The great council, on which so long had hung the hopes of the Christian world, had at last been held. The reformation of the church, postponed by the skilful policy of the popes, had been reached in the closing sessions, and had been hurriedly provided for. As we have seen, the regulations which concerned the morals of the clergy were sufficient for their purpose, if only they could be enforced, yet as they were but the hundredth repetition of an endeavor to conquer human nature, which had always previously failed, even those who enacted them could have felt little faith in their efficacy. August Baumgartner, the Bavarian ambassador, in his address to the council, June 27th, 1562, had alluded to the prevailing belief that any comprehensive effort to enforce the chastity required by the canons would result in driving the mass of the Catholic clergy over to Protestantism.1412 Since continence was held by them to be impossible, it was thought that they would prefer to marry their concubines as Lutherans rather than give them up as Catholics. Possibly the fear of such untoward result may explain the slender effect which can be discerned from a scheme of reform so laboriously reached and so pompously heralded as the panacea for the woes which were destroying the church.
Although Catherine de Medicis and her sons refused to allow the council to be formally published in France, yet she permitted its decrees to be freely circulated, and her bishops were at liberty to adopt them as the code of discipline in their dioceses.1413 The difficulties raised by the Emperor Maximilian on the score of priestly celibacy were met with a vigor on the part of Pius IV. which savored of the thirteenth rather than the sixteenth century. Philip II., after some hesitation, ordered the reception of the council in all his dominions, which extended from Naples to the North Sea;1414 and Poland, despite some opposition from an ambitious prelate, submitted to it before the year 1564 was ended.1415
As an authoritative exposition of the law of the church of Christ, conceived and elaborated under the influence of the Holy Ghost, and commanded for implicit observance by the Vicegerent of God; as the expression of the needs and wants of the Catholic faith, wrought by the concentrated energy and wisdom of the leading doctors of Christendom, and transmitted for practical application through the wondrous machinery of the Catholic hierarchy, it should have had an immediate influence on the evils which it was intended to eradicate. Those evils had confessedly done much to create and foster the schism under which the church was reeling; their magnitude was admitted by all, and no one ventured to defend or to palliate them. Their removal was acknowledged to be a necessity of the gravest character, and every adherent of Catholicism was bound to lend his aid to the good work. What, then, was accomplished by the Council which had for so long a period labored ostensibly with the object of restoring Latin Christianity to its primitive purity?
Pius IV. rested satisfied with promulgating and confirming the decrees of the council, and waited to see them produce their destined effect. In 1566, however, he was succeeded by Pius V., whose experience as grand inquisitor had doubtless rendered him familiar with the prevailing neglect of ecclesiastical discipline, while his unbending temper made him rigorous in his determination to restore it. One of the earliest acts of his pontificate was the publication of a Bull commanding the ordinaries of all churches to put in force the Tridentine canons respecting concubinary priests, thus showing that already they were treated with contempt,1416 while a special mandate on the subject, addressed to the Archbishop of Salzburg, describes the unchecked corruption of the German priesthood as threatening the speedy destruction of the Catholic religion there.1417 Two years later he found it necessary to issue another Bull, directed against darker crimes, the deplorable prevalence of which can hardly be attributed to any additional and unaccustomed vigor in removing the female companions of the clergy,1418 for the Archbishop of Salzburg, in reply to a fresh command to reform his church, had replied that he and his suffragans had never ceased to attempt it, but that all their efforts had been fruitless and that he despaired of success.1419 Even a worse experience befell Bernardt Rasfeldt, Bishop of Munster, who, in his synod of 1566, published a papal brief commanding the dismissal of clerical concubines, for his action roused the fury of his canons to such a degree that they forced him to resign his bishopric and spend the rest of his days in obscurity. He was succeeded by Johann von Hoya, Bishop of Osnabruck and President of the Imperial Chamber, a man distinguished by his birth and learning, but who speedily wearied of the conflict and sought peace by imitating the example of his subordinates.1420
In 1571 Pius undertook another subject of reform. Notwithstanding the decree of the council that any action of clerical fathers for the benefit of their offspring should be considered as fraudulent, the transmission of ecclesiastical property to such illegitimate heirs continued almost unchecked, and Pius recognized the necessity of further legislation to diminish the abuse. His Bull on the subject is drawn up with a care and minuteness which show the magnitude of the evil and the extreme difficulty of preventing it.1421 Nor was there only the need of preserving the possessions of the church; the scandal of sacerdotal families required repression, and all other means having apparently failed, in 1572 another decretal declared that such children were incapable of receiving even the private and patrimonial property of their fathers.1422 These successive edicts are a full confession that the long-promised reformation was a failure, and that, while the council might regulate doctrine, it was utterly powerless to enforce discipline. The papal fulminations proved equally powerless, and Rome itself apparently winked at contraventions of the rule, which could be rendered profitable by the prerogative of issuing dispensations. In 1610 the Synod of Augsburg found it necessary to declare that it would enforce the Tridentine canons prohibiting the illegitimate sons of priests from holding preferment in their father’s benefices, notwithstanding what dispensations they might produce to the contrary.1423
