for the conviction of a bishop the testimony of seventy-two witnesses was requisite, while forty-four were necessary in the case of a priest, thirty-seven in that of a cardinal deacon, and seven for a sub-deacon -- all to be heads of families and professing Christians." p. 73
- "While thus striking at all the principles which subordinated the church to the state, it must be supposed that the sagacious originators of the movement had endeavored to create a body of irresponsible ecclesiastical despots, each supreme in his own diocese or province, to become eventually the priest-king of an insignificant territory. Even as the churchman was elevated above the layman, so was the power of the hierarchy developed in the comprehensive scheme of Ingilram and Isidor. Transmitting step by step the new powers thus acquired to the supreme head at Rome, the whole body of the church was rendered compact and manageable, either for assault or defense; and it acquired the organization which enabled it not only to preserve most of the advantages thus gained, but to extend in all directions its influence and authority. Had the bishops maintained their individual independence they would have accomplished nothing beyond the ends of personal ambition, as did the nobles who were then carving out their hereditary fiefs; and even this success would have been temporary, for, in their isolation, they would have been one by one under the attacks of the rapacious barons who wielded the military power of their provinces. What the temporal sovereign lost, however, was transmitted through the hierarchy to the pope, and the church acquired the unity which was requisite to carry it through the stormy centuries to come." p. 111
The Papacy and the Church
- "As the bishop of the imperial city was the pastor and spiritual director of the emperor, and as the emperor was the suzerain who was all-powerful in deciding religious quarrels and civil and criminal cases, it will readily be perceived what ample opportunities the bishops of Constantinople enjoyed, when they chanced to be on good terms with their masters, of extending their influence over their older rivals. Of this they made good use, and the upstart church became the common centre of attack by all the venerable prelates of the East. In this Alexandria, the most powerful and wealthy, was the leader, and Theophilius, Cyril, and Dioscorus filled the first half of the fifth century with their ceaseless assaults on St. John Chrysotom, Nestorius, and Flavianus, whose principal fault was that their see was rapidly overshadowing the influence of the traditional apostolic churches. This rivalry furnishes the key of the disgraceful contests which constitute the ecclesiastical history of the time, and we shall see presently how frequent and how useful were the opportunities which it offered to Rome, as each rival sought her alliance in the effort to crush its antagonist." p. 120
- "The power to be obtained by the Papacy through this dangerous gift was however only indirect, and the prerogative of universal appellate jurisdiction, so long and so unavailingly sought, was finally obtained through the instrumentality of the False Decretals. The clear perceptions which planned and executed the forgeries laid especial stress upon the appellate power, and lost no opportunity to inculcate its necessity and to remove all obstacles to its exercise in the widest sense." p. 149
- "The pope was thus pronounced to be the sole judge, in first and last resort, for every member of the clergy; and as the one source of justice he simply delegated, for the sake of convenience, to the local prelates, such portion of his power as would enable them to take testimony and forward it to him, with their opinion expressed in the form of a verdict. In fact, the constant iteration of these principles throughout the False Decretals, in every possible variation of language, shows the importance attached to them and the magnitude of the change in existing customs which they involved. When innovations so bold could be confidently asserted and arrogantly enforced, it is easy to account for the immense increase of papal prerogative, which brought under its influence every portion of the ecclesiastical body, even to its ultimate fibres." pp. 150-151
- "The final result of this is seen in the "Taxes of the Penitentiary" -- the official scale of prices at which absolutions could be purchased at the papal court, first drawn up by John XXIII and perfected by Leo X. Repeated editions of these lists were printed and circulated throughout Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, until the controversial use made of them by Protestant writers caused them to be suppressed. According to this tariff, a layman who had committed simony was absolved on payment of six grossi (the grosso was one-tenth of the ducat), while it cost a priest seven; the priest who falsified papal letters had to pay eighteen, while a bastard could procure for twelve a dispensation enabling him to take orders and hold preferment. Nor was this realization of the treasure of salvation confided to the church confined to ecclesiastical offenses, for all the crimes of the Decalogue were reckoned at their appropriate figure, which were by no means extravagant. Thus a man who had killed his father, his mother, his brother, or his sister, could obtain absolution at from five to seven grossi per parricide, with the provision that, if one of the victims chanced to be a clerk, he was obliged to visit Rome in person to purchase the absolution. It is safe to say that a more scandalous exhibition of cynical venality may vainly be sought for in the annals of human misgovernment.
It is hardly to be wondered at that the Emperor Ferdinand complained in 1562 to the Council of Trent that many of the papal dispensations issued from Rome were a public scandal, which diminished and dishonored the papal authority and brought all dispensations, even those which were legitimate, into contempt.
