The Black Pope_A History of the Jesuits Page 4
The world moved, and the Church moved with the world. Changes were rife everywhere, and the heads of the Church found that their own special interests would be seriously imperilled if they did not move also. But this by no means implied that the Church encouraged the march of intellect. The modifications which were made did not allow more freedom, they simply changed the form of restraint. New bonds were forged to suit new times. The religious Orders had lost all credit with the people. As long as they observed their primitive rule and lived in the poverty which they vowed to observe, it was all very well, at least in the eyes of the poor. They were pleased and consoled to see that poverty was honoured as a religious virtue. If practising poverty could be the means of saving the soul of the friar, it must also benefit the serf. But when the friar ceased to practise poverty, or even to show much respect for it, all was changed. And when the friar, who vowed temperance, was often seen in a condition which would have been punished with severity if his cloth had not protected him, the poor man was not slow to denounce the injustice.
Further, the friar was vowed to chastity, and here also he failed, till at last ribald songs were sung, or said, which held men up to public scorn, and not without cause, who has once been revered as the angels of the earth. The friars, as a class, were ignorant, and far too secure in their own estimation of their position to trouble themselves about learning. But when men began to think, they expected to be helped by those to whom they once looked up as the sole depositories of learning, and when they failed respect was lost and doubt began. Wandering friars, who neither taught nor prayed, soon became of little account. The enclosed monasteries had decreased in numbers, and the popes no longer encouraged them. It needed new rules, and a new form of so-called religious life for the new conditions of society. Ignatius had realised these new conditions and established new rules. The new rules declared that the propagation of the faith and the promulgation of Christianity, which in that age meant the same thing, were to be the primary objects of the Jesuits. The methods by which they were to be carried out were preaching, hearing confessions, and educating the young. An admirable programme for the end in view. The young were to be trained to believe that in the Church, and in the Church alone, salvation was to be found. At an impressionable age they naturally became as wax in the hands of their superiors, and provided they did not revolt in after life, would remain the humble servants of their early teachers. But that the Jesuit pupil did revolt, we shall see eventually. A boy may be made to believe, while he is a boy, that he will fulfil the high destinies of his manhood by continuing this submission; but when he arrives at man’s estate he wants something more than mere assertion before he will be ready to place all the affairs of life under clerical control.
The control which the confessional gave to the Jesuit will be considered elsewhere. Ignatius might have established his colleges and educated youth in vain, if he had not made plans fraught with a marvellous and foreseeing wisdom for retaining the prizes which he had secured. The iniquities of the confessional have been justly made again and again the subject of public exposure and denunciation; but the direction which is given in the confessional, and its far reaching results, is a subject which deserves more attention than it has received. To the consideration of this point we shall return later. In the meantime let us glance at the work of the Reformation. Luther and Loyola both visit Rome; but with what different results! When Loyola commences his career of human policy and craft, he uses the sins and follies of his fellow men and women for his own advancement. Luther has but one thought, the greater glory of God and the advancement of His kingdom. He needed not to frame rules or compose spiritual exercises, to court cardinals or fallen women; his rule was the Bible, God’s charter of eternal life; and his spiritual exercise was prayer to the one and only Mediator between God and man.
Chapter II
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Luther—and some of the Causes of the German Reformation—Which the Jesuits Were Founded to Combat
The Jesuits Founded to Combat the Dangers to Rome of the German Reformation.—How Luther evangelised.—He sings for his daily bread in the streets of Eisenach. Hardships of his early life.—Frau Cotta befriends him.—Germany more independent of Rome than Spain, and has more light.—Angry disputes between the religious Orders on articles of faith.—The Dominicans and Franciscans quarrel about the immaculate conception.—The Dominicans get up an apparition to uphold their side, how they were found out and defeated.—The exposure greatly helps the cause of the Reformation.—Luther tried by the cruel calumnies of some Christian people.—His pathetic complaint.—His appeal to posterity for justice.—His dying words.
THE name of Luther is familiar as a household word. There are few who do not know something of his simple history. His parents were poor and his friends were few. If his words sometimes offend the sensibilities of the 19th century, we should remember that he had a work to do in the 16th, which required some very plain speaking. Besides, at this period blunt and even coarse speech was used in the ordinary affairs of life. If Luther is blamed for expressions which shock us, we may at least do him the justice to remember that he was brought up in a Church which had ever set its face determinately against education in the highest sense of the word. Neither honied phrases, nor that liberality which is so often made a cloak for cowardice, would have served the cause for which he fought, or the work which he had to do.
