The
History of Protestantism |
| Chapter 1 | . . . | PROTESTANTISM Protestantism — The Seed of Arts, Letters, Free States, etc. — Its History a Grand Drama — Its Origin — Outside Humanity — A Great Creative Power — Protestantism Revived Christianity. |
| Chapter 2 | . . . | DECLENSION OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH Early Triumphs of the Truth — Causes — The Fourth Century — Early Simplicity lost — The Church remodeled on the Pattern of the Empire — Disputes regarding Easter-day — Descent of the Gothic Nations — Introduction of Pagan Rites into the Church — Acceleration of Corruption — Inability of the World all at once to receive the Gospel in its greatness. |
| Chapter 3 | . . . | DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY FROM THE TIMES OF CONSTANTINE
TO THOSE OF HILDEBRAND. Imperial Edicts — Prestige of Rome — Fall of the Western Empire — The Papacy seeks and finds a New Basis of Power — Christ's Vicar — Conversion of Gothic Nations — Pepin and Charlemagne — The Lombards and the Saracens — Forgeries and False Decretals — Election of the Roman Pontiff. |
| Chapter 4 | . . . | DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY FROM GREGORY VII. TO BONIFACE
VIII. The Wax of Investitures — Gregory VII. and Henry IV. — The Miter Triumphs over the Empire — Noon of the Papacy under Innocent III. — Continued to Boniface VIII. — First and Last Estate of the Roman Pastors Contrasted — Seven Centuries of Continuous Success — Interpreted by Some as a Proof that the Papacy is Divine — Reasons explaining this Marvelous Success — Eclipsed by the Gospel's Progress |
| Chapter 5 | . . . | MEDIAEVAL PROTESTANT WITNESSES. Ambrose of Milan — His Diocese — His Theology — Rufinus, Presbyter of Aquileia — Laurentius of Milan — The Bishops of the Grisons — Churches of Lombardy in Seventh and Eighth Centuries — Claude in the Ninth Century — His Labors — Outline of his Theology — His Doctrine of the Eucharist — His Battle against Images — His Views on the Roman Primacy — Proof thence arising — Councils in France approve his Views — Question of the Services of the Roman Church to the Western Nations. |
| Chapter 6 | . . . | THE WALDENSES — THEIR VALLEYS Submission of the Churches of Lombardy to Rome — The Old Faith maintained in the Mountains — The Waldensian Churches — Question of their Antiquity — Approach to their Mountains — Arrangement of their Valleys — Picture of blended Beauty and Grandeur. |
| Chapter 7 | . . . | THE WALDENSES — THEIR MISSIONS AND MARTYRDOMS Their Synod and College — Their Theological Tenets — Romaunt Version of the New Testament — The Constitution of their Church — Their Missionary Labors — Wide Diffusion of their Tenets — The Stone Smiting the Image. |
| Chapter 8 | . . . | THE PAULICIANS The Paulicians the Protesters against the Eastern, as the Waldenses against the Western Apostasy — Their Rise in A.D. 653 — Constantine of Samosata-Their Tenets Scriptural — Constantine Stoned to Death — Simeon Succeeds — Is put to Death — Sergius — His Missionary Travels — Terrible Persecutions-The Paulicians Rise in Arms — Civil War — The Government Triumphs — Dispersion of the Paulicians over the West — They Blend with the Waldenses — Movement in the South of Europe — The Troubadour, the Barbe, and the Bible, the Three Missionaries — Innocent III. — The Crusades. |
| Chapter 9 | . . . | CRUSADES AGAINST THE ALBIGENSES Rome founded on the Dogma of Persecution — Begins to act upon it — Territory of the Albigenses — Innocent III. — Persecuting Edicts of Councils — Crusade preached by the Monks of Citeaux — First Crusade launched — Paradise — Simon de Montfort — Raymond of Toulouse — His Territories Overrun and Devastated — Crusade against Raymond Roger of Beziers — Burning of his Towns — Massacre of their Inhabitants — Destruction of the Albigenses. |