Yet even these legislative labors of the pope are less instructive than the war which he commenced against the courtesans of Rome. If the new enactments could have been expected to command respect, the example should have been set in the Holy City itself, but Pius IV. had allowed the most public and scandalous immorality to flourish unchecked under his immediate supervision. In 1538 the “Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia” had animadverted upon the cynical licentiousness of the Roman clergy in terms which show that not much improvement had taken place since Petrarch’s description of the papal court,1424 and the thirty years which had intervened had not served to purify it. Pius V. felt the disgrace keenly, and resolved on its suppression. He at first proposed to put an end to the nefarious trade, and to banish all the public women who would not give a pledge of reformation by an immediate marriage. Forced to relinquish this measure as impracticably harsh, he contented himself by restricting their residence to certain houses, and forbade their plying their vocation in the streets by day or night. Although he thus admitted the necessity of the evil, and endeavored to restrain only its public manifestation, even this moderate attempt at reform was deemed insufferable. The clergy were ashamed to offer opposition openly, but found no difficulty in urging the Senate to strenuous resistance. The remonstrance made by that body shows not only the frightful extent of the prevalent immorality, but also the settled conviction that immorality was inseparable from celibacy. It was represented that if the proposed rules were enforced, the prosperity of the city would be destroyed and the rents of houses be reduced to nothing; moreover, it was urged that, amid so vast a number of men condemned to celibacy, if any such restrictions were put in force, it would be impossible to preserve the virtue of the wives and daughters of the citizens. The contest was stubbornly continued until at length Pius was driven to declare that, if any further difficulty were interposed, he would abandon the city.1425
In spite of these well-meant but nugatory efforts of Pius, the immorality of the papal court itself and of its highest dignitaries was admitted by a Bull which Sixtus V. promulgated in 1586. In decreeing that no one who had children, even if they were legitimate, should be eligible to the cardinalate, he took care to let the world understand the cause of the restriction by declaring that in no other way could evidence be had of the observance of their vows.1426
If Pius V. met with opposition in the task of purifying the Augean stable of Rome, St. Charles Borromeo, encouraged and stimulated by his example, found himself involved in a more dangerous quarrel when he attempted, in the equally demoralized city of Milan, to enforce respect for the decrees of Trent. In 1569 he undertook to reform the canons of S. Maria della Scala, whose licentious mode of life was a scandal to the faithful. So persistently did they deny their subjection to his archiepiscopal jurisdiction, that, after a long discussion, his only resource for vindicating his authority was excommunication. The contumacious canons were still indisposed to yield, and, assembling in their church, they maltreated his messenger. Thinking that his presence might bring them to reason, he ventured himself to expostulate with them, and found them drawn up in their cemetery, with arms in their hands, and supported by soldiers whom they had hired. On reaching the gate, he dismounted from his mule and advanced towards them with his cross, which he had snatched from his cross-bearer. Unabashed by this symbol at once of religion and authority, the mutinous canons rushed upon him with shouts of “Spagna,” “Spagna,” brandishing their weapons and discharging their fire-arms at the cross in his hands—fortunately without injuring him. Having thus driven him off, they continued for some time in open rebellion, until they were at length obliged to submit, when Pius V. and Philip II. united their power in support of St. Charles.1427
Still greater was the peril to which the saint was exposed in his quarrel with the Umiliati. They were a branch of the Benedictine order, founded in 1180 by the Milanese who escaped the destruction of their city by Frederic Barbarossa. Sharing in the general license of the age, the excesses of the Umiliati became so infamous that they surpassed in turpitude the worst exploits of the unbridled youth of the city. Supported by the decretals of Pius, in 1568 St. Charles undertook to reduce the order to the observance of monastic rule. The Umiliati resisted with so much energy and success that, after two years of contest, they were still defiant. Regarding St. Charles as the cause of all their troubles, Girolamo Lignana, Provost of S. Cristoforo di Vercelli, who assumed their leadership in 1570, engaged a monk of the order named Girolamo Donati to murder him. The blackness of the deed was not relieved by the circumstances under which it was attempted. While the holy archbishop was absorbed at midnight in his devotions, Donati stole into the oratory and discharged full upon him an arquebuss loaded with slugs. Some of the missiles struck St. Charles, but rebounded to the floor, leaving him unhurt, and the miraculous nature of his escape was proved by the depth to which others penetrated the walls. At this moment the policy of Philip the Catholic supported the disaffected and rebellious monks, and for some time yet they escaped the retribution due to their many crimes, but at length those concerned in the attempted murder were caught and executed, and the order of the Umiliati was broken up.1428
These examples sufficiently show how little the great body of ecclesiastics was disposed to submit to a curtailment of the license which had become traditional, and how little respect was paid either to the commands of the great Œcumenic Council, or to the general and local authorities. It is easy to imagine that few prelates were so disposed to court martyrdom as the saintly Charles, and that churches with less conscientious pastors easily found means to purchase or compel exemption from the laws which bound them to morality. In fact, President d’Espeisses, in his memorial presented to Henry III. in 1583, against the publication of the council in France, drew one of his arguments from the greater corruption of the Italian church, where, though the council was received without demur, yet none of its orders reforming the morals of the clergy received the least attention.1429 That the Tridentine canons in this respect were wholly inefficacious throughout Italy, and that the officials, with rare exceptions, did not venture to enforce them, can indeed be seen in the series of provincial councils held during the remainder of the century, from Lombardy to Naples.
The papacy had succeeded in crushing the reformers who had responded in so many Italian cities to the uprising in Germany; it had then convoked and managed at its will the great Congress of Catholic Christendom which was to put an end at once and forever to all the evils which had led to the schism; it had every opportunity and every motive for vindicating itself from the aspersions of its enemies, and yet we see it at once recur to the old machinery of local councils enacting canons whose frequency and wordy severity are the inverse measure of their efficiency. Had the promises of reform so liberally made been possible in their fulfilment, there had been no need of further legislation. A convocation of the ecclesiastics of each province to receive and publish the decrees of Trent would have been all-sufficient. When, therefore, we see the endless iteration with which the guilty clergy were threatened with the Tridentine canons, and with other new or revivified penalties—as at the councils of Milan in 1565 and 1582,1430 and at those of Manfredonia in 1567, of Ravenna in 1568, of Urbino in 1569, of Florence in 1573, of Naples in 1576, of Consenza in 1579, of Salerno in 1596, of S. Severino in 1597, and of Melfi in 15971431—we can only conclude that the evil was irremediable, in spite of the well-meant efforts to suppress it, or to throw off the responsibility of its existence.
