Chapter XXVII (1)

GENERAL CONDITION OF EUROPE FROM THE VIII. TO
THE XVI. CENTURY

700–1500

Effects of Barbarian Supremacy on the Nations of Europe--Rise
of the Papal Power--Character of the Popes--Their
Vices and Crimes--The Interdict--Corrupt Practices of
Prelates and Degradation of the Papacy--Institution of
the Monastic Orders--Their Great Influence--Their Final
Degeneracy--Wealth of the Religious Houses--The Byzantine
System--Its Characteristics--Power of the Eunuchs--Splendor
of Constantinople--Destruction of Learning--Debased Condition
of the Greeks--The People of Western Europe--Tyranny of
Caste and its Effects--Feudal Oppression--Life of the
Noble--His Amusements--The Serf and his Degradation--His
Hopeless Existence--Treatment of the Jews--Prevalence of
Epidemics--Religious Festivals--General Ignorance--Scarcity
and Value of Books--Persecution of Learning--The Empire of the
Church--Its Extraordinary Vitality.

In order that the reader may thoroughly understand and properly appreciate the moral and intellectual supremacy of the Spanish Arabs and their prodigious advance in the domain of science and the arts, I have thought it advisable, by way of contrast, to present to him a short and superficial sketch of the religious, political, and domestic conditions which prevailed in the society of contemporaneous Europe. The extent of this vast and comprehensive subject--one which has exhausted the erudition of many great historians, whose works of themselves would constitute a considerable library--must, therefore, excuse the incomplete and cursory character of this chapter; while its importance as a standard of comparison will account for an apparent deviation from the general plan embraced by these volumes.

The elegant luxury and refined civilization of the Romans had disappeared amidst the universal anarchy which followed the dissolution of their empire. The boundaries of great states and kingdoms had been obliterated. Provinces once famed for their fertility were now the haunts of prowling beasts and truculent barbarians. The despotic but generally salutary government of the Cæsars had everywhere, save in the immediate vicinity of Byzantium, been replaced by the capricious and irregular jurisdiction of petty chieftains, whose violent passions were restrained only by their weakness, and of marauding princes, ambitious to destroy every vestige of that architectural magnificence and mental culture whose monuments they despised, and whose example they had neither the desire nor the capacity to emulate. Instead of a smiling landscape, everywhere exhibiting the traces of agricultural skill and laborious and patient industry, a prospect of universal desolation met the eye of the anxious and hurrying wayfarer. Moss-grown heaps of rubbish alone marked the site of many a once flourishing and opulent city. The towering aqueducts,--those engineering marvels of the ancient world,--whose majestic ruins still excite the admiration of all mankind, were broken and fallen into decay. The peerless temples and altars of the gods had been desecrated by the hands of sacrilegious Goth, Hun, and Lombard. Bands of brigands, insensible to pity, swarmed upon the highways. In the cities the equitable decisions of the prætor had been supplanted by the extortions of ecclesiastical fraud and barbarian insolence. The vices prevalent during the most abandoned period of Roman licentiousness had survived, and had been aggravated by the unfeeling cruelty of the conquerors. No scruples of humanity or delicacy suggested the concealment of the most revolting orgies. The streets of the Eternal City exhibited enormities whose very mention the rules of modern propriety do not tolerate. Banquets where the brutal propensities of the turbulent and uncouth guests were indulged to the utmost constantly afforded provocation for bloodshed and murder. Knowledge of letters, understanding and appreciation of the arts, had already wholly vanished. The literary masterpieces of classic genius remained unknown or forgotten in the insignificant collections of scattered libraries, or had been buried under the smoking ruins of those institutions of learning which once adorned the capitals and the provincial cities of Greece and Italy.

By the accident of geographical position, by the adoption of familiar political maxims, and by the incorporation into its ritual of many ceremonies long endeared to the votaries of Paganism, the Church of Rome had secured an influence over the minds of men which under any other circumstances it could scarcely have acquired. The revered name and dignity of Supreme Pontiff imparted authority to its decrees and gave prestige to its decisions on questions of doctrine. The five Christian emperors, from Constantine to Gratian, adopted without alteration the attributes and wore the insignia of the sacred office established by Numa and usurped by Augustus. The assumption of imperial power is shown by the extent of Papal jurisdiction long sharply defined by the ancient limits of the empire. The adoption of the Latin idiom enabled the Church to communicate secretly with its servants in the most distant countries; while at the same time it invested the proceedings of its worship with a mystery which awed the ignorant and fanatic believer. The splendid ceremonial, the imposing temples, the elaborate vestments, the costly furniture of the altar enriched with gold and jewels, the incense, the solemn chants, the consecration of the Host,--all powerfully impressed the superstitious children of the slaves of ancient mythology, in whose minds still lingered traces of those traditions which had been received by their fathers with the implicit faith due to the oracles of the gods.

