St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation

[Stone]

CHAPTER IX. – HERESIES OF THE NINTH CENTURY

ARTICLE I. – THE GREEK SCHISM COMMENCED BY PHOTIUS

l. St. Ignatius, by means of Bardas, Uncle to the Emperor Michael, is expelled from the See of Constantinople.
2. He is replaced by Photius.
3. Photius is consecrated.
4. Wrongs inflicted on St. Ignatius, and on the Bishops who defended him.
5. The Pope sends Legates to investigate the affair.
6. St. Ignatius appeals from the Judgment of the Legates to the Pope himself.
7. He is deposed in a False Council.
8. The Pope defends St. Ignatius.
9. The Pope deposes the Legates and Photius, and confirms St. Ignatius in his See.
10. Bardas is put to death by the Emperor, and he associates Basil in the Empire.
11. Photius condemns and deposes Pope Nicholas II., and afterwards promulgates his Error concerning the Holy Ghost.
12. The Emperor Michael is killed, and Basil is elected, and banishes Photius. Godeschalcus, of whom we have already spoken (chap. 5, art. 2, n. 17), was charged with Predestinarianism in this century; but, as we have already heard his history, we now pass on to the great Greek Schism.



1. In the reign of the Emperor Michael, the Church of Constantinople was governed by the Patriarch, St. Ignatius. This great Prelate was son to the Emperor Michael Curopalates; and when his father was dethroned, he was banished to a monastery, and there brought up in all the penitential austerities of monastic life. His virtues were so great, that, on the death of Methodius, Bishop of Constantinople, he was placed in the vacant See, and his appointment gave universal satisfaction; but his fortitude in defense of the Faith, and of the rights of his Church, raised up for him many powerful enemies, and among them, three wretches who were unceasing in their persecution of him Bardas, uncle to the Emperor, Photius, and Gregory Asbestas, Bishop of Syracuse. Bardas wishing to be sole master in the Empire of his nephew, Michael, had either procured the death or banishment of all who stood in his way at Court. He even shut up in a Monastery his own sister, the Empress Theodora, because he could not bend her in all things to his wishes, and then began a persecution against St. Ignatius, because he refused to give her the veil (1). What irritated him, above all, against the Saint was, he had repudiated his wife, and lived publicly with his step daughter, a widow. St. Ignatius admonished him of the scandal he was giving; but he took so little note of this, that he presented himself one day in the church to partake of the Holy Mysteries, and the Saint then excommunicated him. Bardas threatened to run him through with his sword, and from that out never ceased misrepresenting him to the Emperor, and at last, on the 23rd of November, in the year 858, got him banished out of the Patriarchal Palace, and exiled to the Island of Terebintum (2), and sent after him several Bishops, Patricians, and some of the most esteemed judges, to induce him to renounce the Bishopric. Their journey was all in vain; and Bardas then promised to each of the Bishops the See of Constantinople, if they deposed St. Ignatius, and these unfortunate Prelates lent themselves to the nefarious scheme, though every one of them had previously taken an oath, that he would not vote for the Patriarch’s deposition, unless he was convicted of a Canonical fault; but they were all deceived in the end, for Bardas, after promising that the Emperor would give the Bishopric to each of them, persuaded them that it would be most grateful to the Emperor, if each one, when called, would at first, through humility, as it were, refuse it, and they took his advice. The Emperor sent for each of them, and preferred the Bishopric; every one declined at first, and was not asked a second time, so that their villany was of no use to them (3).


2. The Patriarch chosen by the Court, was the impious Photius, a Eunuch of illustrious birth, but of the most inordinate ambition. He was a man of great talent, cultivated by the most arduous study, in which he frequently spent the whole night long, and, as he was wealthy, he could procure whatever books he wanted; he thus became one of the most learned men of his own or of any former age. He was a perfect master of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, medicine, and all the profane sciences; he had not paid much attention to ecclesiastical learning, but became a most profound theologian when he was made Patriarch. He was only a mere layman, and held some of the highest offices in the Court; he was Protospathaire and Protosecretes, or Captain of the Guards, and Chief Secretary.


3. We cannot say much for his religious character, for he was already a schismatic, as he joined Gregory, Bishop of Syracuse, a man convicted of several crimes, and whose character was so bad, that when St. Ignatius was elected Bishop of Constantinople, he would not permit him to attend at his consecration, and Gregory was so mortified at the insult, that he dashed to the ground the wax candle he held in his hand as an attendant at the consecration, and publicly abused Ignatius, telling him that he entered into the Church not as a shepherd but as a wolf.


4. He got others to join with him, and formed a schism against the Patriarch, so that the Saint was in the end obliged, in the year 854, to pass sentence of deposition against him in a Council (4). Noel Alexander remarks, that St. Ignatius deposed Gregory from the See of Syracuse, because the churches of that province were subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople, as Sicily then formed part of the Empire of the East but in order to confirm the sentence, he appealed to Benedict III., who, having again examined the affair, confirmed what was decided, as Nicholas I. attests in his sixth epistle to Photius, and his tenth epistle to the clergy of Constantinople (5).


5. Such was Gregory, with whom Photius was leagued, and as this Jast was elected Bishop of Constantinople, not according to the Canons, but solely by the authority of Bardas, he was at first rejected by all the Bishops, and another was elected by common consent. They adhered to their resolutions for many days, but Bardas by degrees gained them over. Five still held out, but at length went with the stream, and joined the rest, but only on condition that Photius would swear to, and sign a paper, promising to renounce the schism of Gregory, and to receive Ignatius into his communion, honouring him as a father, and to do nothing contrary to his opinion. Photius promised every thing, and was accordingly consecrated, but by the very same Gregory, and took possession of the See (6).


6. Six months had not yet passed over, since his consecration, and he had broken all his oaths and promises; he persecuted St. Ignatius, and all the Ecclesiastics who adhered to him; he even got some of them flogged, and by promises and threats, induced several to sign documents, intended for the ruin of his sainted predecessors. Not being able to accomplish his design, he laid a plot, with the assistance of Bardas, that the Emperor should send persons to take informations, to prove that St. Ignatius was privately conspiring against the state. Magistrates and soldiers were immediately sent to the island of Terebintum, where St. Ignatius dwelt, and endeavoured by every means, even resorting to torture, to prove the charge, but as nothing came out to inculpate him, they conveyed him to another island called Jerium, and put him in a place where goats were kept, and, in a little time after, brought him to Prometum, near Constantinople, where he underwent cruel sufferings, for they shut him up in a confined prison, and his feet were fastened to the stocks by two iron bars, and the captain of his guard struck him so brutally with his clenched fist, that he knocked two of his teeth out. He was treated in this brutal manner, to induce him to sign a renunciation of his See, to make it appear, that of his own free will he gave up the Patriarchate. When the Bishops of the province of Constantinople were informed of this barbarous proceeding, they held a meeting in the Church of Peace, in that city, declared Photius deposed, and anathematized him and all his adherents; but he, supported by Bardas, called together a Council in the Church of the Apostles, in which he deposed and anathematized St. Ignatius, and, as several Bishops complained loudly of this injustice, he deposed them likewise, and put them in prison along with Ignatius. Finally, in the month of August, of the year 859, St. Ignatius was banished to Mytilene, in the island of Lesbos, and all his adherents were banished from Constantinople, many of them severely beaten, and one, who complained against this act of injustice, had his tongue cut out (7).

Photius could not but see that he was very much censured for all this, so he sent some of his partisans to Rome, to Pope Nicholas, to request that he would send his Legates to the East, under the pretext of extinguishing the remains of the Iconoclastic heresy, but in reality, to sanction the expulsion of St. Ignatius by their presence, and the Emperor wrote to the Pope on the same subject, at the same time (8). When the Imperial Ambassador and the Legates of Photius arrived in Rome, the Pope deputed two Legates, Rodaldus, Bishop of Porto, and Zacchary, Bishop of Anagna, to arrange the affairs of the Iconoclasts, by holding a Council, and deciding any supplementary matters necessary to carry out the provisions of the Seventh Council, and regarding the affair of Photius himself, as he received neither a letter or messenger from St. Ignatius (for his enemies deprived him of all intercourse with the Holy See), he directed his Legates to take juridical informations on the spot, and forward them to him. On the arrival of the Legates in Constantinople (9), they were kept three months by the Emperor and Photius, and even not permitted to speak with any one, except those appointed to visit them, lest they might be informed of the true state of things regarding the deposition of St. Ignatius.

They were made to understand that if they did not bend, in all things, to the Emperor’s will (10), they would be banished to a place where nothing but a miserable death awaited them. At first they resisted, but finally, after spending there eight months, yielded, and soon after, Photius called together a Council in Constantinople, which was attended by them, and three hundred and eighteen Bishops, but, as Noel Alexander remarks (11), they were merely the nominal Legates of the Pope, for that meeting did not even preserve the forms of a General Council, for it was the Emperor himself who presided, and everything was done according as he wished, at the instigation of Photius.

When the Council was assembled, a message was sent to St. Ignatius, to appear, and defend his cause; he at once put on his Pontifical ornaments, and went on foot, accompanied by Bishops and priests, and a great number of the Monks and the laity, but on his way he was met by the Patrician, John, who, on the part of the Emperor, prohibited him, under pain of death, from appearing in the Pontifical robes, but merely in the habit of a simple Monk. He obeyed, and presented himself in this garb in the Church of the Apostles; he was there separated from the friends who accompanied him, and brought alone into the Emperor’s presence, who loaded him with abuse. Ignatius asked leave to speak, and then asked the Pope’s Legates what brought them to Constantinople. They answered, that they came to try his case. The Saint asked them if they brought letters for him from the Pope, and was told they had not, as he was no longer considered as Patriarch, having been deposed by a Council of his province, and that therefore they were there to judge him. ” Then banish the adulterer Photius, first of all,” said St. Ignatius, ” and if you cannot do that, you are no longer judges.” The Emperor said they, wishes us to be judges; but the Saint peremptorily refused to recognise them as such, and appealed to the Pope, on the authority of the fourth Canon of the Council of Sardis, which decrees, that, ” If a Bishop be deposed, and he declares that he has a defence to make, no one must be elected in his place till the Pontiff of the Roman Church decides his case.”


7. Notwithstanding this, seventy-two false and bribed witnesses were examined, and deposed that the Saint had been guilty of tyranny in the government of his Church, and that he was intruded into the See by the secular power, and that, therefore, he should, according to the Apostolical Canon, be deposed : “If any Bishop obtain his See by secular powers, let him be deposed.” On this testimony, the Bishops of the Council, if it could be called such (with the exception of Theodulus of Ancira, who hated the injustice), and the Legates, deposed St. Ignatius, all crying out, univortliy, unworthy (12). He was then handed over to the executioners, to be tormented till he would sign his own deposition; they first nearly starved him for a fortnight, and afterwards hung him up by the feet over a deep pit, which was the tomb of Copronimus, and dashed him from side to side, till the marble lining of the tomb was stained with his blood. When he was thus reduced to the last extremity, and scarcely breathing, one Theodore, a bravo employed by Photius, took hold of his hand, and forcibly made him sign a cross on a sheet of paper, which he brought to Photius, who then wrote on it himself : ” I, Ignatius, unworthy Bishop of Constantinople, confess that I have not been lawfully appointed, but have usurped the throne of the Church, which I have tyrannically governed.” But even after this act of villany, Photius did not consider himself safe, so he laid a plot with Bardas, and sent soldiers to take St. Ignatius, who, after his liberation from prison, lived at home with his mother, but he escaped in the disguise of a poor man, carrying two baskets slung on a pole over his shoulder. Six light horsemen were sent after him, with directions to kill him wherever he was found, but God delivered him out of their hands. For forty days, Constantinople was shaken by earthquakes, and so Bardas and the Emperor gave him leave to retire to his monastery, and live in peace (13), though he was again banished.


8. In the meantime the Legates returned to Rome loaded with presents by Photius, and merely told the Pope verbally that Ignatius was deposed by the Council, and Photius confirmed. Two days after, Leo, secretary to the Emperor, arrived in Rome, and presented a letter to the Pope from the Emperor, containing a long defence of the acts of the Council, and of Photius. Nicholas began then to suspect that his Legates had betrayed him, and so he immediately summoned together all the Bishops then present in Rome, and publicly declared in presence of the secretary Leo himself, that he never had sent his Legates either to depose Ignatius or confirm Photius, and that he never had, nor ever would consent to either one or the other (14). He wrote both to the Emperor and to Photius to the same effect (Epis. 9), and wrote likewise another letter to all the faithful of the East (Epis. 4), in which, by his Apostolic authority, he particularly commands the other Patriarchs of the East to hold the like sentiments regarding Ignatius and Photius, and to give all possible publicity to this letter of his. Photius, in the meantime, without taking any notice of this letter of his Holiness, planned that a certain Monk of the name of Eustrates should present himself in Constantinople, pretending that he had been sent to the Pope by Ignatius as the bearer of a letter, complaining of all he had suffered; but he said the Pope did not even deign to receive him, but on the contrary, sent a letter by him to Photius, assuring him of his friendship. Photius immediately brought these two letters to the Emperor and to Bar das; but when the whole matter was sifted, it was discovered that it was all a scheme got up by Photius, and Bardas felt so indignant at the imposition, that he commanded that the Monk Eustrates should receive a severe flogging (15).


9. The Pope convoked a Council of several provinces, which was held in the beginning of the year 863, first in St. Peter s, and then in the Lateran Church, to try the Legates for betraying the Roman Church. One alone of them, the Bishop Zacchary, made his appearance (Rodoaldus being in France), and he being convicted, on his own confession, of having signed the deposition of Ignatius, contrary to the orders of the Pope, was excommunicated and deposed by the Council, and the following year the same was decreed in regard to Rodoaldus, in another Council held in the Lateran, and he was threatened with anathema, if he ever communicated with Photius, or opposed St. Ignatius.

Besides, in this first Lateran Council, Photius was deprived of all sacerdotal offices and honours, on account of his many crimes, and especially for having got himself ordained, he being a lay man, by Gregory, the schismatical Bishop of Syracuse, and for having usurped the See of Ignatius, and daring to depose and anathematize him in a Council; besides, for having bribed the Legates of the Holy See to contravene the orders of the Pope, for having banished the Bishops who refused to communicate with him, and, finally, for having persecuted, and continuing to persecute, the Church. It was then decreed that if Photius should continue to hold possession of the See of Constantinople, or prevent Ignatius from governing it, or should exercise any sacerdotal function, that he should be anathematized, and deprived of all hope of communion, unless at the hour of death alone. Gregory, Bishop of Syracuse, was condemned in the same manner, for having dared to exercise Ecclesiastical functions after his deposition, and for consecrating Photius Bishop. It was finally decreed that Ignatius never was deposed from his See, and that for the future every cleric should be deposed, and every layman anathematized, who would show him any opposition (16).


10. When the Emperor Michael heard of the decrees of the Roman Council, he wrote a most abusive letter to Pope Nicholas, threatening him with his displeasure if he did not revoke his judgment (17). The Pope answered him (Epis. 70), that the Pagan Emperors were Princes and Pontiffs, but that after the coming of Jesus Christ the two powers were divided, as temporal things were different from spiritual things, and Noel Alexander particularly calls attention to these expressions in the Pope’s letter : ” It is plain that as there is no higher authority than the Apostolic See, that no one can revoke its judgment; nor is it lawful for any one to pass judgment on its judgments, since, according to the canons, appeals come to it from all parts of the world; but from it no one is permitted to appeal.”

He then says that the case of Ignatius and Photius can only be decided by appearing in person, or by deputy, in Rome, when both can state their causes of complaint, and defend themselves (18). Some time after the Emperor took the field to conquer Crete, and was accompanied by his uncle, Bardas, who was so strongly suspected of being a traitor, that he resolved to put him to death. He was in the Emperor’s tent when he saw the soldiers come to take him, and he threw himself at his nephew’s feet, imploring mercy, but his prayer was in vain; he was dragged out, and cut in pieces, and a piece of his flesh was carried round the camp in mockery, fixed on a spear, and thus, in the year 886, the unfortunate Bardas closed his mortal career. The Emperor immediately returned to Constantinople, and appointed Basil the Macedonian, who was one of the chief instigators of the death of Bardas, Prime Minister, and as he was aware of his incapacity in governing by himself, he soon after associated him in the empire, and had him solemnly crowned (19).


11. Although Photius lost his protector, he did not lose heart; he continued to retain the Emperor’s friendship, and ingratiated himself with Basil. He was abandoned by many of his adherents after he incurred the censures of the Pope, and he then bitterly persecuted them whenever he could; some he deprived of their dignities; some he imprisoned, and he banished the hermits from Mount Olympus, and burned their cells (20). On the 13th of November, 866, the Pope sent three Legates to Constantinople, to appease the Emperor, and put an end to the discord caused by Photius; but they were arrested in Bulgaria by an Imperial officer, who treated them very disrespectfully, and told them that the Emperor would have nothing to say to them; so when they perceived the treatment they were likely to receive if they proceeded to Constantinople, they returned to Rome (21). It came to the knowledge of Photius at the same time that the Pope had sent other Legates to the Bulgarians, to protest against the new mode of Unction introduced by him (Photius) among them, in the administration of the sacrament of Confirmation, and he felt so indignant at this interference, that he summoned a Council, which he called an Ecumenical one, in which he got the two Emperors, Basil and Michael, to preside, and had it attended by the Legates of the other Patriarchal Sees, and by many Bishops of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, to revenge himself on the Pope.

Persons came forward there, and made several charges against Pope Nicholas. Photius received the accusations, and tried the cause, and finally condemned the Pope for many supposed crimes, and deposed and excommunicated him and all who would hold communion with him. Twenty-one Bishops were mad enough to approve of and subscribe this sacrilegious sentence, and Photius afterwards forged nearly a thousand other signatures to the same document (22). He had now lost all respect for the Pope, and his insolence arrived at such a pitch, that he sent a circular letter of his composition to the Patriarch of Alexandria, condemnatory of several practices and doctrines of the Roman Church, as the fast on Saturdays, the celibacy of the Clergy, but, above all, the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Ghost, not from the Father alone, but from the Father and Son (23). Baronius (24) even says, that he taught that every man had two souls. He obtained the Emperor’s permission to summon a second Council in Constantinople, and having done so, he again excommunicated and deposed the Pope (25).


12. In the year 867, the Emperor Michael was killed, while drunk, by his own guards, at the instigation of Basil, whose life he sought, on account of some disagreements they had. When Basil thus obtained the undivided sovereignty of the Empire, he banished Photius from the See of Constantinople, and exiled him to a distant Monastery (26), and the next day he sent the Imperial galley to the island where the Patriarch St. Ignatius was confined, to convey him back to Constantinople, and received him with the highest honours on his arrival, and solemnly put him in possession of his See once more (27).

He sent orders then to Photius to restore all the documents with the Emperor’s signature he had in his possession; but he sent back word, that as he left the palace, by the Emperor’s command, in a hurry, that he left all his papers behind him; but while he was making this excuse to the Prefect sent to him by Basil, his officers perceived the servants of Photius busy in hiding several bags filled with documents, with leaden seals appended to them; these were immediately seized on, and brought to the Emperor, and among other papers, two books, beautifully written, were found, one containing the acts of the imaginary Council condemning Ignatius, and the other the Synodical Letter against Pope Nicholas, filled with calumnies and abuse (28). Basil then wrote to Pope Nicholas, giving him an account of the expulsion of Photius and the re-establishment of Ignatius; but this letter was delivered into the hands of Adrian II., in 868, the successor of Nicholas, who died in 867. Adrian answered the Emperor, and said that he would put into execution, in regard to Photius and Ignatius, whatever was decided by his predecessor (29), and the same year he condemned the Council of Photius in a Council held at Rome, and the book we mentioned was burned there, being first thrown on the ground, with this anathema : ” Cursed at Constantinople; be again cursed at Rome” (30).


(1) Hermant, t. 1, c. 344.
(2) Van Ranst, p. 162.
(3) Fleury, t. 7, 1. 50, n. 2.
(4) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 3.
(5) Nat. Alex. t. 13, Dis. 4, s. 2.
(6) Nat. Alex. loc. cat. s. 2; Fleury, t. 7, l. 50, n. 3; Baron. An. 858, n. 25.
(7) Bar. An. 859, n. 54; Fleury, loc. cit. n. 3 & 4; Nat. Alex. loc. cit.
(8) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 4. cum Anas, in Nic. 4.
(9) Nat. Alex. t. 13; Diss. 4. s. 3, ex. Epis. 6; Nichol.
(10) Nichol. Ep. 9.
(11) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. s. 4.
(12) Baron. Ann. 801, n. 1; Nat. Alex. cit. s. 4, and Bernin. s. 9, c. 9. ex. Niceta in Vit. St. Ig. Nat.
(13) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. s. 4; Fleury, t. 7, c. 53, n. 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, & . Nat. Alex, t . 14; Diss. 14, s. 6.
(14) Nichol. Epis. 13.
(15) Fleury, loo. cit. n. 15, 18, 19, & Nat. Alex, t, 13, diss. 14, s. 6.
(16) Baron. Ann. G63, . 3; Fleury, t.7,1. 50, n. 19, 26.
(17) Nichol. Epis. 8.
(18) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 41; Nat. Alex. cit. s. 6.
(19) Fleury, n. 42. Fleury, n. 52, 53.
(20) Fleury, loc. cit, n. 41.
(21) Nat. Alex. t. 13, diss. 4, s. 7
(22) Baron. Ann. 663, n. 13; Nat. Alex. cit. s. 7
(23) Fleury, t. 7, I 52, n. 55, 56.
(24) Baron. Ann. 869, n. 49.
(25) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. & Grav. t. 3, s. 9, coll.. 4.
(26) Baron. Ann. 367, n. 92; Nicetas in Vita, St. Ignatii, p. 1226.
(27) Fleury, t. 7, 1. 51, n, 1, 2.
(28) Nat. Alex. loc. cit, s. 9, & Fleury, loc. cit.
(29) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 18. n. 19.
(30) Baron. Ann. 868, n. 38;Nat. Alex. loc. cit. s. 9, & Fleury, cit.

[Stone]

CHAPTER IX. – HERESIES OF THE NINTH CENTURY

ARTICLE II. – THE ERRORS OF THE GREEKS CONDEMNED IN THREE GENERAL COUNCILS

13, 14, 15.  The Eighth General Council against Photius, under Pope Adrian, and the Emperor Basil.
16. Photius gains over Basil, and in the meantime St. Ignatius dies.
17. Photius again gets possession of the See.
18. The Council held by Photius, rejected by the Pope; unhappy death of Photius.
19. The Patriarch, Cerularius, revives and adds to the errors of Photius.
20. The unhappy death of Cerularius.
21, 22. Gregory X. convokes the Council of Lyons, at the instance of the Emperor Michael; it is assembled.
23. Profession of Faith written by Michael, and approved of by the Council.
24. The Greeks confess and swear to the Decisions of the Council.
25. They separate again.
26. Council of Florence, under Eugenius IV.; the errors are again discussed and rejected; definition of the Procession of the Holy Ghost.
27. Of the consecration in leavened bread.
28. Of the Pains of Purgatory.
29. Of the Glory of the Blessed.
30. Of the Primacy of the Pope.
31. Instructions given to the Armenians, Jacobites, and Ethiopians; the Greeks relapse into schism.


13. Pope Adrian (1) made arrangements to celebrate a General Council in Constantinople, which was accomplished in the year 869, in the reign of the Emperor Basil; he sent three Legates to preside in his name : Donatus, Bishop of Ostia, Stephen of Nepi, and Marinus, one of the seven deacons of the Roman Church, who was afterwards Pope. The Legates proceeded to Constantinople, and were most honourably received by the Emperor; he sent all the officers of the palace to meet them at the gate of the city, and they were received there by the clergy in their robes, likewise. They were then presented to the Emperor in his palace, and he received them with all honour and reverence, kissed the Pope’s letters when presented to him, and told them that he, as well as all the Bishops of the East, were for two years waiting for the decision of the Roman Church, their mother, and he, therefore, most earnestly besought them to make every endeavour to re-establish union and peace. The day for the opening of the Council was then appointed.