In fact, the manner in which the council of Trent was greeted by the clergy may be judged from its treatment in the archiepiscopate of Utrecht. Though Philip II. had authoritatively ordered its reception in 1565, we find the Duke of Alva in May, 1568, issuing his commands to the prelates of the five churches of Utrecht to offer no further opposition to it. Even so stern a ruler could not obtain immediate obedience, however, to so obnoxious a series of regulations, and they responded by pleading their ancient privileges. This availed them little, for in June he replied that his instructions were positive, and he proceeded to enforce them by sending royal commissioners to the province, empowered to carry them out. In July, therefore, the Archbishop assembled his clergy and in conjunction with the commissioners issued a series of regulations designed to give effective force to the canons of the council. Visiting nunneries and haunting taverns, joining in dances and hunting and indecent songs were forbidden. The clergy were ordered to shave their beards and to give up their concubines, whom they were not to retake or to replace. Even yet they did not yield, but while they were ashamed to claim the right to keep their female companions, they demurred as to the sacrifice of their beards, and the Archbishop was obliged to issue another peremptory command.1432
Throughout the whole extent of Central Europe the Tridentine canons met with a like slackness of obedience. Even the question of sacerdotal marriage, which had been raised by the council to the dignity of a point of faith, was stubbornly contested, and was not yielded until after a protracted struggle.
In 1569 we find the synod of the extensive and important province of Salzburg virtually dividing its clergy into two classes—those who haunt the taverns under pretext of getting their meals, but really for the purpose of indulging in drunken riots with their parishioners, and those who keep houses, with concubines under the guise of female servants, whom they secretly marry, and who are openly known by their husbands’ names. To meet this condition of affairs, the synod devised an elaborate system by which the richer clergy were directed to keep as domestics respectable middle-aged married women with their husbands, while the poorer ecclesiastics were to club together for the same purpose.1433 This expedient proved as fruitless as its predecessors, for in 1572 Gregory XIII. complained to the archbishop that in many places priests who were known to be married were permitted by their bishops to celebrate Mass and to handle the sacred elements.1434 In spite of all this the evil continued unabated, and in 1616 the Archbishop of Salzburg, in his instructions for a general visitation, ordered that all priests should remove their concubines to a distance of at least six miles, and should not allow their illegitimate children to live openly with them, except under special license from him.1435
In 1565, Anthony, Archbishop of Prague, promulgated the council of Trent in his provincial synod. He was a man of more than ordinary vigor; he had been the imperial orator at Trent, understood fully the views of the council, and was not likely to underrate either their importance or their authority. Armed with the Tridentine canons, he set actively to work and instituted a very thorough system of inquisitorial visitations, which ought to have succeeded if success were possible. Yet, after the lapse of thirteen years, in a special mandate issued by him in 1578, he deplores the obstinate blindness of many of his clergy, who still believed, with the heretics, that marriage was not incompatible with priesthood, while those who did not marry were guilty of the less dangerous error of maintaining concubines and children on the revenues of their benefices.1436
The same wilful ignorance apparently existed in the diocese of Wurzburg, for Bishop Julius, in 1584, found it necessary, in his episcopal statutes, to discountenance clerical matrimony and to prove its nullity by laboriously quoting innumerable canons and decretals; and he even condescended to remind his priesthood that in taking orders they had willingly and knowingly entered into an engagement of continence, by the consequences of which they must be prepared to abide.1437
A provincial synod of Gnesen, of which the date is uncertain, but which was probably held in 1577, deplored the insane audacity displayed by ecclesiastics in marrying, and threatened them with the Tridentine anathema.1438 This warning appears to have been completely disregarded, for the Bishop of Breslau, a suffragan of the metropolis of Gnesen, in opening his diocesan synod in 1580, still complained that many of his clergy were guilty of this perversity, and he was at some pains to disavow any complicity with it, or any connivance at the licentiousness which was prevalent among the unmarried.1439 In 1591 the synod of Olmutz asserted that many clerks in holy orders contracted pretended marriages, and were not ashamed of the families growing up publicly around them, while others indulged in scandalous concubinage with women, whom they styled house-keepers or cooks. In endeavoring to put an end to this state of affairs, the synod manifested its estimation of the morals of the priesthood by renewing the hideous suggestions which we have seen in the tenth and twelfth centuries, for pastors were allowed to have near them the female relatives authorized by the Nicene canons, but, in view of the assaults of the tempter, were prudently advised not to let them reside in their houses.1440 The disregard of the Tridentine canon continued, and as late as 1628, at the synod of Osnabruck, the orator who opened the proceedings inveighed in the vilest terms against the female companions of the clergy, who not only occupied the position of wives, but were even dignified with the title.1441
Even in Spain, under Philip II., the new ideas had penetrated, and priestly marriages became sufficiently numerous to render it necessary for the Inquisition to add to its “Edict of Denunciations,” which was read during Lent in every church, a command to reveal to the authorities any case of marriage on the part of monks or of ecclesiastics in holy orders.1442
We have seen above that the highest authorities in the church did not hesitate openly to attribute the origin and success of the Reformation to the scandalous corruption of the ecclesiastical body. The council of Trent had not resulted in removing the scandal, and clear-sighted prelates were not wanting who proclaimed that the same causes continued to operate and to produce the same effect. Anthony, Archbishop of Prague, in his synod of 1565, took occasion to declare that the misfortunes of the church were attributable to the dissoluteness of the clergy, and that the extirpation of heresy could best be effected by reforming the depraved morals and filthy lives of ecclesiastics.1443 At the council of Salzburg, in 1569, Christopher Spandel, in the closing address, asked the assembled prelates what title was more contemptible or more odious than that of priest in consequence of the license in which the clergy as a body indulged.1444 The clergy of France, assembled at Melun in July, 1579, when addressing Henry III. with a request for the publication of the council of Trent, assured him that the heresy which afflicted Christendom was caused by the corruption of the church, and that it could only be eradicated by a thorough reformation.1445 Though the Inquisition took care that Spain should not be much troubled by heretics, yet the synod of Orihuella, in 1600, declared that the concubinage practised by ecclesiastics was the principal source of popular animosity and complaint against them.1446 These complaints were general. In 1599, Cuyck, Bishop of Ruremonde, published a work aimed at concubinary priests, in which he assured them that they and their predecessors were the cause of the ruin and devastation of the Netherlands for the last thirty years, for their vices had led to the contempt felt for the clergy, and thus to the heresy which had caused the civil wars. Those who kept their vows he asserts to be as rare as the grapes that can be gleaned after the vintage or the olives left