In the course of centuries, the primitive simplicity of the Gospel and the purity of life which distinguished the first Christians had been lost in the complex theology, in the unseemly contests for precedence, in the crimes and the licentiousness which distracted the society of the Eternal City. From a simple priest, whose tenure of office was dependent on the pleasure of his associates, the Bishop of Rome had been exalted into a mighty sovereign, responsible only to the powers of Heaven. The palace of the Vatican exhibited all the vices of the most corrupt of courts. The assumption of infallibility,--an inevitable result of the preposterous claims of the Papacy,--through the contradictory interpretations of different individuals whose interests were conflicting led to the most opposite conclusions, often to results fatal to the peace and honor of the Church. The faith of the populace was weakened. Infidelity in the priesthood became too common to excite remark. The universal depravity was incredible and appalling. The general demoralization resulting from the example of the clergy, whose atheism and debauchery were proverbial, threatened the existence of society, a catastrophe which the thorough organization of the hierarchy alone prevented. Even in the fifteenth century Machiavelli wrote, “The nearer a nation is to Rome the more impious are the people.” When the German Schopp called the famous scholar, Casaubon, an atheist, the latter retorted: “If I were an atheist I should now be at Rome, where I have often been invited.” The effects of this superb ecclesiastical organization were not long in manifesting themselves. The legitimate resources of power were aided by every device of fraud, of oppression, of imposture, of forgery. A succession of able and unprincipled pontiffs fastened on Christendom a yoke which the intelligence and the science of subsequent generations have not even yet been able to entirely remove. The temporal supremacy of the Cæsars was re-established over Europe; the dogmas of Catholicism were preached in distant continents unknown to the ancient world; and a tyranny far more terrible in its consequences than that experienced under the cruel rule of Nero and Domitian was imposed upon the intellectual aspirations of mankind.

No branch of history affords such a significant illustration of human craft and human weakness as the story of the ambition, the intrigues, and the vices of the Popes. In its consideration, the fact must never be lost sight of that the Holy Father was, as a necessary consequence of his creed, the earthly embodiment of spiritual perfection,--the vicegerent of Almighty God. Either the admission of a single error of judgment, or a controversy involving the most insignificant tenet sustained by one pope and disputed by his successor, was fatal to the claim of infallibility, which was the foundation of the entire ecclesiastical system. The omniscience conferred by the apostolic succession, which traced its origin to the Saviour Himself, could never be mistaken. The example of the Supreme Pontiff, the relations he sustained to the great officials of his court, his occupations, his diversions, his tastes, his habits, his conversation, were of far greater importance in the eyes of the meanest peasant of some remote kingdom who acknowledged his mission than were the most glorious achievements of any temporal sovereign. The possibilities for the attainment to positions of such authority and influence as were offered by the Roman Catholic hierarchy had been unknown to Paganism. These opportunities enabled men of base origin, but of extraordinary talents, to reach the chair of St. Peter, men whose faults were overlooked or palliated by the indulgent spirit of the age on account of the successful prosecution of their schemes and the veneration which attached to their calling.

Thus, among the powers of the earth, highest in rank, greatest in renown, supreme in influence, pre-eminent in infamy, was the Papacy of Rome. The maintenance of an uniform standard of orthodoxy was little considered by the spiritual potentate whose will was the law of Christendom. It is well known to every student of Church history that Jewish doctrines predominated in the early days of Christianity and controlled the policy of its priesthood. The Pagan ideas and ceremonies inherited from the Roman pontiffs it never laid aside. Every form of heterodox belief was entertained at different periods by the incumbents of the Holy See. St. Clement was an Arian; Anastasius a Nestorian; Honorius a Monothelite; John XXII. an unconcealed atheist. The contradictory dogmas, the acrimonious disputes, the frightful anathemas, that resulted from the adoption of these heretical principles of doctrine were the public reproach of the Christian world. As the power of the Papacy increased, its possession became more and more an object to ambitious and unscrupulous adventurers. It was sought and obtained by arts countenanced only by the vilest of demagogues. It was sold by one Pope to another; and, like the imperial laurel appropriated by the Pretorian Guards, it was put up at auction by cardinals and became the property of the most wealthy purchaser. Some of the Holy Fathers had not taken orders; others had not even received the sacraments of baptism and communion before being invested with the pontifical dignity. In some instances the tiara and the mitre were placed upon the brows of children. Neither John XII. nor Benedict IX. had attained the age of thirteen years when intrusted with the direction of the spiritual affairs of Christendom. An infant of five years was consecrated Archbishop of Rheims. Another who was only ten was placed upon the episcopal throne of Narbonne. Alonso of Aragon, the natural son of Ferdinand the Catholic, was made Archbishop of Saragossa at the age of six. The origin of the vicars of Christ was sometimes of the most obscure and often of the most disgraceful character. Stephen VII., John X., John XI., John XII., Boniface VII., Gregory VII., were the sons of courtesans. In some instances the infamy was further increased by the additional stigma attaching to the crime of incest. The famous courtesan Marozia, who for the greater part of her life disposed of the Papacy at her will, is credited with the installation of eight Popes, all her lovers or her children, one of whom was at once her son and grandson. The empire she acquired by her talents and her beauty lasted almost a quarter of a century. To that epoch is ascribed an occurrence that many writers have designated as fabulous, but which is established by evidence far more convincing than many events that have successfully withstood the most formidable assaults of hostile criticism. It was long asserted by chroniclers of the orthodox faith, and universally credited, that in the capital of Christianity, hallowed by the glorious deaths of countless martyrs, linked with the proud associations of the rise and progress of the spiritual power of the Papacy, and ennobled by the most signal victories of the Church, a monstrous prodigy had occurred. It was said that Pope John VIII., whose sex had hitherto been unsuspected save by those favored with her intimacy, while returning from the celebration of a solemn festival, at the head of a procession of cardinals and bishops and surrounded with the glittering emblems of pontifical power and majesty, had been seized with the throes of parturition in one of the most public thoroughfares of Rome.