While thus acquiring unlimited control over the populations, the papacy was likewise extending its supremacy over the secular rulers. The most efficient instrument in this was perhaps the forged donation of Constantine to Sylvester I. In examining this remarkable document one scarcely knows which most to admire -- the consummate boldness that could anticipate belief in it, or the credulity that was ready to admit that the first Christian Emperor transferred the seat of empire and founded his new Rome for the single purpose of relinquishing to the popes the sole and undisputed possession of the West, and of rendering the successors of St. Peter the legitimate heirs and successors of Augustus. We read, in the style of an eight-century notary, a formal donation-entre-vifs of the Western Empire and its appurtenances, to be held and enjoyed with all the imperial rights in independent sovereignty, as superior to that of the emperors as spiritual things were superior to temporal -- and all this mingled with puerile directions as to the trappings and stage-properties of the pope and his spiritual court, crowns, white horses, linen garments, and felt shoes. Armed with such title-deeds, and the Leonine constitution, which barred all alienation of church property, the Roman Pontiff became the rightful owner of Western Europe, and kings held their territories only by his sufferance. The gratitude of Adrian I for the comparatively insignificant beneficence of Charlemagne was too openly manifested for us to suppose that ideas of such magnificent acquisitiveness could then have been entertained. Appetite grows by what it feeds on, however, and when, a few years later, in 776, this extraordinary document was produced from the papal manufactory, it was quoted timidly by Adrian to the Frank as a hint that he might not improperly imitate a munificence alongside of which his generosity was absolute niggardliness. To this the stern founder of the new empire turned a deaf ear, nor does his disregard of the claims thus advanced appear to have interfered with the good understanding between the respective heads of church and state, whose mutual support was mutually necessary. His successor, Louis, with all his reverence for ecclesiastical authority, paid as little respect to the extravagant pretensions of the grant; and when he, too, in 817, made a donation to the Holy See, confirming the gifts of Charlemagne and of Pepin, he took care to reserve to himself the sovereignty of the territories whose usufruct he bestowed on St. Peter. That this sovereignty was not merely nominal, but active, is sufficiently established by facts already alluded to; but if more were needed, it may be found in the edict of Lothair, in 824, wherein, while enjoining on the inhabitants of the Roman territory the utmost respect and obedience to the pope, his instructions to the dukes, counts, and judges with regard to the exercise of their functions, and his appointment of Missi to supervise their dispensing of justice, prove the complete jurisdiction which he exercised without protest or objection on the part of Eugenius. If the strong government of the united Franks, however, repressed the aspirations of ambitious but prudent pontiffs, the dissensions which ensued, and the final disruption of the empire, affords the opportunity which was needed. This forgery, lying latent with those of Ingilram and Isidor, was roused from its slumbers; and, though the Saxon emperors might venture to call it in question, for more than half a thousand years the imperial liberality of Constantine was received as an undisputed fact, which it was rank heresy to call inquisition. It did not require much ingenuity to assume that the imperial dignity was enjoyed by the popes from the time of Constantine until Leo conferred it upon Charlemagne, and, when the ideas of feudalism were paramount, the corollary naturally followed that the emperors held it in some sort as a fief of the church, and were thereby bound to the popes as to the suzerains. To the medieval mind, an argument such as this was well nigh irresistible." pp. 163-168
The Benefit of Clergy
- "Among the most important and dearly-prized privileges of the church was that which conferred on its members immunity from the operation of secular law, and relieved them from the jurisdiction of secular tribunals. Not only did they thus acquire a peculiar sanctity, which separated them from the people and secured for them veneration, but the personal inviolability thence surrounding them gave them enormous advantage in all contests with the civil power. Secure in this panoply of privilege, they could dare all things. Amenable only to divine law, the statues of emperors and kings were to them but the idle breath of men; the church was independent of the civil power, and in its aggressive enterprises it occupied a vantage-ground of incalculable value." p. 177
"The persistence of the church, backed up by the unfailing resource of excommunication, finally triumphed, and the sacred immunity of the priesthood was acknowledged, sooner or later, in the laws of every nation of Europe. This of course was a source of injury to the community and of corruption to the church, for the clerks, in emancipating themselves from human law, did not obtain exemption from human infirmities, and in the ecclesiastical courts not only were the facilities of escape through the system of canonical compurgation vastly greater than in the secular tribunals, but the theory which regarded degradation from the priesthood as one of the heaviest penalties that could be inflicted, and the rule which forbade the spiritual judges from pronouncing sentences of death or mutilation, rendered their jurisdiction virtually an asylum for offenders when compared with the atrociously cruel criminal jurisprudence of the time. In addition to this, there was the spirit de corps which tended to incline the episcopal officials to seek the acquittal rather than the conviction of those of the cloth, and it is therefore not surprising that the laity came to regard the clergy as entitled to a lenity which amounted almost to impunity for crime." pp. 192-193
- "That the laity were illiterate and the clergy educated was taken for granted, and by the middle of the fourteenth century the test of churchmanship came to be the ability to read, so that as time passed on the benefit of clergy gradually extended itself, and the privilege became in face a free pardon on a first offense for all who knew their letters, a test which speedily led to the ingenious device of gaolers teaching their prisoners to read as a preparation for their trial." p. 197
- "So completely was the church thus emancipated from all subjection to the secular power that in 1491 we find a synod of Bamberg threatening with excommunication and deprivation of the fruits of his benefice any ecclesiastic who should obey in any way a summons from the secular courts in either civil or criminal cases." p. 201
- Regarding the thirteenth century: "Some reform was necessary, but the church applied it with a sparing hand, so as not to abandon the immunity which alone rendered these abuses possible, while endeavoring to evade the odium of the criminals who everywhere claimed and enjoyed her protection." p. 209
- Regarding the fourteenth century: "These concessions, if they can be so called, amounted in reality to nothing. They pretended to touch a few of the more palpable scandals, but left unreformed the intolerable abuses which the increasing enlightenment of the age was not inclined to brook." p. 210
- "In fact, the councils of the period present an abundant store of canons directed against the multitudes of vagabonds who were amenable to no discipline, and who made no pretense of abandoning their secular lives, while they confidently claimed the protection of the body which they disgraced. The church could find no cure for the evil, however, without abandoning some of her most cherished prerogatives, and she preferred to endure the scandal rather than to suffer the loss. So far, indeed, did she carry her pretensions that in the fourteenth century we find the Bishop of Paris endowed with jurisdiction over all painters, imagers, embroiderers, embroideresses, and enamelers, because, apparently, those trades were mostly concerned with ecclesiastical decoration, and his claims were vigorously enforced, though sometimes successfully contested by other ecclesiastical jurisdictions." p. 211
- "The evils arising from this state of things were by no means confined to the escape of malefactors who personated the ecclesiastical character. The impunity conferred by the benefit of clergy on clerical offenders necessarily exercised the most unfortunate influence on the church itself, and was a powerful element in bringing about the corruption of the ecclesiastical body which was the disgrace of the middle ages. An honest archdeacon of Salzburg, writing in 1175, complains that the clergy were restrained by no fear of punishment, and therefore abandoned themselves to excesses which laymen hardly dared to attempt. However vile might be their lives, they felt no dread of the ecclesiastical authorities, for they could not be accused by the laity, and would not accuse each other, since all were guilty of the same practices, and each endeavored to protect his companions in sin." pp. 219-220
- "The corruptions which brought about the Reformation had gradually divested the church of its claims to respect, and the Reformation itself had had its influence on the orthodox as well as on the reformer. Never again could the church hope for implicit obedience, or expect that men should listen to its commands as to the oracles of God. Scarcely had the ink fairly dried on the canons of Trent, when the Polish Diet of 1565 enacted that a clerk charged with any criminal offense should be tried by the secular and not by the ecclesiastical court." p.. 229-230