after gathering the crop; but the only remedy he can suggest is increased vigilance and severity on the part of the prelates.1447 Evidently, the Tridentine canons had thus far been a failure. In 1609, at the synod of Constance, the Rev. Dr. Hamerer, in an official oration to the assembled prelates, deplored the continued spread of heresy, which he boldly told them was caused by the perpetually increasing immorality that pervaded all classes of the priesthood. The Reformation had begun, had derived its strength, and was still prospering through their weakness, which rendered them odious to the people, and made the Catholic religion a by-word and a shame.1448 In 1610, the Bishop of Antwerp, in a synodal address, agreed with Bishop Cuyck in attributing the evils which had so grievously afflicted the church of Flanders for nearly half a century, to the same cause, and, while recounting the various successive efforts at internal reform made since the council of Trent, he pronounced each one to have been a failure in consequence of the incurable obstinacy of the clergy.1449 Damhouder, a celebrated jurisconsult of Flanders, whose unquestioned piety and orthodoxy gained for him the confidence of Charles V. and Philip II., does not hesitate to speak of the clergy of his time as men who rarely lived up to their professions, and who as a general rule were scoundrels distinguished for their indulgence in all manner of evil.1450 In a similar mood the Bishop of Bois-le-Duc, in opening his synod of 1612, declared that the scandalous lives of the ecclesiastics were a source of corruption to the laity and a direct encouragement of heresy.1451 So, in 1625, the synod of Osnabruck gave as its reason for endeavoring to enforce the Tridentine canons that the true religion was despised on account of the depraved morals of its ministers, whose crimes were a sufficient explanation of the stubbornness of the heretics. So little concealment of their frailty was thought necessary that they openly enriched their children from the patrimony of the church, and decked their concubines with ornaments and vestments taken from the holy images, even as we have seen was the custom among the Anglo-Saxons of the tenth century.1452
The Thirty Years’ War proved a more effectual bar to the spread of heresy than these fruitless efforts to cure the incurable malady of the church. After the Peace of Westphalia, there was no further need to appeal to the dread of proselyting Lutheranism as a stimulus to virtue, but still the same process of reasoning appears in exhortations to regain the forfeited respect of the community. Thus, in 1652, the Bishop of Munster expressed his horror at the obstinacy with which, in spite of fines, edicts, and canons, his clergy persisted in retaining their concubines, and he declared that the discordance between the professions and the practice of the priesthood rendered them a stench in the nostrils of the people and destroyed the authority of religion itself;1453 and in 1662 the synod of Cologne deplored that the notorious want of respect felt for the ministers of Christ was the direct result of their own immorality.1454 A doctrine even sprang up to the effect that it was not requisite to force a concubinarian to eject his companion if she was useful to him in his housekeeping or if it would be difficult for him to obtain another servant; and this became sufficiently formidable to entitle it to a place among the errors of belief formally condemned by the Roman Inquisition in its decree of March, 1666.1455
In France the influence of the Tridentine canons had been equally unsatisfactory. At a royal council held in 1560, which resolved upon the assembly of the States at Orleans, Charles de Marillac, Bishop of Vienne, declared that ecclesiastical discipline was almost obsolete, and that no previous time had seen scandals so frequent or the life of the clergy so reprehensible.1456 From the proceedings of the Huguenot Synod of Poitiers, in 1560, it is evident that priests not infrequently secretly married their concubines, and, when the woman was a Calvinist, her equivocal position became a matter of grave consideration with her church.1457 The only result of the Colloquy of Poissy, in 1561, was that Catherine de Medicis prevailed upon the bishops to present a request to the king asking him to use his influence with the pope to concede the marriage of priests and the use of the cup by the laity. Means were found, as we have seen, to prevent the former of these demands from being made, while the latter, when presented, was peremptorily refused.1458 In the existing condition of affairs, the council of Trent could not reasonably be expected to effect much, for, as the orthodox Claude d’Espence informs us, the French prelates, like the Germans, were in the habit of collecting the “cullagium” from all their priests and informing those who did not keep concubines that they might do so if they liked, but must pay the license-money, whether or no.1459 In 1564, the Cardinal of Lorraine, not long after his return from the council, held a provincial synod at Rheims, where he contented himself with declaring that the ancient canons enjoining chastity should be enforced.1460 The next year, 1565, a synod held at Cambray reduced the penalties to a minimum, and afforded every opportunity for purchasing immunity, by enacting that those who consorted with loose women, and who remained obdurate to warnings and reprehension, should be punished at the pleasure of the officials.1461 In two years more the same council was fain to ask the aid of the secular arm to remove the concubines of its clergy1462—a course again suggested as late as 1631.1463 The terms in which Claude, Bishop of Evreux, at his synod of 1576, announced his intention of taking steps to eject those who for the future should persist in their immorality show not only that such measures were even yet an innovation, but also indicate little probability of their being successful.1464 The council of Rheims, in 1583, while proclaiming that the Tridentine canons shall be enforced on all concubinary priests, manifests a reasonable doubt as to the amount of respect which they will receive in threatening that those who are contumacious shall be subdued by the secular arm.1465 The council of Tours, in the same year, deplores that the whole ecclesiastical body is regarded with aversion by the good and pious on account of the scandals perpetrated by a portion of them. To cure this evil, the residence of suspected women, even when connected by blood, is forbidden, as well as of the children acknowledged to be sprung from such unions, and various penalties are denounced against offenders.1466 The council of Avignon, in 1594, declares that the numerous decrees relative to the morals and manners of the clergy are either forgotten or neglected, and then proceeds to forbid the residence of suspected women.1467 That of Bordeaux, in 1624, earnestly warns the clergy of the province not to allow their sisters and nieces to live in their houses, and especially not to sleep in the same room with them;1468 and various other synods held during the period repeated the well-known regulations on the subject, which are only of interest as showing how little they were respected.1469
No one, in fact, who is familiar with the popular literature of France during that period can avoid the conviction that the ecclesiastical body was hopelessly infected with the corruption which, emanating from the foulest court in Christendom, spread its contagion throughout the land. If Rabelais and Bonaventure des Periers reflect the depravity which was universal under Francis I., Brantôme, Beroalde de Verville and Noël du Fail continue the record of infamy under Catherine de Medicis and her children.1470 The genealogy of sin is carried on by Tallemant des Réaux, Bussy-Rabutin, and the crowd of memoir writers who flourished in the Augustan age of French literature. Into these common sewers of iniquity it is not worth our while to penetrate; but, when the high places in the hierarchy were filled with men to whom the very name of virtue was a jest, we need not hesitate to conclude that the humbler members of the church were equally regardless of their obligations to God and man.
