History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution - Volume 1, James MacCaffrey [affordable ebook reader TXT] 📗

and the first volume of the /Acta Sanctorum/ appeared in 1643.
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[1] Quetif-Echard, /Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum/, ii. 14.

[2] Id., ii. 144-51.

[3] Couderc, /Robert Bellarmin/, 2 vols., 1893.

[4] Werner, /Franz Suarez und die Scholastik der letzten
jahrhunderte/, 1861.

[5] Chatellain, /Viz du Pere D. Petavius/, 1884.


CHAPTER VII

THE AGE OF ABSOLUTISM AND UNBELIEF


NEW CONTROVERSIES AND ERRORS

The centralisation movement, that began in the fifteenth century, and that tended to increase the power of the sovereign at the expense of the lesser nobles and of the people, was strengthened and developed by the religious revolt. The Protestant reformers appealed to the civil rulers for assistance against the ecclesiastical authorities, and in return for the aid given to them so generously they were willing to concede to the king all power in civil and ecclesiastical matters. Thenceforth the princes were to be so supreme in spirituals as well as in temporals that their right to determine the religion of their subjects was recognised as a first principle of government. During the days of the Counter-Reformation, when religious enthusiasm was aroused to its highest pitch, the Catholic sovereigns of Europe fought not so much for the aggrandisement of their own power as for the unity of their kingdoms and the defence of the religion of their fathers, threatened as it was with complete overthrow.

But once the first fervour had passed away, and once it was recognised that religious harmony could not be secured by the sword, Catholic sovereigns began to understand that the Protestant theory of state supremacy meant an increase of power to the crown, and might be utilised to reduce the only partially independent institution in their kingdoms to a state of slavery. Hence they increased their demands, interfered more and more in ecclesiastical matters, set themselves to diminish the jurisdiction of the Pope by means of the /Royal Placet/ and other such legal contrivances, and asserted for themselves as much authority as could be reconciled with Catholic principles interpreted in their most liberal sense. They urged the bishops to assert their independence against the Holy See, and the bishops, forgetful of the fact that freedom from Rome meant enslavement by the State, co-operated willingly in carrying out the programme of their royal masters. Men like Bossuet, carried away by the new theories of the divine right of kings, aimed at reducing the power of Rome to a shadow. They were more anxious to be considered national patriots than good Catholics. They understood only when it was too late that in their close union with the Holy See lay their only hope of resisting state aggression, and that by weakening the authority of the Pope they were weakening the one power that could defend their own rights and the rights of the Church. Their whole policy tended to the realisation of the system of national churches, and were it not for the divine protection guaranteed by Christ to the society that He Himself had founded, their policy might have been crowned with success.

The principle, too, of individual judgment introduced by the Reformers was soon pushed to its logical conclusions. If by means of this principle Luther and his disciples could reject certain doctrines and practices that had been followed for centuries by the whole Catholic Church, why could not others, imitating the example that had been given to them, set aside many of the dogmas retained by Luther as being only the inventions of men, and why could their successors not go further still, and question the very foundation of Christianity itself? The results of this unbridled liberty of thought made themselves felt in religion, in philosophy, in politics, in literature, and in art. Rationalism became fashionable in educated circles, at the courts, and at the universities. Even Catholics who still remained loyal to the Church were not uninfluenced by the spirit of religious indifference. It seemed to them that many of the dogmas and devotions of the Church were too old-fashioned, and required to be modernised. The courts in many cases favoured the spread of these anti-religious views because they meant the weakening of the power of the Church. They joined with the apostles of rationalism in attacking the Society of Jesus, because the rationalists realised that the Jesuits were their strongest opponents, while the politicians believed them to be the most strenuous supporters of the jurisdiction of Rome. It was only when the storm of revolution was about to burst over Europe that the civil rulers understood fully the dangerous tendency of the movement which they had encouraged. They began to open their eyes to the fact that war against Christianity meant war against established authority, and that the unbridled liberty of thought and speech which had been tolerated was likely to prove more dangerous to the cause of monarchy than to the cause of religion.


(a) Gallicanism.

Richer, /De ecclesiastica et politica potestate/, 1611. Puyol,
/Edm. Richer, Etude sur la renovation du gallicanisme au XVIIe
siecle/, 2 vols., 1877. Lavisse, /Histoire de France/ (vii.),
1905. Bossuet, /Defensio declarationis cleri gallicani/ (ed.
1885). Gerin, /Recherches historiques sur l'assemblee de 1682/,
1878. De Maistre, /De L'Eglise gallicane/, 1821. Gerin, /Louis
XIV. et le Saint-Siege/, 1894. Mention, /Documents relatifs au
rapport du clerge avec la royaute de 1682 a 1705/, 1893. Picot,
/Memoires pour servir a l'histoire ecclesiastique pendan le XVIIIe
siecle/, 7 vols., 1853-57.