- "In 1627, Urban VIII refurbished and reissued the Bull In Coena Dimini, one of the clauses of which pronounced ipso facto excommunication against all officials concerned in bringing ecclesiastics before secular tribunals, and all potentates issuing laws under which they could be so tried. " p. 230
- "If, during the eighteenth century, the benefit of clergy was still maintained, it was under such limitations and restrictions as showed that it existed only by sufferance of the civil power, and in many places it was virtually abrogated." p. 231
- "Yet an infallible church cannot abandon a claim that has once been made and admitted. If tyrannical princes and republics insist on the equality of the citizen, and subject clerical offenders to the laws of the land as through they were ordinary mortals, it is simply an abusive exercise of power, to which the church submits with Christian meekness when she has no means at hand to assert her rights. The sacro-sanct council of Trent, under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, confirmed the privileges enjoyed for centuries, and announced to all earthly potentates that any invasion of those privileges was punishable with the dred anathema that bars forever the gates of salvation. As long as this remains unrepealed by an assembly equally gifted with divine power, it is the irrefragable law which overrides all human ordinances. In fact, it is doubtful whether even an ecumenic council could undertake to abandon those positions, for Pius IX, in an apostolic letter of 1851, has condemned as a heresy the doctrine that clerical immunity drew its origin from the civil power, and asserts that it is derived from the direct order of God. So when, in May, 1851. the Republic of New Granada dared to abolish the ecclesiastical courts and to subject the clergy to the secular tribunals, Pius lifted up his voice and proclaimed to the nations that the act was null and void, and that all concerned in it had incurred the censures inevitable upon those who willfully seek to violate the imprescriptible rights of the church. Not less energetic and decisive was his action when the Mexican constitution of 1855 proposed to abolish the benefit of clergy; the constitution was at once declared to be annulled, and its supporters were warned of the penalties in store for them. Evidently the church only lacks the power and not the will to interfere as of old in the civil and political affairs of the nations." p. 231-232
- "In his Bull of Oct. 12th, 1869, replacing the older Bulls In Coena Domini, defining the offenses which entail ipso facto excommunication, Pius IX, denounces this last and severest of ecclesiastical punishments on all concerned, directly or indirectly, in subjecting ecclesiastics to secular courts, and on all powers which promulgate laws or statues infringing on the privileges of the church; and he expressly prohibits any prelate from absolving such offenders." p. 233
Excommunication
- "In the long career of the church towards the universal domination, perhaps the most efficient instrument at its command was its control over the sacrifice of the altar. Through this it opened the gates of heaven to the obedient, and plunged the rebellious into the pit of hell; and the generations which implicitly believed in its authority over the world to come were necessarily rendered docile subjects in this world. Armed with power so vast and vague, it could intervene decisively in the dissensions between sovereigns and people, and subdue them both to its designs of highest state-craft, making each the means to humiliate the other; while, at the same time, it could control the life of the obscurest peasant, and bind him helplessly in blind submission to the behests of its humblest minister. This despotism, so absolute and so all-pervading, which dictated the action of kings, which interpenetrated every fibre of society, was based upon the religion of love, and self-sacrifice, and humility. Human history, so fruitful of paradoxes, scarce offers an example more notable of the perversion of good into evil. The divine precepts of charity, forgiveness, and self-abnegation, distorted by the ignorance, the passion, and the selfishness of man, became the warrant by which greed and ambition attained the fruition of their wildest hopes.
To describe minutely the countless vicissitudes by which these results were reached would greatly transcend the limits of the present essay. I can only propose to present such a general view of the subject as may aid the student in tracing the origin of some of the moral and material forces which have molded our civilization, and which, in a degree somewhat modified, are still at work around us. The church is infallible; it draws its inspiration from above, and cannot rightfully be called to account by any earthly power for the use which it may make of the authority confided to it. Thus autocratic by the organic law of its being, uncontrolled and uncontrollable by any human power external to itself, even the observer of the present may find profit in contemplating what was its policy in the past, and the use which it has made of the supremacy conceded to it of old." pp. 235-236
- "It was no part of the recognized duty of the apostles to frame an elaborate system of ecclesiastical discipline that should regulate the church of the future in its development over the earth. Believing, as they did, that the second coming of Christ was at hand, temporary regulations alone seemed necessary for the scanty flock of believers, whose enthusiasm in submitting themselves to the law of love was sufficient guarantee against serious trouble, during the short time that was to elapse before the Messiah himself should return to govern the world." p. 238
- "The questions connected with the granting or withholding of death-bed communion involved considerations of more tremendous import. When man assumes to place himself between his Creator and his fellow-beings, and to wield, without appeal, supreme authority over eternal life and death, the contrast between his finite intelligence, obscured by human passions, and the infinite power to which he aspires, would be ludicrous if it were not revolting. To make the salvation of a living soul dependent upon the ministrations of a fallible fellow-creature, to be withheld at his caprice, or lost through his malevolence, or ignorance, or supineness, would seem to be an imposture too gross for the most fatuous credulity; and yet it has been for fifteen hundred years, and still is, the belief of a majority of those who profess faith in their Redeemer, and in the doctrine of Atonement. When, in enlightened France, within the last few years, we have seen a priest on his trial for murder, because in his ignorant zeal he performed the Caesarean operation,. and thus destroyed both mother and child in the effort to save the unborn babe by the water of baptism, we can hardly be surprised that in former ages doctrines so monstrous found ready acceptance in the minds of all." p. 258
- "That men believing themselves armed with so tremendous and fearful a power should exercise it so recklessly, seems incredible, and yet unfortunately the facts exist to show beyond the possibility of doubt that those who so acted were possessed of that belief. The man who died excommunicate and unreconciled was damned beyond the hope of redemption. It is true that if he had been admitted to penitence, and had been zealously seeking to merit forgiveness, and was suddenly cut off by shipwreck or other unforeseen accident at a distance from priestly aid, then the church indulged in some doubt as to his perdition. He might possibly be saved, but the presumption was against him, and his name might not be included in the prayers of the faithful, for if God had willed his salvation, he would not have been condemned to die afar from the saving viaticum -- though, it is true, some authorities shrank from so cruel a practical application of the principles which all professed." pp. 259-260
- "The history of persecution is too vast a subject to be treated here in detail. Suffice it to say that, with the exception of Constantius, who was an Arian, and Julian, who was a Pagan, every emperor, from Constantine to Valentinian III, has left enduring evidence of his zeal for the suppression of heterodoxy." p. 277
The Church and the Barbarians
- "Under Barbarian rule, the church found itself confronted by a new series of problems. In the Pagan Empire, the church consisted of pastors and people, with common interests and sympathies, exposed to the same evils, and forming an indivisible whole. Under the Christian emperors, the clergy, endowed with certain privileges, gradually found their personal interests diverging from those of the populations who had been converted in masses. Though technically the church of Christ might still be held to comprehend the laity, yet practically it consisted of the ecclesiastics, with whom naturally the advancement of their order and the preservation and extension of its immunities became the first consideration. This divergence between the clergy and the people was rapidly developed by the incursions and conversion of the Barbarians. There could be little in common between the established clergy of Gaul, for instance, and the untamed German hordes which presented themselves for Christianization and civilization; and the antagonism naturally existing under such circumstances left its indelible impress on the character and policy of the church. The priest who undertook parish duty amid a clan of wild Frankish converts, however conscientiously he might labor for their salvation, could not but feel that in the flesh they were possible enemies who might at any moment drive him away or slay him; and the supernatural prerogatives which, under Roman civilization, were scarcely required to enforce respect for his authority, became the only weapons of self-defense upon which he could rely.