| Chapter 10 | . . . | ERECTION OF TRIBUNAL OF INQUISITION The Crusades still continued in the Albigensian Territory — Council of Toulouse, 1229 — Organizes the Inquisition — Condemns the Reading of the Bible in the Vernacular — Gregory IX., 1233, further perfects the Organization of the Inquisition, and commits it to the Dominicans — The Crusades continued under the form of the Inquisition — These Butcheries the deliberate Act of Rome — Revived and Sanctioned by her in our own day — Protestantism of Thirteenth Century Crushed — Not alone — Final Ends. |
| Chapter 11 | . . . | PROTESTANTS BEFORE PROTESTANTISM Berengarius— The First Opponent of Transubstantiation — Numerous Councils Condemn him — His Recantation — The Martyrs of Orleans — Their Confession — Their Condemnation and Martyrdom — Peter de Bruys and the Petrobrusians — Henri — Effects of his Eloquence — St. Bernard sent to Oppose him — Henri Apprehended — His Fate unknown — Arnold of Brescia — Birth and Education — His Picture of his Times — His Scheme of Reform — Inveighs against the Wealth of the Hierarchy — His Popularity — Condemned by Innocent II. and Banished from Italy — Returns on the Pope's Death — Labors Ten Years in Rome — Demands the Separation of the Temporal and Spiritual Authority — Adrian IV. — He Suppresses the Movement — Arnold is Burned |
| Chapter 12 | . . . | ABELARD, AND RISE OF MODERN SKEPTICISM Number and Variety of Sects — One Faith — Who gave us the Bible? — Abelard of Paris — His Fame — Father of Modern Skepticism — The Parting of the Ways — Since Abelard three currents in Christendom — The Evangelical, the Ultramontane, the Skeptical. |
BOOK FIRST
PROGRESS FROM THE FIRST TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER 1 Back to Top
PROTESTANTISM
Protestantism — The Seed of Arts, Letters, Free States, etc. — Its History a
Grand Drama — Its Origin — Outside Humanity — A Great Creative Power —
Protestantism Revived Christianity.
THE History of Protestantism, which we propose to write, is
no mere history of dogmas. The teachings of Christ are the seeds; the modern Christendom,
with its new life, is the goodly tree which has sprung from them. We shall speak of the
seed and then of the tree, so small at its beginning, but destined one day to cover the
earth.
How that seed was deposited in the soil; how the tree grew up and flourished despite the
furious tempests that warred around it; how, century after century, it lifted its top
higher in heaven, and spread its boughs wider around, sheltering liberty, nursing letters,
fostering art, and gathering a fraternity of prosperous and powerful nations around it, it
will be our business in the following pages to show. Meanwhile we wish it to be noted that
this is what we understand by the Protestantism on the history of which we are now
entering. Viewed thus — and any narrower view would be untrue alike to philosophy and
to fact — the History of Protestantism is the record of one of the grandest dramas of
all time. It is true, no doubt, that Protestantism, strictly viewed, is simply a
principle. It is not a policy. It is not an empire, having its fleets and armies, its
officers and tribunals, wherewith to extend its dominion and make its authority be obeyed.
It is not even a Church with its hierarchies, and synods and edicts; it is simply a
principle. But it is the greatest of all principles. It is a creative power. Its plastic
influence is all-embracing. It penetrates into the heart and renews the individual. It
goes down to the depths and, by its omnipotent but noiseless energy, vivifies and
regenerates society. It thus becomes the creator of all that is true, and lovely, and
great; the founder of free kingdoms, and the mother of pure churches. The globe itself it
claims as a stage not too wide for the manifestation of its beneficent action; and the
whole domain of terrestrial affairs it deems a sphere not too vast to fill with its
spirit, and rule by its law.