14. The Legates presided in this Council in the name of the Pope; although in the eighth and tenth act, Basil and his two sons, Constantine and Leo, arc called Presidents, still, as Noel Alexander (2) remarks, the Emperor is called the President, not because of any authority he held in the Synod, but because hewas honoured as the protector of the Church, but not as the judge of Ecclesiastical affairs. The firstSession was held on the 5th of October, in the year 869, and eight others were held, the last in the February of 870. The Bishops and priests who had joined the schism, presented themselves in the fifth Session, and were mercifully received again. Photius also came forward, but when he was asked by the Legates whether he received the exposition of Pope Nicholas, and of his successor Pope Adrian, he refused to answer (3). He was pressed for a reply, but he only said : ” God understands what I mean, though I do not speak.” “But,” said the Legates, “your silence will not preserve you from condemnation; Jesus Christ said he was silent, likewise, and was condemned.” They told him that if he wished to be reconciled to the Church, he should confess his crimes, and all the wrongs he had inflicted on Ignatius, and promise to recognise him as his pastor for the future, still he continued silent; then the Patrician Baanes, addressed him, and said : ” My Lord Photius, your mind is now confused, so the Council gives you time to think on your salvation; go, you shall be again recalled.” He made his appearance again in the  seventh Session, with the crozier in his hand, but it was taken from him, for the Council said he was a wolf, and not a shepherd; he was again asked if he was willing to retract his errors, but he answered, that he did not recognize the Legates as his judges. Several other questions were put to him, but he answered them in a haughty manner, so he was anathematized in these words : “Anathema to Photius the invader, the schismatical tyrant, the new Judas, the inventor of perverse dogmas.” In these and such like terms was he condemned, and, together with him, Gregory of Syracuse, and all their followers, who persevered in their obstinacy (4).


15. Twenty-seven Canons were promulgated in this the Eighth General Council. Among the rest it was decreed, that all the orders conferred by Photius were invalid, and that the churches and altars he consecrated should be consecrated again. All Bishops and Clerks who continued to hold by his party were deposed, and all who held with him that man had two souls were anathematized. It was prohibited, under pain of deposition, to consecrate Bishops, at the command of the Sovereign (5). All the works of Photius were burned in the midst of the Assembly; the definitions of the other seven General Councils were received, and the Council was closed. It was afterwards confirmed by Pope Adrian, at the request of the Fathers (6), who besought him to confirm the Decrees of this General Synod as his own, that the words of truth and the decrees of justice should be received through the whole world confirmed by his authority. It is worthy of remembrance what Nicetas tells us of this Council (7), that the Fathers signed the Decree with a pen dipped in the Sacred Blood of Jesus Christ. The Emperor Basil did not look sufficiently to the safety of the Legates on their return to Rome; and the consequence was, that they were seized by the Sclavonians, and robbed of all they had, the Original Acts of the Council among the rest, with the autograph signatures of the Fathers. They were freed from captivity by the joint exertions of the Pope and the Emperor, and, on the 22nd of December, 870, arrived in Rome. The Pope received through another channel the authentic copy of the Synodical Acts, and confirmed the Council (8). The cause of the Emperor’s displeasure with the Legates was, because they refused to accede to the wishes of the Ambassadors of the King of Bulgaria, in Constantinople, who wished to be subjected, not to the Roman Church, but to the See of Constantinople, and the Legates of the other Oriental Patriarchates seconded this request (9).


16. Photius, in the meantime, never ceased to asperse the Council. He wrote several letters to that effect to his friends, and one, especially, to a Monk of the name of Theodosius (10), in which he says : ” Why do you wonder that those who have been themselves condemned presume to judge the innocent? Have you not examples? Caiphas and Pilate were judges; my God Jesus was the accused.” He then alludes to the examples of St. Stephen, St. James, St. Paul, and so many Martyrs, who had to appear before judges worthy of being put to death a thousand times. ” God,” said the impious Photius, ” disposes of everything for our advantage.” Noel Alexander and Fleury tell us, that, during the whole ten years of his exile, he never ceased plotting and scheming to injure the holy Patriarch, St. Ignatius, and to get back to the See himself, and he left no means untried to accomplish his purpose.

He laid one plan, in particular, to ingratiate himself into the Emperor’s favour : He wrote a genealogy and prophecy on a piece of old parchment, and in the antique Alexandrian character. This was called “Beclas,” the name of Basil’s father. In this he pretended that Basil, though his father was but a man of low birth, was descended from Tiridates, King of Armenia, and that his reign would be longer and happier than that of any of his predecessors. He got this bound up in an old cover, and privately conveyed into the Imperial library. He then got one of his friends, as great a schemer as himself, to suggest to the Emperor, that there was not a man in the Empire who could interpret that but Photius. The Emperor took the bait, and recalled him, and he soon ingratiated himself into his good graces, and endeavoured to obtain permission from St. Ignatius, through the Sovereign’s influence, to exercise Episcopal functions; but the Saint never would permit him, for, as he was excommunicated by a Council, he said he could not be re-habilited, unless by another Council; but, notwithstanding, he administered Orders, and exercised other Episcopal duties (12). The Holy Patriarch, Ignatius, died in the year 878, the eightieth year of his age, and there are strong suspicions, according to Noel Alexander, and Van Ranst, that Photius was the author of his death. Fleury says (13), that Stilianus, the Metropolitan of Neocesarea, wrote to Pope Stephen, and openly charged Photius with employing some wretches to take away the Holy Patriarch’s life. Both the Greek and Latin Churches honour the memory of St. Ignatius, on the 23rd of October. 


17. Three days had not elapsed since the death of St. Ignatius, and Photius managed to mount the Patriarchal throne once more, and at once began to banish, flog, and incarcerate the servants of his holy predecessor. He restored some of the deposed Bishops; and those who rejected his communion, and adhered to the Council, he delivered into the hands of his relative, Leo Catacalus, who gained over many of the weak by torments, and punished the constancy of many more with death (14). He was most desirous of having the sanction of Pontifical authority for his re-establishment, and tried number less schemes to accomplish it. Among the rest he sent a letter to the Pope then reigning, John VIII., telling him that he was forced to resume the See, and he surreptitiously obtained the signatures of the other Oriental Patriarchs to this, by pretending that it was a contract for a purchase to be secretly made. He sent another letter, forged in the name of St. Ignatius (then dead), and several other Bishops, begging of the Pope to receive Photius, and he sent along with those, letters from the Emperor, which he obtained in his favour (15). When the Pope received those letters, in Rome, in the year 879 desirous of not displeasing the Emperor, especially he answered, that, for the good of the Church, and for peace sake, he was willing to dispense with the Decrees of the Eighth Council, and of his predecessors, and receive Photius into his communion, but only on condition of giving public proofs of penance, in a Council, to be held in presence of his Legates, then in Constantinople, and he, accordingly, sent Peter, a Cardinal, as his Legate, to preside at a Council in his name. Cardinal Baronius, Noel Alexander, Fleury (16), and several others, severely censure this condescension of the Pope; but Peter de la Marca excuses him (17), for, solicited as he was by the Emperor, and having the authority of his predecessors, Leo, Gelasius, and Felix, and of the Council of Africa, all which teach that the rigour of the law must be dispensed with in time of necessity, he naturally considered that the good of the Church required he should yield the point, and thus, with the consent of the other Patriarchs, he consented that Photius should retain possession of the See.


18. Photius put the finishing stroke to his plans on the arrival of the Legate in Constantinople; he deceived him, by asking for the Pope’s letter that he might translate it into Greek, and when he got it into his hands, he curtailed it, and interpolated it to suit his own purpose, as Cardinal Baronius shows, and on the strength of this deception, a Council was held, called the Eighth General Council, by the schismatic Greeks, though it was nothing more than a Cabal, for though it was attended by four hundred and eighty Bishops, they were all adherents of Photius, and he presided himself and carried everything just as he liked, in opposition to the sentiments of the Legate and the Pope. This Council was closed after five Acts, and the impious Photius was re-established in the Pope’s name, in the See of Constantinople. When Pope John learned what passed in Constantinople, as Noel Alexander (18) relates, he had sent anew his Legate, Maximus, to Constantinople to annul by Apostolical authority all that had been done in that wicked Council; and the Legate proceeded with courage, and confirmed, in the Pope’s name, the condemnation of Photius, decided by the General Council; this so displeased the Emperor, that he cast the Legate into prison, and kept him there for thirty days, but, withal, the Pope confirmed the decrees passed against Photius by his predecessors, Nicholas I. and Adrian II., and again solemnly excommunicated him. Cardinal Gotti (19) adds, that this sentence of John VIII. was, after the death of Basil, which took place in 886, put into execution by his son and successor, Leo VI., the philosopher. Fleury tell us (20) that the Emperor sent two of his principal officers to the church of Sancta Sophia, and they went into the gallery, and publicly read all the crimes of Photius, and then banished him from the Metropolitan See, and sent him to an Armenian Monastery, where he died, but we do not know how or when. Cedrenus (21 ), in his annals, however, says that the Emperor ordered his eyes to be put out, as suspected of rebellion; and Noel Alexander says he died obstinately in his schism, and separated from the communion of the Church.


19. Noel Alexander (22) says that the schism was extinguished on the death of Photius, but that it broke  out again; but Danæus (23) says, that, on the contrary, his death left it as it was, and that it broke out with more violence in the time of Nicholas Chrisobergus, Patriarch, in 981, of Sisinnius, his successor, in 995, and, more than all, in the reign of Sergius, also Patriarch, who sent, in his own name, to the Bishop of the East, the Encyclical letter written by Photius against the Pope. It gained new strength in the eleventh century, under the Patriarch Michael Cerularius. This Prelate was of noble birth, but proud and intriguing; and he was imprisoned in a monastery, by the Emperor Michael Pophlaganius, and was not released till the reign of the Emperor Constantine Monomachus, in the year 1043; he uncanonically seized on the See of Constantinople, but naturally fearing the censures of the Pope for this act of violence, he laboured to bring to maturity the seeds of division, previously sown between the two Churches. He commenced the attack, by writing a letter to John, Bishop of Trani, in Apulia, charging the Roman See with holding erroneous doctrines regarding the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son; that the soul after leaving Purgatory, went directly to enjoy beatitude before the General Resurrection; that the Pope usurped the authority of Universal Pastor, without having any authority to do so, and more, that the Latins, by consecrating the Eucharist in unleavened bread, followed the Jewish practice of celebrating the Pasch in unleavened bread.

In making a charge of this sort against the Roman Church, he was most surely astray, for our Lord celebrated the Pasch on the first day of the feast of the unleavened bread; and then, according to the precept of God himself, in Exodus, it was unlawful to have even in the house, leavened bread : ” Seven days there shall not be found any leaven in your houses” (Exod. xii.); and, besides, there was a most ancient tradition handed down direct from St. Peter himself, as Christian Lupus (24) says, that Christ offered up the Sacrifice in unleavened bread, and such was indubitably the universal practice, during the first centuries in the West, unless, for a short time, when the discipline was changed, lest the Christians should be scandalized, as if they were Judaizing. It is true, the Greeks have always made use of leavened bread; and by doing so, never offended against Faith, for one Church has never reprobated the custom of another; but Certilarius was altogether astray in accusing the Latin Church of heresy, for using unleavened bread.


20. Pope Leo, to extinguish the fire of schism which was every day spreading more widely, sent as his Legates to the East, Umbert, Bishop of Silva Candida, the Cardinal Archdeacon of Rome, and Peter, Archbishop of Amalphi; they brought letters from the Pope to the Emperor Constantine, threatening to excommunicate Cerularius, unless he desisted from censuring the Roman Church, on account of the custom of celebrating with unleavened bread. The question then was discussed in Constantinople itself, and the Latin practice was justified; but Cerularius refused all along to meet the Legates, and continued to give them every opposition in his power. The Legates, despairing of any change in him, after celebrating Mass one day in St. Sophia, publicly laid the letter of excommunication on the altar. This only exasperated him more, and he removed the Pope’s name from the Diptychs, and following the Legates example, he excommunicated them, and sent letters through all Asia and Italy, filled with calumnies and abuse of the Roman Church. He lived and died obstinately in schism : he was banished to Proconesus by the Emperor, Isaac Comnemus, who deposed him from the Patriarchate, and he there ended his days (25).


21. The schism was not extinguished at his death, but spread more widely; and though several Greek Churches in the eleventh and following centuries continued in communion with the Roman Church, still the breach was every day becoming wider, till Constantinople was conquered by the Latins. Union was again restored under the Frankish Monarchy, from the reign of Baldwin, the first Latin Emperor of Constantinople, in 1204, till 1261; but when Constantinople was re-taken by Michael Paleologus, the Greeks renewed the schism, which to all appearance they had eternally forsaken, and for the four subsequent centuries the Churches were disunited, till the chastisement of God bore heavily on the sinful Empire. Michael Paleologus (26) sent a Franciscan Doctor to Gregory X., the bearer of letters requesting an union between the Greek and Roman Churches once more, and he wrote to St. Louis, King of France, also, to induce him to co-operate to the same end. The Pope was most desirous to accede to his wishes, and he sent four Friars of the Order of St. Francis (or according to others, two of the Franciscan and two of the Dominican Order,) as his Legates, to conclude a peace. This happened in 1272, and he convoked a General Council at the same time to meet in two years after in Lyons, to concert with the Christian Sovereigns for the conquest of the Holy Land; to reform some matters of discipline; but principally to reunite the Greek and Latin Churches; and to facilitate this object, so dear to his heart, he sent a formula of Faith to the Emperor by the four religious delegates, which the Greek Bishops were called on to sanction. He prayed the Emperor to come to the Council himself, or, at all events, to send his Legates, and he also invited the Patriarch of Constantinople and the other Greek Bishops to the Council.


22. At the appointed time the Council assembled in Lyons, and besides the Latin Prelates, two of the Greek Patriarchs, Pantaleon, of Constantinople, and Opizio, of Antioch, and several other Greek Bishops, attended. Five hundred Bishops altogether, seventy Abbots, and about one thousand inferior Prelates, were assembled. St. Bonaventure was also present, and took the first place after the Pope, and to him was committed, by his Holiness, the whole arrangement of the Council. The Pope had summoned St. Thomas of Aquin, likewise, but he died on his way thither, in the Convent of Fossa Nova.

The Ambassadors of the Kings of France, England, and Sicily, were also in attendance. Several authors, among others Trithemius and Platina, assert, that the Emperor Michael was present; but Noel Alexander proves (27) indubitably, that he was not, but only his Ambassadors, and, it is on that account, that his letter was read in the Council, and approved of, because the Ambassadors, in his name, took an oath assenting to the union, and, besides, Pope Gregory, immediately on the conclusion of the Council, wrote to him an account of all that had taken place there, which he assuredly would not have done, had he been present in person.


23. In the fourth Session, the letter of the Emperor Michael Paleologus, was read, professing the Faith taught by the Roman Church, as laid down in the formula, sent to him by the Pope. In this, he professes that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, the existence of Purgatory, the validity of Consecration with unleavened bread, and finally, the primacy of the Pope. Noel Alexander (28), and Raynaldus (29), quote his words : ” That the Holy Roman Church has full and plenary primacy, and principality over the whole Catholic Church, and that it received the plentitude of power in the Apostle St. Peter, whose successor, the Roman Pontiff is, through Christ himself; and, as it is bound, above all others, to defend the truth of the Faith, so its judgment should be definitive, in all controversies  regarding Faith. That all persons having any Ecclesiastical business, can appeal to it, and that it can examine and judge all Ecclesiastical cases, and all other Churches owe it reverential obedience.” The plentitude of power consist in this, that it admits the other Church to a part of its solicitudes, and it honours others, but above all the Patriarchal Churches, with divers privileges, never, however, giving up its prerogatives, both in General Councils and elsewhere, but always keeping the purity of the Faith, as faithfully explained ;” and then he adds : ” We, of our own free will, confess and receive the Primacy of the Holy Roman Church.” He then begs of the Pope, to allow the Symbol or Creed to be sung in the Greek Church, as it was before the schism, and to permit the Greeks to observe the same rites as before, when not opposed to Faith, to the Divine Commandments, to the Old or New Testament, to the Doctrines laid down by General Councils or Holy Fathers, and received by the Councils, celebrated under the spiritual power of the Roman Church.

The letters of the several Greek Bishops were then read, submitting themselves to the power of the Roman Church, and professing in all things the same Episcopal obedience, to the Apostolic See as their fathers did before the schism.


24. When these letters were read, George Acropolita, the great Logothete, or High Chancellor, the Emperor’s Ambassador, renounced the schism in his name, professed the Faith of the Roman Church, and recognized the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff; he also took an oath, promising that the Emperor never would depart from his Faith and obedience. The Legates of the Greek Bishops did the same, and now the Council having approved and accepted the profession of Faith, the Synodical Constitution was promulgated: “We confess, said the Fathers, with a faithful and devout profession, that the Holy Ghost proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles, but, as from one principle, not from two spirations, but one spiration. The Holy Roman Church, the Father and Mistress of all Churches, has always professed, and firmly holds and teaches this Doctrine, and, this is also the true and unchangeable opinion of the orthodox Fathers and Doctors, both of the Latin and Greek Churches. But as some, on account of not knowing this undoubted truth, have fallen into various errors, we, wishing to  prevent any from going the same false way in future, with the approbation of the Sacred Council, condemn and hand over to reprobation, all who presume to deny, that the Holy Ghost eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son, or who dare to assert that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son as from two principles, and not from one.” The Council closed at last, and Gregory sent back the Greeks to their own country, loaded with presents, and wrote to the Emperor Michael, and to his son, Andronicus, congratulating them on the completion of the Synod. The Emperor was so highly pleased that all was iso happily concluded, and, as Joseph, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was always opposed to the union, would not now give his consent to it, he obliged him to renounce his dignity, and retire to a Monastery, and had John Veccus elected in his place, and he imprisoned, banished, and even put to death, some Ecclesiastics and Nobles, who refused to receive the decrees of the Council (30).


25. Two Synods were held in Constantinople in the year 1276, under Pope John XXL, in which the Patriarch Veccus, and the other Greek Bishops, professed the Faith, according to the rule laid down by the Roman Church; and the Emperor Michael and his son Andronicus wrote to the Pope, that all that the Roman Church believes and teaches was confirmed by these Synods. The Emperor wrote another letter, in 1278, to Nicholas III., the successor of John, informing him that he used every means in his power to consolidate the union, but that so many outbreaks occurred, and so many plots were laid against him, that he feared he would be deposed if he tried any further, and he begged of his Holiness not to be angry if he appeared to yield a little in so delicate an affair. The end of the matter was, that the Greeks, with few exceptions, every day more and more separated themselves from the union they had sworn to, and at last Martin IV., the successor of Nicholas III., excommunicated the Emperor, Michael Paleologus, in 1281, as a supporter of the Greek schism and heresy, and forbade all Princes, Lords, and Universities, and the authorities of all cities and towns, under pain of personal excommunication and local interdict, from having any connexion with him, as long as he was under ban of excommunication. Noel Alexander, on the authority of two authors, says that the Pope excommunicated the Emperor at the instigation of Charles, King of Sicily, who hoped that when Michael was by this measure deprived of assistance, that  be could easily banish him from the throne, and place his son-in-law on it; but Roncaglia, in his notes on Alexander, shows that Martin having renewed the excommunication the following year, (as Raynaldus relates, Ann. 1281, N. 8), proves that the only reason he could have for doing it was, that the Emperor broke faith, and gave up the union he had sworn to maintain (31).


26. This schism continued for about a hundred and twenty years longer, from the Council of Lyons, till the year 1439, when the Greeks were reduced almost to the last extremity, for the Almighty permitted the Turks to punish them, and, after conquering the greater part of their empire, now threatened their total destruction. In their distress, they now made overtures for a re-union with the Roman Church once more, and Pope Eugenius IV., who was extremely desirous of acceding to their wishes, convoked a Council, principally for this object, in Ferrara; and when the plague broke out in that city, afterwards in Florence, and invited the Emperor, the Patriarchs, and the other Greek Bishops to attend. The Emperor John Paleologus, accepted the invitation, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, the two chief Metropolitans, Basil Bessarion, Archbishop of Nice, and Mark, Archbishop of Ephesus, several other Greek Bishops, seven hundred other distinguished personages, and a hundred and sixty Latin Bishops, assembled in Florence. The points of disagreement, which were the same as those decided on in the Council of Lyons (32), were again examined. The word, Filioque, ” and from the Son,” which was added to the Creed by the Latin Church, to explain that the Holy Ghost proceeds both from the Father and the Son, as from one principle, was again debated. Mark, the Greek Archbishop of Ephesus, was the most strenuous oppose of this addition; it was unlawful, he said, to add anything to the ancient Symbols of the Church, but our Theologians replied, that the promise made by Jesus Christ to assist his Church, was not confined to any period, but lasts till the end of time : ” Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matt, xxviii, 20). The word, Consubstantial, was not, said they, in the Creed at first; and for all that the Council of Nice thought it necessary to add it, to put an end to the subterfuges of the Arians, and explain that the Word was of the same substance as, and in all things equal to, the Father. The Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, also, made an addition to the Nicene Creed, to explain the two Natures of Christ, Divine and human, against Nestorius, who taught that He was a mere man; and against Eutyches, who asserted that the human was absorbed by the Divine Nature. Hence they argued that the words, “and from the Son,” were added to the Symbol; not to prove that the ancient Symbols were imperfect, but to declare more clearly the truth of the Faith, and that the declaration of the truth ought not to be called an addition, but rather an explanation.

The Council, therefore, defined: ”That this truth should be believed by all Christians; that the Holy Ghost is eternally from the Father and the Son, and that his essence and being is both from the Father and the Son, and that he proceeds eternally from both, as from one principle, and by one spiration; and that this is what the Holy Fathers mean by saying that he proceeds from the Father by the Son; and when the Greeks speak of the Son, as the cause, and the Latins the principle, together with the Father, of the subsistence of the Holy Ghost, they both mean the same thing.” Here are the words: ”Diffinimus, ut hæc fidei veritas ab omnibus Christianis credatur, quod Spiritus Sanctus ex Patre, et Filio æternaliter est; et essentiam suam, suumque esse subsistens habet ex Patre simul et Filio; et ex utroque æternaliter tanquam ab uno principio, et unica spiratione procedit, declarantes, quod id quod SS. Patres dicunt ex Patre per Filium procedente Spiritum Sanctum; ad hanc intelligentiam tendit, ut per hoc significetur, Filium quoque esse secunduni græcos quidem causam, secundum latinos vero principium subsistentiæ Spiritus Sancti, sicut et Patrem. Et quoniam omnia quad Patris sunt, Pater ipse unigenito Filio suo gignendo dedit, præter esse Patrem, hoc ipsum quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit ex Filio, ipse Filius a Patre æternaliter habet, a quo etiam æternalitur genitus est. Diffinimus insuper, explicationem verborum illorum Filioque, veritatis declarandæ gratia, et imminente tune necessitate, ac rationabiliter Symbolo fuisse appositam.”


27. The question of the validity of the consecration of the Eucharist in unleavened bread was then discussed, but the parties soon agreed on this, as there was no doubt that wheaten bread was the essential matter of the Sarcament, and it was but a matter of discipline whether it was leavened or unleavened; and it was then defined that each Priest should follow the custom of his own Church, whether of the East or the West.


28. Purgatory, and the state of beatitude the just enjoy, previous to the General Resurrection, was then discussed. Both parties soon agreed on these points, for as to Purgatory, the Greeks never denied its existence, but they taught that the stains of sin are there purged away by the penalty of sorrow, and not of fire; and they, accordingly, at once agreed to the definition of the Council, which decided that the souls are purged from the stain of sin, in the next life, by punishment, and that they are relieved by the suffrages of the faithful, and especially by the Sacrifice of the Mass, but does not specify either the penalty of sorrow or of fire; and the Council of Trent, in the Twenty-fifth Session, in the Decree on Purgatory, decided the same, though many of the Holy Fathers, as St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, Bede, and the Angelic Doctor St. Thomas, particularly mention the penalty of fire, as I have remarked in my Dogmatic Work on the Council of Trent, in opposition to the Innovators (33); and they found their opinion on the text of St. Paul (I. Cor. iii, 12). The following is the Decree of the Council : ” Item (definimus) si vere pœnitentes in Dei charitate decesserint, antequam dignis pœnitentiæ fructibus de commissis satis fecerint, et omissis, eorum animas poems purgatoriis post mortem purgari, et ut a poenis hujusmodi releventur, prodesse eis Fidelium vivorum suffragia, missarum scil. Sacri-ficia, orationes, et eleemosynas, et alia pietatis officia, secundum Ecclæsia instituta.”


29. The Greeks also accepted the definition of the Council, that the just enjoy the beatific vision previous to the General Resurrection. This is the Decree: ”Illas (Animas) etiam, quæ post contractam peccati maculam, vel in suis corporibus, vel eisdem exutæ corporibus (prout superius dictum est), sunt purgatæ, in Cælum mox recipi, et intueri clare ipsum Deum trinum, et unum sicuti est, pro meritorum tamen diversitate, alium alio perfectius; illorum autem animas, qui in actuali mortali peccato, vel solo original! decedunt mox in infernum descendere, pœnistamen disparibus puniendas.” Theologians commonly teach that the blessed will not have the fullness of beatitude, till after the General Judgment, when their souls will be united with their bodies. This, St. Bernard (34), speaking of the two stoles of the blessed, says : ” The first stole is the happiness itself, and the rest of the soul; but the second is immortality and the glory of the body. 