The Barbarian was a man of deeds rather than of words. His laws were few and simple, and for the most part resolved themselves, in the ultimate analysis, into provisions for the payment of damages, which could be eluded by an appeal to brute force. Rude as they were, the history of the times shows that these laws could easily be brushed aside by any one with power and audacity sufficient to disregard them; and it can readily be imagined how hopeless would be the application to the mallum, or court of freemen, by a clerk who would be regarded with double contempt, as a Roman by his conquerors, and as a man of peace by warriors emulous only of martial renown." pp. 299-300
Carlovingian Reconstruction
- "An epistle attributed to Calixtus I argues at much length against the legality of marriages between kindred, showing how little had been accomplished by previous efforts. The correspondence forged between Gregory the Great and Felix of Messina extended the prohibition to the seventh degree; and a canon attributed to Pope Julius gave increased antiquity to this rule. At the same time another, to which the name of Pope Fabian was attached, shows the confusion which existed, by reducing the prohibition to the fourth degree, and forbidding the separation of those already married, being substantially a repetition of the Carlovingian rule. Benedict the Levite was bolder, and in transferring to his collection of capitularies the canon of the council of Mainz of 813, he adroitly extended the prohibition from the fourth degree to the fifth and sixth; and subsequently he fabricated others which carried it to the seventh. These being copied by Hincmar, Burchardt, Ivo, and Gratian, it was rendered difficult for any man to know whether he was properly married or not, and, as we shall see hereafter, there was afforded to the church, the opportunity of intervening effectually in the affairs of princes and kingdoms." pp. 323-324
Church and State
- "From the same transaction between Charles le Chauve and John VIII, there arose another novel precedent, which foreboded the ultimate triumph of the church over the state. Seven years before, when the miserable Lothair of Lotharingia died, in 869, without legitimate issue, his uncles Charles le Chauve and Louis le Germanique had made haste to divide his spoils. His brother, the Emperor Louis II, however, claimed that the kingdom had been bequeathed to him, and his power in Italy made it not difficult for him to secure for his pretensions the support of the papacy. Adrain II accordingly interfered, threatened with excommunication all who should lay hands on the heritage, or should render allegiance to the usurpers, and wrote to Hincmar of Rheims, ordering him to excommunicate his sovereign if he should dare to disobey the mandate. Hincmar's reply to this assumption of supremacy is couched in terms of scantiest courtesy. The kingdoms of earth, he reminds the pope, are obtained by battle, and not by the excommunication of pope or bishop; the Frankish warriors are not disposed to regard the successor of St. Peter as both king and pontiff, or to admit that he has any control over their allegiance, nor do they believe that their chances of heaven depend upon their selecting their king at his bidding, for an illegal excommunication injures only him who utters it, and it is unseemly in a bishop to deprive a Christian of the sacraments for the purpose of transferring a kingdom from one monarch to another. This was good canonical doctrine, but when Charles, at the death of Louis II, sought the imperial crown, which chanced to be virtually at the disposal of the pope, he was willing to admit all claims of the church, in the vain hope of acquiring additional support for the precarious dignity; and with blind infatuation he sought and obtained the interference of the papacy in the relations between sovereign and subject. In the Roman synod of 877, which confirmed his election as emperor, Pope John VIII gratified him by anathematizing with a perpetual curse all who should dare to resist his authority or dispute his title, and the synod unanimously responded "So be it!" Charles gained nothing by thus inviting and acknowledging the supreme jurisdiction of the church over the allegiance of nations, but the precedent which he thus established held good. However much he may at the moment have rejoiced in the additional guarantee of the imperial crown, he found that in effect it availed him little, when the approach of his nephew Carloman at the head of a German army sent him flying homewards to perish miserably in a peasant's hut among the Alps, almost before the echoes of the clergy's "Fiat, fiat, fiat!" had died away. For five hundred years afterwards, however, succeeding emperors learned the full significance of the interference of the church between the monarch and his subjects, when they found that the allegiance which could be enforced by excommunication could be abrogated by the same means. What the church could give, the church could take away, and the heedless recipients of her gifts could only hold them on the tenures of obedience." pp. 341-342
The Church and Feudalism
- "As the royal authority crumbled and was virtually lost in the anarchy which gave birth to feudalism, the church was left, without protection, to defend itself as best it could from the endless and all-pervading assaults of the local tyrants whose power was the reward of lawless audacity. At the council of Tribur, in 895, there appeared an unfortunate priest whose eyes had been put out by some savage layman. The offender was summoned to make amends for the outrage, but he refused even to come before the council, and treated the power of the assembled bishops with contemptuous indifference. They could do nothing but promulgate a canon deploring the neglect with which the censures of the church were treated, and calling upon the counts to arrest those who when excommunicated disregarded the sentence. It would be asking too much of human nature to expect that men thus subjected to cruelty and wrong should retain the benignant charity of the religion which they professed; and however much their own worldly self-seeking may have contributed to the savage anarchy of their flocks, yet that barbarianism could not but react on their own characters, in the convulsive efforts which they made to preserve themselves and their privileges." pp. 342-343
- "As the elements of human society were thus painfully developing themselves into an organized system, the vast and indefinite claims of the church presented in the False Decretals, and partially recognized in the expiring efforts of the later Carlovingian legislation, were pressed with unfaltering vigor by the able men who occupied the pontifical throne after the middle of the eleventh century. It is no wonder that in such a state of things the trained and disciplined intellects of the church had a vast advantage over the rude intelligence of the feudal nobles. With a unity of purpose that made all its members work to a common end, and with a perseverance that no discouragement could baffle, the church pursued its aims undeviatingly. Where so many rival interests were ever seeking each other's destruction, it could always find an ally whenever it met with serious opposition; and that ally invariably found, sooner or later, that implicit obedience to its pretensions was rigorously exacted as the price of its assistance. Thus skillfully using the antagonism of conflicting interests to break down each in turn, it succeeded in molding the plastic elements of civilization into a theocracy such as the world had never before witnessed." pp. 354-355
- "The principles which he advanced, and which both parties were forced to admit, gave to the church the right to intervene between the monarch and his lieges, and placed at the discretion of a single man the corner-stone on which was based the whole feudal system -- the oath of allegiance and fidelity." p. 370
- Regarding the turn of the twelfth century: "The reckless abuse of the power of excommunication seemed at last to have produced its natural result of destroying the respect and fear entertained for the censures of the church -- at least among the Germans." p. 373