Whence came this principle? The name Protestantism is very recent: the thing itself is
very ancient. The term Protestantism is scarcely older than 350 years. It dates from the
protest which the Lutheran princes gave in to the Diet of Spires in 1529. Restricted to
its historical signification, Protestantism is purely negative. It only defines the
attitude taken up, at a great historical era, by one party in Christendom with reference
to another party. But had this been all, Protestantism would have had no history. Had it
been purely negative, it would have begun and ended with the men who assembled at the
German town in the year already specified. The new world that has come out of it is the
proof that at the bottom of this protest was a great principle which it has pleased
Providence to fertilize, and make the seed of those grand, beneficent, and enduring
achievements which have made the past three centuries in many respects the most eventful
and wonderful in history. The men who handed in this protest did not wish to create a mere
void. If they disowned the creed and threw off the yoke of Rome, it was that they might
plant a purer faith and restore the government of a higher Law. They replaced the
authority of the Infallibility with the authority of the Word of God. The long and dismal
obscuration of centuries they dispelled, that the twin stars of liberty and knowledge
might shine forth, and that, conscience being unbound, the intellect might awake from its
deep somnolency, and human society, renewing its youth, might, after its halt of a
thousand years, resume its march towards its high goal.
We repeat the question — Whence came this principle? And we ask our readers to mark
well the answer, for it is the key-note to the whole of our vast subject, and places us,
at the very outset, at the springs of that long narration on which we are now entering.
Protestantism is not solely the outcome of human progress; it is no mere principle of
perfectibility inherent in humanity, and ranking as one of its native powers, in virtue of
which when society becomes corrupt it can purify itself, and when it is arrested in its
course by some external force, or stops from exhaustion, it can recruit its energies and
set forward anew on its path. It is neither the product of the individual reason, nor the
result of the joint thought and energies of the species. Protestantism is a principle
which has its origin outside human society: it is a Divine graft on the intellectual and
moral nature of man, whereby new vitalities and forces are introduced into it, and the
human stem yields henceforth a nobler fruit. It is the descent of a heaven-born influence
which allies itself with all the instincts and powers of the individual, with all the laws
and cravings of society, and which, quickening both the individual and the social being
into a new life, and directing their efforts to nobler objects, permits the highest
development of which humanity is capable, and the fullest possible accomplishment of all
its grand ends. In a word, Protestantism is revived Christianity.
CHAPTER 2 Back to Top
DECLENSION OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH
Early Triumphs of the Truth — Causes — The Fourth Century — Early
Simplicity lost — The Church remodeled on the Pattern of the Empire — Disputes
regarding Easter-day — Descent of the Gothic Nations — Introduction of Pagan
Rites into the Church — Acceleration of Corruption — Inability of the World all
at once to receive the Gospel in its greatness.
ALL through, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, the
Lamp of Truth burned dimly in the sanctuary of Christendom. Its flame often sank low, and
appeared about to expire, yet never did it wholly go out. God remembered His covenant with
the light, and set bounds to the darkness. Not only had this heaven-kindled lamp its
period of waxing and waning, like those luminaries that God has placed on high, but like
them, too, it had its appointed circuit to accomplish. Now it was on the cities of
Northern Italy that its light was seen to fall; and now its rays illumined the plains of
Southern France. Now it shone along the course of the Danube and the Moldau, or tinted the
pale shores of England, or shed its glory upon the Scottish Hebrides. Now it was on the
summits of the Alps that it was seen to burn, spreading a gracious morning on the
mountain-tops, and giving promise of the sure approach of day. And then, anon, it would
bury itself in the deep valleys of Piedmont, and seek shelter from the furious tempests of
persecution behind the great rocks and the eternal snows of the everlasting hills. Let us
briefly trace the growth of this truth to the days of Wicliffe.
The spread of Christianity during the first three centuries was rapid and extensive. The
main causes that contributed to this were the translation of the Scriptures into the
languages of the Roman world, the fidelity and zeal of the preachers of the Gospel, and
the heroic deaths of the martyrs. It was the success of Christianity that first set limits
to its progress. It had received a terrible blow, it is true, under Diocletian. This,
which was the most terrible of all the early persecutions, had, in the belief of the
Pagans, utterly exterminated the "Christian superstition" So far from this, it
had but afforded the Gospel an opportunity of giving to the world a mightier proof of its
divinity. It rose from the stakes and massacres of Diocletian, to begin a new career, in
which it was destined to triumph over the empire which thought that it had crushed it.