30. The greatest dispute was concerning the Primacy of the Pope, and Mark of Ephesus not only obstinately opposed this doctrine to the end of the Council, but after its conclusion, as we shall see, succeeded in again perverting the Greeks. The Greeks, indeed, admitted that the Pope was the head of  the Church, but would not allow that he could receive appeals from sentences passed by the Four Patriarchal Sees of the East, or convoke a General Council without their assent. They were so firm on this point, especially, that there would be no hope of agreement, had not Basil Bassarion, the Archbishop of Nice, suggested a mode of reconciling both parties, by putting in the clause: ” Saving the rights and privileges of the Greeks ;” and to this the Greeks at last consented, for they then maintained their privilege, and at the same time confessed their subjection to the Roman Church; for the very word privilege implies a concession from a superior power, and thus the power of the Pope over all Christian Churches is confirmed. “We define,” says the Council, ” that the Holy Apostolic See, and the Roman Pontiff, has the primacy over the whole world, and that the Pope is the successor of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and our Father and Doctor; and that full power has been given him by our Lord Jesus Christ, in St. Peter, to feed, rule, and govern the Universal Church, as is contained in the Acts of the Universal Councils, and the Sacred Canons. We also renew the order laid down by the Sacred Canons, in regard to the other venerable Patriarchs, that the Patriarch of Constantinople should have the second place after the Holy Roman Pontiff; the Patriarch of Alexandria, the third; of Antioch, the fourth; and of Jerusalem, the fifth; saving all their rights and privileges.”


31. When all this was concluded, and before the Council was dismissed, the Armenians arrived in Florence, on the invitation of the Pope, as their provinces were infected with errors. The Armenian Patriarch sent four delegates, who were most kindly received by the Pope, and as they were extremely ignorant, his Holiness judged it proper to cause a compendium of the whole Christian doctrine to be drawn up, which they should swear to profess, and take with them as a rule for their countrymen. This Instruction or Decree was accepted and sworn to, by the Armenians, and is quoted at length by Cardinal Justinian and Berninus (35). The Jacobites, also, on the invitation of the Pope, were represented in the Council by the Abbot of St. Anthony, sent by the Armenian Patriarch. The Ambassadors of the Sovereign of Ethiopia, the Prester John, of that age, presented themselves at the Council, likewise, and promised obedience to the Roman Church, and a book of instructions were given them by the Pope, when he transferred the Council from Florence to Rome (36). This peace, however, was but of short duration, for the Greeks, on their return home, again fell back into their former errors, principally at the instigation ofthe wicked Mark of Ephesus. The chastisement of God soon overtook that fickle people; in 1453, Mahomet II. took Constantinople by assault, and gave it up to sack and slaughter; the infuriated soldiery slew all who came in their way, cast down the altars, profaned the monasteries, and despoiled the wretched inhabitants of all their property. Thus fell the empire of the East, after eleven centuries of a glorious existence. The Greeks continue, to the present day, obstinately attached to their errors; they are the slaves of the Turks in their ancient capital. That noble Church that gave to the world, Athanasius, Gregory, Basil, and so many other learned and holy Doctors, now lies trampled under foot, vice usurping the place of virtue, and ignorance seated in the chair of learning. The Greek Church, in a word, the Mother of many Saints and Doctors of the Church, has, on account of its separation from the Roman See, fallen into a state of deplorable barbarity and wretched slavery (37).



(1) Nat. Alex. s. 11,& Graveson, t. 3, coll. 3, p. 153.
(2)) Nat. Alex. t. 13; Diss. 4, s. 12.
(3) Baron. Ann. 869, n. 28. 
(4) Baron. Ann. 869, n. 37, & Fleury, t. 7, l. 51, n. 29, & seq.
(5) N. Alex. sec. 22, & Fleury, l. 51, n. 55.
(6) N. Alex. loc. cit. 
(7) Nicep. ap. Fleury, loc. cit. 46. 
(8) Hermant, t. 1, c. 374.
(9) Fleury, t. 7, l. 31, n. 44, 49.
(10) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 41.
(11) Nat. Alex. t. 7, diss. 4, sec. 25; Fleury, t. 8, l. 53, re. 1, ex Nicet.
(12) Nat. Alex. sec. 25; Baron. Ann, 878, n. 53; Fleury, t. 8, 1. 53, w. 1, & seq.; Van Ranst, p. 154.
(13) Fleury, cit. l. 53, n. 52.
(14) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. sec. 25.
(15) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 3, 4; N. Alex. cod. sec. 25. 
(16) Baron. Ann. 879, t. 10; N. Alex. t. 13, diss. 4, sec. 26; Fleury, t. 8, l. 53, n. 7.
(17) De Marc, de Concordia, Sac. & Imp. l. 3, c. 14.
(18) Nat. Alex., loc. cit. sec. 28.
(19) Gotti, Ver. Belig. t. 2, c. 85, sec. 1. 
(20) Fleury, t. 53, n. 51.
(21) Apud. Gotti, loc. cit.
(22) Nat. Alex. s. 29. 
(23) Danæus tem. net. p. 271
(24) Chris. Lupus, p. 3, Conc. Diss. de Act. St. Leo VII.
(25) Bernin. t. 3, sec. xi, c. 6; Van Ranst, sec. 10, p. 171; Bask. t. 2, sec. 11, c. 3.
(26) Nat. Alex. t. 17, diss. 7, de Con. Lug. 11, o. 1.; Graveson, t. 4, coll. 4, p. 116.
(27) Nat. Alex. cit. a. 2, n. 1.
(28) Nat. Alex. cit. n. 2.
(29) Kaynal. Ann. 1274, n. 14.
(30) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. a. 2, n. 6, ex Nicephor. l. 5, & aliis.
(31) Nat. Alex. t. 17, digs. 7, a. 2, per totum.
(32) Spondan. ad. Ann. 1438, n. 28.
(33) Incit. Sogg. 25, n. 1, & 27.
(34) S. Bernard, t. 1, q. 1033; Serm. 3, om. SS. n 1.
(35) Card. Justin, in Concil. Floren. par. 3, p. 263, & ap. Bernin. t . 4, s. 5, 6, p. 134
(36) Kainal. Ann. 1442, n. 1 &2.
(37) Hermant, t. 2, c. 201; Berti . H. t. 2, s. 16, c. 5.

[Stone]

CHAPTER X. – THE HERESIES WHICH SPRUNG UP FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

We pass over the Tenth Century, because in that age no new heresy sprung up in the Church; but Danæus (1) says, that there was both great ignorance and great disunion in the West, so that even the Apostolic See was not exempt from intrusions and expulsions. Graveson (2) states the same, and says, that it was a great mark of Divine Protection, that, amid so many evils, a schism did not arise in the Church.

ARTICLE I. – HERESIES OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

1. Stephen and Lisosius burned for their Errors. 
2. The new Nicholites and the Incestuosists. 
3. Berengarius, and the principles of his Heresy. 
4. His Condemnation and Relapse. 
5. His Conversion and Death.

1. The first heresy of this century was an offshoot of Manicheism, or, rather, a collection of errors, which may be called Atheism itself. It was first discovered in Orleans, in France, where it was introduced by an Italian lady, and was embraced by many persons, but especially by two Ecclesiastics, of the name of Stephen and Lisosius, who were considered both holy and learned men. They taught, that all that the Scriptures say about the Trinity and the Creation of the World is mere nonsense, as the heavens and the earth are from all eternity, and never had a beginning. They denied the Incarnation and the Passion of Christ, and, consequently, the value of Baptism.

They condemned Matrimony, and denied that good works were rewarded, or evil ones punished, in the next life. They used to burn an infant eight days old, and preserved his ashes for the Viaticum of the Sick. A Norman gentleman, called Arefastus informed Robert, King of France, of the practices and doctrines of those wretches, and he, at once, went to Orleans himself, accompanied by the Queen, and a number of Bishops. These Prelates finding Stephen and Lisosius obstinate in their errors, held a Synod, and deposed and degraded them, and they were then, by the King’s orders, brought outside the city, shut up in a cabin with several of their followers and burned alive (1).


2. The new Nieholites also made their appearance in this century. These were some clergymen in Holy Orders, who preached that it was lawful for them to marry. The sect called Incestuosists also then disturbed the Church. These taught that it was lawful to contract marriage within the four prohibited degrees of consanguinity (2).


3. The remarkable heresy of Berengarius also sprung up in this century, and it is one of the prodigies of Divine Mercy, to see that this heretic, after so many relapses, in the end died a true penitent, and in communion with the Church. Berenger, or Berengarius, was born in the early part of this century, in Tours; he first studied in the school of St. Martin, and then went to prosecute his studies at Chartres, under Fulbert, the Bishop of that city. A certain author (3), speaking of his haughtiness, says, that while only a scholar he cared but very little for his master’s opinions, and despised altogether anything coming from his fellow-students; he was not, however, deeply grounded in the abstruse questions of philosophy, but took great pride in quibbles, and strange interpretations of plain words. His master, Fulbert, well aware of his petulant genius, and his desire of novelty, frequently advised him to follow in every thing the doctrine of the Fathers, and to reject all new doctrines. He returned to Tours, and was received among the Chapter of the Church of St. Martin, and was appointed a dignitary, the Master of the School, as it was called.

He next became Treasurer of the Church, and then went to Angers, and was appointed Archdeacon by the Bishop Eusebius Bruno, one of his own scholars. It was in Angers, according to Noel Alexander and Graveson (4), that he first began, about the year 1047, to disseminate his errors; and Baronius says, that the Bishop Eusebius connived at it, though Noel Alexander acquits him (5). At first, he attacked the Sacrament of Matrimony, the Baptism of infants, and other dogmas of the Faith; but he soon gave up all other questions, and confined himself to one alone the denial of the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. He attacked Paschasius Radbert, who, in 831, wrote a learned treatise on the Eucharist, and held up to admiration John Scotus Erigena, who flourished in the ninth century, and is believed to have been the first who attacked the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Cardinal Gotti, however, remarks that Berenger is looked on as the founder of this heresy, as the Church was obliged to summon several Councils to condemn it, as we shall see hereafter (6).

4. Berengarius was first condemned in the year 1050, in a Roman Council, held under Pope St. Leo IX., but he took so little notice of this, that he called it the Council of Vanity. He was condemned, likewise, in the Council of Vercelli, held the same year, and that Council also condemned the book of John Scotus. He was again condemned in a Council held in Paris, under the reign of King Henry I.; and Victor II., the successor of St. Leo, condemned him in a Synod, held in Florence, in the year 1055. In this same year he abjured his errors convinced by Lanfranc that he was wrong in a Council held at Tours, and swore never again to separate himself from the Faith of the Catholic Church; but his subsequent conduct proved that he was not sincere in this recantation. In the year 1059, therefore, Pope Nicholas II. convoked a Council in Rome of 113 Bishops, and then Berengarius again made his profession of Faith, according to the form prescribed to him, and swore again never to deviate from it, and threw his own works, and those of John Scotus, into a great fire, which was lighted in the midst of the Council.

Still he was unchanged : on his return to France, he again relapsed, and even wrote a book in defense of his heresy, and in defiance of the Church of Rome. Alexander II., the successor of Nicholas, paternally admonished him by letter; but he not only obstinately held out, but even sent him a disrespectful answer. Maurilius, Archbishop of Rouen, therefore, considered himself obliged to adopt extreme measures, and in a Council, held in 1063, excommunicated him and all his followers, and the Decres of this Council were confirmed by another, held in Poietiers, in 1075. Finally, St. Gregory VII., to put an end to the scandal altogether, convoked a Council, in Rome, of one hundred and fifty Bishops, in 1079, in which the Catholic doctrine was confirmed, and Berengarius, confessing himself convinced, took an oath to the following effect : ” I confess that the bread and wine placed on the altar are substantially converted into the true Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ, by the mystery of Sacred Prayer and the words of our Redeemer, not alone by the sign and virtue of a Sacrament, but by the truth of substance, &c.” (7).


5. Notwithstanding all this, when Berengarius returned to France, he again retracted his confession by another writing (8); but in the year following, 1080, he obtained from the Divine Mercy the grace of a true conversion, and in a Council, held at Bordeaux, retracted this last work of his, and confirmed the profession of faith he made at Rome; and he survived this last retractation for nearly eight years, and in the year 1088, at the age of nearly ninety years, he died a true penitent, in communion with the Church, after spending these eight years in retirement in the island of St. Cosmas, near Tours, doing penance for his sins (9). William of Malmesbury (10) says, that when just about to die, Berengarius exclaimed, remembering all the perversions his heresy had caused : ” To-day Jesus Christ shall appear to me either to show me mercy on account of my repentance, or, perhaps, to punish me, I fear, for having led others astray.”

St. Antoninus, De Bellay, Mabillon, Anthony Pagi, Noel Alexander, Graveson, and several other authors, assert that his repentance was sincere, and that he never relapsed during the last years of his life a remarkable exception to so many other heresiarchs, who died in their sins.


(1) Danes, gen. tem. not. p. 275.
(1) Fleury, t. 8, I. 58, n. 53 & 55; Graves, t. 3, sec. 11, coll 3; Gotti, Ver. Relig. t. 2, c. 86, sec. 1; Berti, sec. 11, c. 3; Van Ranst, sec. 11, p. 173, & seq.
(2) Graveson, His. Ecclesias. t. 3, sec. 10, coll 2
(2) Van Banst, sec. 11, p. 167; Berti, Brev. His. sec. 11, c. 3.
(3) Quidmond, f. 1, de Corp. xti. ver. in Euch.
(4) Nat. Alex. t. 14, sec. 11, c. 4, art. 2; Graves, t. 3, sec. 11, coll. 3
(5) Nat. Alex. t. 14, diss. 1, art. 4.
(6) Gotti, Ver. Rel. t. 2, c. 87, sec. 1 . & 2; Fleury, t. 8, l. 59, n. 65; Graves, loc. cit.
(7) Fleury, t. 9, l. 62, n. 60; N. Alex. loc. cit. art. 17; Gotti, loc. cit. s. 3.
(8) Mabillon, pref. 2, sec. 6, n. 31.
(9) Fleury, t. 9, /. 63, n. 40.
(10) Villel. Malmesb. de rebus, Angl. l. 3.

[Stone]

CHAPTER X. – THE HERESIES WHICH SPRUNG UP FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

ARTICLE II. – HERESIES OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY

6. The Petrobrussians.
7. Henry, and his Disciples.
8. Their condemnation.
9. Peter Abelard, and his Errors concerning the Trinity.
10. His condemnation. 11. – His Conversion and Death.
12. His particular Errors.
13. Arnold of Brescia; his Errors and condemnation.
14. Causes a Sedition, and is burned alive.
15. Gilbert de la Force; his Errors and Conversion.
16. Folmar, Tanquelinus, and the Abbot Joachim; the Apostolicals and the Bogomiles.
17. Peter Waldo and his Followers under different denominations Waldenses, Poor Men of Lyons, &c.
18. Their particular Errors, and condemnation.



6. The Petrobrussians made their appearance at this time; they were followers of a Monk, Peter of Bruis, who, tired of the restraint of the cloister, apostatized, and fled to the province of Aries, and, about the year 1118, began to preach his errors in that neighbourhood. These may be reduced to five heads, as Peter, Abbot of Cluny (1), tells us : First – He rejected the baptism of infants till they came to the use of reason. Second – He rejected altars and churches, and said they should be destroyed. Third – He prohibited the veneration of the Cross. Fourth – He rejected the sacrifice of the Mass, and the sacrament of the Eucharist. Fifth – He rejected prayers and suffrages for the dead. It is very likely, Graveson says (2), that these errors were condemned in the Third Canon of the Council of Toulouse, in the year 1119, at which Pope Celestine II. presided, and that they were again condemned in the Second Council of Lateran, under Innocent II.

It is the opinion of some, that Peter of Bruis was a follower of the Manichean doctrine; but Noel Alexander and Cardinal Gotti (3) are of the contrary opinion, because he baptized with water, made use of flesh-meat, and venerated both the Old and New Testaments, all which the Manicheans rejected. He had a horrible death. He collected together a great number of crosses on Good Friday, in the town of St. Giles, in the Diocese of Nismes, and making a great fire with them, he caused a great quantity of meat to  be roasted at it, and distributed it to his followers, but the Archbishop of Arles got him into his power some time after, and sentenced him to be burned alive (4).


7. After the death of this unfortunate man, another Monk, named Henry, some say an Italian, others a Provenceal (5), took his place, and about the year 1142, increased the numbers of the sect, and added new errors to those of his master. He was highly esteemed for his learning and piety, and on that account disseminated his errors most extensively in several places, especially in the Diocese of Mans; but before he proceeded to that city himself, he sent two of his disciples, bearing, like himself, a cane with an iron cross on the top, and they obtained leave for him to preach in that city, from the Bishop Ildebert. When he began to preach, his eloquence soon drew crowds after him, and he so excited the fury of the populace against the priests, that they looked on them as excommunicated, and would have burned down their dwellings, robbed them of their property, and even stoned them to death, if the principal people of the city had not opposed these violent proceedings. The Bishop Ildebert himself, was not allowed to pass free by Henry’s followers, so he banished him from his Diocese, and received two of his disciples, whose eyes were opened to his errors, and abandoned him (6). After his banishment from Mans, he first went to Poietiers, and next to Toulouse, where he principally added to his followers.

St. Bernard describes (Epis. 241) the ruinous consequences that ensued from his preaching in that city; the Priests, the churches, the Festivals, the Sacraments, and all holy things, were treated with supreme contempt; people died without confession, and without the Viaticum, and Baptism was refused to children. He even adds, that Henry himself shamelessly spent what he got at his sermons at the gamingtable, and that so great was his depravity, that he frequently, after preaching in the day, spent the night in houses of ill fame. When the Pope, Eugene III., learned that the number of the heretics was daily increasing in Toulouse, he sent thither, as Legate, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, Alberic, and he took along with him, Godfrey, Bishop of Chartres, and St. Bernard, who, by his sermons, conferences, and miracles, converted many from their evil ways, and accordingly, in his Epistle to the people of Toulouse, in 1147 (Ep. 242), he says : ” We thank God that our sojourn among you was not an idle one, and although we tarried but a short time with you, still our presence was not unprofitable.”


8. The Legate, Alberic, published a sentence of excommunication against all holding any communication with the Henricians, or with their protectors. St. Bernard promised Henry himself that he would receive him as a Monk into Clairvaux, in case it was his wish to retire and do penance (7); but the unfortunate man always shunned him. The Saint still continued to follow his traces, and wherever he went and preached, went after him and preached likewise, and generally re-converted those who had fallen by him. He was taken at last, and put in chains into the hands of the Bishop, and he, as Noel Alexander, tells us, delivered him up to the Legate Apostolic, and it is supposed that he was by him, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, that he might not have any longer an opportunity of preaching his heresy (8).


9. Peter Abelard was born in 1079, in the village of Palais, three leagues from Nantes. At first he taught philosophy and theology with great credit, but the disastrous consequences of an intrigue with Heloise, the niece of Fulbert, a Canon of Paris, drove him from the world, and he retired, to bury his shame and regret in the Abbey of St. Denis, and took the monastic habit at the age of forty years (9). He soon got tired of the life of the cloister, and went to the territories of the Count of Champagne, and opened a school which soon became celebrated, and it was there he published his book, filled with several errors concerning the Trinity.

His work was condemned by Conon, Bishop of Palestrina, the Pope’s Legate, in a Council held in Soissons in 1121, and Abelard was summoned there, and obliged to cast the book into the fire with his own hands, and was then given into the keeping of the Abbot of St. Medard of Soissons, who received orders to keep him in close custody in a Monastery (10).


10. Notwithstanding all this, Abelard continued for eighteen years teaching theology and works tainted with various errors. St. Bernard, when this came to his knowledge, endeavoured to get him to change his sentiments, without giving him any pain; but though Abelard promised amendment, there was no change, and knowing that there was soon to be a Council at Sens, he called on the Archbishop, and complained that St. Bernard was privately speaking against his works, and begged the Archbishop to summon the Saint to the Council, promising publicly to defend his writings. St. Bernard at first refused; but finally conquered his repugnance, and although not prepared for the dispute, attended on the appointed day, the 2nd of June, 1140. He produced Abelard’s book in the assembly, and quoted the errors he marked in it; but Abelard, instead of answering, judging that the Council would be opposed to him, appealed to the Pope previous to the delivery of the sentence, and left the meeting. Though the Bishops did not consider his appeal canonical, still, out of respect for the Pope, they did not condemn Abelard in person; but St. Bernard having proved that many propositions in the book were false and heretical, they condemned these, and then forwarded an account of the whole proceedings to Innocent II., requesting him to confirm their condemnatory sentence by his authority, and to punish all who would presume to contravene it (11). St. Bernard wrote to the same effect to Innocent, and the Pope not only condemned the writings of Abelard, but his person likewise, imposing perpetual silence on him as a heretic, and excommunicating all who would attempt to defend him (12).


11. Abelard was on his way to Rome to prosecute his appeal, but happening to pass by Clugni, he had a meeting with Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of that Monastery, and with the Abbot of Citeaux, who came on purpose to reconcile him with St. Bernard. The Abbot of Clugni joined his entreaties to those of his brother of Citeaux, and persuaded him to go and see St. Bernard, and retract the errors this holy Doctor charged him with. Abelard yielded at last; he went to Citeaux, became reconciled to St. Bernard, and returned to Clugni, and being there informed that the condemnation of the Council was confirmed by the Pope, he resolved to abandon his appeal, and to remain in that Abbey for the remainder of his life. The Abbot offered to receive him with all his heart, if the Pope had no objection. Abelard wrote to the Pope and obtained his consent, and then became an inmate of the Abbey of Clugni. He lived there for two years, wearing the habit of the Convent, and leading a life of edification, and even gave lessons to the Monks; but he was obliged, on account of a heavy fit of sickness, to go for change of air to the Priory of St. Marcellus, in Burgundy, and he died there on the 21st of April, in the year 1142, the 63rd of his age, and went to enjoy, we hope, eternal happiness (13).


12. The following errors were attributed to Peter Abelard : First He said that the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are improperly attributed to God, and that they only describe the plenitude of the Supreme Good. Second That the Father has a plenary power, the Son a certain power, but that the Holy Ghost has not any power. Third That the Son is of the substance of the Father, but that the Holy Ghost is not of the substance of the Father and the Son. Fourth That we can do good without the assistance of grace. Fifth That Jesus Christ, as God and man, is not a third person of the Trinity. Sixth That mankind derives from Adam the penalty alone, but not the fault of original sin. Seventh That no sin is committed with desire or with delectation, or with ignorance (14). Graveson (15) says that Abelard asserted in his Apology that these errors were falsely attributed to him by the ignorance or malice of others, and Berenger, Bishop of Poietiers, one of his disciples, also wrote an Apology in defence of his master.

But then the authority of St. Bernard, the Decrees of the Council, and the condemnation of Innocent II., should have more weight with us than these Apologies. Graveson and Alexander justly remark, that although Abelard may undoubtedly have been the author of those heretical propositions, still, that he cannot be called a heretic, as he repented and abjured them. Cardinal Gotti (16) speaking of him, says : “There is no doubt but that he rendered himself suspected in explaining the Articles of the Faith, so that at one time he seems an Arian, then a Sabellian, next a Macedonian, now a Pelagian, and frequently a founder of a new heresy altogether; but he finally wiped away all stains by his retractation.”


13. Arnold, of the city of Brescia, in Italy, lived also in this century. He went to study in Paris under Abelard, and was infected with his master’s errors. He then returned to Brescia, and to gain an opinion of sanctity, took the monastic habit, and, about the year 1138 (17), began to preach and dogmatize against the truth of the Faith. He was more flippant than profound, and always attached to new opinions. His sentiments regarding Baptism and the Eucharist were not Catholic, but his principal declamations were against Monks, Priests, Bishops, and the Pope. Those Monks, he said, would be damned who possessed estated property the Priests who held property also and the Bishops who were in possession of lordships or feudalties would share the same fate; the Clergy, he said, should live on the tithes and oblations of the people alone. The effect of his sermons of this nature was to cause the Clergy of Brescia and the neighbouring cities to be despised and contemned by the people, and he was, therefore, charged by his Bishop and others, before the Second Council of Lateran, held in 1139, by Pope Innocent II.; and the Council condemned and imposed perpetual silence on him (18). When Arnold heard of this sentence, he fled to Zurich, in the Diocese of Constance, and did a great deal of harm there, as the austerity of his life gave authority to his words, and he was, besides that, supported by the nobles of the country.