Temporal Penalties
- "Northern Germany, however, was by no means disposed to yield the same implicit obedience to the demands of the church. The Sachsenspiegel, which was the recognized code of the North, as the Schwabenspiegel was of the South, expressly declared that no one could be deprived by excommunication of the privileges of the common or feudal law unless the excommunicate was put under ban by the emperor. The censures of the church, indeed, were specially asserted to be directed against the soul, and they could have no effect upon the temporal condition of the sinner." pp. 412-413
- "In Italy, the authority of the church was weaker than elsewhere. According to medieval theory that authority was derived from the successor of St. Peter, and to the Italians the pope was invested with little of that awful and mysterious dignity which rendered his name a word of power in distant and more barbarous regions. They knew him as a secular prince, vindicating his claims to obedience by the arm of flesh as well as by the power of the Word, and they had too often successfully withstood his pretensions to feel much dread of his curses when not restrained by his legions." p. 413
- "At the other extremity of Italy, when the pressure from Germany was removed, there was equal alacrity on the part of the independent states in disregarding the claims and pretensions of the church. Thus Milan, in 1347, decided that the clergy were bound, equally with the laity, by all the details of municipal law; and in 1388 Gian Galeazzo Viscounti, the first Duke of Milan, struck a blow at the whole system of excommunication by a decree in which he released all laymen from the necessity of answering a summons from the ecclesiastical courts -- clerks were to be tried by clerical judges, and laymen by laymen alone. Whatever may have been the motives which prompted the wily Viscounti to this extraordinary attack upon the jurisdiction and prerogatives of the church, it was altogether too much in advance of the age for even his power to sustain it, and in the following year we find him limiting the decree to various essential particulars. Yet it stands upon the statue-book to show how precarious in Italy was the hold of the church on those prerogatives which kept the rest of Latin Christendom in subjection." pp. 414-415
- "Poland was, probably from its contamination by the Greek scheismatics, even less disposed than Italy to invest the sentence of excommunication with temporal terrors." p. 415
- "The Northern nations were guilty of no such insubordination. In Sweden, for instance, the inviolability of ecclesiastical censures was protected with relentless ferocity." p. 415
- "In Hungry, the secular powers were bound to subdue excommunicates by the seizure of all their possessions." p. 415
Abuse of Excommunication
- "With the power of the state thus at command, the authority of the church became almost illimitable. It was not only available in reducing to submission the proudest monarchs of Christendom, but it extended to the minutest details of daily life." p. 416
- "As the excommunicate was what the old English law denominated a "lawless man" -- one who could claim no protection under the law -- it is easy to see that when a quarrel arose between a prelate and a layman, the former could fulminate the anathema against his adversary, who thenceforth had no standing in court until he could procure absolution from his excommunicator, thus practically placing him at the mercy of his antagonist, who could exact his own terms for reconciliation. It mattered not whether the excommunication was legal or illegal, justifiable or unjustifiable. The False Decretals had promulgated the doctrine that the episcopal sentence, even when groundless, was to be respected, and this principle became freely admitted in practice." pp. 417-418
- "Letters were constantly procured from the pope by his legates under false pretenses; they were transferred from hand to hand, and were used for extortion or revenge by enabling the holder to cite his adversary before distant courts, under pain of excommunication, to trump up fictitious cases, and to weary him out with perpetual annoyances and endless expenses. The remonstrances of these councils of course, only deal in generalities, but from an epistle of Innocent III, written more than a century earlier, we obtain a glimpse into the nature of the wrongs thus perpetrated. That pontiff complains of the uses to which certain letters of his had been put, and he endeavors to recall them. The holder of one of them, failing in his efforts to overcome the virtue of a young married woman, used the papal authority to cite her and her friends before an ecclesiastical court, under pretext of obtaining restitution of certain presents which he claimed to have made her. Thus, in the name of the pope, he procured her excommunication, and that of several others, including a female relative who had refused to act as procuress for him. Several of these unfortunates had died while under the ban and had not been buried, while the young wife herself had only been able to obtain absolution on her death-bed by paying a heavy bribe to the ecclesiastical judge. It requires no effort of the imagination to conceive the amount of human misery revealed in this short and simple story. In another case a cobbler was cited and excommunicated by virtue of the same letter, in a dispute arising about a little thread, valued at less than four deniers. The holder of a papal letter endeavoring to force an entrance into a certain house was prevented by one of the servants. Soon after the domestic was about to be married, when the other interposed, declared him excommunicate, and consequently unable to marry, and in virtue of the powers conferred by the letter, absolved him after extorting ten sols. The same individual caused two hundred men to be cited on fraudulent grounds by an arch-priest, and then had the arch-priest summoned before the episcopal court because he had not shown due diligence in executing the papal mandate; finally forcing him to buy himself off with a heavy fine. With a similar threat of excommunication he extorted fifteen sols from a shoemaker who, he asserted, had made his shoes too small; and another sum from the owner of a horse which he had hired, and which by stumbling in a ford had wet his cloak. Another man he prosecuted for a handful of vegetables, and obtained ten sols from him. In another case he harassed with repeated citations a young man who had caused him the expenditure of a single denier by not keeping an engagement to visit with him a house of prostitution. Innocent adds that some of the ecclesiastical judges were understood to share the booty of these nefarious transactions; that they purposely cited persons to appear in places dangerous to reach, a failure to attend being, by canon law, punishable with excommunication; and that they freely signed and sealed letters to their friends and accomplices, empowering them to inflict excommunication and grant absolution -- in this, apparently, only following the example set them by the pontiff himself. If such abuses could flourish under the lofty ambition and ceaseless vigilance of a man like Innocent, it is easy to imagine the condition of affairs under popes who were either negligent or corrupt, when Europe was covered with harpies armed with irresistible and irresponsible powers, tormenting the existence and sucking the life-blood of whom they pleased. Nicholas de Claminges describes the papal collectors who traversed Europe to exact the payments levied upon the churches by Rome as men selected for their hardness and arrogance, who, armed with the unlimited power of excommunication and interdiction, carried ruin and desolation into whole provinces. To meet their insatiable demands, churches were obliged to sell their sacred vessels and their relics, abbots and prelates whose poverty rendered them unable to satisfy these harpies, when dying were denied the right of sepulture and were thrust into unconsecrated ground; priests were forced to leave their cures and gain a miserable life of beggary or by serving laymen in profane labors, and few churches remained that were not reduced to pauperism.