It is evident from all this that the standard of ecclesiastical morals had not been raised by the efforts of the Tridentine fathers, and yet a study of the records of church discipline shows that with the increasing decency and refinement of society during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the open and cynical manifestations of license among the clergy became gradually rarer. It may well be doubted, nevertheless, whether their lives were in reality much purer. A few spasmodic efforts were made to enforce the Nicene canon, prohibiting the residence of women, but they were utterly fruitless, and were so recognized by all parties; and the energies of the arch-priests and bishops were directed to regulating the character of the handmaidens, who were admitted to be a necessary evil. The devices employed for this purpose were varied, and repeated with a frequency which shows their insufficiency; and it would be scarce worth our while to do more than indicate some sources of reference for the curious student who may wish to follow up the reiteration which we have traced already through so many successive centuries.1471 Among them, however, one new feature shows itself, which indicates the growing respect paid to the appearance of decency—complaints that concubines are kept under the guise of sisters and nieces.
That the monastic orders had profited more than the secular clergy by the Tridentine reformation may well be doubted. Laurent de Peyrinnis, one of the heads of the Order of Minims, in 1668, issued a code of regulations in which he showed that scandal was more dreaded than sin when he promulgated an exemption from excommunication in favor of those brethren who, when about to yield to the temptations of the flesh, or to commit theft, prudently laid aside the monastic habit.1472 Another celebrated jurist of the same Order bears testimony to the demoralization of his brethren when he declares that if the severe punishments provided for unchastity by the statutes were enforced they would result in the destruction of all the religious congregations.1473
In the New World the licentiousness of the priesthood, as might be expected, began to vex the infant church as soon as it was organized among the heathen. The earliest synods and councils which were held contain the customary denunciations of concubinage and prohibitions for ecclesiastics to keep their children in their houses, to celebrate their baptisms and nuptials, and to be assisted by them in the ministry of the altar. Many, as we are informed by the first council of Mexico, held in 1555, brought with them from Spain their concubines under the guise of relatives.1474 For the most part, however, they formed connections with the natives.
In fact, the institution of slavery and the subject populations among whom its ministers were scattered gave rise to fresh problems, which the church sought perseveringly, but vainly, to solve. Thus, in New Grenada, before the conquest was fairly achieved, Bishop Barrios, of Santafé, held his first synod, in 1556, and there, after premising that the fruits of religion among the Indians depended upon the good example of their pastors, he proceeded to prohibit any priest stationed in an Indian town from having any Indian woman residing in his house; his food was to be cooked by men, or, if this was impossible, his female servant must be a married woman, residing with her husband under another roof1475—a provision repeated by the synod of Lima in 1585.1476 A curious experiment in dealing with the troubles arising from slavery is seen in the Mexican canons, which directed that if an ecclesiastic had children by his slave, the ownership of the woman was to be transferred to the church and the children were to be set free. It will be remembered (p. 178) that in 1022 the church insisted upon the continued servitude of clerical bastards whose mothers were serfs of the church; and the contrast between this and the regulation which proclaimed the freedom of the children as a punishment inflicted upon the father is perhaps the sorriest exhibit that could be made of the character of those who were engaged in spreading the teachings of Christ among the heathen.1477
While there can be no doubt that much heroic self-devotion was shown in the efforts made to convert the new subjects of Spain, it is equally unquestionable that a majority of the ecclesiastics who sought the colonies were men of the worst description. The councils held in the several provinces deplore the evil example which they set to their newly converted flocks, and the regulations which were issued time and again against their excesses show the impossibility of keeping them under control. In Peru, for instance, when in 1581 St. Toribio commenced the quarter of a century of labor as Archbishop which worthily won for him the canonization accorded by Benedict XIII. in 1726, two councils had already been held in Lima, one in 1552 and the other in 1567, which had essayed a reformation of morals. He, in turn, lost no time in summoning a provincial council, which assembled in 1583, the decrees of which, in their denunciation of all manner of vices, show how ineffectual the previous efforts had been. The clergy were not disposed to submit tamely to the new restraints which Toribio sought to impose, and, while the active resistance which some of them raised was subdued, the underhand management of others was so far successful that the royal assent to the proceedings of the council was delayed till 1591.1478 Notwithstanding the activity of Toribio, who, between 1583 and 1604, held three provincial councils and ten diocesan synods, who three times personally visited every portion of his vast archbishopric, and who repeatedly ordered his vicars to send secret reports of concubinary and dissolute priests, he was obliged, in the provincial council of 1601, to content himself with renewing the regulations of 1583, sorrowfully observing that they had received scant obedience, and