The original acceptance of and belief in this portentous catastrophe, and its subsequent denial, form one of the most curious episodes in the annals of the Church. For five centuries it was implicitly received as historic truth. The life of Pope Joan long occupied a prominent place in the biographies of the successors of St. Peter, dedicated to eminent prelates, often to the Pontiffs themselves. The occurrence--whose locality was marked by the statue of a woman wearing the Papal insignia and holding a child in her arms--was minutely described in the works of learned and respectable historians. This memorial was thrown into the Tiber by the order of Sixtus V. Her bust, destroyed by Charles VIII. during the French invasion of Italy, was long an ornament of one of the churches of Sienna. Until the time of Leo X. certain ceremonies, which cannot be described, were publicly instituted at the election of every Pope to determine his sex. To these even the licentious Borgia was forced to conform. John Huss, when arraigned before the Council of Constance, amidst an unbroken silence, reproached the ecclesiastical dignitaries assembled to condemn him, and whom the slightest heretical assertion roused to tumultuous fury, with the imposture which had so signally demonstrated the weakness of the vaunted inspiration of the Papacy. More than five hundred writers, whose interests were identical with those of the Vatican--among them chroniclers, polemic divines, authorities on the history of the Church and its discipline, all enthusiastic members of the Roman Catholic communion--have confirmed the existence of a female Pope.

But, whether true or false, the disgrace consequent upon this gigantic scandal was insignificant when compared with the moral effect of the long series of crimes which disfigure the annals of Papal Rome. The shameless venality of the Princes of the Church had from the most remote times disgraced the proceedings by which was elevated to the throne of the apostles the immaculate Vicar of God. So corrupt was the ecclesiastical society of the capital that no Pontiff who endeavored to live a moral life was secure for a single hour. Celestine was poisoned at the instance of the cardinals eighteen days after receiving the tiara. Adrian V. was poisoned in the conclave itself before his election. The partisans of antagonistic claimants of the Papacy pursued each other with a vindictiveness scarcely equalled by the most intense bitterness of political faction. Each aspirant to the pontifical dignity denounced his opponent as an anti-pope, and exhausted the rich vocabulary of clerical invective in consigning him to the vengeance of Heaven. The defeated candidate was subjected to every variety of torture; to the deprivation of his nose, his eyes, his tongue; to the suffering of confinement in noisome dungeons; to the pangs of prolonged starvation. The temporal enemies of the Holy Father fared even worse than his rivals for spiritual supremacy. No deed was considered too flagitious for the removal of a dangerous and obstinate adversary. Innocent IV. employed the trusted physician and friend of the Emperor Frederick II. to compass his destruction. The Emperor Henry VII. was poisoned by order of Clement V. The assassination of the Medici under Sixtus IV. was planned by that Pope, and carried out before the altar, the signal for attack being the elevation of the Host by the celebrant, an archbishop. Half of the population of Rome was sacrificed to gratify the malignity of Formosus, whose quarrels long survived him and desolated the fairest provinces of Italy. Three years after the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain by Gregory IX. its victims already numbered tens of thousands.

In the variety and shrewdness of schemes for procuring money the statesmen of no government have ever equalled the astute financiers of the Apostolic See. In addition to the infinite number of vexatious and cruel expedients suggested by the possession and exercise of irresponsible power, the Popes employed means which violated every precept of morality, but whose successful issue demonstrated the practical wisdom which had inspired them. Simony was invariably practised, and not infrequently defended, even by those whose manifest duty it was to suppress it. The wealthiest candidate for the Papacy, whose physical infirmities indicated a speedy demise, had the best prospect for the realization of his ambition. The price of a cardinal’s hat varied from one thousand to ten thousand florins; the pallium of an archbishop was rated still higher in the ecclesiastical market, for the dignity of which it was the symbol usually brought thirty thousand ducats in gold. To meet this tax demanded at the death of every metropolitan, the new incumbent was sometimes reduced to pledge the furniture of the altar as security to Jewish usurers, who alone were able to raise such exorbitant amounts; and it was a source of complaint among the devout that Hebrew children had been seen to amuse themselves with the utensils consecrated to pious uses, and that in the unhallowed orgies of their fathers sacred vessels were habitually profaned which had originally been destined to receive the body and blood of Christ. When the exigencies of the Pontiff required it, the sacrifice of a few cardinals afforded a safe and easy means of replenishing the Papal treasury by the sale of the vacant dignities and by the reversion of the estates of the victims to the domain of the Holy See. It is a well-known fact that Alexander VI. died from drinking poisoned wine intended for certain princes of the Church whom he had invited to share his treacherous hospitality. Great wealth was obtained by the sale of absolutions granted by one Pope from the anathemas of his predecessor. This device suggested the traffic in indulgences, promising immunity from all punishment for crime. The avarice of John XXII. prompted him to draw up and promulgate a schedule of fines, so that by the payment of trifling sums the culprit was completely absolved from the moral and secular consequences of the most atrocious offences in the criminal calendar.