In the latter half of the twelfth century, Peter Cantor declares that excommunication was used generally as a means of extortion." p. 452
- "The only thing that was lacking to complete the atrocity of the system was found when the canonists devised the plan of making certain offenses punishable with what was known as excommunication ipso facto, ipso jure, or latae sententiae. This, as its various names indicate, required neither judge, trial, nor sentence -- the offender was excommunicated by the fact of his offense, and was subjected to all the consequent penalties without warning. It could be prescribed even for internal sins as well as for external acts; for thoughts which no man new, as well as for crimes notorious to all; and thus the subject of it might be cut off from the church, and deprived of salvation without his own knowledge or that of others. This fortunate invention gave so much additional efficiency to the spiritual sword that it became widely employed." p. 457
- "The number of the sins thus punishable increased with time, and in 1491, a synod of Bamberg made an enumeration of no less than one hundred offenses thus punishable with ipso facto excommunication by the canon law, and it is curious to observe that in this long catalogue only twelve are disconnected with the direct personal interests of the church, while many are of the most trifling character. To give a man over without warning to Satan for collecting toll from an ecclesiastic on crossing a bridge would seem but a slender exercise of Christian charity, and yet such was the use made by the church of the illimitable power which it claimed to enjoy under the special ordinance of God." pp. 458-459
Emancipation
- "Yet though the revolt of the Hussites had shown how infirm was the basis on which was erected the imposing structure of sacerdotal Christianity, the sounding promises of reformation extorted from the fears of the hierarchy were sufficient to postpone the dreaded revolution for nearly a century. The whole organization of the church, however, was so thoroughly interpenetrated with corruption that no internal efforts at purification could be successful." p. 460
- "Thus gradually came to an end the alliance between church and state which Charlemagne found so efficient in his civilizing policy, and which proved so disastrous to his successors. The pretensions of the False Decretals led so inevitably to the monopoly of all power by the church, that when they were once recognized no monarch could ask its assistance in reducing his subjects to obedience without himself becoming its slave. We have seen to how much of petty tyranny and oppression this gave opportunity, yet on the whole there can be no question that it advanced the interests of civilization, and that the average influence of the church was for the benefit of the people. When Innocent III boldly stood forward as the sole defender of Ingeberga of Denmark against her powerful and resolute husband, Philip Augustus, he taught the reckless spirit of feudalism that might does not always make right. In those turbulent ages it was only the church that could interpose between power and its victims, and the church could not do this unless armed with the ability to coerce as well as to persuade. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that many of the evils thus combated were indirectly created by the influence, the connivance, or the supineness of the church. If the laity were fierce and lawless, it was because the church had proved false to its great mission, and had employed its almost illimitable power not in softening the manners of mankind and inclining their hearts to the truths of the Gospel, but in consolidating its authority and increasing its worldly possessions." p. 473
- "To the covetous and unscrupulous an ecclesiastical career opened the shortest avenue to success, and the church accordingly became filled with the covetous and unscrupulous, bringing in their train corruption of every kind, and oppression which rivaled that of the feudal seigniory. When this was at length carried beyond human endurance, Europe arose with a universal protest. The bolder spirits emancipated themselves alike from the dogmas and the dominion of Rome; the more conservative preserved their reverence for the doctrines of Latin Christianity, but plainly showed that their allegiance was to be secured only by the abandonment of the prerogatives which the critical spirit of inquiry discovered to be as destitute of authority as they were unsuited to the new requirements of modern civilization. The struggle was long and intricate. For a century or more the press, the pulpit, and battlefield were by turns or simultaneously the arena on which the new era and the old contended for mastery, and when at length physical exhaustion brought about a truce at the peace of Westphalia, although the Roman church apparently held her own, it was no longer on the same terms as before. The princes who had fought her battle had secured their pay. They were no crusaders who had drawn the sword unselfishly for the propagation of the faith, and if they had preserved her existence, their price for the service had been emancipation.
Their emancipation proved to be likewise the emancipation of the church. As its temporal authority declined, its spiritual energy revived. The change, it is true, was slow, and did not become fully manifest until the Revolution of '89 relieved the hierarchy still further from the burdens which kept it weighed down to earth. Since then it has gained enormously in all that constitutes real power over the souls and consciences of men. Unfortunately, however, this has been accomplished in spite of itself, and it still clings to the old traditions and mourns over the disgraceful glories of the past.
The spirit of the hierarchy is unchanged and apparently unchangeable. According to Pius IX, in his allocution of 1849, the impotence of the church to impose its yoke on others is bondage and shameful servitude; and, careless of the teachings of the intervening twenty years, he shows what that yoke is by reviving in 1869, as recorded in the journals of the day, an obsolete order which requires all physicians to cease attendance, and abandon to his fate, any patient dangerously ill, who, within three days after seeking medical aid, shall not have confessed his sins, and expressed willingness to receive extreme unction. Destined to perdition in the next world, he is to be abandoned helpless to his fate in this, and the voice of humanity is to be stilled for him who cannot be forced into dependence on the spiritual ministrations of the priest. When the Vicar of Christ conceives that his duty to God requires him to use such means to reclaim his erring children, we learn the full significance of the principles proclaimed in the Encyclical and Syllabus of December, 1864, where any denial of the imprescriptible rights at any time possessed by the church is condemned as absolute heresy. It is a damnable error to assert that the church has ever exceeded her rightful prerogatives; that the state should be independent; or that the church should not be allowed to coerce into submission all who may disregard her authority.