When St. Bernard heard this, he wrote to the Bishop of Zurich (Epis. 195), exhorting him to be on his guard against so dangerous a character, and to put him in prison, as the Pope had commanded, because if lie rested satisfied with only banishing him out of his own Diocese, he would be allowing the plague to infect some other place. He also wrote to Guido, the Pope’s Legate, with whom it was said Arnold had taken refuge (Epis. 146), putting him on his guard in like manner.


14. In the first year of the Pontificate of Eugenius III., 1145, Arnold went to Rome, and blew up the coals of a sedition already enkindled. He went about saying that the dignity of the Senate and the Order of Knights should be re-established, and that the Pope had no right to the government of Rome, as his power was spiritual alone. The Romans, excited by these discourses, rose up against the authority of the Prefect of Rome, tore down some of the houses of the nobility and Cardinals, and maltreated, and even wounded, some of them (19). While Arnold was stirring up this sedition, he was taken prisoner by Gerard, Cardinal of St. Nicholas, but was rescued by the Viscounts of the Campagna, and fell into the hands of Frederic Barbarossa, then King of the Romans, and when he went to Rome he was met by three Cardinals, sent to him by Adrian IV., and they, in the Pope’s name, demanded that Arnold should be delivered up to them. Frederic gave him up at once, and he was brought back to Rome, and according to the sentence passed on him by his judges, he was burned to death in public, and his ashes cast into the Tiber. Such was the end of this disturber of Rome and of the world, as Van Ranst calls him, in 1155 (20).


15. Gilbert de la Poree, a native of Poietiers, was at first a Canon of that city, and afterwards its Bishop, in 1141. From the very first day he began to study philosophy, he was so taken with logical subtleties, that when he afterwards applied himself to scholastic theology, which was then just beginning to be developed, he wished to judge every thing by the rules of philosophy, and to use them as a standard for the articles of the Faith; and hence the origin of his errors. He said that the Divine Essence was not God, and that the proprietors of the Persons are not the Persons themselves; that the Divine Nature did not become incarnate, but only the Person of the Son, and that Baptism is received alone by those predestined to glory.

He was charged with these errors in the year 1145, and Pope Eugenius III., to whom the complaint was made, ordered his accusers to have the whole affair investigated in a Council in Paris. The Synod was accordingly held, and St. Bernard attended, and strenuously combated his errors; but nothing was decided till the following year, in which a Council was held in Rheims, at which the Pope himself attended, and condemned Gilbert’s doctrine. He at once bowed to the decision of the Pontiff, abjured his errors, was reconciled to his accusers, who were two of his own Archdeacons, and returned with honour to his Diocese (21).


16. Other heretics disturbed the peace of the Church in this century. One of these was Folmar, Principal of the Church of Trieffenstein, in Franconia; he said that in the Eucharist, the blood alone of Jesus Christ was received under the appearance of wine, and the flesh alone, not the bones or the members, under the appearance of bread, and that it was not the Son of Man that was received, but the flesh alone of the Son of Man. He, however, soon retracted, and abjured his errors in a letter he wrote to the Bishops of Bavaria and Austria (22). Tanquelinus taught that the reception of the Holy Eucharist was of no avail for salvation, and that the ministry of Priests and Bishops was of no value, and was not instituted by Christ. He infected the city of Antwerp, but it was afterwards purged from this heresy by St. Norbert, founder of the Premonstratensians and Archbishop of Magdeburg (23). Joachim, an Abbot in Calabria, lived also in this century; he fell into some errors regarding the Trinity, in a treatise he wrote against Peter Lombard; he denied that the three Divine Persons are one and the same as the Divine Nature, and he also said that in the mystery of the Trinity, essence generates essence, insinuating by that, that each Divine Person has a particular essence.

This was a renewal of the Tritheism of John Philiponus, infected with the Eutychian heresy, who taught that there are three Natures in the Trinity, confounding; the three Persons with the three Natures. This treatise was condemned in the Fourth Council of Lateran, celebrated by Innocent III., in 1215. Joachim, however, had previously died in 1201, and submitted all his writings to the judgment of the Church, so Honorius III., the successor of Innocent, would not have him considered as a heretic (24). The Apostolicals also infested the Church about this time; among other errors, they condemned marriage, and even bound themselves by a vow of chastity, though the licentiousness of their lives showed what little regard they had for that angelic virtue (25). We have already spoken of the Bogomiles (Chap, iv, N. 81), treating of the heresy of the Messalians. We have now to investigate the history of the Waldenses.


17. Peter Waldo, the founder of the sect of the Waldenses, began to preach his heresy in the year 1160, on the occasion of the sudden death of a great personage in Lyons, who dropped dead in the presence of a great many people. He was so terrified at the occurrence, that he immediately distributed a large sum of money to the poor, and a great many people joined him out of devotion, and became his followers. He was a man of some learning, and began to explain the New Testament to his followers, and taught several errors. The Clergy immediately took up arms against him, but he set them at defiance, telling his followers that they (the Clergy) were both ignorant and corrupt, and that they were envious of his exemplary life and learning. Such is the origin of the Waldenses, according to Fleury, Alexander, and Gotti (26); but Graveson gives another account (27); he says, that Peter Waldo, having either heard or read the 19th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, in which our Lord tells us that we should sell our goods, and give the price to the poor, persuaded himself that he was called on to renew the Apostolic life, and accordingly sold his property, gave all to the poor, and led a life of poverty himself. A person of the name of John, terrified at the sudden death already spoken of, sold his patrimony, likewise, and joined him; many others followed their example, and in a little time the sect became so numerous, that in the diocese of Poietiers alone, they had forty- one schools.

From these seats of iniquity sprung several sects, enumerated by Rainer (28), who for seventeen years was a Waldensian, but his eyes at length being opened to their impiety, he forsook them, joined the Catholic Church, and became a distinguished member of the Order of St. Dominick. The different sects that sprouted out from the parent stock, took various names; they were called Waldenses, from Peter Waldo; Lionists, or Poor Men of Lyons, from the city whence they originated; Picards, Lombards, Bohemians, Bulgarians, from the provinces they overran; Arnaldists, Josepeists, and Lollards, from Doctors of the sect; Cathari, from the purity of heart they boasted of; Bons Hommes, or good men, from their apparent sanctity and regularity of life; Sabbatists, or Insabatists, either from the peculiar shoe or sandal, with a cross cut on the top, which they wore, or because they rejected the celebration of the Sabbath and other festivals (29).


18. The Waldenses fell into very many errors, which Ranier, quoted by Noel Alexander, enumerates (30). We will only mention the principal ones here. The Roman Church, they said, failed in the time of Pope St. Sylvester, when it entered into the possession of temporal property, and that they alone were the true Church, as they followed the Apostles and the Gospel in holding no possessions. The Pope, they said, was the head of all errors, the Bishops, Scribes, and the Religious, Pharisees. Tithes ought not to be paid, as they were not paid in the primitive Church. They only believed in two Sacraments, Baptism and the Eucharist, and Baptism, they said, was of no use to infants. A priest falling into mortal sin, according to them, lost the power of absolving and consecrating, and, on the contrary, a good layman has the power of giving absolution.

They rejected Indulgences, and the dispensations of the Church, the fasts commanded to be observed, and all the ceremonies of the Roman Church. They abhorred Holy Images and the sign of the Cross even; denied the distinction between mortal and venial sin, and said it was unlawful to take an oath, even in judgment. These heretics were first condemned by Alexander III., in 1163; in the Synod of Tours, in 1175 or 1176; in the Synod of Lombes, in 1178; in one held in Toulouse by Peter, Cardinal and Legate of the Pope; in the Third General Council of Lateran, in 1179; in the Fourth General Council of Lateran, in 1215; and finally, in the Constitution of Gregory IX., ” Cap. excommunicamus, 15 de Herat,” in which all the heretics of all the above-named sects are anathematized (31).



(1) Bibli. Cum. p. 1120.
(2) Graves. Hist. t. 3, sec. 12, coll. 2.
(3) Nat. Alex. t. 14, sec. 12, c. 4, art. 4; Gotti, Ver. Rel. t. 2, c. 89, s. 1.
(4) Gotti, loc. cit. n. 10, l. 69, n. 24; N. Alex. loc. cit.; Graves, loc. cit.
(5) Gotti, c. 79, sec. 2.
(6) Nat. Alex. cit. art. 7; Fleury, cit. n. 24.
(7) Fleury, n. 25.
(8) Nat, Alex. loc. cit.
(9) Fleury, t. 10, I. 67, n. 22.
(10) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 21; Nat. Alex. t. 15, diss. 1, a. 7.
(11) Fleury, t. 10, l. 68, n. 61, 62; Nat. Alex. c. 1.
(12) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 67; Nat. Alex. art. Sin fine.
(13) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. art. 12, & Fleury, loc. cit.
(14) Fleury, n. 61, Alex. art. 5, ex: Ep. St. Bernar.
(15) Graveson, t. 3, sec. 12, coll. 3.
(16) Gotti. Ver. Rel. t. 2, c. 90, s. 3, um Baron. Ann. 1140, n. 11, & seq. loc. cit.
(17) Nat. Alex. t. 14, s. 12, c. 3, art. 8.
(18) Fleury, t. 10, l 68, . 55; Gotti, loc. cit. s. 1; Nat. Alex,
(19) Nat. Alex. loc. cit.; Fleury, t. 10, l. 69, n. 10; Gotti, loc. cit.
(20) Van Ranst His. p. 148; Fleury, t. 10, l. 70, n. I; Nat. Alex. & Gotti, loc. cit.
(21) Nat. Alex. t. 14, s. 12, c. 4, a. 9; Graveson His. Eccles. t 3, sec. 12, coll. 3; Fleury, t. 10, I 69, n. 23.
(22) Nat. Alex. t. 14, s. 12, c. 4, ar. 12.
(23) Nat. loc. cit. ar. 6.
(24) Graves, t.3, s. 12, Coll. 3; Fleury, f. 11, l. 77, n. 46; Berti, s. 12, c. 3; Van. Ranst. p. 214.
(25) N. Alex. loc. cit. or. 11.
(26) Floury, l. 11, l. 73, n. 55; Nat. Alex. t. 14, c. 4, art. 13; Gotti, t. 2, c 93, s. 1.
(27) Graves, t. 3, . 12, Coll. 3.
(28) Rainer, Opuse de Hœret.
(29) Graves, loc. cit. & Nat. Alex. loc. cit.
(30) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. ar. 13, s. 2, & seq.
(31) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. s. 7.

[Stone]

CHAPTER X. – THE HERESIES WHICH SPRUNG UP FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

ARTICLE III. – HERESIES OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

19. The Albigenses and their Errors.
20. The Corruption of their Morals.
21. Conferences held with them, and their Obstinacy.
22. They create an Anti-Pope.
23. Glorious Labours of St. Dominick, and his stupendous Miracles.
24. Crusade under the command of Count Montfort, in which he is victorious.
25. Glorious death of the Count, and Destruction of the Albigenses.
26. Sentence of the Fourth Council of Lateran, in which the Dogma is defined in opposition to their Tenets.
27. Amalric and his Heresy; the Errors added by his Disciples; they are condemned.
28. William de St. Amour and his Errors.
29. The Flagellants and their Errors.
30. The Fratricelli and their Errors, condemned by John XXII.


19. The heretics called the Albigenses, sprung from the Waldenses, made their appearance in this century, and were so called, because they first spread themselves in the territory of the city of Albi, or that part of Narbonic Gaul called Albigensum, and subsequently in the province of Toulouse (1). Graveson (2) says that the impurities of all other heresies was joined in this one sect. This sect was in existence previous to the reign of Innocent III., but it was so strong in the year 1198, that Cesarius (3), a contemporaneous author, says, that almost all the pure grain of the Faith of the people was turned into tares.

Spondanus gives the following list of their errors (4) : First – They received the New Testament alone, rejecting the Old, with the exception of the passages quoted by our Lord, and his Apostles; they, likewise, renounced all Catholic Doctors, and when asked for an account of their Faith, they said they were not bound to answer. Second – They taught that there were two Gods, a good and a bad one; the good one, the author of the New Testament, and the Creator of all invisible things; the bad one, the author of the Old Testament, the creator of man, and of all visible things. Third – They said that Baptism was useless to infants. Fourth – That an unworthy Priest had not power to consecrate the Eucharist. Fifth – That matrimony was nothing more than concubinage, and that no one could be saved in that state, and still their morals were most corrupt. Sixth – That no one should obey either Bishops or Priests, unless they have the qualities required by the Apostles; and that they have no power in the Sacraments or in Divine things, and that no one, therefore, should pay tithes to them. Seventh – That churches should not be dedicated to God or the Saints, and that the faithful are not bound to pray or to give alms, either to the poor or to churches, and that it was quite sufficient to confess to any one at all, and that Penance was of no use. Noel Alexander (5), besides these errors, enumerates several others, as that the Fathers of the Old Testament were all damned; that St. John the Baptist was a demon; that the Roman Church is the harlot of the Apocalypse; that the resurrection of the body is all a lie; that the Sacraments are all false, and that the Eucharist, Confirmation, Orders, and the Mass are nothing more than superstitions; that the souls of men are no other than the rebellious spirits who fell from heaven; that there was no purgatory, and they blasphemously applied to the Virgin Mother of God, a term we dread to make use of.


20.They led most horribly immoral lives. Lucas Tudensis(6) horrifies us by recounting what he heard from some of them who forsook the sect, and joined the Catholic Church. Murder, cheating, theft, and usury were quite common among them, but their impurities were, above all, of the most horrible description; the nearest relatives had no regard to the decencies of life, or the very laws of nature itself.

The old people, he says, are blasphemous and cruel; the young ripe for every wickedness; the children, from the universal depravity, belonging to no father in particular, are depraved from their childhood; and the infants imbibe the most pernicious errors with their mothers milk; the women, without shame or modesty, go about among their neighbours, making others as bad as themselves. Among the other proofs of their impiety, Cesarius (7) tells us, that when they were besieged by the Catholics in Bessiers, they indecently defiled a book of the Gospels, and threw it from the walls into the ranks of the besiegers, amidst a shower of arrows, crying out : ” Behold your law, wretches.”


21. The Albigenses laboured to gain proselytes not alone by persuasion, but by force of arms likewise; and the Catholics, therefore, found it necessary to have recourse not alone to preaching, but were obliged to summon the power of the Prince to their aid. Peter of Castlenau and Rodulph, Cistercian monks, together with their Abbot, Arnold, appointed Apostolic Legates by Innocent III., were the first to oppose them. The Holy Bishop of Osma joined them, and without attendance or money, like the Apostles, they proceeded on foot to preach to the heretics, and their first conference was held in Montreal, in the Diocese of Carcasonne. They disputed for fifteen days in presence of judges chosen for the purpose, and the heretics were convinced, but the judges being favourable to the heretical party, suppressed the sentence, and would not even give up the acts of the disputation. The preachers remained in the city to instruct the people, and supported themselves by begging from door to door. The Abbot of Citeax and twelve of his Monks, together with, the Bishop of Osma, spread themselves through the country, preaching and disputing with the heretics. The Bishop of Osma and some other Prelates held another conference with the Albigenses in Pamiers, and the heretics were so confounded that the judge of the conference, a nobleman of the city, abjured his errors, and more followed his example every day (8).

The Cistercian, Peter of Castlenau, the Pope’s Legate, having found it necessary to excommunicate Raymond, Count of Toulouse, the chief favourer of the heretics, was summoned before him to clear himself from charges laid against him; he went accordingly, but nothing was decided on in the interview; the Count even uttered threats against him when he was about to take his departure, and sent two of his servants to accompany him. One of them, while the Legate was passing the Rhone, ran him through with a lance. Peter at once felt that the wound was mortal. ” God pardon me,” said he, ” as I pardon you,” and died shortly after. Pope Innocent, when informed of his death, declared him a martyr, and excommunicated his murderers and all their accomplices, and gave orders to the Bishops of the Provinces of Arles and Narbonne and the neighbouring territories again to excommunicate the Count of Toulouse (9).


22. A few years after the Albigenses elected a person of the name of Bartholomew, an anti-Pope. He resided on the borders of Dalmatia and Bulgaria, and was the chief adviser of the heretics. He appointed another person of the same name as his Vicar, and he took up his residence in the territory of Toulouse, and sent round to all the neighbouring cities his Principal’s letters, headed, “Bartholomew, Servant of the Servants of the Holy Faith, to N. N., health.” This Vicar pretended to consecrate Bishops, and regulate the Church (10), but the Almighty soon put a stop to all by the death of the anti-Pope (11).


23. It is now time to speak of the glorious labours of St. Dominick, who may justly be called the exterminator of the Albigenses. He was engaged nine years, according to Graveson, or seven, according to Van Ranst, in battling with them, and, finally, he instituted the Order of Preachers, to bring back the strayed sheep to the fold of the Catholic Church. He attended the Bishop of Osma at the conference he held with the heretics, and was a most strenuous opponent of their errors, both by preaching and writing, and God confirmed his exertions by miracles. Peter de Valle Sernai, a Cistercian Monk (12), relates the following miracle, and says he had it from the man himself in whose possession the paper was. After the conference of Montreal, St. Dominick wrote down the texts he cited on a sheet of paper, and gave it to one of the heretics to peruse them at his leisure. The next evening several Albigenses were seated round a fire considering it, when one of them proposed to throw the paper into the fire, and if it burn, said he, that is a proof that our faith is the true one, but should that not be the case, we must believe the Catholic Faith.

All agreed; the paper was cast into the flames, and, after lying there some time, it leaped out unscorched. All were surprised; but one of the most incredulous among them suggested that the experiment should be tried again; it was done so, and the result was the same. Try it a third, said the heretic; a third time it was tried, and with the same effect. But for all that they agreed to keep the whole affair a secret, and remained as obstinate as before. There was a soldier present, however, somewhat inclined to the Catholic Faith, and he told it to a great many persons (13). God wrought another more public miracle through his servant, in Fois, near Carcasonne; he challenged the heretics, in one of his sermons, to a formal disputation, and each party agreed to bring, in writing, to the Conference their profession of Faith, and the principal arguments in support of it. The Saint laid down his document the heretics did the same; they then proposed that each paper should be thrown into the fire, and leave the judgment to God. St. Dominick, inspired by the Almighty, immediately cast his paper into the flames; the heretics also threw in theirs, which was immediately burned to ashes, while the Saint’s remained intact on the top of the burning coals. Three times it was cast into the fire, and always came forth untouched by the flames (14).


24. Neither miracles nor missions had any effect on the Albigenses, however, who every day became more powerful, under the protection of several princes, and especially of Raymond, Count of Toulouse. Pope Innocent III., therefore, considered it necessary at last to call on the Catholic princes to free he Church from these enemies, and, therefore, wrote to Philip, King of France, and to the other princes of that kingdom, and likewise to the Bishops and faithful, calling on them to take up arms for the extermination of these heretics, and granting them the seme indulgences as were granted to those who put on the cross for the liberation of the Holy Land. This bull was published in 1210, and immediately a great number of soldiers not only from France but elsewhere, enrolled themselves in this Crusade under the command of Count Simon of Montfort.

The Albigenses numbered a hundred thousand, the Crusaders only twelve hundred, and Count Montfort was advised not to risk an engagement; but he said : ” We are numerous enough, for we fight for God, and God for us.” He divided his small army into three bodies, and made a feint, as if about to march on Toulouse, but turned on the vanguard of the enemy, and attacked them with such fury, that at first they wavered, and finally took to flight. Montfort, encouraged by this success, gave orders to his three small divisions to unite, and without loss of time, attacked the main body of the enemy, among whom was the King of Arragon. The Count broke through the ranks, and singled out the King; he charged him with his lance, but Montfort, parrying the blow with one hand, seized the King with the other, and unhorsed him, and his Esquire immediately dispatched the fallen Monarch. The enemy was panic-struck with the King’s death, and fled in every direction, and the Crusaders cut them down almost without opposition. It is said that between the Albigenses and the Arragonese twenty thousand fell that day, with only a loss of six or seven persons to the Catholics (15). The letters written by the French Bishops to all the Churches of Christendom, on the occasion of this glorious and stupendous victory, are still extant (16).

25. Count Montfort, after so many glorious actions in defence of the Faith, died gloriously, like Judas Maccabeus, at the second siege of Toulouse. He was told that the enemy were concealed in the trenches; but he armed, and went to the church to hear Mass, and recommend himself and his cause to God. While he was hearing Mass, he was informed that the people of Toulouse were attacking the troops who had charge of the besieging engines; but he refused to move until, as he said, he had heard Mass, and seen his God on the altar.

Another messenger came in haste to tell him that his troops were giving way, but he dismissed him, saying : ” I want to see my Redeemer.” After adoring the Sacred Host, he raised up his hands to heaven, and exclaimed : ” Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, Lord, according to thy word, in peace, because mine eyes have seen thy salvation. Now,” said he, ” let us proceed, and die, if necessary, for him who died for us.” His soldiers rallied at once when he appeared among them; but he approached too near to the engines, and a stone from one of them struck him in the head, and he had barely time to recommend himself to God and the Blessed Virgin, when his spirit fled. This was on the 25th of June, 1218 (17). After the death of this great champion of the Lord, and Martyr of Christ, as Peter de Valle Sernai (18) calls him, Louis VIII., King of France, prosecuted the war, and in the year 1236 took Avignon from the enemy, after a siege of three months, and several other strong places besides. St. Louis IX., by the advice of Pope Gregory IX., prosecuted the war, and having taken the city of Toulouse, the young Count Raymond for his wicked father met with a sudden death signed a treaty of peace, on the conditions prescribed to him by the King and the Pope’s Legate, the principal one of which was, that he would use all his power to extirpate the Albigensian heresy in his territory. The heretics, thus deprived of all assistance, dwindled away by degrees, and totally disappeared, as Graveson tells us (19), though Noel Alexander and Cardinal Gotti say that they were not totally put down (20).


26. These heretics having been previously condemned in particular Synods, at Montilly, Avignon, Montpelier, Paris, and Narbonne, were finally condemned in the Fourth General Council of Lateran, celebrated and presided over by Pope Innocent III., in 1215. In the first Chapter of this Council it was decreed, in opposition to these heretics, ” that there was one universal principle, the Creator of all, visible and invisible, corporeal and spiritual things, who by his Almighty power in the beginning of time, created from nothing both spiritual and corporeal, angelic and earthly beings, and man likewise, as consisting of body and spirit.

The devil, and all other evil spirits, were created by God good, according to their nature, but became bad of themselves, and man sinned at the suggestion of the devil. The Holy Trinity, undivided, as to its common essence divided, as to its personal proprieties gave saving doctrine to mankind, by Moses and the Holy Prophets, and other servants, according to the properly-ordained disposition of time; and, at length, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, by the whole Trinity in common, incarnate of Mary, ever Virgin, conceived by the co-operation of the Holy Ghost, and made true man, composed of a rational soul and a real body, one person in two Natures, more clearly pointed out to us the way of life; who, according to his Divinity, being impassible and immortal, was made passible and mortal, according to his humanity, and suffered and died on the wood of the Cross for the salvation of mankind, descended into hell, arose from the dead, and ascended into heaven; but he descended in the spirit, arose in the flesh, and in both ascended into heaven, and shall come in the end of the world to judge both the living and the dead, and shall render to each both the reprobate and the elect according to their works. For all shall arise in the same bodies they now have, to receive, according to their deserts, either rewards or punishment the wicked, eternal punishment with the devil the good, eternal glory with Christ. There is one universal Church of all the faithful, out of which there is no salvation, in which Jesus Christ is, at the same time, priest and sacrifice, and his body and blood is truly contained under the appearance of bread and wine, the bread being, by the Divine power, transubstantiated into the body, and the wine into the blood, that we might receive from him what he received from us to perfect the mystery of Unity; and no one but a Priest rightly ordained according to the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ himself granted to the Apostles, and to their successors, can consecrate this Holy Sacrament. The Sacrament of Baptism, consecrated to the invocation of the undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, properly administered in water, both to infants and adults, by any person, according to the form of the Church, is available to salvation. And should any one, after receiving Baptism, fall into sin, he can he always healed by true repentance. Not virgins alone, and those who observe continence, but married persons, likewise, pleasing God by true faith and good works, shall deservedly obtain eternal happiness (21).