that consequently the corruption and abuses prevalent among the clergy deprived them of usefulness among their Indian parishioners.1479 We can thus readily understand the grief with which the honest Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta, a contemporary, after depicting the eager docility with which the natives at first welcomed Christianity, contrasts it with the hatred which sprang up for the very name of Christian when they realized the hopeless wretchedness of their position under their new taskmasters; and the Fray does not conceal the fact that this was partly owing to the character of some of the clergy, while the better ones were disheartened and discharged their trusts mechanically, without expectation of accomplishing good.1480 This condition of morals did not improve with time. In his official report of 1736, the Marques del Castel-Fuerte, Viceroy of Peru, remarks that the greater portion of those of Spanish blood born in the colonies embraced an ecclesiastical life, as offering an easier and more assured career than any other. Surrounded by their Indian subjects, the pastors lived in luxury and license, which their superiors did little or nothing to check. In 1728 the civil power was ordered to make an investigation into the morals of the priesthood, and especially to designate those whose concubinage was open and notorious—an invasion of the sacred immunities of the church which provoked a storm against the secular authorities, although only an examination was proposed, and there was no attempt to be made of conviction or punishment.1481
That the monastic establishments shared in the general dissoluteness we may fairly conclude when we see the precautions which St. Toribio found necessary to preserve the purity of the spouses of Christ. Thus one regulation provides that no ecclesiastic shall visit a nun without a written permission, to be granted only by the Archbishop himself, or his Provisor; and so little confidence did he feel in the guardians whom he himself appointed, that he directs that the official visitors who inspected the nunneries should not enter them without some special and urgent reason.1482
A curious rule adopted by the first council of Mexico in 1555 shows how much more scandal was dreaded than sin. In order, as it says, to avert danger and infamy from the clerical order and from married women, it prohibits the Fiscal, or prosecuting officer, from taking cognizance of cases of adultery committed by ecclesiastics, unless the husband be a consenting party, or the adulterer makes public boast of it, or the fact is so notorious that it cannot be passed over in silence; and even when action thus is not to be avoided, in no case is the name of the woman to be mentioned in the proceedings. The Provisors, however, are not forbidden to take notice of such crimes, but are allowed to settle them, if they can, with all due discretion.1483 As might be expected these regulations, by giving practical immunity, led to an increase in crime, and the third council of Mexico in 1585 tells us that many of the clergy indulged in it, in preference to ordinary concubinage, in the confidence that they would not be prosecuted; but the amended rule adopted by the Council to meet this trouble differs so little from its predecessors, that we may reasonably doubt whether it was followed by any diminution in the evil.1484 And this, judging from Rivera’s notes to his edition of 1859, is the existing state of ecclesiastical law in Mexico,1485 although the Tridentine canon specially orders the Episcopal Ordinaries to proceed ex officio in all such cases, even of laymen.1486
The church of the post-Tridentine period began to find a darker and more dangerous sin attract closer attention than of old, and call for more serious efforts to prevent its offending the awakened consciousness of the faithful. The power of the confessional, one of the most effective instrumentalities invented by the ingenuity of man for enslaving the human mind, was peculiarly liable to abuse in sexual relations. No one can be familiar with the hideous suggestiveness of the penitentials without recognizing how fearfully frequent must be the temptations arising between confessor and penitent, while their respective relations render seduction comparatively easy, and unspeakably atrocious.1487 To deprive such relations of danger requires the confessor to be gifted with rare purity and holiness, and when these functions were confided to men such as those who composed the sacerdotal body, as we have seen it throughout the Middle Ages, the result was inevitable.
The scandals of the confessional were no new source of tribulation to the church and the people. No sooner had the early custom of public and lay confession tended to fall into the hands of the priesthood than it was found necessary to call attention to the dangers thence arising. The first council of Toledo, in 398, forbids any familiarity between the virgins dedicated to God and their confessors.1488 About the year 500, Symmachus calls attention to the spiritual affinity contracted between the confessor and his penitent, rendering the latter his daughter; he alludes to Silvester as having denounced guilty relations between them, and proceeds to decree not only deposition in such cases, but life-long penitence.1489 As sacerdotal confession gradually became customary, a decretal was forged—whether to give additional authority to the practice, or to impress upon the minds of confessors the necessity of prudence—by which the name of Celestin I. was used for a regulation confiscating all the possessions of the female delinquent and confining her in a monastery for life, while the seducer was warned that such sin with his spiritual daughter amounted to a grave case of adultery, for which he must be deposed and undergo penance for twelve years, provided, always, that the facts had become known to the people,1490 thus indicating that scandal rather than sin was the danger most dreaded.