Ignatius Loyola had not even thought of his Order, or seen his visions, when the hungry little lad Luther was singing for his daily bread in the streets of Eisenach. His early life was one of hardship and much suffering. The times were hard. The severities of the Inquisition had made men callous and brutal to each other. If the Church considered cruelty a virtue, why should the populace resent the infliction of pain? The tyrannies of the nobles had also their evil effect on human life, and on the formation of character. A word, and a blow, and often the blow without the word was the common rule of life. But there were tender hearts for all the hardness of the times, and Frau Cotta was one of the gentle ones who loved mercy and practised peace. Luther had a voice of some power and sweetness, and sang from time to time at her door. The good Frau, who had no children of her own, was touched by the boy’s poverty, and became his friends The lad who sang himself into her heart eventually became a priest. His father was strongly opposed to this step, and no wonder. The name of priest and monk had long been a term of reproach because of the evil lives of so many of those who bore it.
The Wycliffite movement in England had been rather a revolt against the wickedness in the high places of the Church, than doctrinal. In Germany the revolt began in the same way, but ended in the discovery that what men did depended on what men believed. By their fruits ye shall know them. The clergy, too, were very much more concerned with what touched their material interests than with what touched their faith. Nor has this ceased to be true, for when Ireland manifested a determination to resist the political interference of the Pope and showed her displeasure by the reduction of payments to the ecclesiastical treasury she was at once conciliated.
The custom of writing in Latin, which was universal during the middle ages, greatly facilitated the transmission of thought, and information as to movements religious or secular. Hence Huss was thoroughly familiar with the writings of Wycliffe and made them his text books when teaching in the University of Prague. It was a noted fact that licentious living was far more common amongst the religious orders than amongst the secular priests. Hence the success of Ignatius Loyola in founding a new and professedly reformed rule. Men who still clung to the ancient faith, and who could not deny existing evils, were ready to aid any plan which promised amendment. The quarrels between the two great religious orders was another source of scandal, yet serious as they were, they seem insignificant when compared with the intestine disputes and scandals which eventually developed amongst the Jesuits themselves.
It was no wonder then that Luther’s plain thinking and pious father, should
have objected strongly to his becoming a priest. A public scandal in the shape of a quarrel between Dominicans and Franciscans, which has been very fully recorded by contemporary historians, had nearly as great an effect in shaking the power of the Roman Catholic Church, as the sale of indulgences.
The facts of history are so strongly against the Church of Rome, that she has found it necessary to omit or minimise these facts in the histories which she places in the hands of the young. She would fain have all men believe that her faith has never changed, and when it is pointed out that she has continually added new articles to her creed, she replies, that these new articles have always been believed. History attests that the very reverse has been the case. There is scarcely an article of the creed of Rome which has not been hotly, and even acrimoniously, disputed for centuries by members of that Church. This has been especially the case with regard to the doctrine of the so-called immaculate conception of Mary. The great mediaeval orders, the Franciscan, and the Dominican, were rivals for the support of the people, and for the honours of the theological schools. Between these religious bodies, the war of opinion raged with a fury which could scarcely be credited by those who are not familiar with the subject. An appeal to Scripture was of course never thought of, there was not a word in the Bible which could be turned to account, even by the most dexterous metaphysical theologian. St. Thomas might write learned essays on the number of angels who could exist on the point of a needle, but for the doctrine of the immaculate conception of her who had declared that she rejoiced in God her Saviour, there was so little that could be pressed into the service, that the Franciscans were driven to supply a miracle. Sebastian Franck gives the story at great length in his “Chronica,” published in 1531. We can only give the briefest abridgment here, but the affair is too characteristic of the times, and the consequences were too important, to omit all notice of it.
Miracles come in sometimes very opportunely, the Dominicans, who had always opposed the doctrine of the immaculate conception, were losing ground on that account. They were reproached with want of devotion to the Virgin, which practically is the greatest crime of which a Roman Catholic can be guilty. The Franciscans, on the contrary, were lauded for their piety and zeal, much to their satisfaction. Something had to be done to help the lessening prestige of the order of Friars Preachers. And something was done. A miracle was carefully arranged and carried out, with precautions which ought to have secured success. What makes the matter most revolting is, that the miracle was not the result of either the fraud or the imagination of a single and perhaps scarcely responsible individual; on the contrary, it was planned and authorised in a secret Chapter of the Order, held at Wimpfen, in 1506.
Nurnberg and Frankfort were first proposed as suitable places for carrying out the pious fraud, but eventually Berne was selected; as the inhabitants of the other places were believed to be rather too much inclined to make careful investigations before accepting evidence. The victim selected was a young novice who had just entered the convent, and who was full of zeal, and more likely to believe than to question anything apparently supernatural. Mysterious noises were made in his cell at night, and he was led to suppose that he had been visited by a spirit. Between fright and gratification that he should have been selected by heaven for such favours, he was soon in just the state of mind to believe anything. The prior appeared to him in the form of a spirit, and told him that he (the spirit) needed prayers, that he should ask to have eight masses read in the chapel of St. John, and that the friars should also scourge themselves during this period.