In their relations with foreign courts the Popes brought to bear every source of corruption and violence for the accomplishment of their ends. They availed themselves of the prestige attaching to their sacred office for the encouragement of insurrection and parricide. They openly sold the investitures of distant kingdoms. They armed the servant against his master, the vassal against his lord, the subject against his king. They prohibited the education of children as inimical to the interests of the clergy, who alone were declared worthy to enjoy the benefits of learning. When an obnoxious enemy was to be removed, they did not shrink from selecting instruments at whose employment honor and piety alike revolt,--the envenomed poniard, the sacramental elements mingled with deadly poisons and yet blessed by the ceremonies of the officiating prelate, whose instructions impressed the unsuspicious victim with the belief that he knelt in the very presence of God. According to Montaigne, the Holy Father was accustomed to use during the pontifical mass a contrivance which counteracted the effects of a consecrated draught which might otherwise be a messenger of death. From having been the vassals of the Emperor, the tributaries of the Saracen Emirs, and the tools of the Kings of France, the Popes in time arrogated to themselves imperial prerogatives; and his title to the crown was not considered as vested in a sovereign until it had been placed upon his brow by an ecclesiastic duly commissioned by the Successor of St. Peter. Through the insidious influence of a superstition, fostered by the ignorance of the time, the authority of powerful monarchs was disputed in their capitals. Degrading penances were imposed upon and performed by them without remonstrance. The humiliation of the prince in the eyes of his people increased, in a corresponding degree, the importance of the spiritual ruler who could inflict such punishments.

By excommunication and interdict--the one cutting off an individual from the fellowship of believers, the other aimed at an entire community or kingdom and involving the innocent with the guilty--the vengeance of the Church was visited upon all, of whatever rank, who had violated her canons or interfered with her projects of ambition. It is difficult in our age to appreciate the grave effects of ecclesiastical fulminations which the progress of intelligence and the development of civilization have long since deprived of their terrors. Of excommunication, anything besides a human being might be the subject, from a comet to rats, worms, and every kind of vermin. The interdict was equivalent to a dreadful curse inflicted by the vicegerent of God. With awe-inspiring ceremonies, usually performed at midnight to increase their impressive effect, the decree of the Holy See was solemnly proclaimed. In gloomy silence, occasionally broken by sobs and half-stifled lamentations, the terror-stricken multitude listened to a sentence which, in their eyes, exceeded, through the direful consequences it entailed, the severest penalty that any earthly tribunal could inflict. The churches were closed. The bells were silent. The tapers burning on the altars were extinguished. The relics were concealed. Before every house of worship where the Host was enshrined the consecrated wafer was publicly committed to the flames. The crucifixes of chapel and cathedral alike, enveloped in folds of black cloth, were hidden from the reverential gaze of those on whose heads had fallen the censure of the Almighty. All religious ceremonies were suspended save the aspersion, which secured for the Church the hope of another devotee, the solemnization of marriage, and the final rites which dismissed the passing soul on the threshold of eternity. The endearments of conjugal affection, the last blessing of the parent, the diversions of youth, the familiar greetings of friendship and esteem, were all prohibited. Surrounded by black-garbed priests bearing torches, an officiating cardinal, robed in violet,--the mourning of his order,--read the fatal edict which cut off absolutely the only medium of communication between the sinner and his God. From that moment the people were deprived of those welcome ministrations which had been their pleasure and consolation from infancy; which had directed their footsteps; which had confirmed their wavering resolution in many an emergency; which had relieved their sufferings; which had enhanced their happiness and furnished almost their sole amusements. No opportunity was neglected to impress the offending children of Rome with the awful consequences of the malediction which the perversity of their rulers had inflicted upon them. Subjects were absolved from their allegiance. The channels of commerce were closed. Trade of every kind was suspended. Worshippers, whose piety urged them, in spite of ecclesiastical menace, to frequent the portals of the church, were rudely driven back. The use of meat was forbidden, as in Lent; the familiar objects connected with the service of religion disappeared; the bells, deprived of their clappers, were taken down from the steeples; the sacred effigies of the saints were laid upon the ground and sedulously concealed from the profane gaze of an accursed people; the rich trappings of the shrines, the utensils of the mass, the vestments of the priests, were collected and carried away. The festivals which stimulated the devotion and amused the leisure of the gay and careless multitude were discontinued; the procession, which impressed all classes with its solemnity and magnificence, no longer moved with barbaric pomp through the crowded streets lined with long rows of kneeling worshippers; the voice of prayer was unheard; marriages were celebrated in church-yards; the bodies of the dead, denied a resting-place in consecrated ground and deprived even of the ordinary rites of sepulture, were cast unceremoniously beyond the walls of cities, to be devoured by unclean beasts and to poison the air with noxious odors.

When the ban was removed, the purification of every edifice, altar, and vessel, the reconsecration of every relic and image,--rites which demanded heavy contributions,--evinced the foresight and thrift of the priesthood.