It was inevitable that this trouble should continue, as we have seen it do throughout the whole history of a celibate priesthood.1491 That it was the subject of frequent and indignant reprehension on the part of those who sought to elevate and purify the church we may well believe. Calixtus II. freely assumes the perdition of the priest who thus betrays the sacred confidence reposed in him, denouncing him as a lion devouring sheep, as a bear attacking a traveller who has lost his way, as a fowler spreading lures for birds and attracting them with sweet sounds, while the woman he treats not as a partner in guilt, but as an unfortunate who finds destruction where she is seeking salvation.1492 It is observable here that the fault is assumed to lie exclusively with the confessor, and such is likewise the case in the eloquent denunciations of Savonarola, who declares that the Italian cities are full of these wolves in sheep’s clothing, who are constantly seeking to entice the innocent into sin by all the arts for which their spiritual directorship affords so much scope.1493 The extent to which the evil sometimes grew may be guessed from a case mentioned by Erasmus, in which a theologian of Louvain refused absolution to a pastor who confessed to having maintained illicit relations with no less than two hundred nuns confided to his spiritual charge.1494
The view which was taken of this crime during the progress of the Reformation is set forth in a work on the Criminal Canon Law printed in Venice in 1543, which intimates that improper relations between a confessor and his penitents are not much worse than ordinary concubinage, but that when they become publicly known they should be severely punished by deprivation and imprisonment, seeing that their notoriety tends to prevent men from allowing their wives and daughters to confess, and exposes the sacrament of penitence to the assaults of the heretics.1495 It was probably this worldly wisdom which prevented the Council of Trent from alluding specifically to the matter and endeavoring to put an end to a crime so heinous, for assuredly it had not grown less in the ever increasing license of the age. It is rather curious that in Spain, the only kingdom where heresy was not allowed to get a foothold, the trouble seems to have been greatest and to have first called for special remedial measures. Already, in 1556, Paul IV. had addressed a brief to the Inquisitors of Grenada, calling their attention to the frequency of the crime and assuming that confessors who could so abuse their office must hold unorthodox views as to the sacrament of penitence, which rendered them suspect of heresy and thus brought them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. He therefore instructed the Inquisitors to prosecute such offenders zealously, but it was deemed best not to attract public attention to a matter so delicate, lest the faithful should be deterred from frequenting the confessional. The investigations were accordingly prosecuted in secret, and the criminals were privately punished.1496
Enough was discovered to show that the trouble was general, and in 1564 Pius IV. issued a Bull addressed to the Inquisitor General, in which, assuming like his predecessor that the offence must be heretical, he authorized the Holy Office to prosecute it throughout the Spanish dominions, and revoked all immunities which the monastic orders might enjoy exempting them from local jurisdiction.1497 This brought the subject formally within the scope of the Inquisition which thenceforth took charge of it in those countries blessed with that institution. In some portions of Spain the Inquisitors added the crime of “solicitation” to the list of offences published in their annual “Edict of Denunciation,” which required every one, under pain of excommunication, to denounce to the Holy Office all cases of which he might happen to be cognizant. Gonsalvo relates that in 1563 this was done in Seville, when it brought such a crowd of accusing women to the Inquisition that twenty secretaries were unable to take down the depositions, within the allotted time of thirty days, and the limit had to be extended until it reached the term of four months, causing finally so great a popular ferment and implicating so large a number of ecclesiastics that the attempt had to be abandoned.1498
Llorente considers this to be an exaggeration, as is probably the case, but he admits that the Conseyo de la Suprema was led to forbid the inclusion of the offence in the Edict of Denunciation, which greatly diminished the number of accusations, and this prohibition was repeated in 1571, in the hope that through the machinery of the episcopal courts the crime would be suppressed; but this expectation proving illusory, in 1576 the Conseyo ordered the crime to be reinstated in the Edict.1499
In 1608 Paul V. seems suddenly to have awakened to the necessity of extending to Portugal the means employed in Spain, and he issued to the Portuguese Inquisitor General a Bull similar in purport to those of his predecessors. Little was accomplished, even in these favored countries, and in 1622 Gregory XV. published a Bull extending to all Christendom the provisions of the previous ones, and granting to the episcopal courts full jurisdiction over all accused of “solicitation,” notwithstanding whatever immunities they might otherwise enjoy; a single witness was pronounced sufficient, when supported by circumstantial evidence, and the punishment of those convicted was left to the discretion of the judge, with the suggestion that it might extend to perpetual imprisonment or condemnation to the galleys for life, or even abandonment to the secular arm—that Inquisitorial euphuism for the faggot and the stake.1500 Apparently these Bulls received slender attention, for in 1633 a special decree directs that they shall be read at least once a year and an emphatic warning be given in a chapter of each order, and sworn evidence of the fact be transmitted to the congregation of the Inquisition at Rome.1501 Even this was but partially successful. Gregory’s Bull was not published in either France or Germany, and for a century or more its observance throughout those regions depended entirely upon such bishops, of whom there were but few, who might see fit to promulgate its regulations in their individual dioceses;1502 although the established rule of the church protected the criminal by not permitting a woman who had been seduced in the confessional to name her seducer to another confessor.1503
Even in the kingdoms where the Bull was legally received and published, its provisions in practice seem to have been held as directed almost exclusively against those who might be foolish enough to incur suspicion of heresy by asserting that they were not aware of their guilt. While the Holy Office stretched its power to convict and punish all the wretched heretics whom it could bring within its grasp, it was singularly tender of those whom successive popes denounced as the worst of offenders. In a learned work on the subject, the author, an official of the Portuguese Inquisition, urges the caution requisite in proceedings which affect the honor of ecclesiastics, bringing scandal and grief to the faithful and glory and joy to the heretic. As the accused had all presumptions in his favor, since he had been selected for the sacred functions of the confessional, and as women were by nature inconstant, corruptible, deceitful, mendacious, and given to perjury, he concludes that the evidence of a single witness is wholly inconclusive; two witnesses of good character may justify the seclusion of the accused, either in prison or in his own convent or house, but four were necessary to his conviction; he decides adversely the question whether deficiency of evidence can be supplemented by torture; and he cites Potiphar’s wife to caution his brethren against lending too hasty credence to accusations which may be only the revengeful promptings of a baffled tempter.1504 Casuists were found to argue that the solicitation must occur during the act of confession itself to bring the accused within the words of the papal