Indeed, the catalogue of offenses entailing ipso facto excommunication enumerated by Pius IX in his Bull of Oct. 12, 1869, reviving and modifying the Bulls In Coena Domini of his predecessors, shows that the church is resolute to maintain the old abuse of power, though it may not be willing to encourage the abuses of its applications in detail. On the plea of reducing the vast accumulation of canons which denounced this iniquitous sentence, he proceeds to codify and rearrange, and thus to bring freshly before the world, the fearful censure which condemns, without trial and without appeal, all transgressors to perdition. Heretics are thus reminded of their inevitable fate; all who question the papal power are included in the ban; and the reading or possession of any book prohibited by the Index is sufficient to involve the unlucky owner in the course. In the same mood all the rights, prerogatives, and privileges of the church are guarded with this tremendous anathema; nor, in his serene assumption of performing in this a work of charity does Pius for a moment seem to think of the countless millions of human souls whom he is delivering over helpless unto Satan in the exercise of the powers conferred on him by Christ through St. Peter. As of old the one unpardonable sin is disobedience to the church and to its visible head on earth." pp. 474-476
- "The ideal of Hildebrand is evidently still the ideal of the ruling hierarchy. The priest is still the supernatural being set apart by God, wielding the full power of Christ, who has bestowed His authority on him. The bishop is still clothed by divine law with the right to the unlimited and unqualified obedience of the faithful, while the state only possesses a limited and qualified claim to the allegiance of the citizen, and, when the two powers conflict, divine law of course must override human law, the church, as a "Divine Institution," being necessarily the arbiter "whose authority the state is bound to respect as supreme in its sphere." As of old, this right to the unquestioning submission of the faithful is enforced by the control over the sacraments, through which the gates of heaven are closed and the portals of hell are opened to the eternal and changeless destiny of him whose contumacious obstinacy causes him to die outside of the pale of the church. If the nineteenth century is not subjected to the theocracy which ruled the thirteenth century, it therefore is through no abatement in the claims of the church to universal domination, but because a godless and irreligious generation refuses to render due reverence to the ordinances of God. " pp. 476-477
The Reformed Churches
- "In the heat of controversy Luther might deny the power of excommunication, but when he excommunicated the pope he only showed, by unconscious example, that some power of the kind must be lodged in every organized church; and this was recognized when the Protestants, after completing the work of destruction, commenced that of reconstruction. Every body of men must have the right to determine their conditions of fellowship, and the power of expulsion from their association must be lodged somewhere, to be used with such moderation and discretion as God may vouchsafe to them. This was manifested when the Lutherans came to draw up a formal declaration of faith and discipline in the Augsburg Confession -- though it should be borne in mind that this document was framed in the hope that it might lead to a reconciliation of the churches, and that it therefore conceded as much as possible to the Catholic views, while its adoption as the recognized standard of German orthodoxy arrested the development of the reform.
The relations between the church and state, and the limits of the sacerdotal power as expressed in the Augsburg Confession, are the natural results of Luther's doctrines on the sacrament of ordination quoted above. The old abuses of the episcopal power, infringing on the secular authority, are warmly denounced. The province of the church is to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments, not to dethrone kings, usurp temporal power, or interfere with the laws of the land. Church and state have each its own sphere, and if the ministers of the church have at any time exercised authority, its source has not been divine law, but the pleasure of the secular potentate. " pp. 491-492
- "Those who in persecution could thus arrogate to themselves the right to speak for God, and could assume that their acts were His, lacked only the opportunity to become as tyrannical and domineering as the Latin church in its worst days. Honestly, but fiercely, fanatical, they were troubled with as few doubts or misgivings as Damiani or Torquemada, and in a few generations of unresisted domination their simple form of belief would have resulted in a theocracy as absolute as that which Hildebrand founded. The rapidity of this inevitable development was manifested in Scotland, as soon as the Catholic cause was fairly subdued. John Know was consistent when, during his residence in England he refused, in 1552, the parish of Allhallows in London offered to him by Cranmer, and, on being summoned before the King's Council to explain his declination of the preferment, he gave as one of his reasons that no ministers in England had authority to separate the Lepers from the Heal, which was a chief point in his office. In the English establishment the power of excommunication was not confided to the hands of simple pastors and congregations but formed part of the machinery of ecclesiastical courts, and Knox would not submit to be shorn of the prerogatives which he deemed essential to the office of the ministry. In Scotland he had full opportunity to mold the kirk according to the Calvinist theories, and the results were not long in becoming apparent. The consistories of Calvin, composed of the pastor with his deacons and elders, became the kirk-sessions, which were virtually the rulers of the land, and which maintained their power for generations against the assaults of papist and prolatist on the single basis of excommunication. A contemporary has sketched these assemblies and their domination in no friendly spirit: "Every parish had a tyrant who made the greatest lord in his district stoop to his authority. The kirk was the place where he kept his court; the pulpit his throne or tribunal from which he issued out his terrible decrees; and twelve or fourteen sour, ignorant enthusiasts, under the title of elders, composed his council. If any, of what equality soever, had the assurance to disobey his orders, the dreadful sentence of excommunication was immediately thundered out against him, his goods and chattels confiscated and seized, and he himself being looked upon as actually in the possession of the devil, and irretrievably doomed to eternal perdition, all that convened with him were in no better esteem." pp. 497-498
- "The kirk-sessions moreover were the principal promoters of the fearful prosecutions for witchcraft, which perhaps were worse in Scotland than in any other county. They paid the "prickers" who tortured miserable old women to obtain proof, and they voted supplies of firewood for the resultant auto-da-fe. While they rigorously prohibited funerals and marriages on the Sabbath as a profanation of the sacredness of the day, witch-burnings were deemed a good work allowable on the Lord's day, and committees of ministers attended them officially. " pp. 500-501
- "Another liberal proposition made in the same convocation was that any one notably neglecting to attend divine service or to take communion should be held as excommunicate without further process or promulgation of sentence, and that during his continuance therein be he deprived of all benefit of law, having no standing in court except as defendant." p. 510
- "Even making allowances for indignant exaggeration, this shows how all the abuses which led to the Reformation were rapidly being revived and systematized in the new establishment. A sacerdotal church and caste were growing up on the pattern of the ancient hierarchy, with the substitution of a king for a pope -- the combination of spiritual with temporal tyranny pointing inevitably to the establishment of a despotism as complete as that of the Caesars. At this moment, it is true, a fresh impulse had been given to popular indignation by the actions of the synods of 1640 above referred to; and a glance at the canons there adopted under the guidance of Laud, and promulgated by royal proclamations under the great seal, will serve to show how efficiently the censures of the church were being used in aid of the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission, for the purity of the faith and the supremacy of the crown." p. 514 - 515
- "The pestilent invention of printing was deprived of its capacity for evil with the same care. Any stationer, printer, or importer who might print, buy, sell, or disperse any book or scandalous pamphlet against the faith, discipline, or government of the Church of England was excommunicate ipso facto, and his name was ordered to be sent to the attorney-general for prosecution "according to the late decree in the Honorable Court of Star Chamber against the spreaders of prohibited books." Any preacher who vented such damnable doctrine in a sermon was to be excommunicated for a first offense, and deprived for a repetition. Even possession of such books, except by doctors of divinity in orders, graduates in divinity, or persons having episcopal or archidiaconal jurisdiction, was visited with the same penalties. Some provisions ere added to prevent the decree of excommunication by persons and property qualified, but these were counterbalanced by similar restrictions laid on the granting of absolution.