The vision, according to pre-arrangement, was made the subject of sermons in the Dominican Church, the preacher declaring that suffering souls never came to ask help from the Franciscans, whom he described in the coarse and violent terms characteristic of the theological disputes of the day. The prior placed relics in the cell of the favoured youth, sprinkled holy water, and went through the usual Roman Catholic forms of protecting him from bad spirits, and encouraging the good. The spirits continued their visits. The confessor of the unfortunate youth gave him a letter addressed to the Virgin Mary, which contained questions on the disputed theological points, and desired him to implore the Queen of Heaven for a reply. The reply came as was to be expected, and in order to make the miracle more convincing, it was found in the tabernacle, with the host where it had been placed “miraculously.” Further, the novice was told by the Virgin to ask the Pope (Julius II) to order a festival in honour of her having been born in original sin. If this had been done the Church would have been so bound to this doctrine, that it would have been impossible, if indeed anything is impossible to infallibility, to have proclaimed her immaculate conception hereafter. It was now considered time to bring the novice forward publicly as an inspired person. So far all had gone well. He was deprived of his senses, by some draught which the monks gave him, and while in a state of apparent trance, they made the marks of the wounds of Christ on his hands and feet, a form ardently coveted by Roman Catholic visionaries. This was another triumph over their Franciscan brethren, for no male saint had ever received the stigmata except St. Francis of Assisi.
The novice, who seems to have acted so far in good faith, began to find out, through the carelessness of his deceivers, who were now sure of their success, that he had been made their tool. They tried to poison him, they tried to starve him, they tried to bribe him, but all was in vain. Rumours got about, as rumours will, and there were loud cries for ecclesiastical intervention. The matter was referred to Rome. Rome appointed a commission of inquiry, but the good burghers of Berne were not quite so credulous as the monks had hoped, and they had not quite as much faith in ecclesiastical investigation of ecclesiastical cases as might have been expected. They demanded that eight of their own councillors should be joined with the ecclesiastical commissioners, with the result that four of the monks were sentenced to death, and were burned alive in the market place at Berne, according to the barbarous custom of the times.
Nor was this a solitary example of the state of the monastic institutions of the age of Loyola; other and similar cases might be recorded, but enough has been said to show how the people were prepared for revolt. It has, unfortunately, been too much the habit with controversialists of all denominations, to attack the character of those from whom they have differed. Of course, one who has held such a prominent position as Luther could not escape. Even his parents were made the subject of attack, yet they were simple and God fearing people. If they were not anxious to see their son a member of a religious order, facts such as that which we have just related might plead their excuse, even with members of the Church in which they lived and died. But Luther’s father was guilty of what was then considered a serious crime. He refused to obey the demand of the priest who attended him on his death-bed, and who tried to make him leave all, or nearly all, his little property to the ever grasping church instead of to his children, who sorely needed it.
We find a marked difference between the views with which Luther and Loyola studied for the priesthood. Ignatius desired only just as much knowledge even of theology as would enable him to obtain the dignity to which he aspired. Indeed, so great was his ignorance, and so self-evident his inability to learn, that he never could have received orders, even in that lax age, if his want of the necessary qualifications had not been dispensed with. Luther had many advantages in his educational career. He lived in Germany, where the Inquisition had not the power which it had in Spain, and where, consequently, learning was encouraged rather than forbidden. He found a superior in the Augustinian Monastery at Erfurth in the person of the Vicar- General of the Order, John von Staupitz, who entered into his spiritual difficulties and exhorted him to study the Scriptures. How little either the master or the pupil anticipated the result! But the chains which bound Luther to his Church were broken slowly. It is indeed difficult for those who have not had personal experience of the Church of Rome to realise what a tremendous force of spiritual strength is require
d to forsake this strange religion. To those who never have suffered it is in vain to speak. It needs a Christ-like sympathy to feel for and with others at any time, but above all in circumstances which are foreign to our personal experience.
It is true that Rome has forbidden the reading of the Bible in language too plain, and by authority too strong to be questioned. It is also true that under certain conditions Rome relaxes her rule. It is also true that every monk, nun, and priest is obliged to read portions of the Bible daily, when saying the Office. But whether a small portion of the Bible or the whole Bible is read matters little in the end, for, small or large, what is read must be read with the eyes of the Church, and explained as required by the Church. Hence the Bible is practically a sealed book to the Roman Catholic. This is a point which is scarcely understood, either by those who think that Roman Catholics are never allowed to see a Bible, or by those who think that they can use it freely. The words used by our Lord to the Jews exactly describe this condition of things in the Church of Rome: “Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered” (Mark vii, 13). The mere mechanical reading of the Bible can avail little, and the mere mechanical reading of part of the Bible is all that Rome allows.
There is no doubt that Luther felt very keenly the false accusations which were brought against him, not only by his enemies, but even by those who ought to have been his warmest supporters. The unity of Rome has always been its strength. The dis-union of Christians has been the greatest hindrance to the spread of the Gospel. As the end of time draws nearer may we not hope that Christians will draw nearer to each other, and to their coming Lord.