For centuries France had been the zealous defender of the Church and of the Holy See. From the days of Clovis the French nation had never wavered in its allegiance to the successors of Saint Peter, many of whom had been obliged to seek refuge on the soil of France. In return for this support given ungrudgingly in many a dangerous crisis, several important privileges were conferred by the Popes on the French rulers, in which privileges moderate supporters of Gallicanism were inclined to seek the origin and best explanation of the so-called Gallican Liberties. But the extreme Gallicans, realising that such a defence could avail but little against the Pope, who could recall what his predecessors had granted, maintained that the Gallican Liberties were but the survival of the liberty possessed by individual churches in the early centuries, that these liberties had been restricted gradually by the Holy See, which succeeded in reducing the national churches to servitude, and that the French Church alone had withstood these assaults, and had maintained intact the discipline and constitution of the apostolic age. The rulers of France, well aware that every restriction upon the authority of the Church meant an increase of the power of the Crown, gladly fostered this movement, while the French bishops, unconscious of the fact that independence of Rome meant servitude to the king, allowed themselves to be used as tools in carrying out the programme of state absolutism.

The Pragmatic Sanction of Louis IX., referred to by many writers as the first indication of Gallicanism, is admitted by all scholars to be a forgery. The exorbitant demands formulated by Philip the Fair during his quarrel with Boniface VIII. are the first clear indication of the Gallican theory that confronts the historian. The principles laid down by the rulers of France during this quarrel were amplified considerably in the writings of William of Occam, Jean of Jandun, and Marsilius of Padua, and were reduced to definite form in the time of the Great Western Schism. At that time, mainly owing to the influence of Gerson, D'Ailly, and other French leaders, the doctrine of the superiority of a General Council over the Pope was accepted, and received official confirmation in the decrees of the fourth and fifth sessions of the Council of Constance (1414-17), and in the Council of Basle (1431-6). The decrees passed by the Synod of Bourges (1438) were strongly anti-papal, and despite of the efforts of Nicholas V. and his successors to procure their withdrawal most of them remained in force till the Concordat of 1516. Partly owing to this Concordat, by which the right of nomination to all bishoprics and abbacies in France was secured to the Crown, and partly to the strong feeling aroused in France during the conflict with Calvinism, little was heard of Gallicanism during the sixteenth century. It was mainly, however, as a result of the opposition of the French bishops that the decree of the Council of Florence regarding papal supremacy was not renewed at the Council of Trent, and it was in great measure due to the influence of Gallican principles that the decrees of the Council of Trent were not received in France for years.

Gallicanism was renewed in the beginning of the seventeenth century by Edmund Richer (1559-1631), syndic of the Paris University and editor of the works of Gerson. He was a man who held novel views about the constitution both of Church and State, and who professed his sincere admiration for Gerson's exposition of the relations that should exist between a General Council and the Pope. In 1610 one of the Dominican students undertook to defend publicly the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope, whereupon a violent controversy broke out, but it was settled for a time by the prudent intervention of Cardinal Du Perron. The Parliament of Paris, however, undertook the defence of Richer and of the work that he published in explanation of his theories. In this book, /De Ecclesiastica et Politica Potestate/ (1611) he laid it down that the Church was a limited not an absolute monarchy; that the whole legislative power rested in the hands of the hierarchy, composed according to him of both bishops and parish priests; that this legislative power should be exercised in a General Council, which as representing the entire hierarchy was the repository of infallibility, and was not subject to the Pope; that the power of executing the decrees of General Councils and of carrying on the administration of the Church rested in the hands of the Pope, who could not act contrary to the canons; that neither Pope nor hierarchy could undertake to enforce ecclesiastical decrees by any other means except persuasion; and that if force were required it could be exercised only by the head of the State, who was the natural protector of the Church, and responsible to God for the due observance of the canons.

This book was condemned by the provincial Synod of Sens, held under the presidency of Cardinal Du Perron in 1612, by the provincial Synod of Aix, by the Bishop of Paris, and by the Pope. The Parliament of Paris, however, supported Richer, who lodged an appeal with the civil authorities against the action of the bishops, and sought to secure for his theories the support of the Sorbonne. Though forced by the king to resign his office at the University he continued to defend his views stubbornly till 1629, when for political rather than for religious reasons he was called upon by Cardinal Richelieu to sign a