Such regulations as these, agreed upon in a conclave of prelates, and given the force of law by royal proclamation, betokened a rapid concentration of spiritual and temporal despotism to which Englishmen in that age were not likely to submit. It is no wonder then that one of the first efforts of the Long Parliament which assembled in Nov. 1640, was directed against them, the chief arguments being leveled at the palpable infringements on the rights of Parliament. So fierce was the attack that when the matter came to a vote, Dec. 16th, no one dared to record himself against a resolution which declared "That the Canons and Constitutions Ecclesiastical, treated upon by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Presidents of the Convocations for the respective Provinces of Canterbury and York, and the rest of the Bishops and Clergy of these Provinces, and agreed upon with the King's Majesty's license in their several Synods begun at London and York in the year 1649, do contain in them matter contrary to the King's Prerogative, to the fundamental Laws and Statutes of the Realm, to the Rights of Parliament, to the Property and Liberty of the Subject, and Matters tending to Sedition and of dangerous consequences." pp. 516-517
- "From this long history of oppression and wrong we may learn how easily the greed, the ambition, or the bigotry of man can convert to the worst purposes the most beneficent of creeds; and how unequal is our weak human nature to the exercise of irresponsible authority. Honest fanaticism and unscrupulous selfishness have vied with each other in using as a weapon for the subjugation of body and soul the brightest promises made by a benignant Saviour to his children; and every increase of power has been marked by an increase in its abuse. It is a saddening thought that a religion, so ennobling and so purifying in its essence, should have accomplished so little for humanity in this life, and that the ages in which it ruled the heart and intellect most completely should be those in which its influence was the least efficient for good and the most potent for evil. Its great central principles of love, and charity, and self-sacrifice seem ever to have found their most determined enemies in those who had assumed its ministry and had bound themselves to its service; and every conquest made by its spirit has been won against the earnest resistance of its special defenders. Even though the last two centuries have been marked by a development of true Christianity, still the old arrogance and uncharitableness exist. Indifferntism and irreligion are assumed to be the motives of men who most earnestly strive to obey the laws of Christ; and it would scarce be safer now than in the thirteenth century to intrust temporal authority to those who claim to represent the Redeemer and His Apostles." pp. 520-521
The Early Church and Slavery
- "That Christ rejected as incompatible with his great mission all direct interference with the existing organization of society is self-evident. He preached non-resistance and subordination to the powers that be. His object was not to found a sect like Islam, which should go forth to conquer the infidel, with the gospel in one hand and the sword in the other, but to regenerate human nature, so that in the long succession of centuries man should be pruified and evil suffer a gradual but permanent overthrow. When he proclaimed the principle of the Golden Rule; when St. Paul bade Philemon to take back the fugitive Onesimus not as a slave but above a slave, a brother beloved; when he ordered masters to grant justice and equality to slaves for the sake of the Master of all, the rules of life were laid down, which, conscientiously followed, must render slavery finally impossible among Christians." p. 523
- "Slavery was so brutalizing that even the freedman was still a brute in the eyes of the legislator.
Such was the institution of slavery in the Roman world when Christianity emerged from its obscurity. Slaveholding, if not approved, was at least tolerated in the early church, and abundant evidence exists that it was in so sense regarded as an infraction of discipline. To have made it an article of faith, or a rule that the Christian should own no slaves, would have been to threaten the structure of civil society, and to give color to the political accusations which were the pretext of successive persecutions. Yet short of this everything was done to render slavery nominal." p. 537
- "In becoming the religion of the state, Christianity merely exchanged an external for an internal master. The time had not yet come when it could control the state, and meanwhile, as an affair of state it was necessarily controlled by the state. Even more ruinous to its purity was the exchange of persecution for corruption. As long as there was hazard in professing Christianity, the majority of Christians were religious by conviction, and carried their religion into their daily life. When, however, the church was taken into favor by the monarch, and offered splendid prizes to reward the ambitious, it became crowded with men whose object was self-aggrandizement, and whose restless talents speedily enabled them to dominate the humble and conscientious. With wealth and power came conservatism. The interest of the church was no longer identical with that of religion, and in any conflict between the two, the latter was sure to succumb." pp. 540-541
- Writing about the fifth century, "Not only did religion thus use its influence in favor of the slave, but the church became the legalized intercessor between him and his master. It thus employed its right of asylum" p. 548
Concluding paragraph
- "Its practice was frequently at variance with its teachings, for human nature is weak, and the sacred character of the priest has never in any age exempted him from the frailty which we all inherit. Yet the aberrations of man, though they might obscure, could not prevail against the principles of the Gospel,. and in the long course of centuries the influence of Christianity gradually won the victory over human cupidity and pride. That a man should exercise the absolute despotism of ownership over his fellow-creature has at length been recognized as wrong in itself, and this is not the least of the peculiar characteristics which distinguish Christian civilization from that of other ages and creeds. When so much has been gained we are fairly justified in anticipating more, and in looking forward hopefully to the time when the universal brotherhood of mankind shall be a practical element in the guidance of life." p. 576
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Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.
last updated Feb. 23, 2001