decrees, which were not applicable even if it took place in the confessional immediately before the woman commenced to confess, or immediately after she had received absolution.1505 The accused who denied, might be shown the torture, but could not be exposed to it, and if punished, his punishment must be secret, so as not to give rise to popular disquiet.1506 In Spain, when the local tribunal had agreed upon a sentence, it could not be executed without referring the case and all the evidence to the Conseyo de la Suprema;1507 but the sentence which was thus so carefully to be considered, was not usually severe. Some instructions on the subject issued in 1577, after premising that there must be neither public penitence nor appearance in an auto de fé, and that the sentence, unlike that of heretics, must be made known only to the ecclesiastics of the place, proceed to state that the penalties to be imposed on the guilty are at the discretion of the Tribunal, except that he is obliged to abjure the implied heresy and is prohibited from hearing confessions in the future. Whether he is to be suspended from administering the other sacraments, or from preaching, and whether he is to be imprisoned or banished from the place of his crime, must depend upon the gravity of the offence. In grave cases, secular priests may be punished by seclusion, or deprivation of function or benefice, or pecuniary fines, with discipline, secret prayers and fasting; and monks may be visited with the discipline, removal from the scene of their misdeeds, suspension or privation of orders, of the privilege of voting in their convents, and relegation to the last place in the choir and refectory.1508 All this manifests not only a provident care to prevent scandal among the faithful, but a singular tolerance of crime when compared with the severity which characterized the ordinary operations of the Inquisition, in lapses of faith however slight. A man who asserted that simple fornication was not a mortal sin was treated as a heretic and “relaxed” or “reconciled,” with all the tremendous consequent penalties upon him and his posterity; and it is significant in many ways to observe that a culprit guilty of prostituting the confessional to seduce his spiritual daughters was to be punished by being made to take the lowest seat in the choir. This misplaced lenity was more than carried out in practice. According to Llorente, the records of the Inquisition show that not ten per cent. of those accused were convicted; and even when convicted it was not unusual for the convict, through influences brought to bear on the Inquisitors General, to obtain a removal of the interdiction of hearing confessions.1509 In one case of special atrocity which occurred under the eyes of Llorente himself, the culprit, in addition to the discipline, deprivation of vote, and degradation to the lowest seat in the choir (he had been Provincial of the Capuchins of New Grenada), was condemned to five years’ imprisonment in a convent of his own order—a most inadequate penalty for a man who had seduced thirteen nuns in a convent under his spiritual guardianship.1510 In the horrible affair of Corella, which occurred in 1743, it is true that the Abbess, Doña Agueda de Luna, died under the torture; and her principal accomplice, Fray Juan de la Vega, after being tortured in his examination, was declared suspect in the highest degree and was confined in the desert convent of Duruelo till his death, but in this case the accused were Molinists, or Illuminati, which of itself rendered them worthy of the stake, and in addition, besides numerous infanticides, they had entered into a pact with Satan.1511
The nunneries, indeed, appear to have suffered especially from this cause, particularly when their spiritual directors were monks. This was a complaint of old standing, and the authors of the “Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia,” in 1538, proposed to put an end to the scandals thence arising by prohibiting members of the conventual orders from serving in that capacity, which was to be confided in the future to the Episcopal Ordinaries.1512 A more partial cure was that suggested in 1627 by Urban VIII. when he granted a special Bull to Christobal de Lobera, Bishop of Cordova, depriving the mendicant orders of their right to papal jurisdiction, and subjecting them to the Ordinary of the diocese in order to put a stop, if possible, to crimes committed by them in the confessional.1513 These monastic troubles were by no means confined to Spain. When, as we shall see hereafter, the Grand Duke, Leopold of Tuscany, undertook in 1774 to reform the nunneries of his dominions, they had for a century and a half been the scene of the worst disorders, committed by the regular clergy who were their spiritual directors, and Leopold found his principal opposition in the court of Rome itself.1514 In Provence, the canons of Pignan made no secret of their domination over the bodies as well as over the souls of the nuns of the district, so that in a single year there were sixteen declarations of pregnancy officially made by the latter, who seemed to consider it as one of the duties of their profession. As Michelet remarks, this at least diminished the monastic crime of infanticide, for the children were openly put out to nurse and were generally adopted by their foster-mothers.1515
Some statistics, given by Llorente from the archives of the Inquisition, afford a curious commentary upon the influence of monasticism. Comparing the number of accusations brought for this offence with the total census of the secular and regular clergy, he found that one out of every ten thousand secular priests was charged with it, while among the monastic orders the proportion was much greater. The Benedictines, Bernardines, Jeronymites, Premonstratensians, Basilians, Agonizantes, Theatins, and Oratorians, and the canons regular of Calatrava, Santiago, Alcantara, Montesa, St. Juan, and of the Holy Sepulchre showed a proportion of one in every thousand. Among the Carmelites, Augustinians, Mathurins, the Order of La Merced, the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Minims of St. Francis de Paul, there was one in every five hundred: one in four hundred among the barefooted orders of the Augustinians, Mathurins, and Fathers of La Merced; and one in two hundred among the barefooted Carmelites, the Alcantarians and the Capuchins.1516 These results Llorente explains partly by the greater attention paid by some orders to the duties of the confessional, but chiefly by the differences in their rules of discipline. Those who, like the secular priests, had comparative wealth and freedom were able to gratify their passions without resorting to indulgence so dangerous, while those whose vows bound them to poverty and asceticism were most liable to be tempted by the opportunities of the confessional. It was precisely the orders that were most rigid which produced the greatest number of culprits. Another significant fact was that the greater portion of these accusations were brought by nuns, and from this Llorente seeks to explain the small proportion of cases in which the accused was found guilty. The inquiries necessary to confession often appeared to the simple-minded devotee a direct enticement to sin, and her excited imagination, in dwelling upon them, would lead her to imagine herself the object of her confessor’s impure desires—a defence of the system almost as damaging as the facts which it attempts to extenuate.1517
Whatever may be Llorente’s opinion as to the comparative innocence of the secular priesthood, it does not appear to have been shared by the church. The local ecclesiastical legislation of the seventeenth century is surcharged with innumerable minute directions as to the age of the confessor and the form and structure of confessionals; restricting female penitents, unless dangerously ill, from being heard except in church and by daylight, and prescribing the relative positions to be maintained by confessor and penitent.1518 In the earlier, though scarce purer, period of the fifteenth century John Myrc contents himself with simpler rules—