27. In this century also lived Amalric, or Amaury, a priest, a native of Bene, near Chartres. lie studied in Paris, and was a great logician, and taught this science with great applause. He then applied himself to the study of Sacred Scripture and Theology, and as he was fond of new-fangled opinions, he had the rashness to teach that every Christian ought to believe himself a natural member of Christ, and that no one could be saved unless he so believed. The University of Paris condemned this opinion in 1204, but Amalric refused to submit to the sentence, and appealed to Innocent III., and went to Rome, to prosecute his appeal in person; the Pope, however, confirmed the sentence, and obliged him to make a public abjuration in the presence of the University. He obeyed the Pope’s orders in 1207, but his heart belied what his lips uttered, and so great was his chagrin that he soon after died. His disciples added new errors to those taught by their master. The power of the Fathers, they said, lasted only during the period of the Mosaic Law; the New Law lasted from that till their own times that is, twelve hundred years; and then the Law of the Holy Ghost began, when all Sacraments and all other assistances to salvation ceased, and every one could be saved by the Grace of the Holy Ghost alone, without any act of his own. The virtue of Charity, they said, caused that that which before was sinful, if done through Charity was sinful no longer, and thus, under the pretext of Charity, they committed the most impure actions. They asserted that the body of Christ was only in the Consecrated Host as in any other bread, and that God spoke as much through Ovid as through St. Augustine, and they denied the Resurrection, heaven, and hell, for those who thought about God as they did had heaven in themselves, and those who fell into mortal sin had hell in their own bosoms (22).

Raul of Nemours, and another priest, laboured assidiously to discover these heretics in several dioceses, not only many of the laity, but also some priests, being infected with it, and, when they discovered them, had them conveyed to Paris, and put in the Bishop’s prison. A Council of Bishops and Doctors was held in 1209, in which some of those unfortunate people retracted; but others obstinately refused, and were degraded, and handed over to the Royal power, and were, by orders of the King, burned outside the gates of Paris; and the bones of Amalric were exhumed at the same time, and burned, and thrown on the dunghill. It was also ordered, that Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which was the fountain of this heresy, should be burned likewise, and all persons were prohibited, under pain of excommunication, from reading or keeping the work in their possession. In this Council were, likewise, condemned the books of David of Nantz, who asserted that God was the Materia Prima. St. Thomas wrote against him in 1215 (23). The heresy of Amalric was condemned in express terms, in the Fourth General Council of Lateran, cap. ii (24).


28. William de St. Amour, a Doctor of Sorbonne, and Canon of Beauvais, lived in this century also. He wrote a work, entitled, ” De periculis adversus Mendicantes Ordines,” in opposition to the Friars, who made a vow of poverty, in which he asserted that it was not a work of perfection to follow Christ in poverty and mendicancy, and that, in order to be perfect, it was necessary, after giving up all we had, either to live by manual labour, or to enter into a monastery, which would afford all the necessaries of life; that the Mendicant Friars, by begging, acted contrary to the Holy Scriptures, and that it was not lawful for them to teach the laity, to preach, to be enrolled as Masters in Colleges, or to hear the confessions of the laity. This work was condemned by Pope Alexander IV., in the year 1252, and publicly burned, and the following year the author was banished from all the dominions of France, and a few years after died a miserable exile (25).


29. In the year 1274, the sect of the Flagellants sprung up, and first made its appearance in Perugia, and thence spread on, even to Rome itself. A torrent of vice had overspread the Italian Peninsula about that time, and a violent spirit of reaction commenced. All were seized on by a new sort of devotion, and old and young, rich and poor, nobles and plebians not alone men, but even ladies terrified with the dread of Divine judgments, went about the streets in procession, nearly naked, or, at least, with bared shoulders, beating themselves with scourges, and imploring mercy. Even the darkness of the night, and the rigors of winter, could not subdue their enthusiasm. Numerous bodies of penitents sometimes even as many as twelve thousand marched in procession, preceded by priests, and crosses, and banners; and the towns, and villages, and plains resounded with their cries for mercy. A great change for the better in the morals of the people was the first fruit of this wonderful movement enemies were reconciled, thieves restored their ill-gotten wealth, and all were reconciled to God, by confession. They used to scourge themselves twice a day, it is said, for thirty-three days, in honour of the thirty-three years of our Lord’s life, and sung, at the same time, some canticles in honour of his Sacred Passion. From Italy this practice spread into Germany, Poland, and other kingdoms; but, as neither the Pope nor the Bishops approved of this public form of penance, it speedily degenerated into superstition. They said that no one could be saved unless by adopting this practice for a month; they used to hear the confessions of each other, and give absolution, though only lay people; and they had the madness to pretend that even the damned were served by their penance. Pope Clement VI. formally condemned this heresy, and wrote to the Bishops of Germany, Poland, Switzerland, England, and France, on the subject, which proves how widely it was spread; he also wrote to all secular princes, calling on them to scatter these hypocrites, to disperse their conventicles, and, above all, to imprison their leaders (26).


30. Another sect the offspring of an ill-judged piety, also sprung up in this century, that of the Fratricelli. This sect originated with Peter of Macerata and Peter of Fossombrone, two apostate Franciscan friars, who, playing on the simplicity of Pope Celestine V., got permission from him to lead an eremetical life, and observe the rule ,of St. Francis to the very letter. Boniface VIIL, Celestine’s successor, soon saw that this institute was a source of error, which was spreading every day more widely, and he, accordingly, in express terms, condemned it; but notwithstanding this sentence, the Fratricelli every day increased in numbers, and openly preached their tenets. John XXII., therefore, found it necessary to publish a Bull against them in 1318, and, as Noel Alexander relates, condemned the following errors adopted by them: First – They taught that there were two Churches one carnal, abounding in delights, and stained with crime, governed by the Roman Pontiff, and his Prelates the other spiritual, adorned with virtue, clothed in poverty, to which they alone, and those who held with them, belonged, and of which they, on account of their spiritual lives, were justly the head. Second – That the venerable Churches, Priests, and other Ministers were so deprived both of the power of order and jurisdiction, that they could neither administer the Sacraments, nor instruct the people, as all who did not join their apostacy were deprived of all spiritual power, for (as they imagined), as with them alone holiness of life was found, so with them alone authority resided. Third – That in them alone was the Gospel of Christ fulfilled, which hitherto was either thrown aside or totally lost among men (27).



(1) Nat. Alex. 1. 16, c. 3, ar. 1.
(2) Graves, t. 3, s. 12, Coll. 3.
(3) Cæsar Heisterb. Dial. Mirac. Diss. 5, c. 2.
(4) Spondan. Epit. Baron, ad. Ann. 1181.
(5) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. s. 2.
(6) Lucas Tuden, l. 3, Adv. Albig.
(7) Caesar, l. 5, de Demon.
(8) Gotti, Ver. Eel. t. 2, c. 94, . 3,
(9) Fleury, t. 11, l. 76, n. 36; Gotti, loc. cit.; Nat. Alex. loc. cit. loc. cit.;
(10) Parisius, Hist. Anglic, an. 1223.
(11) Fleury, t. 11, l. 78, n. 60; Gotti, Nat. Alex. loc. cit. s. 2.
(12) Pat, Vallis. Ser. His. Albig. c.7,
(13) Nat. Alex. t. 16, c. 3; Gotti, Ver Rel. t. 2, c. 94, cap. 3.
(14) Gotti, loc. cit.
(15) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. s. 4; Gotti, loc. cit s. 4; Bernin. t. 3; sec. 13, c. 1; Graveson, t. 4, sec. 33 : Coll. 3.
(16) Rainald Ann 1213, n 60.
(17) Fleury, L 11, l. 78, n. 18; Nat. & Gotti, loc. cit.
(18) Pet. Vallises. His. Albig. c. 86.
(19) Grav. loc. cit.
(20) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. sec. 4, & Gotti, loc. cit.
(21) Nat. Alex. l. 16, c. 3, s. 5; Gotti, t. 2, c. 94.
(22) Fleury, t 11, A 67, n. 59; Nat. Alex. c. 16, l. 3, a. 2; Graveson, t. 4, sec. 13, coll. 3.
(23) St. Thomas, 1, p. 9, 3, ar. 8.
(24) Fleury, Nat. Alex. Graveson, loc. cit.
(25) Fleury, l. 12, 1. 84, n. 30; Nat. Alex, t, 16, c. 3, ar. 1; Berti, Brev. Histor. sec. 13, r. 3.
(26) Nat. Alex. t. 16, sec. 13, art. 5; Fleury, t. 13, I. 84, n. 62.
(27) Nat. Alex. loc. cit.

[Stone]

CHAPTER X. – THE HERESIES WHICH SPRUNG UP FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

ARTICLE IV. – HERESIES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

31. -The Beghards and Beguines; their errors condemned by Clement V.
32.-Marsilius of Padua, and John Jandunus; their writings condemned as heretical by John XXII.
33.-John Wicklifle, and the beginning of his heresy.
34.-Is assisted by John Ball; death of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
35.-The Council of Constance condemns forty-five Articles of Wickliffe.
36, 37.-Miraculous confirmation of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
38.-Death of Wickliffe.

31. The Beghards and Beguines sprung up in Germany in this century. Van Ranst (1) draws a distinction betweeen the good Beghards, who, in Flanders, especially, professed the third rule of the Order of St. Francis, and the heretics; and also between the Beguines, ladies, who led a religious life, though not bound by vows, and the heretical Beguines, whose conduct was not remarkable for purity. The religious Beguines deduce their origin either from St. Begghe, Duchess of Brabant, and daughter of Pepin, Mayor of the Palace to the King of Austrasia, or from Lambert le Begue, a pious priest, who lived in 1170. The origin of the name adopted by the heretics is uncertain; but the followers of the Fratricelli were called by that name in Germany and the Low Countries, as were also the followers of Gerard Segarelli, and Dulcinus, who both were burned alive for their errors. The doctrines professed by the Beghards was as absurd as it was impious. Man, said they, might arrive at such a degree of perfection, even in this life, as to become totally impeccable, and even incapable of advancing any more in grace, and when he arrives at this state, he should no longer fast or pray, for sensuality is then so entirely subjected to reason and the spirit, that anything the body desires may be freely granted to it. Those who have arrived at that pitch of perfection are no longer subject to human obedience, or bound by the precepts of the Church. Man can, even in the present life, being thus perfect, obtain final beatitude, as well as he shall obtain it hereafter in the realms of the blessed, for every intellectual nature is in itself blessed, and the soul does not require the light of glory to see God.

It is only imperfect men who practise acts of virtue, for the perfect soul throws off virtue altogether. “Mulieris osculum (cum ad hoc natura non inclinet) est mortale peccatum, actus autem carnalis (cum ad hoc natura inclinet), peccatum non est maxime cum tentatur exercens.” When the body of Christ is elevated, a perfect man should not show any reverence, for it would be an imperfection to descend from the summit of his contemplation, to think on the Eucharist or on the humanity of Christ. It is remarkable, that many of their opinions were adopted by the Quietists in a subsequent century. Clement V. condemned these heretics in a General Council, held in Vienne, in Dauphiny, in 1311.


32. Marsilius Menandrinus, of Padua, and John Jandunus, of Peragia, also lived in this century. Marsilius published a book, called “Defensorum Pacis,” and Jandunus contributed some additions to it. The errors scattered through the work were condemned by Pope John XXII., as heretical, and refuted by several Theologians, especially by Noel Alexander, who gives the following account of them (2). When Christ paid tribute to Cæsar, he did it as matter of obligation, and not of piety, and when he ascended into heaven, he appointed no visible head in the Church, left no Vicar, nor had St. Peter more authority than the rest of the Apostles. It is the Emperor’s right to appoint, remove, and punish Prelates, and when the Papal See is vacant, he has the right of governing the Church. All Priests, not even excepting Bishops and the Pope, have, by the institution of Christ, equal authority and jurisdiction, unless the Emperor wishes that one should have more power than another. The whole united Church has not the power to punish any man, and no Bishop or meeting of Bishops can inflict a sentence of excommunication or interdict, unless by authority of the Prince. Bishops collectively or individually can no more excommunicate the Pope than he can them. The dispensation for marriages, prohibited by human law alone, and not by Divine law, belongs, of right, to the Prince. To the Prince, by right, it belongs to give a definitive judgment, in regard to persons about to be ordained, and Bishops should not ordain any one without his authority. We will now speak of Wickliffe, the leader of all the so-called Reformers.


33. John Wickliffe began to preach his heresy in 1374, some say because he was disappointed in the Bishopric of Winchester.* He was learned in Scholastic Theology, which he taught at Oxford, and was a favourite preacher, always followed by the people. He led an austere life, was meanly clothed, and even went barefooted. Edward III. died, and was succeeded by his grandson, Richard, the son of Edward the Black Prince, who was then only eleven years of age; and his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, was a man of very lax sentiments in regard to religion, and extended his protection to Wickliife, who openly preached his heresy (3). Gregory IX., who then governed the Church, complained to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, that they were not active enough in putting a stop to this plague, and he wrote on the same subject to the King and the University of Oxford (4). A Synod of Bishops and Doctors was accordingly summoned, and Wickliffe was cited to appear and account for himself; he obeyed the summons, and excused himself by explaining away, as well as he could, the obnoxious sense of his doctrine, and putting another meaning on it. He was then only admonished to be more prudent for the future was absolved and commanded to be silent from thence forward (5).

* I believe the holy Author was misled in this fact; it is generally supposed that the primary cause of his rancour against the Monastic Orders and the Court of Rome were his expulsion from the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall, into which he had illegally intruded himself See LINGARD, vol. IV., c. 2.


34. Wickliffe was assisted by a wicked priest of the name of John Ball, who escaped from the prison where his Bishop had confined him for his crimes, and joined the Reformers, who gladly received him. The subject of his discourses to the people was that all ranks should be levelled, and the nobility and magistracy done away with, and he was joined by over an hundred thousand levellers. They laid their demands before the Sovereign, but could not obtain what they desired; they considered that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, a good man in the main, but too weak a disposition to cope with the troubles of the times, influenced the Sovereign’s mind against them; they resolved on his death, therefore, and stormed the Tower, where he had taken refuge, and found him praying, and recommending his soul to God. He addressed them mildly, and tried to calm their rage, but his executioner, John Sterling, stepped forward, and told him to prepare for death. The good Bishop then confessed that he deserved that punishment for not being more vigorous in the discharge of his duties, perhaps, and stretched forth his neck to receive the fatal stroke; but whether it was that the sword was blunt, or the executioner awkward, his head was not cut off till he received eight blows (6). Berninus, quoting Walsingham (7), says that the executioner was immediately possessed by the devil, and that he ran through the streets with the sword hanging round his neck, boasting that he had killed the Archbishop, and entered the city of London to receive his reward; this was, however, different from what he expected, for he was condemned to death, and Ball was hanged and quartered, at the same time, together with his accomplices.


35. William of Courtenay being appointed Archbishop, in place of Sudbury, held a Synod in London, and condemned twenty-four propositions of Wickliffe ten of them, especially as heretical. These were afterwards condemned by the University of Paris, and by John XXIII., in a Council held at Rome, and, finally, in the eighth Session of the Council of Constance, in 1415, in which forty-five articles of Wickliffe were condemned the greater part as heretical, the rest as erroneous, rash, &c. and among these the twenty-four condemned previously were included. The following are the errors condemned by the Council, as Noel Alexander quotes them (8) : The material substance of bread and wine remains in the Sacrament of the Altar, and the accidence of the bread is not without the substance in the Eucharist. Christ is not identically and really there in his proper presence.

If a Bishop or Priest be in mortal sin he cannot consecrate, nor ordain, nor baptize. There is nothing in Scripture to prove that Christ instituted the Mass. God ought to obey the devil. If one be truly contrite, all external confession is superfluous and useless. If the Pope is foreknown and wicked, and, consequently, a member of the devil, he has no power over the faithful. After Urban VI. no other Pope should be elected, but, like the Greeks, we should live under our own laws. It is opposed to the Holy Scriptures that Ecclesiastics should have possessions. No Prelate should excommunicate any one, unless he knows him to be already excommunicated by God, and he who excommunicates otherwise, is, by the act, a heretic, or excommunicated himself. A Prelate excommunicating a Clergyman who appeals to the King, or to the Supreme Council of the Realm, is, by the fact, a traitor to the King and the Realm. Those who cease to preach, or to listen to the Word of God, on account of the excommunication of man, are excommunicated, and in the judgment of God are traitors to Christ. Every Deacon and Priest has the power of preaching the Word of God, without any authority from the Holy See or a Catholic Bishop. No one is a Civil Lord no one a Prelate no one a Bishop, while he is in mortal sin. Temporal Lords can, whenever they please, take temporal goods from the Church. Possessionatis habitualiter delinquentibus id est ex habitu non solum actu delinquentibus. The people can, whenever they please, punish their delinquent Lords. Tithes are merely eleemosynary offerings, and the parishioners have the right, whenever they please, of keeping them from their Prelates on account of their sins. Special prayers applied by Prelates or Religious to any one individual, are of no more value to him than general ones ceteris paribus. Any one giving charity to Friars is excommunicated by the fact. Any one entering a religious Order, either mendicant or endowed, becomes weaker, and less able to observe the commandments of God.

The Saints who founded religious orders sinned by doing so. Religious living in Orders do not belong to the Christian Religion. Friars are obliged to live by the labour of their hands, and not by receiving the oblations of the Faithful. Those who oblige themselves to pray for others, who provide them with the things of this life, are guilty of Simony. The prayer of the foreknown availeth nothing. All things happen through absolute necessity. The confirmation of youth, the ordination of Priests, and the consecration of places, are reserved to the Pope and Bishops, on account of the temporal gain and honour they bring. Universities and the studies, colleges, degrees and masterships in them, are only vain things introduced from paganism, and are of no more utility to the Church than the devil himself. The excommunication of the Pope, or of any other Prelate, is not to be feared, because it is the censure of the devil. Those who found Convents sin, and those who enter them are servants of the devil. It is against the law of Christ to endow a Clergyman. Pope Sylvester and the Emperor Constantino erred by endowing the Church. All members of the mendicant orders are heretics, and those who give them alms are excommunicated. Those who become members of any religious order are by the fact incapable of observing the Divine commandments, and, consequently, can never enter the kingdom of heaven till they apostatize from their institute. The Pope, and all his Clergy having possessions, are heretics, by holding these possessions; and temporal Lords, and the rest of the laity who consent to their holding them, are heretics also. The Roman Church is the synagogue of Satan, and the Pope is not the proximate and immediate Vicar of Christ. The Decretal Epistles (canon law) are apochryphal, and seduce from the Faith of Christ, and the Clergymen are fools who study them. The Emperor and secular Lords have been seduced by the devil to endow the Church with temporalities. It is the devil who introduced the election of the Pope by the Cardinals. It is not necessary for salvation to believe that the Roman Church is supreme among all other Churches. It is folly to believe in the Indulgences of the Pope and Bishops. The oaths which are taken to corroborate contracts and civil affairs are unlawful. Augustine, Benedict, and Bernard, are damned, unless they repented of having possessions, and of instituting and entering into religious Orders; and so from the Pope to the lowest Religious they are all heretics. All religious orders altogether are invented by the devil.


36. Enumerating these errors, I cannot help remarking that Wickliffe, the Patriarch of all the modern heretics, attacks especially the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, as we see in his three first propositions, and in this he was followed by all the modern heresiarchs; but God, at the same time, confirmed the faith of his people by extraordinary miracles; and I will just mention three of them (among a great number), on the authority of authors of the first character. Nicholas Serrarius (9) relates, that when the Wickliffites first began to attack this dogma of the Faith in 1408, the following miracle took place : A Priest, called Henry Otho, was one day saying Mass in Durn, in the Diocese of Wurtzburg, and, through his want of caution, upset the chalice, and the Sacred Blood was spilled all over the corporal. It appeared at once of the real colour of blood, and in the middle of the corporal was an image of the Crucifix, surrounded with several other images of the head of the Redeemer, crowned with thorns. The Priest was terrified, and although some other persons had already noticed the accident, he took up the corporal, and laid it under the altar-stone, that it might decay in some time, and nothing more would be known about it. God, however, did not wish that such a miracle should be concealed. The Priest was at the point of death, and remorse of conscience troubled him even more than the agony he was suffering; he could bear it no longer, but confessed all, told where the corporal was concealed, and then died immediately. All was found to be as he stated, and God wrought other miracles to confirm its truth. The Magistrates investigated the whole affair with the greatest caution and deliberation, and sent an authentic account of it to the Pope, and he published a brief, dated the 31st of March, 1445, inviting all the devout faithful to ornament and enlarge the church honoured by so stupendous a miracle.


37. Thomas Treter (10) relates the next miracle. Some Jews bribed an unfortunate Christian servant woman to procure a consecrated Host for them, and when they got it, they brought it into a cavern, and cut it in little bits on a table with their knives, in contempt of the Christian Faith. The fragments immediately began to bleed, but instead of being converted by the miracle, they buried them in a field near the city of Posen, and went home. A Christian child soon after, who was taking care of some oxen, came into the field, and saw the consecrated particles elevated in the air, and shining as if made of fire, and the oxen all on their knees, as if in adoration. He ran off at once, and told his father, and when he found the fact to be as the child stated, he gave notice to the Magistrates and the people.

Crowds immediately followed him to the place, and all saw the particles of the Sacred Host shining in the air, and the oxen kneeling in adoration. The Bishop and Clergy came at once in procession, and collecting the holy particles into the pixis, they brought them to the church. A little chapel was built on the spot soon after, which Wenceslaus, King of Poland, converted into a sumptuous church, where Stephen Damaleniski, Archbishop of Gnesen, attests that he saw the sacred fragments stained with blood. Tilman Bredembach (11) relates that there lived in England, in 1384, a nobleman of the name of Oswald Mulfer; he went to his village church one Easter, to receive his Paschal Communion, and insisted on being communicated with a large Host. The Priest, fearful of his power, if he denied him, placed the large Host on his tongue, but in the very act the ground opened under his feet, as if to swallow him, and he had already sunk down to his knees, when he seized the altar, but that yielded like wax to his hand. He now, seeing the vengeance of God overtaking him, repented of his pride, and prayed for mercy, and as he could not swallow the Host for God would not permit him the Priest removed it, and replaced it in the Tabernacle; but it was all of the colour of blood. Tilman went on purpose to visit the place where this miracle happened : he saw, he says, the Host tinged with blood, the altar with the marks of Oswald’s hands, and the ground into which he was sinking still hollow, and covered with iron bars. Oswald himself, he says, now perfectly cured of his pride, fell sick soon after, and died with sentiments of true penance.


38. We now come back to Wickliffe, and see his unhappy end. On the feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury, in 1385, he prepared to preach a sermon, not in honour of, but reprobating the Saint; but God would no longer permit him to ravage his Church, for a few days after, on St. Sylvester’s Day, he was struck down by a dreadful palsy, which convulsed him all over, and his mouth, with which he had preached so many blasphemies, was most frightfully distorted, so that he could not speak even a word, and as Walsingham (12) informs us, he died in despair. King Richard prohibited all his works, and ordered them to be burned. He wrote a great deal, but his principal work was the Trialogue between Alithia, Pseudes, and Phronesis Folly, Falsehood, and Wisdom. Several authors wrote in refutation of this work, but its own contradictions are a sufficient refutation, for the general characteristics of heretical writers is to contradict themselves (13). The University of Oxford condemned two hundred and sixty propositions extracted from Wickliffe’s works; but the Council of Constance included all his errors in the one hundred and forty-five articles of his it condemned.

(1) Van Ranst, His. Heres p. 221.
(2) Nat. Alex. t. 16, c. 3, ar. 13, p. 193.
(3) Nat. Alex. s. 6, n. 1; Gotti, loc. cit. n. 2.
(4) Gotti, ib. n. 3; Nat. Alex. 6, n. 1; Grav. loc; cit.
(5) Nat. Alex. s. 6, n. 1; Gotti, ibid, n. 5, & Grav. loc. cit.
(6) Gotti, loc. cit. n.5; Van Ranst, dicto, n. 241; Bernin. l. 3, c. 9
(7) Bernin. loc. cit. c. 9, con Richard, Ranst. Ann. 1381, ex Walsingh.
(8) Nat. Alex. t. 16, sec. 14, c. 3, . art. 22, s. 6; Gotti, ibid, Van
(9) Serar. Moguntinar. rerom, l. 5.
(10) Treter de Mirac. Eucharis.
(11) Bredembach in Collat. l. 1, c. 35.
(12) Walsingham, ap. Bernin. t.3, c. 9; Van Ranst, p. 241; Varillas, t.1. l.1 & Gotti, loc. cit.
(13) Graveson, t. 4, sec. 15, coll. 31; Bernin. t, 3, l. 9, p. 609, c. 8,

[Stone]

CHAPTER X. – THE HERESIES WHICH SPRUNG UP FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY


ARTICLE V. – HERESIES OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. THE HERESY OF JOHN HUSS, AND JEROME OF PRAGUE.

39. John Huss’s character, and the commencement of his Heresy.
40. His Errors.
41. He is condemned in a Synod.
42. Council of Constance he is obliged to appear at it.
43. He comes to Constance, and endeavours to escape.
44, 45. He presents himself before the Council, and continues obstinate.
46. He is condemned to death, and burned.
47. Jerome of Prague is also burned alive for his obstinacy.
48. Wars of the Hussites they are conquered and converted.