Such were the frightful methods by which the Papacy, in an age of ignorance, punished a nation for the offences of a sovereign who had thwarted its schemes, defied its power, or incurred its enmity. In the estimation of the credulous--and in those days all were credulous--the interdict was not only a general curse enforced by every circumstance which could appeal to the prejudices of the devout; it was the sudden intercepting of the means of salvation, only attainable through the agency of the servants of the Church. Mediæval writers have left us affecting accounts of the universal wretchedness which the use of this instrument of ecclesiastical tyranny produced. It rarely failed of success, for no monarch, however bold or arbitrary, could long withstand its power; and the mere threat of its exercise was often sufficient to strike terror into a whole people and to peremptorily check the well-conceived designs of ambitious royalty. The interdict only fell into disuse after the foundation of the Inquisition, the most effective and formidable weapon ever devised by the merciless spirit of Papal despotism.

With the financial exhaustion induced by profuse expenditure in every species of luxury and vice, new and ingenious expedients were invented for the relief of the pressing necessities of the Vatican. The institution and frequent recurrence of the Jubilee, with its concourse of millions of fanatics, each bearing his offering to the insatiable genius of Rome; the Crusades, which acquired for the Papacy incalculable wealth by the conveyance of lands for a nominal consideration and the generous contributions of pilgrims; the Constitutions of Leo, which declared the real property of ecclesiastical foundations to be inalienable; the Inquisition, whose origin was more political than moral, and by whose rules one-half of the property of the condemned was forfeited to the sovereign and one-half to the Church, are prominent examples of the financial ability of the Popes.

The personal characters of the infallible and inspired guides of the Christian world cannot be delineated in the fulness of their impious depravity. The moral supremacy assumed by them as the representatives of celestial power was presumed to excuse the open indulgence of vices which even the most licentious temporal potentates sedulously veiled from the eyes of mankind. For more than two centuries the Papal court presented an almost uninterrupted exhibition of profligacy, which scandalized devout believers, whose imagination had invested the Holy Father with the attributes of divinity, and excited the horror of the few eminent and consistent Christian prelates who remained pure amidst the general contamination. Some priests celebrated mass in a state of intoxication. Others paraded the streets with a train of bacchantes singing profane and licentious songs. They presented their boon companions with the sacred vessels of the altar. Archbishops appointed women of infamous antecedents to the superintendence of convents. The Vatican swarmed with catamites and courtesans. Colonies of nuns, members of the seraglios of the cardinals and the Pope, occupied houses adjoining the sanctuary of St. Peter’s. The satellites of the Papacy obtained the most lucrative employments by means of unnatural blandishments and ministrations of unspeakable vileness. The most debased ideas were entertained of the ecclesiastical functions devolving upon the head of the Christian communion. Ministers of religion were consecrated in stables. Cathedrals were made the theatre of mummeries and obscene dances. Virgins were torn from the precincts of the sanctuary and dragged to the Papal harem. In the time of John XII. no woman was safe from indignity and outrage in the very temple of God. Boniface IX. sold a cardinal’s hat to a profligate adventurer named Bathalzar Cossa, who afterwards seized the tiara by force and passed from the deck of a pirate galley to the Apostolic Throne. The latter, under the name of John XXIII., in a few years attained a reputation remarkable even in the annals of Papal degradation. He was deposed by the Council of Constance after conviction of every offence of which a depraved imagination could conceive. The infallibility of his mission was thus impugned both by his irregular appointment and by the intervention of his spiritual subordinates who effected his deposition. It was an axiom of the canon law, inevitably resulting from the original spurious grant of pontifical authority, that no guilt or heresy of the Pope could divest him of his spiritual powers or of the sanctity which enveloped his person as the Vicar of God. A dire necessity alone could impel a council to violate this fundamental principle upon which depended the prestige of the Papacy. The impiety of the Holy Fathers was not less prominent than their defiance of the rules of morality. Boniface VIII. openly blasphemed the name of Christ. John XXII. ridiculed the sacraments. At the banquets of John XII., Venus and Bacchus were in turn toasted by noisy revellers of both sexes, the favorite associates of that Pontiff.

The admissions of Pius II., in his correspondence preserved in the Vatican, indicate without concealment the practice of the grossest libertinage. From the orgies of Benedict XII. dates the famous proverb, “Bibere papaliter,” “To drink like a Pope.” Sixtus IV., who inaugurated the custom of licensing the brothels of Rome, derived annually from this horrible traffic the enormous sum of thirty thousand ducats. Innocent X. sold to the starving peasantry, at an advance of a hundred per cent., the grain he had purchased at the price he himself had fixed. Sixtus IV. gravely decreed that the illegitimate children of the Popes should, by reason of their birth alone, be placed on an equality with the descendants of the princely houses of Italy. The scandals of the court of Avignon under Clement VI. and his successors surpassed even those which had for ages made the Eternal City a reproach to civilization and Christianity. Of the latter, Benedict XII. has been conspicuously held up to the execration of posterity as the violator of the sister of Petrarch, whose connivance he attempted to purchase with a cardinal’s hat and a purse of a thousand florins of gold. The bull of Alexander VI., which countenanced the slaughter of fifteen million inoffensive natives of the New World, is a fitting climax to this revolting chronicle of crime and infamy. Well might the indignant Cardinal Baronius exclaim, that “the Popes were monsters who installed themselves on the throne of Christendom by simony and murder.” Few indeed there were of the Holy Fathers who tolerated even the suspicion of profane learning in their jurisdiction. Most of them were the implacable enemies of every kind of knowledge. Gregory I. burned all the copies of Livy that the most rigorous search could disclose. Gregory VIII., scandalized by the “superstitious tales” contained in the work of the great Roman historian, completed, as far as human energy and malignity could effect, the destructive task of his predecessor. In consequence, out of a hundred and forty-two books known to have existed during the reign of these two Pontiffs, but thirty-five have survived. Sylvester II. is said by Petrarch to have been “Negromante, e di dottrina eccellente,” qualifications which seem rather incongruous with the duties and the traditions of the Papacy. Nor was the famous Gerbert the only Pope devoted to uncanonical and prohibited investigations of the false science of the age. John XIX. was skilled in hydromancy; John XX. was an expert in the casting of horoscopes and in divination; Benedict IX. consulted the familiar geniuses of the forests and the mountains; Gregory VII. possessed a manual of enchantment, and shook clouds of sparks from his sleeves when he pronounced the Pontifical blessing; Alexander VI. had the reputation throughout Italy of “an abominable sorcerer.”

The spirit of infidelity and blasphemy which prevailed in the highest ranks of the priesthood also infected the occupants of the throne. The lives of some of the most devout sovereigns presented incredible examples of cruelty, hypocrisy, and deceit. Ecclesiastical example and the facility of absolution had apparently destroyed all reverence for the precepts of the Gospel, all apprehension of Divine wrath. The contempt often entertained by royalty for the decrees of the Almighty is disclosed by the impious speech of Alfonso X., the Most Catholic King, “If God had consulted me when He created the world, I would have given Him some good advice.”

The spurious donation of Constantine, by which the first Christian sovereign was alleged to have conveyed to Pope Sylvester I. the title to the Western Empire, and with it the inherited authority of the Cæsars, was supplemented in the eighth century by the Forged Decretals, a series of epistles declared to have been promulgated by the first Bishops of Rome, whose names and order of apostolic succession are themselves either apocryphal or based entirely on uncertain tradition. The inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities of the Decretals, which afford abundant internal evidence of the ignorance of those who composed them, and their entire want of concord on important points of doctrine, have demonstrated beyond question their fraudulent origin. But in an age of superstition their authority was amply sufficient to accomplish the object for which they were invented,--the autocracy of the Popes. The general deficiency of critical knowledge, assisted by the reverence entertained by the masses for the decisions of the Successor of St. Peter, caused these glaring forgeries to be accepted with the same faith which was accorded to the precepts of the Gospel. They conferred the most extensive and dangerous prerogatives on the Papacy. They subjected the claims of every temporal sovereign to the extravagant pretensions of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The right of regal investiture was by their maxims declared to be inherent in members of the sacerdotal order, and the title of a monarch alleged to be imperfect until he had been crowned by a servant of the Church. By their incorporation into the civil procedure of Europe,--for centuries dominated by the canon law,--they established on a permanent basis the ideas and the principles of Papal supremacy. No measure of statecraft has ever advanced the interests of the Holy See to such an extent as the publication of the Decretals, nor has any genuine series of laws exercised over society a more potent influence than that imposed by these fraudulent epistles upon subsequent legislation.

The vast ecclesiastical system, whose ramifications extended to the most insignificant hamlets of every country in Europe and whose jurisdiction was paramount in the domains of the most powerful monarchs, carried with it the abuses and vices of the central and irresponsible authority. The spiritual courts of provincial metropolitans and bishops presented on a diminished scale the greed and sensuality of the Vatican. The same organized simony regulated the presentation and promotion of clerk and prelate. The same iniquitous expedients were adopted for the augmentation of ecclesiastical revenues. Priests and bishops lived in avowed and unblushing concubinage. The seraglio of the Abbot of San Pelayo de Antealtaria contained seventy concubines. Henry III., Bishop of Liege, acknowledged the paternity of sixty-five illegitimate children. In Spain, the metropolitans, as well as their subordinates, maintained harems guarded by eunuchs. In Germany, sacerdotal dignitaries of the highest rank endeavored to overturn the empire by the aid of idolaters, and enlisted bands of robbers who plundered cities and extorted enormous ransoms from wealthy merchants and defenceless travellers. In France, the clergy of Verdun regularly furnished Jewish traders with Christian children who had been emasculated for the slave-markets of Cordova and Seville. In Italy, the sale of young and beautiful maidens to the Moors of Sicily and Mauritania, which had invoked the indignant protest of Charlemagne, was for many years one of the most lucrative perquisites of the priesthood.