39. In the reign of Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia, and son of the Emperor Charles IV., about the beginning of the fifteenth century, the pestilence of the heresy of Wickliffe first made its appearance in Bohemia. The University of Prague was then in a most flourishing condition; but the Professors who had the management of it kept up a very lax system of discipline. They were of four nations, each of which enjoyed equal privileges in that seat of learning Bohemians, Saxons, Bavarians, and Poles; but mutual jealousies blinded them to the danger the Catholic faith was exposed to, for want of due vigilance. Such was the state of things when John Huss, one of the Bohemian professors, obtained a privilege from the King, that in all deliberations of the University, the vote of the Bohemian nation alone should count as much as the three others together. The German professors were so much offended at this ordinance, that they left Prague in a body, and settled in Leipsic, where they contributed to establish that famous University, and thus the government of the whole University of Prague, we may say, fell into the hands of John Huss (1). This remarkable man was born in a village of Bohemia, called Huss, and from which he took his name, and his parents were so poor, that at first the only means of learning he had, was by accompanying a gentleman’s son to school as attendant; but being a man of powerful mind, he, by degrees, worked himself on, until he became the chief professor of the University of Prague, which he infected, unfortunately, with heresy. Having, as we have seen, ousted the German professors, and become almost supreme in his College, it unfortunately happened that one of Wickliffe’s disciples, Peter Payne, who had to fly from England, arrived in Prague, and brought along with him the works of his master. These works fell into the hands of Huss, and though filled with blasphemy, pleased him by the bold novelty of their doctrines, and he imagined that they were well calculated to make an impression on the ardent minds of the youth of the University. He could not at once begin to teach them, for he was one of the Doctors who, a little while before, had subscribed the condemnation of Wickliffe’s errors (2), so he contented himself, for the present, with merely making them subjects of discussion with his pupils; but little by little he became more bold, and not alone among the students of the University, but even among the people in the churches, he disseminated the pestilence.

At length, he threw off the mask altogether, and preaching one day in the Church of SS. Matthias and Matthew, in Prague, he publicly lauded the works of Wickliffe, and said, if he were dying, all he would desire is to be assured of the same glory that Wickliffe was then enjoying in heaven.


40. He next translated some of Wickliffe’s works into Bohemian, especially the Trialogue, the worst of them all. He was joined at once by several Priests of relaxed morals, and also by several Doctors, discontented with the unjust distribution of church patronage, which was too often conferred on persons whose only qualification was nobility of birth, while humble virtue and learning was neglected. Among the Doctors who joined him was Jerome of Prague, who, in the year 1408, had, like Huss, condemned the errors of Wickliffe, but now turned round, and even accused the Council of Constance of injustice, for condemning them. Sbinko, Archbishop of Prague, summoned a Synod, which was attended by the most famous Doctors, and condemned the propositions broached by Huss, and he was so enraged at this, that he endeavoured to stir up the people to oppose it; the Archbishop, accordingly, excommunicated him, and sent a copy of the condemnation of his doctrine to Pope Alexander V., but Huss appealed to the Pope, who was badly informed, he said, of the matter, and in the meantime, the Archbishop died, and thus Bohemia became a prey to heresy. Huss was now joined by Jacobellus of Misnia, and Peter of Dresden, who went about preaching to the people against the error the Church was guilty of, as they said, in refusing the people communion under both kinds, and proclaimed that all who received under one kind were damned. John Huss and his followers took up this new doctrine, and so deeply was the error implanted in the minds of the Bohemian Hussites, that even all the power of the Irrfperial arms could scarcely eradicate it.


41. Noel Alexander enumerates the errors of Huss under thirty heads (3). We will only take a succinct view of the most important ones. The Church, he said, was composed of the predestined alone (Art. 1, 3, 5, 6); and the two Natures, the Divinity and the Humanity, are one Christ (Art. 4). Peter neither was nor is the head of the Catholic Church (Art. 7, 10, 11); and Civil and Ecclesiastical Lords, as Prelates and Bishops, are no longer so while in mortal sin (Art. 30); and he says the same of the Pope (Art. 20, 22, 24, 26). The Papal dignity is derived from the power of the Emperor (Art. 9); and Ecclesiastical obedience is an invention of the Priests (Art. 15). Everything the wicked man does is wicked, and every thing the virtuous man does is virtuous (Art. 16). Good Priests ought to preach, though they be excommunicated (Art. 17, 18); and in Art. 19, he reprobates Ecclesiastical censures. It was an act of iniquity to condem the forty-five Articles of Wickliffe (Art. 25). There is no necessity of a head to rule the Church, for the Apostles and other Priests governed it very well before the office of Pope was introduced (Art. 27, 28, 29). These are, in substance, the errors of John Huss. Van Ranst (p. 275) remarks, that it appears from his own works, that he always held the belief of the Real Presence, and when, in the Fifteenth Session of the Council, he was accused of teaching that, after the consecration, the substance of bread remained in the Eucharist, he denied that he ever either taught or believed so. He also admitted Sacramental Confession, with its three parts, as we do Extreme Unction, and all the other Sacraments prayers for the dead the invocation and intercession of Saints. How unjustly, then, says the same author, do the Lutherans and Calvinists condemn in the Church of Rome these dogmas held by Huss himself, whom they venerate as a witness of the truth, and through whom they boast that they have derived the original succession of their Churches.


42. We now come to speak of the sad end the obstinacy of Huss brought him to. The Pope condemned Wickliffe and his errors, in a Synod held in Rome, in 1413. When this came to the knowledge of Huss, he published several invectives against the Fathers composing the Synod, so the Pope found himself obliged to suspend him from all Ecclesiastical functions, the more especially as he had been cited to Rome, but refused to come. In the year 1414, a General Council was held in the city of Constance, at which twenty-nine Cardinals, four Patriarchs, and two hundred and seven Prelates assisted, and the Emperor Sigismund attended there in person also (4). John Huss was summoned by the Emperor to present himself before the Council and defend his doctrine, but he refused to leave Prague until he was furnished by him with a safe conduct. The Emperor gave him the protection he demanded, and he, accordingly, came to Constance, puffed up with the idea, that he would, by his reason ing, convince the Fathers of the Council that he was right. He was quite satisfied, also, that in case even the Council should condemn him, he was quite safe, on account of the Imperial safe-conduct; but it is extraordinary that he never adverted to the clause inserted in it, granting him security as far as he was charged with crimes, but not in regard to errors against the Church (5); for it was stated that he would be exempt from all penalty in regard to his faith, if he would obey the decisions of the Council, after being heard in his defence, but not if he still obstinately remained attached to his errors. But, as we shall see, he refused to obey these conditions. The Lutherans, therefore, are unjust in charging us with upholding that maxim, that faith is not to be kept with heretics, and alleging that as their excuse for not coming to the Council of Trent. Our Church, on the contrary, teaches that faith must be observed with even infidels or Jews, and the Council of Basil faithfully observed the guarantee given to the Hussites, though they remained obstinately attached to their errors.


43. When Huss arrived in Constance, before he presented himself to the Council he fixed his safe conduct to the door of the Church; and while he remained at his lodging, never ceased to praise Wickliffe, and disseminate his doctrines; and, although he was excommunicated by his Bishop, in Prague, he used to say Mass in a chapel; but when the Archbishop heard of this, he prohibited him from celebrating, and his subjects from hearing his Mass (6). This frightened him, and when he saw the charges that would be made against him, and received an order from the Council not to quit the city, he trembled for his safety, and attempted to escape; he, accordingly, disguised himself as a peasant, and concealed himself in a cart-load of hay, but was discovered by a spy, who was privately placed to watch him, and notice being given to the magistrates of the city, he was taken. This took place on the third Sunday of Lent.


44. He was asked, why he disguised himself in this way, and hid himself in the hay ? He said it was because he was cold. He was put on a horse, and taken to prison, and he then appealed to the safe-conduct given him by the Emperor; but his attention was directed to the clause giving him security only as far as he was charged with certain crimes, but not for any erroneous doctrines concerning the Faith, and he was told, that it was decided that he should prove his cause not to be heretical, and if not able to do that, either retract or suffer death (7). He was now truly terrified; but seeing several Bohemians around him, who accompanied him to the Council, he threw himself from the horse among them, and thus thought to escape, but was immediately seized again, and confined in the Dominican Convent, but attempting to escape from that, he was transferred to a more secure prison (8).


45. He was summoned from his prison to appear before the Council, and defend himself, and as the Council had already condemned the forty -five articles of Wickliffe, he trembled for his own fate. Witnesses were formally examined to prove the errors he had both preached and written, and a form of abjuration was drawn up by the Council for him to sign, for it was decided by the Fathers, that he should not alone retract verbally, but also subscribe the abjuration of his heresy in the Bohemian language. This he refused to do; but he presented a paper himself, in which he declared that he could not conscientiously retract what he was asked to do, but the Council refused to receive it. The Cardinal of Cambray endeavoured to induce him to sign a general retractation, as every thing charged against him had been proved; and he promised him, in that case, the Council would treat him most indulgently. Huss then made an humble answer : he came, he said, to be taught by the Council, and that he was willing to obey its decrees.

A pen was handed to him, accordingly, to sign his retractation in Bohemian, as was commanded in the beginning; but he said that the fear of signing a lie prevented him. The Emperor himself even tried to bend his obstinacy; but all in vain. The Council, accordingly, appointed the 6th of July to give the final decision; but before they came to extremities, the Fathers deputed four Bishops and four Bohemian gentlemen to strive and bring him round, but they never could get a direct retractation from him. The appointed day at last arrived. He was brought to the Church, in presence of the Council, and asked, if he would anathematize the errors of Wickliffe; he made a long speech, the upshot of which was that his conscience would not allow him to do so.


46. Sentence was now pronounced on him; he was declared obstinately guilty of heresy, and the Council degraded him from the priesthood, and handed him over to the secular power. He made no remark while the sentence was read, intending, after the reading was finished, to say what he intended, but he only commenced to speak, when he was ordered to be silent. He was now clothed in the sacerdotal vestments, which were immediately after stripped off him, and a paper cap was put on his head, inscribed: “Behold the Heresiarch.” Louis, Duke of Bavaria, then took him, and handed him over to the ministers of justice, who cut off his hair in the very place where the pile was prepared to burn him. He was now tied to the stake, but before fire was put to the pile, the Duke of Bavaria again besought him to retract, but he answered, that the Scriptures tell us we should obey God, and not man. The Duke then turned his back on him, and the executioner applied the torch; when the pile began to light, the hypocrite was heard to exclaim : ” Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me ;” words inspired by the vain-glorious desire of being considered to have died a martyr’s death, but we should not forget that the devil has martyrs, and infuses into them a false constancy, and as St. Augustine says : ” It is not the punishment, but the cause, that makes a martyr ;” that is the confession of the true Faith. The flames burned so fiercely, that it is thought he was immediately suffocated, for he gave no other signs of life. His ashes were cast into the lake, and thus the scene closed on John Huss (9).


47. We have now to speak of Jerome of Prague, who, having joined Huss in his errors, was his companion in a disgraceful death and perdition. He was a layman, and joined Huss in all his endeavours to disseminate his errors, led astray himself, first by Wickliffe’s works, and next by the preaching of his master. He came to Constance to try and be of some assistance to Huss, but was taken and obliged to appear before the Council, together with his patron, but he was not finally tried for a year after the death of Huss. A lengthened process was instituted against him, and it was proved, as Raynaldus tells us (10), that he preached the same errors as Wickliffe and Huss, that he was guilty of several excesses, and had caused several seditious movements in divers kingdoms and cities. When first brought before the Council in 1414, he confessed that he was wrong, and said that he was satisfied to abjure his heresy, even according to the formula required by the Council. He, therefore, got permission to speak with whom he pleased, and he then was so imprudent as to tell his friends that his retractation was extorted from him, not by conscience, but because he was afraid of being condemned to be burned alive, but that now he would defend his doctrines to the death. When he was discovered, he was obliged to appear again before the Council, in 1415, and when the Patriarch of Constantinople called on him to clear himself from the new charges laid against him, he spoke out plainly, and said that his former abjuration was extorted by the dread of being burned alive; that he now held as true all the articles of Wickliffe, and that he was anxious to expiate at the stake, the fault of his former retractation. The Fathers of the Council still charitably gave him time to repent, but, at last, in the Twenty-fifth Session, after the Bishop of Lodi endeavoured by every means in his power to induce him to retract, he was declared an obstinate heretic, and handed over to the civil magistrate, who had him led to the pile. Even then, several persons endeavoured to get him to retract, but he said that his conscience would not allow him; he took off his clothes without any assistance, was tied to the stake, and the pile was fired. His agony was much longer than that of John Huss, but, like him, he died without any signs of repentance (11).


48. The unhappy end of John Huss and Jerome of Prague did not put a stop to the progress of their doctrines; on the contrary, as Varillas writes (12), the Hussites, irritated at the punishment of their leader, united together in Bohemia, ruined the churches, seized on the properties of the monasteries, and attempted the life of their King, Wenceslaus; and though they desisted at the time, they were sorry they did not accomplish it after, and they would have done so even then had Wenceslaus not died in the meantime. They then elected Zisca as Commander- in-Chief, and declared war against the Emperor Sigismund, who succeeded his brother Wenceslaus on the throne of Bohemia, and, having gained four victories, they forced him to quit his kingdom. Although Zisca lost both his eyes in battle, he still commanded his countrymen, but was attacked by the plague and died, having previously ordered that his skin should be tanned, and converted into the covering of a drum, that even after his death he might terrify his enemies. After Zisca’s death the sect was divided into Orphans, Orebites, and Thaborites, who, though disagreeing among themselves, all united against the Catholics. When those heretics got a Catholic priest into their power, they used to burn him alive, or cut him in two halves. When the Council of Basil was assembled, they sent delegates there to make peace with the Church, having previously obtained a safe conduct, but all to no purpose, as on their return into Bohemia, the war raged with greater fury, and, having collected a powerful army, they laid siege to the capital, but were encountered by Mainard, a noble Bohemian, and totally routed. Sigismund then again got posession of his kingdom, and made peace with the Hussites, who abjured their heresy, promised obedience to the Pope, and were absolved by him from all censures on the 5th of July, 1436 (13).



(1) Coclæus, Hist. Hussit. Æneas Silv. Hist. Bohem. c. 35; Bernin, t. 4, sec. 15, c. 2, p. 9; Graves. I. 4, coll. 3, p. 75; Gotti, Ver. &c. c. 105.
(2) Nat. Alex. sec. 14, c 3, . 22, sec. 6; Æneas Silv. Hist. Bohem. c. 35.
(3) Nat. Alex. sec. 15, c. 2, a. 1, sec. 2.
(4) Labbe, . . 12, cone.
(5) Varillas, His. &c., t. 1, I. 11, . 25; Gotti, Ver. Bel. 105, s. 3, n. 1.
(6) Coclæus, His. Huss. t. 2. Varillas, loc. cit.; Gotti, cit.
(7) Gotti, loc. cit. sec. 3, n. 3.
(8) Gotti, ibid; Van Ranst, p. 279; Varillas, loc. cit.; Bernin. t. 4; Rainaldus, Ann. 1415, n. 32.
(9) Varill. loc. cit. p. 48; Gotti, loc. cit. s. 3, n. 8; Van Ranst. 279.
(10) Rainal. Ann. 1415, n. 13 & seq.
(11) Varil.p. 51, l. 1; Gotti, c. 105; Bern. t. 4, c. 4.
(12)Varil. Dis. t. 1 t. 2; Gotti, c. 105; Van Ranst. p. 281.
(13) Van Ranst, p. 382; Bernini, loc, cit.

[Stone]

CHAPTER XI. – THE HERESIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

ARTICLE I. – OF THE HERESIES OF LUTHER. – I- THE BEGINNING AND PROGRESS OF THE LUTHERAN HERESY.

1. Erasmus of Rotterdam, called by some the Precursor of Luther; his Literature.
2. His Doctrine was not sound, nor could it be called heretical.
3. Principles of Luther; his familiarity with the Devil, who persuades him to abolish Private Masses.
4. He joins the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine.
5. Doctrines and Vices of Luther.
6. Publication of Indulgences, and his Theses on that Subject.
7. He is called to Rome, and clears himself; the Pope sends Cardinal Cajetan as his Legate to Germany.
8. Meeting between the Legate and Luther.
9. Luther perseveres and appeals to the Pope.
10, 11. Conference of Ecchius with the Heretics.
12. Bull of Leo X., condemning forty-one Errors of Luther, who burns the Bull and the Decretals.



1. We have now arrived at the sixteenth century, in which, as in a sink, all the former heresies meet. The great heresiarch of this age was Luther; but many writers assert that Erasmus was his predecessor, and there was a common saying in Germany that Erasmus (1) laid the egg, and Luther hatched it (2). Erasmus was born in Holland; his birth was illegitimate, and he was baptized by the name of Gerard, which he afterwards changed to the Greek name Erasmus in Latin, Desiderius (3). At an early age he was received among the Regular Canons of St. Augustine, and made his religious profession; but weary of a religious life, and regretting having made his vows, he left the Cloister, and lived in the world, having, it is supposed, obtained a Papal dispensation.

He would certainly have conferred a benefit on the age he lived in, had he confined himself to literature alone; but he was not satisfied without writing on Theological matters, interpreting the Scriptures, and finding fault with the Fathers; hence, as Noel Alexander says of him, the more works he wrote, the more errors he published. He travelled to many Universities, and was always honourably received, on account of his learning; but a great many doubted of his faith, on account of the obscure way he wrote concerning the dogmas of religion; hence, some of the Innovators, friends of Erasmus, often availed themselves of his authority, though he frequently endeavoured to clear himself from the imputation of favouring them, especially in a letter he wrote to Cardinal Campeggio (4).


2. A great contest at that time was going on in Germany, between the Rhetoricians and Theologians. The Rhetoricians upbraided the Theologians with their ignorance, and the barbarism of the terms they used. The Theologians, on the other hand, abused the Rhetoricians for the impropriety and profaneness of the language they used in the explanation of the Divine Mysteries. Erasmus, who took the lead among the Rhetoricians, began by deriding, first, the style, and, next, the arguments of the Theologians; he called their Theology Judaism, and said that the proper understanding of Ecclesiastical science depended altogether on erudition and the knowledge of languages. Many writers openly charge Erasmus with heresy : he explained everything just as it pleased himself, says Victorinus (5), and vitiated everything he explained. Albert Pico, Prince of Carpi, a man of great learning (6), and a strenuous opponent of the errors of Erasmus, assures us that he called the Invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints idolatry; condemned Monasteries, and ridiculed the Religious, calling them actors and cheats, and condemned their vows and rules; was opposed to the Celibacy of the Clergy, and turned into mockery Papal Indulgences, relics of Saints, feasts and fasts, auricular Confession; asserts that by Faith alone man is justified (7), and even throws a doubt on the authority of the Scripture and Councils (8).

In the preface to one of his works he says (9), it is rash to call the Holy Ghost God. ” Audemus Spiritum Sanctum, appellare, Deum quod veteres ausi, non sunt.” Noel Alexander informs us (10), that in 1527 the Faculty of Paris condemned several propositions taken from his works, and that at the Council of Trent the Cardinals appointed by Paul III. to report on the abuses which needed reformation, called on him to prohibit in the schools the reading of the Colloquies of Erasmus, in which are many things that lead the ignorant to impiety. He was, however, esteemed by several Popes, who invited him to Rome, to write against Luther, and it was even reported that Paul III. intended him for the Cardinalship. We may conclude with Bernini, that he died with the character of an unsound Catholic, but not a heretic, as he submitted his writings to the judgment of the Church, and Varillas (11) says he always remained firm in the Faith, notwithstanding all the endeavours of Luther and Zuinglius to draw him to their side. He died in Basle in 1536, at the age of 70 (12).


3. While Germany was thus agitated with this dispute, the famous brief of Leo X. arrived there in 1613; and here we must introduce Luther. Martin Luther (13) was born in Eisleben, in Saxony, in 1483. His parents were poor, and when he afterwards acquired such a sad notoriety, some were not satisfied without tracing his birth to the agency of the devil (14), a report to which his own extraordinary assertions gave some colour at the time, since he said in one of his sermons to the people, that he had eaten a peck of salt (15) with the devil, and in his work ” De Missa Privata,” or low Mass, he says he disputed with the devil on this subject, and was convinced by him that private Masses should be abolished (16). ” Luther,” said the devil, ” it is now fifteen years that you are saying private Masses; what would the consequence be, if on the altar you were adoring bread and wine ? would you not be guilty of idolatry ?” ” I am a Priest,” said Luther, ” ordained by my Bishop, and I have done everything through obedience.” ” But,” added the devil, ” Turks and Gentiles also sacrifice through obedience, and what say you if your ordination be false ?”

Such are the powerful reasons which convinced Luther. Frederick Staphil (17) relates a curious anecdote concerning this matter. Luther at one time, he says, endeavoured to exorcise a girl in Wittemberg, possessed by an evil spirit, but was so terrified that he tried to escape, both by the door and window, which, to his great consternation, were both made fast; finally, one of his companions broke open the door with a hatchet, and they escaped (18).


4. If Luther was not the child of Satan, however, few laboured so strenuously in his service. His name originally was Luder; but as the vulgar meaning of that word was not the most elegant, he changed it to Luther. Applying himself at an early age to literature, he went to Erfurt, in Thuringia, and at the age of twenty years graduated as a Master of Philosophy. While pursuing his legal and philosophical studies in that University, he happened to take a walk in the country with a fellow-student, who was struck dead by lightning at his side. Under the influence of terror, and not moved by devotion, he made a vow to enter into religion, and became an Augustineian Friar, in the Convent of Erfurt (19). “It was not,” he says, ” by my own free will I became a Monk, but terrified by a sudden death, I made a vow to that effect.” This took place in 1504, in the 22nd year of his age, and was a matter of great suprise to his father and friends, who previously never perceived in him any tendency to piety (20).


5. After his profession and ordination he was commanded by his superiors, as an exercise of humility, to beg through the city, as was the custom of the Order at that period. He refused, and in the year 1508 left the Convent and Academy of Erfurt, in which he was employed, greatly to the satisfaction of his colleagues in that University, who could not bear his violent temper, and went to Wittemberg, where Duke Frederick, Elector of Saxony, had a little before founded a University, in which he obtained the chair of Philosophy. He was soon after sent to Rome, to settle some dispute raised in his Order, and having satisfactorily arranged every thing, he returned to Wittemberg, and received from Andrew Carlostad, Dean of the University, the dignity of Doctor of Theology.

The entire expense of taking his degree was borne by the Elector, who conceived a very great liking for him (21). He was certainly a man of fine genius, a subtle reasoner, deeply read in the Schoolmen and Holy Fathers, but, even then, as Cochleus tells us, filled with vices proud, ambitious, petulant, seditious, evil-tongued and even his moral character was tainted (22); he was a man of great eloquence, both in speaking and writing, but so rude and rugged, that in all his works we scarcely find a polished period; he was so vain of himself, that he despised the most learned writers of the Church, and he especially attacked the doctrines of St. Thomas, so much esteemed by the Council of Trent.


6. Leo X. wishing, as Hermant tells us (23), to raise a fund for the recovery of the Holy Land, or, according to the more generally received opinion (24), to finish the building of St. Peter’s Church, commenced by Julius II. , committed to Cardinal Albert, Archbishop and Elector of Mayence, the promulgation of a Brief, granting many Indulgences to those who contributed alms for this purpose. The Archbishop committed the publication of these Indulgences to a Dominican Doctor, John Tetzel, who had already discharged a similar commission in aid of the Teutonic Knights, when they were attacked by the Duke- of Muscovy, and who was reputed an eloquent preacher. This was highly displeasing to John Staupitz, Vicar-General of the Augustinians, and a great favourite of the Duke of Saxony; he, therefore, with the Duke’s permission, charged Luther with the duty of preaching against the abuse of these Indulgences. He immediately began to attack these abuses, and truth compels us to admit that abuses had crept into the mode of collecting these alms, which scandalized the people. He, however, not only preached against the abuses which existed, but against the validity of Indulgences altogether, and immediately wrote a long letter to the Archbishop of Mayence, in which he gave an exaggerated account of the errors preached in their distribution, such as, that whoever took an Indulgence was certain of salvation, and was absolved from all punishment and penalties of sin, and to this letter he tacked ninety-five propositions, in which he asserted that the doctrine of Indulgences altogether was a very doubtful matter.

He did not rest satisfied with sending them to the Archbishop; he posted them on the doors of the Church of All Saints in Wittemburg, sent printed copies of them through all Germany, and had them publicly sustained by his scholars in the University. He was answered by Father Tetzel in Frankfort, who proved the doctrine of the Church, and as he was armed with Inquisitorial powers, condemned these propositions as heretical. When this came to Luther’s ears, he retorted in the most insolent manner, and from these few sparks, that fire was kindled which not only ran through Germany, but through Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the most remote countries of the North (25)


7. In the year 1518, Luther sent his conclusions to the Pope, in a pamphlet, entitled “Resolutiones Disputationum de Indulgentiarum virtute ;” and in the preface, he thus addresses him : ” Holy Father, prostrate at your Holiness feet, I offer myself, with all I possess; vivify or destroy, call, revoke, reject, as you will, I recognise your voice as the voice of Christ, presiding and speaking in you; if I deserve death, I refuse not to die” (26). With such protestations of submission did he endeavour to deceive the Pope, but as Cardinal Gotti (27) remarks, in this very letter, he protests that he adopts no other sentiments than those of the Scriptures, and intends merely to oppose the Schoolmen. Leo X. having now received both Luther’s and Tetzel’s writings, clearly saw the poison which flowed from the pen of the former, and accordingly summoned him to Rome, to defend himself.

Luther excused himself on the plea of delicate health, and the want of means to undertake so long a journey, and added, that he had strong suspicions of the Roman judges; he also induced the Duke of Saxony, and the University of Wittemberg, to write to his Holiness to the same effect, and to request him to appoint judges in Germany to try the cause (28). The Pope dreaded to entrust the case to the decision of the Germans, as Luther already had a powerful party in his own country; he, therefore, sent as his Legate, a latere, Thomas Vio, called Cardinal Cajetan, commissioning him to call on the secular power to have Luther arrested, to absolve him from all censures, in case he retracted his errors; but should he obstinately persist in maintaining them to excommunicate him (29).


8. On the Legate’s arrival in Augsburg, he summoned Luther before him, and imposed three commandments on him : First – That he should retract the propositions asserted by him. Secondly – That he should cease from publishing them, and finally, that he should reject all doctrines censured by the Church. Luther answered that he never broached any doctrine in opposition to the Church, but Cajetan reminded him that he denied the treasure of the merits of Jesus Christ, and his Saints, in virtue of which, the Pope dispensed Indulgences, as Clement VI. declared in the Constitution Unigenitus; that he also asserted that to obtain the fruit of the Sacraments, it was only required to have the faith of obtaining them. Luther made some reply, but the Cardinal, smiling, said he did not come to argue with him, but to receive his submission, as he had been appointed (30). Luther was alarmed at finding himself in Augsburg, then totally Catholic, without a safe conduct (although Noel Alexander (31) says, he obtained one from Maximilian; Hermant, Van Ranst, and Gotti, deny it (32), and Varillas wonders at his boldness in presenting himself without it), and asked time for reflection, which was granted him, and on the following day he presented himself before the Legate, together with a Notary Public, and four Senators of Augsburg, and presented a writing signed with his own hand, saying that he followed and revered the Roman Church in all her acts and sayings, past, present, and to come, and that if ever he said anything against her, he now revoked and unsaid it.

The Cardinal, well aware that he had written several things which were not in accordance with the Catholic Faith, wished to have a still more ample retractation, but still he flattered himself that the one obtained was so much gained. Luther, however, soon slipped through his fingers, for he then persisted that he had neither said nor written anything repugnant to the Scriptures, Fathers, Councils, Decretals, or reason; that his propositions were true, and that he was prepared to defend them, but, nevertheless, that he would submit them to the judgment of the three Imperial Academies of Basle, Fribourg, and Louvain, or of Paris (33).


9. The Cardinal still insisted on the three primary conditions. Luther asked time to answer in writing, and the next day presented a document, in which he advanced many opinions, not only against the value of Indulgences, but also against the merits of the Saints, and good works, propping up his opinions by false reasoning, Cardinal Cajetan heard him out, and then told him not again to appear before him, unless he came prepared to retract his heresy. Luther then left Augsburg, and wrote to the Cardinal, saying that his opinions were founded on truth, and supported by reason and Scripture, but, notwithstanding, it was his wish still to subject himself to the Church, and to keep silence regarding Indulgences, if his adversaries were commanded to keep silent, likewise (34). The Cardinal gave him no answer, so Luther, fearing sentence would be passed against him, appealed from the Cardinal to the Pope, and had the appeal posted on the church doors (35). Van Ranst censures Cajetan for not imprisoning Luther, when he had him in Augsburg without a safe conduct, knowing him to be a man of such deceitful cunning, and so extinguishing, in its commencement, that great fire, which consumed so great a part of Europe, by introducing to the people a religion so much the more pernicious, as it was so favourable to sensual licence.

Luther himself, afterwards, deriding the whole transaction, says (36) : ” I there heard that new Latin language, that teaching the truth was disturbing the Church, and that denying Christ was exalting the Church.” It is then he appealed, first to the Pope, and afterwards from the Pope to the Council (37).


10. The Legate, seeing the obstinacy of Luther, wrote to the Elector Frederick, telling him that this friar was a heretic, unworthy of his protection, and that he should send him to Rome, or at all events banish him from his States. The Elector immediately transmitted the letter to Luther, who, on his escape from the power of the Legate, began to make the most rabid attacks on the Pope, calling him tyrant and Antichrist : “He (the Pope) has refused peace,” said he, ” then let it be war, and we shall see whether Luther or the Pope shall be first hurt.” Notwithstanding his boasting, the Legate’s letter to the Elector terrified him, and he indited a most humble letter, declaring himself guiltless of any crime against Faith, and praying for a continuance of his protection (38). Hermant says the Elector protected Luther, not only on account of his affection for his newly founded University of Wittemberg, on which he shed so much lustre, but also through hatred to the Elector Albert, of Mayence, Luther’s most determined enemy (39). This protector of Luther, however, met with a dreadful death, as if to mark the judgment of God. While hunting, he was attacked with apoplexy, accompanied with dreadful convulsions; Luther and Melancthon immediately posted off to assist, or rather to ruin him, in his last agony, but they could not obtain from him a single word; he had lost the use of all his senses, the most dreadful convulsions racked every one of his limbs, his cries were like the roar of a lion, and he died without Sacraments, or without any signs of repentance.


10. On the 9th of November, 1518, Leo X. published a Bull, on the validity of Indulgences, in which he declared that the Supreme Pontiff alone had the right of granting them without limitation, from the treasures of the merits of Jesus Christ; that this was an article of Faith, and that whoever refused to believe it, should be excluded from the communion of the Church.

Ecchius, a man of great learning, and Pro-Chancellor of Ingoldstad, began to write about this time, and subsequently, in 1519, he had a conference with Luther, through the instrumentality of Duke George, Uncle of the Elector Frederick, a good Catholic. This conference took place in Duke George’s city of Leipsic, and in his own palace. After debating on many questions there, they agreed to leave the whole matter to the decision of the Universities of Erfurt and Paris. The University of Paris, after an examination of the writings on each side, received the doctrine of Ecchius, and condemned that of Luther. One hundred and four of his propositions were censured, which excited his ire to a great pitch against that University. The following year there was another conference between Luther, accompanied by Carlostad and Ecchius, in which, in six discussions, the doctrines of free-will, of grace, and of good works, were argued by Carlostad. Luther followed, and disputed on Purgatory, the power of absolving sins, reserving cases, the primacy of the Pope, and Indulgences. In this conference, his doctrines were not so heretical as soon after the dispute, for then the force of truth obliged him to admit the Papal primacy, though he said it was of human, not divine right; he also acknowledged a Purgatory, and did not altogether reject Indulgences, solely condemning the abuse of them. The same year his doctrines were condemned by the Universities of Cologne and Louvain (40).


12. In the year 1519, the Emperor Maximilian I. died, and there was an interregnum of six months, daring which Luther gained many adherents in Wittemberg, not only among the youth of the University, who afterwards scattered themselves through all Saxony, but some of the Professors, and even some of the clergy, secular and regular, became his disciples. Leo X. seeing his party every day gaining strength, and no hope of his retractation, then published in Rome his famous Bull, ” Exurge Domine,” in which he condemned forty-one of his principal errors as heretical (see third part of this history), and sent his Commissaries to publish it in Germany, ordering, at the same time, his books to be publicly burned in Rome. His Holiness, however, even then exhorts Luther and his followers to return to the fold, and promises to receive with clemency whoever returns before the expiration of two months, at the expiration of which, he orders his Commissaries to excommunicate the perverse, and hand them over to the secular power.

The two months being passed, he published another Bull, declaring Luther a heretic, and also that all who followed or favoured him, incurred all the penalties and censures fulminated against heretics (41). Luther, as soon as he heard of the publication of the first Bull of 1520, and the burning of his books in Rome, burned in the public square of Wittemberg, the Bull, and the Book of the Decretals of the Canon Law, saying : ” As you have opposed the Saints of the Lord, so may eternal fire destroy you ;” and then in a voice of fury, exclaimed : ” Let us fight with all our strength against that son of perdition, the Pope, the Cardinals, and all the Roman sink of corruption; let us wash our hands in their blood (42).” From that day to the day of his death, he never ceased writing against the Pope and the Catholic Church, and from the year 1521 to 1546, when he died, he brought to light again in his works, almost every heresy of former ages. Cochleus, speaking of Luther’s writings, says (43) : “He thus defiled everything holy; he preaches Christ, and tramples on his servants; magnifies faith, and denies good works, and opens a licence to sin; elevates mercy, depresses justice, and throws upon God the cause of all evil; finally, destroys all law, takes the power out of the hands of the magistrate, stirs up the laity against the clergy, the impious against the Pope, the people against princes.”


(1) Rainald. Ann. 1516, n. 91; Bernin. t. 4, sec. 26, c. 2, p. 255.
(2) Gotti, Ver. Rel. c. 108. sec, 2, n. 6.
(3) Nat. Alex. t. 19, sec. 15, c. 5, art. 1, n. 12.
(4) Nat. Alex. loc. cit.
(5) Victor, in Scholiis ad Epist. Hier. ep. 30.
(6) Rainald. & Bernin. loc. cit.
(7) Alberto Pico, l. 20.
(8) Alberto, l. 1l, 12.
(9) Erasm. advers. Hil. 1. 12; Bernin. loc. cit.
(10) Nat. Alex. cit. art. 10, n. 12. (11) Varill. t. l, l,7,p. 322.
(12) Nat, Alex. Loc. cit.
(13) Gotti, Ver. Rel. t. 2, c. 108, sec. 2; Baron. Ann. 1517, n. 56; Varillas Istor. & c. t. 1, l. 3, p. 129; Hermant, Histor. Concili, t. 2, c. 227.
(14) Gotti. cit. sec. 2, n. 3.
(15) Nat Alex. loc. cit; Gotti, loc. cit. sec. 2, n. 2
(16) Gotti, sec. 5, n. 2.
(17) Staphil. Resp. contra Jac. Smi delin, p. 404.
(18) Varillas, loc. cit. I 14, p. 31.
(19) Luther Præfat. ad lib. de Vot. Mon .
(20) Nat. Alex, ibid, see. 1, n. 1; Gotti, loc. cit. sec. 2.
(21) Hermant, Histor. Conc. t. 1, c. 228; Nat. Alex. t. 19, art. 11, sec. 1, n. 1; Van Ranst Hær. p. 298; Gotti Ver. Rel. c. 108, sec. 2, n. 6.
(22) Nat. Alex. sec. 1, n. 3; Hermant, loc. cit.; Van Ranst, loc. cit.
(23) Hermant, loc. cit. c. 227.
(24) Nat. Alex. Gotti, Van Ranst, Bernino, &c
(25) Hermant, c. 228; Van Ranst, p. 299; Gotti, c. 108, sec. 3, n. 3.
(26) Ap. Van Ranst, His. p. 300.
(27) Gotti, sec. 2, n. 8.
(28) Gotti, ibid, n. 9, & Van Ranst, loc cit.
(29) Nat. Alex. t. 19, or. 11, sec. 4; Gotti, loc. cit. sec. 2, n. 20; Hermant. t. 2, c. 229.
(30) Hermant, c. 230.
(31) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. sec. 4.
(32) Hermant, cit. c. 230; Van Ranst, p. 302; Gotti, sec. 3, n. 10.
(33) Nat Alex. or. 11, sec. 4, n. 1; Gotti, c. 108, sec. 3, n. 10.
(34) Nat. Alex, loc.cit.; Van Ranst, p. 302.
(35) Van Ranst, p 302.
(36) Luther, t. I; Oper. p. 208.
(37) Gotti, sec. 3, n. 11. 4,
(38) Gotti, c. 108, sec. 3, n. 12; Van Ranst, p. 302; Nat. Alex. sec. 4, n. 1; Hermant, c. 229.
(39) Hermant, c. 229; Nat. Alex. sec. n. 1; Van Ranst, p. 302.
(40) Van Ranst, p. 303; Varillas, l. 3, p. 48.
(41) Hermant, t. 1, c. 230. (42) Gotti, c. 108, n. 13. (43) Cocleus de act, & Script

. Luth. Ann. 1523

[Stone]

CHAPTER XI. – THE HERESIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

II -THE DIETS AND PRINCIPAL CONGRESSES HELD CONCERNING THE HERESY OF LUTHER

13. Diet of Worms, where Luther appeared before Charles V., and remains obstinate.
14. Edict of the Emperor against Luther, who is concealed by the Elector in one of his Castles.
15. Diet of Spire, where the Emperor publishes a Decree, against which the heretics protest.
16. Conference with the Zuinglians; Marriage of Luther with an Abbess.
17. Diet of Augsburg, and Melancthon’s Profession of Faith; Melancthon’s Treatise, in favour of the authority of the Pope, rejected by Luther.
18. Another Edict of the Emperor in favour of Religion.
19. League of Smalkald broken up by the Emperor.
20. Dispensation given by the Lutherans to the Landgrave to have two wives.
21. Council of Trent, to which Luther refuses to come; he dies, cursing the Council.
22. The Lutherans divided into fifty-six Sects.
23. The Second Diet of Augsburg, in which Charles V. published the injurious Formula of the Interim.
24, 25. The heresy of Luther takes possession of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and other Kingdoms.



13. The first Conference was in the Imperial Diet, assembled in Worms. Luther still continued augmenting his party, and pouring forth calumnies and vituperations against the Holy See. At the request of the Pope, Charles V. then wrote to the Elector of Saxony, to deliver up Luther, or, at all events, to banish him from his territories. The Elector, on receipt of the letter, said that as the Diet was now so near, it would be better to refer the whole matter to its decision. Luther was most anxious to appear in this illustrious assembly, hoping, by his harangue, to obtain a favourable reception for his doctrine, especially as at the request of his patron, the Elector, he obtained not only permission to attend, but also a safe conduct from the Emperor himself. The Diet assembled in 1521, and Luther arrived in Worms, on the 17th of April. Ecchius asked him, in the name of the Emperor, if he acknowledged himself the author of the books published in his name, and if it was his intention to defend them. He admitted the books were his; but as to defending them, he said, as that was an affair of importance to the Word of God, and the salvation of souls, he required time to give an answer. The Emperor gave him a day for consideration, and he next day said, that among his books some contained arguments on Religion, and these he could not conscientiously retract; others were written in his own defence, and he confessed that he was guilty of excess in his attacks on his adversaries, the slaves of the Pope, but that they first provoked him to it. Ecchius required a more lucid answer. He then turned to the Emperor, and said he could not absolutely retract anything he had taught in his lectures, his sermons, or his writings, until convinced by Scripture and reason, and that both Pope and Councils were fallible judges in this matter (1).


14. The Emperor, perceiving his obstinacy, after some conversation with him, dismissed him. He might then have arrested him, as he was in his power, but he disdained violating the safe conduct he himself had given him. Notwithstanding, he published, on the 26th of May, an edict, with consent of the Princes of the Empire, and of its Orders and States, in which he declared Luther a notorious and obstinate heretic, and prohibited any one to receive or protect him, under the severest penalties. He moreover ordained, that, after the term of the safe conduct expired, which was twenty days, he should be proceeded against wherever found (2); and he would not have escaped, were it not for the Elector Frederick, who bribed the soldiers who escorted him, and had him conveyed to a place of security. A report was then spread abroad, that Luther was imprisoned before the expiration of the safe conduct, but the Elector had him conveyed to the Castle of Watzberg, near Alstad, in Thuringia, a place which Luther afterwards called his Patmos. He remained there nearly ten months, well concealed and guarded, and there he finished the plan of his heresy, and wrote many of his works. In the works written here, Luther principally attacked the scholastic Theologians, especially St. Thomas, whose works he said were filled with heresies. We should not wonder he called the works of St. Thomas heretical, who centuries before had confuted his own pestilential errors (3).


15. In the year 1529, another Diet was held in the city of Spire, by the Emperor’s orders, in which it was decided, that in these places in which the edict of Worms was accepted, it should be observed; but that wherever the ancient religion was changed, and its restoration could not be effected without public disturbances, matters should remain as they were until the celebration of a General Council. It was, besides, decided that Mass should freely be celebrated in the places infected with Lutheranism, and that the Gospel should be explained, according to the interpretation of the Fathers approved by the Church. The Elector Frederick of Saxony, George of Branderburg, Ernest and Francis, Dukes of Luneburg, Wolfgang of Anhalt, and fourteen confederate cities (thirteen, according to Protestant historians), protested against this Decree, as contrary to the truth of the Gospel, and appealed to a future Council, or to some judge not suspected, and from this protest arose the famous designation of Protestant (4).


16. The same year another Conference, composed of Lutherans and Zuinglians, or Sacramentarians, was held in Marpurg, under the patronage of the Landgrave of Hesse, to endeavour to establish a union between their respective sects. Luther, Melancthon, Jonas, Osiander, Brenzius, and Agricola appeared on one side, and Zuinglius, Ecolampadius, Bucer, and Hedio, on the other. They agreed on all points, with the exception of the Eucharist, as the Zuinglians totally denied the Real Presence of Christ. Several other Conferences were held to remove, if possible, the discussion of doctrine objected to then by the Catholics, but all ended without coming to any agreement. In this the Providence of God is apparent : the Roman Church could thus oppose to the innovators that unity of doctrine she always possessed, and the heretics were always confounded on this point (5). About this period Luther married an Abbess of a Convent. His fellow-heresiarch Zuinglius, also a priest, had already violated his vows, by a sacrilegious marriage, and Luther would have done the same long before, only he was restrained by the Elector of Saxony, who, though a heretic, shuddered at the marriage of a Religious, and protested he would oppose it by every means in his power.

On the other hand, Luther was now quite taken with Catherine Bora, a lady of noble family, but poor, and who, forced by poverty, embraced a religious life, without any vocation for that state, in a Convent at Misnia, and finally became Abbess. Reading one of Luther’s works, she came across his treatise on the nullity of religious vows, and requested him to visit her. He called on her frequently, and finally induced her to leave her Convent, and come to Wittemberg with him, where, devoid of all shame, he married her with great solemnity, the Elector Frederic, who constantly opposed it, being now dead; and such was the force of his example and discourses, that he soon after induced the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order (6) to celebrate his sacrilegious nuptials, likewise. Those marriages provoked that witticism of Erasmus, who said that the heresies of his day all ended, like a comedy, in marriage.


17. In the July of 1530, the famous Diet of Augsburg was held. The Emperor and all the Princes being assembled at the Diet, and the feast of Corpus Christi falling at the same time, an order was given to the Princes to attend the procession. The Protestants refused, on the plea that this was one of the Roman superstitions; the Elector of Saxony, nevertheless, whose duty it was to carry the sword of state before the Emperor (7), consulted his Theologians, who gave it as their opinion, that in this case he might consider it a mere human ceremony, and that, like Naam, the Syrian, who bowed down before the idol, when the King leaned on his arm in the temple, he might attend. In this Diet the Catholic party was represented by John Ecchius, Conrad Wimpin, and John Cochleus, and the Lutheran by Melancthon, Brenzius and Schnapsius. The Lutheran Princes presented to the Emperor the Profession of Faith drawn up by Philip Melancthon, who endeavoured as much as possible to soften down the opinions opposed to Catholicity. This is the famous Confession of Augsburg, afterwards the Creed of the majority of Lutherans. In those Articles they admitted:

1st – That we are not justified by Faith alone, but by Faith and Grace.

2nd -That in good works not only Grace alone concurs, but our co-operation like wise.

3rd – That the Church contains not only the elect, but also the reprobate.

4th – That free-will exists in man, though without Divine Grace he cannot be justified.

5th – That the Saints pray to God for us, and that it is a pious practice to venerate their memories on certain days, abstracting, however, from either approving or condemning their invocation.

In ten other chapters of less importance they agree with Catholics. They agreed, likewise, in saying that Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist, in each species, and did not condemn the laity who communicated in one kind only. They allowed the jurisdiction of Bishops, and that obedience was due to them by Pastors, Preachers, and Priests, in Spiritual matters, and that censures published by them, according to the rule of Scripture, are of avail. The Emperor, hoping it would render easier the establishment of peace, joined to the commissions two jurists, for each side, along with Ecchius and Melancthon; but this Conference never was closed, because, as Sleidan tells us, Melancthon was not permitted by Luther to sign the treaty, although he was most anxious for the establishment of peace, as he declares in his letter to the Legate Campeggio : ” We have no dogma,” he says, ” different from the Roman Church; we are ready to yield her obedience, if, in her clemency, she will relax or wink at some little matters. We still profess obedience to the Roman Pontiff, if he does not cast us off” (8). Varillas (9) mentions a curious fact relative to this. When Francis I., King of France, invited Melancthon to Paris, to teach in the University (in which he did not succeed), he received from him a pamphlet, in which he laid it down as a principle, that it was necessary to preserve the preeminence and authority of the Roman Pontiff, to preserve the unity of doctrine. Nothing could exceed Luther’s rage when he heard of this, and he told Melancthon that he had a mind to break with him altogether, and that he was now about to ruin the Religion it cost him twenty years labour to establish, by destroying the authority of the Pope.


18. The Zuinglians presented their confession of Faith at the same Diet, in the name of the four cities of Strasburg, Constance, Meningen, and Lindau, which differed from the Lutheran one only in the doctrine of the Eucharist. At the breaking up of the Diet, the Emperor promulgated an edict, in which the Lutheran Princes and cities were allowed, until the 15th of April following, to wait for a General Council, and again become united with the Catholic Church, and the rest of the Empire. It was forbidden them to allow any innovations in Religious matters, or any works contrary to Religion to be published in their respective territories, and that all should unite in opposition to the Anabaptists and Zuinglians. The Lutherans refused to accept these articles, and all hopes of peace being at an end, asked leave to depart. Before they left, however, the Emperor published an edict, subscribed by the remaining Princes and Orders of the Empire, that all should persevere in the ancient Religion, condemning the sects of the Anabaptists, Zuinglians, and Lutherans, and commanding all to hold themselves in readiness to attend at the Council, which he promised he would induce the Pope to summon in six months (10).


19. The Protestants refused obedience to this Decree, and met in Smalcald, a city of Franconia, and there, in 1531, formed the famous League of Smalcald, to defend with force of arms the doctrines they professed; but they refused the admission of the Zuinglians into this League, on account of their errors regarding the Holy Sacrament. This was the cause of the famous battle of Mulberg, on the Elbe, in 1547, in which Charles V. was victorious, and John, Elector of Saxony, and Philip, the Landgrave, the two chiefs of the heretical party in Germany, were made prisoners (11). The whole power of Protestantism would have been broken by this defeat, had not Maurice of Saxony, the nephew of the imprisoned Elector, taken up arms against Charles (12). The Landgrave obtained his liberty, but was obliged to beg pardon of the Emperor prostrate at his feet, and surrender his States into his hands (13).


20. This Philip is the same who obtained, in 1539, from Luther and other faithful Ministers of the Gospel, as they called themselves, that remarkable dispensation to marry two wives at the same time. Yarillas says (14), that the Landgrave, though previous to his marriage he always led a moral life, could not, after the loss of his faith, content himself with one wife, and persuaded himself that Luther and the Theologians of his sect would grant him a dispensation to marry another. He well knew whom he had to deal with : he assembled them in Wittemberg, and though they well knew the difficult position in which they were placed, and the scandal they would give by yielding to his wishes, still his influence had greater weight with them than the laws of Christ or the dictates of their consciences. Varillas (P. 531) gives the rescript in full by which they dispense with him. They say they could not introduce into the New Testament the provisions of the Old Law, which permitted a plurality of wives, as Christ says they shall be two in one flesh, but they likewise say that there are certain cases in which the New Law can be dispensed with; that the case of the Prince was one of these; but that, in order to avoid scandal it would be necessary that the second marriage should be celebrated privately, in the presence of few witnesses; and this document is subscribed by Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, and five other Lutheran Doctors. The marriage was soon after privately celebrated in presence of Luther, Melancthon, and six other persons. The Landgrave died, according to De Thou, in 1567.