The laxity of morals prevalent in the hierarchy was fatal to the preservation of ecclesiastical discipline. Priests and nuns, divesting themselves of their sacred character, which was supposed to present an edifying example to the laity, contended with each other for the infamous superiority of promiscuous lewdness. The contributions of charity, the oblations of the devout, were squandered in drunken orgies and midnight banquets. In certain Swiss cantons a new priest was compelled, on his arrival, to choose a concubine as a theoretical safeguard of the honor of his female parishioners. These connections were authorized by the laws of some countries, among them the fueros of Castile, which permitted the sons of a celibate to inherit half his property. The sale of licenses to entertain what were known as “sub-introduced women” was for centuries a profitable source of revenue to the bishops of England, and no priest was exempt from this tax whether he wished to avail himself of its privileges or not. The dignity of the sacred profession in France had been degraded by the sacrilege of the Carlovingians, who appointed their favorite officers to the richest benefices; and the antecedents and manners of these rude veterans were, as may be supposed, but ill-adapted to the solemn ceremonies of the altar and the confessional. Following this worthy example, churchmen of the highest rank conferred the best livings at their disposal on panders, lackeys, and barbers. The coarse and unfeeling nature of the German ecclesiastics did not hesitate to prompt the violation of every sentiment of honor in the gratification of its brutal instincts. The holding of pluralities in England had become an evil of national importance. Many foreign prelates had never even visited the sees whose revenues they enjoyed. The possession of from twenty to thirty benefices was not uncommon, and some fortunate individuals are mentioned who held from three to four hundred. The deplorable condition of the priesthood was largely due to the enforcement of celibacy on the one hand, and the sale of dispensations to violate it on the other.

The poems, the satires, and the tales which have come down to us from the Middle Ages reveal the profligate manners of the clergy, as well as the general contempt in which they were held by those whose consciences were nominally in their keeping. In these amusing literary productions the priest, the monk, and the cardinal are almost invariably objects of ridicule. Their peculiar garb, their uncouth manners, their lubricity, their gluttony, their avarice, are made the butt of profane and vulgar witticisms. They are entrapped in ludicrous and compromising situations. They are made the victims of severe practical jokes. The language put into their mouths is a compound of obscenity and blasphemy. A society which could countenance such scandalous revelations must have had scanty respect for the clerical profession and its ministers. Assemblages of eminent episcopal dignitaries fare little better than individuals at the hands of the irreverent narrator. Nor can we wonder that such is the case when we recall the conditions and the accessories associated in the public mind with the Councils of the Church. At the departure of the Papal court from Lyons, in the thirteenth century, Cardinal Hugo, a distinguished prelate, in the presence of an immense concourse, made the increased depravity of that city, for which its reverend visitors were confessedly responsible, the subject of a pleasing jest. The Holy Fathers of the famous Council of Constance convoked to reform the priesthood, punish heresy, and establish a more exalted standard of moral discipline for the edification of the ungodly, beguiled the moments snatched from the labors of pious deliberations and religious controversy in the society of crowds of buffoons and dancers and of seven hundred courtesans. The institution of the monastic orders not only contributed greatly to the power of the Papacy but exercised, as well, a direct and generally a most pernicious influence on society. An immense body of fanatics, blindly devoted to the See of Rome, was placed at the absolute disposal of the Pope,--invaluable allies in the bitter contests between the Altar and the Throne. The mutual jealousies and enmities of the secular and the regular clergy made both the more dependent on the favor of the Supreme Pontiff. Every individual in a religious house was sworn to inviolable secrecy concerning all that took place within its walls, a regulation which became in subsequent times a convenient precaution for the concealment of orgies that shunned the light of day. The assumption of the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience imparted to the monk and the begging friar a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the credulous multitude. They mortified the flesh and suppressed carnal provocations by frequent bleeding and long abstinence from food. They disclaimed the aristocratic tastes which were a reproach to the luxurious members of the secular priesthood. They renounced all the allurements, even all the comforts, of life. Their physical necessities were supplied by alms. Their fervid oratory, not confined by the pillared vaults of churches, but which, in the open air, appealed to the imagination and the prejudices of the ignorant, their voluntary renunciation of the pleasures of the world, the ostentatious self-sacrifice of their lives, made them universal favorites with the people. Men of all classes showered gifts upon them. Women eagerly sought their services as confessors. Their visits to the isolated villages of the simple peasantry were hailed as harbingers of good fortune. Their abodes offered gratuitous rest and refreshment to the belated traveller. Their benediction attended the birth and the christening of the infants of the poorest cottage. Their prayers brought consolation and relief to the bedside of the earnest Christian and the repentant sinner alike. At every fireside their temporary and accidental presence was regarded as a blessing.

But a change soon came over the monastic orders. The temptations of wealth, luxury, and personal enjoyment proved too strong to be resisted. The robe of coarse cloth was metamorphosed into a mantle of the finest fabric, trimmed with costly furs. The prior no longer travelled alone and on foot, but rode an ambling palfrey, followed by a train of obsequious attendants. The hermitage developed into a stately palace, whose appointments and surroundings equalled and not infrequently eclipsed in splendor the seats of princes. The monk became a great landed proprietor. By purchase, by gift, by inheritance, by forfeiture, he acquired in every country large and profitable estates. Half of the lands of France were at one time in his possession. The German nobility complained that monasteries had absorbed the bulk of the real property of the empire. The visitation of Henry VIII., which led to the suppression of the religious houses of England, revealed the fact that the regular clergy had for centuries enjoyed the fruits of the most productive and valuable portion of the public domain. The peculiar character of its tenure made ecclesiastical proprietorship the more oppressive. Its title was in mortmain, and its estates inalienable. It could always acquire, but never relinquish, territorial rights. The transfers of land, which constitute so important an incentive to commercial activity in every community, were not merely discountenanced, but were absolutely prohibited, by its selfish and unjust regulations.