21. The Council of Trent was opened on the 13th of December, 1545, under Paul III., was continued under Julius III., and being many times suspended for various causes, was formally concluded under Pius IV., in December, 1563. Luther frequently called on the Pope to summon a General Council, but now that it was assembled he would not attend it, knowing full well his doctrines would be there condemned. First, he appealed from the Legate to the Pope then from the Pope not sufficiently informed to the Pope better informed then from the Pope to a Council and now from the Council to himself. Such has been the invariable practice of heresiarchs : to refute the decisions of the Pope they appeal to a Council; condemned by a Council, they reject the decisions of both. Thus Luther refused to attend the Council, and after his death his example was followed by the other Protestants, who refused even to avail themselves of the safe conduct given to them for that effect.

While the Fathers were making preparations for the Fourth Session, news of Luther’s death was brought to Trent; he went to Eisleben towards the end of January, at the invitation of some of his friends, to arrange some differences, when he was then told he was invited to the Council. He exclaimed in a rage : “I will go, and may I lose my head if I do not defend my opinions against all the world; that which comes forth from my mouth is not my anger but the anger of God” (15). A longer journey, however, was before him; he died in the sixty-third year of his age, on the 17th of February, 1546. After eating a hearty supper and enjoying himself, jesting as usual, he was a few hours after attacked with dreadful pains, and thus he died. Raging against the Council a little before his death, he said to Justus Jonas, one of his followers : ” Pray for our Lord God and his Gospel, that it may turn out well, for the Council of Trent and the abominable Pope are grievously opposed to him.” Saying this he died, and went to receive the reward of all his blasphemies against the Faith, and of the thousands of souls he led to perdition. His body was placed in a tin coffin, and borne on a triumphal car to Wittemberg, followed by his concubine, Catherine, and his three sons, John, Martin, and Paul, in a coach, and a great multitude, both on foot and horseback. Philip Melancthon preached his funeral oration in Latin, and Pomeranius in German. Pomeranius also composed that inscription for his tomb, worthy alike of the master and the disciple : ” Pestiseram vivus, moriens ero inors tua, Papa” ” I was the plague of the Pope while living, dying I will be his death” (16).


22. The Lutherans were invited to the Council by various briefs of the Popes, but always refused to attend (17). They were afterwards summoned by the Emperor Ferdinand, on the re-opening of the Council; but they required conditions which could not be granted (18). They at first split into two sects, Rigorous and Relaxed Lutherans (19), and these two, as Lindan afterwards informs us, were divided into fifty-six sects (20).


23. In another Diet, celebrated in Augsburg, in 1547, the Emperor Charles V. restored the Catholic religion in that city; but in the following year, as Noel Alexander (21) tells us, he tarnished his glory by publishing the famous Interim, thus usurping the authority to decide on questions of Faith and ecclesiastical discipline. We should, says Noel Alexander, hold this Interim in the same detestation as the Enoticon of Zeno, the Ecthesis of Heraclius, and the Tiphos of Constans. In the year 1552 he again tarnished his honour,, for after routing Maurice of Saxony, he made peace with him, and granted freedom of worship in his states to the professors of the Confession of Augsburg. In the year 1556 he gave up the government of the Empire to his brother Ferdinand, King of the Romans, and retired to the Jeromite Monastery of St. Justus, in Estremadura, in Spain, giving himself up to God alone, and preparing for death, which overtook him on the 21st of September, 1558, in the fifty-eighth year of his age (22).


24. Luther’s heresy, through the instrumentality of his disciples, soon spread from Germany into the neighbouring kingdoms, and first of all it infected Sweden. This kingdom, at first idolatrous, received the Catholic Faith in 1155, which was finally established in 1416, and continued the Faith of the nation till the reign of Gustavus Erickson. Lutheranism was introduced into this country in 1523, by Olaus Petri, who imbibed it in the University of Wittemberg; along with many others, he gained over King Gustavus, who gave leave to the preachers to propound, and to all leave to follow, their doctrines, and also permitted the Religious to marry. It was his wish that the old ceremonies should be kept up, to deceive the people; but he caused all the ancient books to be burned, and introduced new ones, written by heretics; thus in four years Lutheranism was established in Sweden. Gustavus, at his death, left the crown to his son, Eric XIV.; but his reign was but short, for his younger brother, John, declared war against him, and dethroned him in 1569.

Before John came to the crown, he was a good Catholic, and desired to re-unite Sweden to the Church, especially as the Pope sent him an excellent missioner to strengthen him in the Faith. He commenced the good work by publishing a liturgy opposed to the Lutheran, and intending gradually to abolish the heresy. He then wrote to the Pope, saying, he hoped to gain Sweden altogether to the Faith, if his Holiness would grant four conditions : First – That the nobility should not be disturbed in the possession of the ecclesiastical property they held. Second – That the married Bishops and Priests should have liberty to retain their wives. Third – That Communion should be given in both kinds. Fourth – That the Church service should be celebrated in the vulgar tongue. The Pope consulted the Cardinals, but refused his request, as he could not well grant him what he refused to so many other Princes. When this answer arrived, the King was already wavering in his determination to support the true Faith, fearful of causing a revolt with which he was threatened; this unfavourable answer decided him, and he gave up all hopes, and followed the religion of his States. His Queen, a zealous Catholic, a sister of Sigismund Augustus, King of Poland, was so much affected by the change in her husband’s dispositions, that she survived but a short time. In twelve months after the King followed her, and left the throne to his son Sigismund, then King of Poland. Charles of Sudermania, who governed the kingdom in the Sovereign’s absence, usurped the crown, and his crime was sanctioned by the States, who declared Sigismund’s right to the throne null and void, on account of his religion. Charles, therefore, being settled on the throne, established Lutheranism in Sweden. He was succeeded by his son, Gustavus Adolphus, one of the greatest enemies Catholicity had either in Sweden or Germany; but his daughter Christina renounced the throne, sooner than give up the faith she embraced, and lived and died in the Catholic Church. She left the kingdom to Charles Gustavus, her cousin, who reigned for six years, and transmitted it to his son, Charles V., and to the present day no other religion but Lutheranism is publicly professed in Sweden (23).


25. Denmark and Norway underwent a similar misfortune with Sweden. Idolatry was predominant in Denmark till the year 826, when the Catholic religion was established by Regnor I., and continued to be the only religion of the kingdom, till in 1523 Lutheranism was introduced by Christian II. The judgment of God, however, soon fell on him, as he was dethroned by his subjects, and banished, with all his family. His uncle, Frederick, was chosen to succeed him. He gave liberty to the Protestants to preach their doctrine, and to his subjects to follow it. Not, however, content with this, he soon began a cruel persecution against the Bishops, and against every Catholic who defended his religion, and many sealed their religion with their blood. This impious Monarch met an awfully sudden death while he was banqueting on Good Friday, and was succeeded by Christian III., who completed the final separation of Denmark from the Catholic Church. Thus in a short time Lutheranism became dominant in these kingdoms, and continues to hold its sway there. There are many Calvinistic congregations in Denmark, as Christian permitted the Scotch Presbyterians to found churches there. There are also some Catholics, but they were obliged to assemble privately for the Holy Sacrifice, and even now, though the spirit of the age is opposed to persecution, they labour under many restraints and disabilities. Norway, till lately, and Iceland at the present day, belongs to Denmark, and Lutheranism is likewise the religion of these countries, though the people, especially in the country parts, preserve many Catholic traditions, but they were till lately destitute of Priests and sacrifice.* In Lapland, some Pagans remain as yet, who adore the spirits of the woods, and fire, and water; they have no Catholic Missioner to instruct them. There are, indeed, but few Catholics altogether in the Northern kingdoms. Formerly, the Dominicans, Franciscans, Carthusians, Cistercians, and Brigittines, had Convents there, but now all have disappeared (24).



(1) Nat. Alex. sec. 14, n. 4; Varill. t. 1, l. 4, dalla, . 175; Van Ranst, p. 304
(2) Nat. Alex. loc. cit.; Van Ranst, p. 205.
(3) Hermant, c. 230, 231; Van Ranst, loc. cit.
(4) Nat. Alex. t. 9, sec. 4, n. 9, ex Sleidano, I 6; Van Ranst, q. 306; Hermant, t. 2, c. 244.
(5) Van Ranst, p. 306; Nat. Alex, loc. cit. n. 10.
(6) Varillas, t. 1, p. 306; Hermant, t. 2, c. 243.
(7) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. sec. 4, n. 11; Van Ranst, P . 307..
(8) Nat. Alex. loc. cit, n. 11; Hermant, c. 244.
(9) Varillas, t.l,l. 10, p. 445, coll 1.
(10) Nat. Alex. sec. 4, n. 10, in fin. ex Cochlæo in Act. Lutheri & Sleidano, l. 7; Van Ranst, p. 307.
(11) Nat. Alex. sec. 4, n. 13; Hermant, t. 2, c. 245
(12) Van Ranst, p. 307; Nat. Alex, t. 19, c. 10, sec. 4, n. 1.
(13) Nat. Alex. loc. cit.
(14) Varillas, t. 1, l 1, p. 530, c. 2.
(15) Cochleus in Actis Lutheri.
(16) Gotti, c. 105, s. 5, n. 7; Van Ranst, p. 308; Bernin. t. 4, sec. 16, c. 5. p.454; Varillas, t;. 2, l. 14,p.34.
(17) Varillas, t. 2, l. 24, p. 366.
(18) Varillas, 1. 25, p. 393.
(19) Varill. t. 2, l. 17, p. 122, & l. 24, p. 364.
(20) Lindan Epist. Roraem in Luther.
(21) Nat. Alex. t. 19, c. 10, art. 5, p, 321
(22) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. c. 10, art. 5.
(23) Historia Relig. Jovet, t. 2, p. 324.
(24) Joves, cit. p. 343.

* KB. Bishops have been appointed lately to Sweden and Norway,

[Stone]

CHAPTER XI. – THE HERESIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

III. – ERRORS OF LUTHER

26. Forty-one Errors of Luther condemned by Leo X.
27. Other Errors taken from his Books.
28. Luther’s Remorse of Conscience.
29. His Abuse of Henry VIII.; his erroneous translation of the New Testament; the Books he rejected.
30. His method of celebrating Mass.
31. His Book against the Sacramentarians, who denied the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.



26. First in order, come the forty-one propositions of Luther, condemned by Leo X. in his Bull Exurge Domine, published in 1520, which is found in the Bullarium of Leo X. (Constit. 40), in Cochleus’s account of Luther’s proceedings, and also in Bernini’s (1) works. They are as follows:

1st – It is a usual, but a heretical opinion, that the Sacraments of the New Law give justifying grace to those who place no hindrance in the way.

2nd – To deny that sin remains in a child after baptism, is, through the mouth of Paul, to trample both on Christ and Paul.

3rd – The tendency to sin (Fomes peccati), although there is no actual sin, delays the soul, after leaving the body, from entering into heaven.

4th  -The imperfect charity of one about to die necessarily induces a great fear, which of itself is enough to make the pains of Purgatory, and excludes from the kingdom.

5th – That the parts of Penance are three Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction; is founded neither in Scripture, nor in the ancient Holy Christian Doctors.

Sixth – Contrition, which is obtained by examination, recollection, and detestation of sins, by which a person recollects his years in the bitterness of his soul, pondering on the grievousness, the multitude, and the foulness of his sins, the loss of eternal beatitude, and the incurring eternal damnation this contrition only makes a man a hypocrite, and a greater sinner.

7th – That proverb is most true, and better than all the doctrine about conditions given as yet : the highest Penance is not to act so again, and the best Penance is a new life.

8th – Presume not by any means to confess venial sins, and not even every wicked sin; for it is impossible that you should know all your mortal sins; and hence, in the primitive Church only these manifestly mortal were confessed.

9th – When we wish clearly to confess everything, we act as if we wished to leave nothing to the mercy of God to pardon.

10th – Sins are not remitted to any one, unless (the Priest remitting them) he believes they are remitted yea, the sin remains, unless he believes it remitted; for the remission of sin and the donation of grace is not enough, but we must also believe it is remitted.

11th – You should on no account trust you are absolved on account of your contrition, but because of the words of Christ: “Whatsoever thou shalt loose.” Hence, I say, trust, if you obtain the Priest’s absolution, and believe strongly you are absolved, and you will be truly absolved, no matter about contrition.

12th – If by impossibility you should confess without contrition, or the Priest should absolve you only in joke, and you, nevertheless, believe you are absolved, you are most certainly absolved.

13th –  In the Sacraments of Penance and the Remission of Sins, the Pope or Bishop does no more than the lowest Priest nay, if a Priest cannot be had, any Christian, even a woman or child, has the same power.

14th – No one ought to answer a Priest that he is contrite, nor ought a Priest to ask such a question.

15th  – They are in great error who approach the Sacrament of the Eucharist with trust, because they have confessed, are not conscious to themselves of any mortal sins, have said the prayers and preparations for Communion all these eat and drink unto themselves judgment; but if they believe and trust, they will then obtain grace : this faith alone makes them pure and worthy.

16th – It seems advisable that the Church, in a General Council, should declare that the laity should communicate under both kinds, and the Bohemians who do so are not heretics, but schismatics.

17th – The treasures of the Church, from which the Pope grants Indulgences, are not the merits of Christ or his Saints.

18th – Indulgences are pious frauds of the faithful, and remission of good works, and are of the number of those things that are lawful, but not expedient.

19th- Indulgences are of no value to those who truly obtain them for the remission of the punishment due to the Divine justice for their actual sins.

20th – They are seduced who believe Indulgences are salutary and useful for the fruit of the spirit.

21st- Indulgences are necessary only for public crimes, and should be granted only to the hardened and impatient.

22nd – For six classes of persons Indulgences are neither useful nor necessary to wit, the dead, those on the point of death, the sick, those who are lawfully impeded, those who have not committed crimes, those who have committed crimes, but not public ones, and those who mend their lives.

23rd – Excommunications are merely external penalties, and do not deprive a man of the common spiritual prayers of the Church.

24th – Christians should be taught rather to love excommunication than to fear it.

25th – The Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter, is not the Vicar of Christ instituted by Christ himself in St. Peter, Vicar over all the Churches of the world.

26th – The word of Christ to St. Peter, ” Whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth,” &c., extended but to what St. Peter himself alone had bound.

27th – It is not certainly in the power of the  Pope or the Church by any means to lay down articles of faith nor laws of morals, nor good works.

28th – If the Pope, with a great part of the Church, should think so and so, although not in error, it is, nevertheless, neither sin nor heresy to think the contrary, especially in a matter not necessary to salvation, until by a General Council one thing is rejected and the other approved.

29th – We have a way open to us for weakening the authority of Councils, and freely contradicting their acts, and judging their decrees, by freely confessing whatever appears true, no matter whether approved or condemned by any Council.

30th  – Some of the articles of John Huss, condemned in the Council of Constance, are most Christian, most true, and most Evangelical, such as not even the universal Church could condemn.

31st – The just man sins in every good work.

32nd -A good work, be it never so well performed, is a venial sin.

33rd – It is against the will of the spirit to burn heretics.

34th - To fight against the Turks is to oppose the will of God, who punishes our iniquities through them.

35th- No man can be certain that he is not in a constant state of mortal sin on account of the most hidden vice of pride.

36th – Free will after sin is a matter of name alone, and while one does what is in him, he sins mortally.

37th – Purgatory cannot be proved from the Holy Scriptures contained in the Canon of Scripture.

38th – The souls in Purgatory are not sure of their salvation at least all of them; nor is it proved by reason or Scripture that they are beyond the state of merit or of increasing charity.

39th -The souls in Purgatory continually sin, as long as they seek relief and dread their punishment.

40th – Souls freed from Purgatory by the suffrages of the living, enjoy a less share of beatitude than if they satisfied the Divine justice themselves.

41st – Ecclesiastical Prelates and secular Princes would do no wrong if they abolished the mendicant Orders.



27. Besides the errors here enumerated and condemned by the Bull, there are many others mentioned and enumerated by Noel Alexander, and Cardinal Gotti (2), extracted from various works of Luther, as from the treatise ” De Indulgentiis,” ” De Reformatione,” ” Respon. ad lib. Catharini,” ” De Captivitate Babilonica,” ” Contra Latomum,” ” De Missa privata,” ” Contra Episc. Ordinem,” ” Contra Henricum VIII. Regem,” “Novi Testamenti Translatio,” ” De Formula Missæ et Communionis,” ” Ad Waldenses, &c.,” ” Contra Carlostadium,” ” De Servo arbitro,” ” Contra Anabaptistas,” and other works, printed in Wittemberg, in several volumes. Here are some of his most remarkable errors:

1st – A Priest, though he does it in mockery or in jest, still both validly baptizes and absolves.

2nd – It is a foul error for any one to imagine he can make satisfaction for his sins, which God gratuitously pardons.

3rd – Baptism does not take away all sin.

4th – Led astray by wicked Doctors, we think we are free from sin, by Baptism and contrition; also that good works are available for increasing merit, and satisfying for sin.

5th – Those who have made it a precept, obliging under mortal sin to communicate at Easter, have sinned grievously themselves.

6th – It is not God, but the Pope, who commands auricular confession to a Priest. Whoever wishes to receive the Holy Sacrament, should receive it entire (that is under both kinds), or abstain from it altogether.

7th – The right of interpreting Scriptures is equal in the laity as in the learned.

8th – The Roman Church in the time of St. Gregory was not above other Churches.

9th – God commands impossibilities to man.

10th – God requires supreme perfection from every Christian.

11th  – There are no such things as Evangelical Counsels; they are all Precepts.

12th – We should give greater faith to a layman, having the authority of Scripture, than to a Pope, a Council, or even to the Church.

13th – Peter as not the Prince of the Apostles.

14th – The Pope is the Vicar of Christ by human right alone.

15th – A sin is venial, not by its own nature, but by the mercy of God.

16th – I believe a Council and the Church never errs in matters of Faith, but as to the rest, it is not necessary they should be infallible.

17th  – The primacy of the Roman Pontiff is not of Divine right.

18th – There are not Seven Sacraments, and for the present there should only be established Baptism, Penance, and the Bread.

19th - We can believe, without heresy, that real bread is present on the altar.

20th – The Gospel does not permit the Mass to be a sacrifice.

21st – The Mass is nothing else but the words of Christ: "Take and eat, &c.,” the promise of Christ.

22nd – It is a dangerous error to call Penance, and believe it to be, the plank after shipwreck.

23rd – It impious to assert that the Sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, unless we should say that when there is undoubted faith, they confer grace.

24t – All vows, both of Religious Orders and of good works, should be abolished.

25th-  It is sufficient for a brother to confess to a brother, for to all Christians that were, has been addressed : ” Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth.”

26th – Bishops have not the right of reserving cases.

27th – A change of life is true satisfaction.

28th – There is no reason why Confirmation should be reckoned among the Sacraments.

29th – Matrimony is not a Sacrament.

30th – Impediments of Spiritual affinity, of crime, and of order, are but human comments.

31st – The Sacrament of Orders was invented by the Pope’s Church.

32nd – The Council of Constance erred, and many things were rashly determined on, such as, that the Divine essence neither generates nor is generated, that the soul is the substantial form of the human body.

33rd- All Christians are Priests, and have the same power in the words and Sacraments.

34th – Extreme Unction is not a Sacrament; there are only two Sacraments, Baptism and the Bread.

35th – The Sacrament of Penance is nothing also, but a way and return to Baptism.

36th - Antecedent grace is that movement which is made in us without us, not without our active and vital concurrence (as a stone which is merely passive to physical acts), but without our free and indifferent action. It was thus Luther explained efficacious grace, and on this he founded his system, that the will of a man, both for good and evil, is operated upon by necessity; saying, that by grace a necessity is induced into the will, not by coaction, for the will acts spontaneously, but by necessity; and in another place, he says, that by sin the will has lost its liberty, not that liberty which Theologians call a coactione, but, a necessitate, it has lost its indifference.


28. In his book on the Sacrifice of the Mass, we may perceive how remorse torments him. ” How often,” he says, ” has my heart beat, reprehending me Are you always wise ? Do all others err ? Have so many centuries passed in ignorance ? How will it be if you are in error, and you lead so many along with you to damnation ? But at length Christ (the devil he should have said) confirmed me.”


29. In the year 1522, Henry VIII. wrote a book in defence of the Seven Sacraments. Luther, answering him, calls him a fool, says he will trample on the crowned blasphemer, and that his own doctrines are from heaven. In the same year, he published his German translation of the New Testament, in which learned Catholics discover a thousand errors; he rejects altogether the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews, the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, and the Apocalypse; he made many changes after the first edition, no less than thirty-three, in the Gospel of St. Matthew alone. In the words of St. Paul, chap, iii, v. 3, ” For we account a man to be justified by Faith without the works of the law,” he adds the word alone, ” by Faith alone.” In the Diet of Augsburg, some one said to him, that the Catholics spoke very loudly of this interpretation, when he made that arrogant answer : ” If your Papist prattles any more about this word alone, tell him that Doctor Martin Luther wishes it to be so; sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas I wish so, I order so, let my will be sufficient reason for it.”


30. In the year 1523, he composed his book, ” De Formula Missæ et Communionis ;” he abolished the Introits of the Sundays, all the Festivals of Saints, with the exception of the Purification and Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin; he retained the Kyrie, the Gloria, and one Collect, the Epistle, the Gospel, and the Nicene Creed, but all in the vulgar tongue; he then passed on to the Preface, omitting all the rest; he then says : “Who, the day before he suffered,” &c., as in the Catholic Sacrifice of the Mass, but the words of the Consecration are chaunted as loud as the Pater Noster, that they may be heard by the people. After the Consecration, the Sanctus is sung, and the Benedictus qui venit, said; the bread and the chalice is elevated, immediately after the Pater Noster is said, without any other prayer; then the Pax Domini, &c. The communion follows, and while that is going on, the Agnus Dei is sung; he approves of the Orationes Domine Jesu, &c., and Corpus D. N. J. C., custodiat, &c. He allows the Communion to be sung, but in place of the last Collect, chaunts the prayer, Quod ore sumpsimus, &c., and instead of the Ite Missa est, says Benedicamus Domine. He gives the chalice to all, permits the use of vestments, but without any blessing, and prohibits private Masses. To prepare for Communion, he says, Confession may be permitted as useful, but it is not necessary. He allows Matins to be said, with three lessons, the Hours, Vespers, and Complin.


31. In the year 1525, Carlostad attacked the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Sacrament, saying that the word this did not refer to the bread, but to the body of Christ crucified. Luther opposed him in his book, ” Contra Prophetas sen Fanaticos ;” in this he first speaks of Images, and says that in the law of Moses it was Images of the Deity alone which were prohibited; he before admitted the Images of the Saints and the Cross. Speaking of the Sacrament he says, by the word hoc, this, the bread is pointed out, and that Christ is truly and carnally in the supper. The bread and the body are united in the bread, and (speaking of the Incarnation) as man is God, so the bread is called his body and the body bread. Thus Luther falsely constitutes a second hypostatic union between the bread and the body of Christ. Hospinian quotes a sermon Luther preached against the Sacramentarians, where, speaking of the peace they wished to have established, if the Lutherans would grant them the liberty to deny the Real Presence, he says: ” Cursed be such concord, which tears asunder and despises the Church.”

He then derides their false interpretation of the words, ” This is my body.” He commences with Zuinglius, who says the word is is the same as signifies. ” We have the Scripture,” says Luther, ” which says, This is my body; but is there any place in the Scriptures where it is written, This signifies my body.” He then ridicules the interpretation of the others. ” Carlostad,” he says, ” distorts the word this; Ecolampadius tortures the word body; others transpose the word this, and say, my body which shall be delivered for you is this; others say, that which is given for you, this is my body; others maintain the text, this is my body, for my commemoration; and others again say, this is not an article of Faith.” Returning, then, on Ecolampadius, who said it was blasphemous to assert that God was kneaded, baked, and made of bread, he retorts : ” It would also, I suppose, be blasphemous to say God was made man that it was most insulting to the Divine Majesty to be crucified by wicked men and concludes, by ” saying : ” The  Sacramentarians prepare the way for denial of all the articles of Faith, and they already begin to believe nothing.” Speaking of Transubstantiation, he says : ” It makes but little difference for any one to believe the bread to remain or not to remain in the Eucharist, if he believes in Transubstantiation.” In an agreement made with Bucer, at Wittemberg, in 1526, he granted that the body and blood of Christ remained in the Sacrament only while it was received.



(1) Bernin. t. 4, sec. 16, c. 2, p. 285.
(2) Nat. Alex. t. 19, art, 11, sec. 2; Gotti, c, 108, sec. 4; Tournelly, Comp, Thol. t. 5, p. 1, diss. 5, art. 2.