Monastic life, while nominally ascetic, presented in the more opulent communities a picture of sybaritic indulgence. In the cloister the refining influence of literature had, even with the gratification of sensual appetites, modified in the monk the degrading propensities and ferocious temper which actuated his associate, the feudal baron. The dishes were more varied and delicate; the choicest wines took the place of the coarse product of the brewery; and the conversation, while fully as irreverent and licentious as that which entertained the guests of the noble, was deprived of much of its repulsiveness by an outward observance of decency. When overcome with too much hospitality, the genial votary of Bacchus, instead of being left under the table, exposed to the ridicule of his companions or the swords of brawlers, was quietly conveyed to his cell by his more sober brethren. The customs of the age imperatively demanded that the head of a religious house should possess all the attributes of aristocratic birth and gentle breeding. In the eyes of the Celt especially, symmetry of form and dignity of carriage were indispensable characteristics of the ruler of a monastic community. Both abbot and abbess were selected for corporeal rather than for moral or intellectual qualifications,--for handsome features, commanding presence, and elegant manners. Popular opinion insensibly associated mental superiority and pious inclinations with physical perfection; and personal deformity was supposed, especially by the ignorant multitude, to indicate a disposition to crime. This belief, no doubt unconsciously derived from the impressions left by the Pagan deities of antiquity, in whose statues, models of beauty, were embodied the unrivalled conceptions of the ancient sculptor, demonstrates the persistent survival of time-honored tradition and religious prejudice in the human mind.

With the unlimited opportunities for their gratification, uncanonical practices were at first secretly indulged in and afterwards openly tolerated. The refectory, once noted for frugality and pious exhortation, was now the scene of gluttonous feasts and licentious jesting. Foreign delicacies and wines of exquisite flavor appeared daily on the table. Monks and nuns maintained unholy relations under the same roof. Many priors had acknowledged concubines, and he who restricted himself to a single mistress was regarded as a paragon of ecclesiastical virtue. In contravention of every rule of their order, monks assumed disguises and wandered over the country in search of amorous adventures. Through their agency obnoxious relatives were kidnapped and forced into perpetual confinement, or, if sufficient pecuniary inducements were offered, made to disappear forever from the knowledge of man. In England they frequently figured in disgraceful brawls with other dissipated patrons of lupanars and taverns. The monasteries of Spain, France, and Italy presented an even more disgraceful picture of drunkenness, licentiousness, and disorder.

The reputation for dissolute practices sustained by the convent was in no respect inferior to that of the monastery. The nuns notoriously affected all the airs and graces of the most accomplished coquetry. They arrayed themselves in rich garments covered with beautiful embroidery, the work of their own skilful hands. Their chemises of violet silk, their scarlet shoes, their veils of silver tissue, were the delight of their admirers and the abomination of the pious. They wore chains and bracelets of gold and rings set with precious gems. They painted their faces. King Edgar publicly reproved the nuns of his kingdom for their attire of purple and their jewels. The inmates of Fontevrault wore the horned head-dress affected by the fashionable ladies of the time. The spouses of Christ adopted every art to attract the attention of the sinful passer-by. In the orgies which defiled even the houses dedicated to divine worship their shamelessness was proverbial. They bathed in perfect nudity with monks and deacons. They sang bacchanalian songs. Their conversation was spiced with blasphemous ribaldry. The universal prevalence of the evil is proved by the frequency with which it is denounced by the Councils of the Church. The Council of Cologne, held in 1307, was especially severe in its reprobation of the custom by which nuns abandoned for a time the conventual life for a career of debauchery and then resumed their former relations with the Church, without repentance, and, what was even worse, without remonstrance from their superiors.

For indulgence in these pleasures prohibited by the laws of God and man, the revenues of the religious houses, although in many instances enormous, were entirely inadequate. The extravagant demands of the Holy See, which collected its tribute at frequent and irregular intervals, further reduced the financial resources of the monastic treasury. The ingenuity of the abbots was not at a loss, however, to devise means to replenish their exhausted coffers. Noble forests, many of them contemporaneous with the reign of the Druidical priesthood, were cut down and sold. Chalices, patens, ciboria, and crucifixes were placed in pawn with Jewish goldsmiths and merchants. Jewels were extracted from votive offerings and altar ornaments and disposed of at a fraction of their real value. These thefts of sacred articles were so serious that inventories of the furniture and utensils of cathedrals were often taken by the orders of primates and sovereigns, rather with a view to discover the losses than to put a stop to a practice which under the existing system was incurable. Absolutions, some forged, but many genuine, bearing the Papal seal and ready to be filled up with the name of the purchaser and the description of the offence of which he was guilty or which he was about to commit, were at the disposal of every criminal. The official visitors of the English abbeys discovered in the cells of recluses who were popularly supposed to be laying up treasures in heaven implements of the counterfeiter and quantities of spurious coin. With the ministrations to the dying the duty of the sufferer to the Church was unceasingly inculcated by the shrewd confessor, until it came to be considered an act of impiety, ranked with sacrilege and suicide, to refuse to bequeath a large share of one’s wealth to the servants of God.