Dignities and wealth now flowed in upon its ministers and disciples, and according to the
uniform testimony of all the early historians, the faith which had maintained its purity
and rigor in the humble sanctuaries and lowly position of the first age, and amid the
fires of its pagan persecutors, became corrupt and waxed feeble amid the gorgeous temples
and the worldly dignities which imperial favor had lavished upon it.
From the fourth century the corruptions of the Christian Church continued to make marked
and rapid progress. The Bible began to be hidden from the people. And in proportion as the
light, which is the surest guarantee of liberty, was withdrawn, the clergy usurped
authority over the members of the Church. The canons of councils were put in the room of
the one infallible Rule of Faith; and thus the first stone was laid in the foundations of
"Babylon, that great city, that made all nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of
her fornication." The ministers of Christ began to affect titles of dignity, and to
extend their authority and jurisdiction to temporal matters, forgetful that an office
bestowed by God, and serviceable to the highest interests of society, can never fail of
respect when filled by men of exemplary character, sincerely devoted to the discharge of
its duties. The beginning of this matter seemed innocent enough. To obviate pleas before
the secular tribunals, ministers were frequently asked to arbitrate in disputes between
members of the Church, and Constantine made a law confirming all such decisions in the
consistories of the clergy, and shutting out the review of their sentences by the civil
judges.[1] Proceeding in this fatal path,
the next step was to form the external polity of the Church upon the model of the civil
government. Four vice-kings or prefects governed the Roman Empire under Constantine, and
why, it was asked, should not a similar arrangement be introduced into the Church?
Accordingly the Christian world was divided into four great dioceses; over each diocese
was set a patriarch, who governed the whole clergy of his domain, and thus arose four
great thrones or princedoms in the House of God. Where there had been a brotherhood, there
was now a hierarchy; and from the lofty chair of the Patriarch, a gradation of rank, and a
subordination of authority and office, ran down to the lowly state and contracted sphere
of the Presbyter [2] It
was splendor of rank, rather than the fame of learning and the luster of virtue, that
henceforward conferred distinction on the ministers of the Church.
Such an arrangement was not fitted to nourish spirituality of mind, or humility of
disposition, or peacefulness of temper. The enmity and violence of the persecutor, the
clergy had no longer cause to dread; but the spirit of faction which now took possession
of the dignitaries of the Church awakened vehement disputes and fierce contentions, which
disparaged the authority and sullied the glory of the sacred office. The emperor himself
was witness to these unseemly spectacles. "I entreat you," we find him
pathetically saying to the fathers of the Council of Nice, "beloved ministers of God,
and servants of our Savior Jesus Christ, take away the cause of our dissension and
disagreement, establish peace among yourselves."[3]
While the, "living oracles" were neglected, the zeal of the clergy began
to spend itself upon rites and ceremonies borrowed from the pagans. These were multiplied
to such a degree, that Augustine complained that they were "less tolerable than the
yoke of the Jews under the law."[4] At
this period the Bishops of Rome wore costly attire, gave sumptuous banquets, and when they
went abroad were carried in litters[5] They
now began to speak with an authoritative voice, and to demand obedience from all the
Churches. Of this the dispute between the Eastern and Western Churches respecting Easter
is an instance in point. The Eastern Church, following the Jews, kept the feast on the
14th day of the month Nisan [6] —
the day of the Jewish Passover. The Churches of the West, and especially that of Rome,
kept Easter on the Sabbath following the 14th day of Nisan. Victor, Bishop of Rome,
resolved to put an end to the controversy, and accordingly, sustaining himself sole judge
in this weighty point, he commanded all the Churches to observe the feast on the same day
with himself. The Churches of the East, not aware that the Bishop of Rome had authority to
command their obedience in this or in any other matter, kept Easter as before; and for
this flagrant contempt, as Victor accounted it, of his legitimate authority, he
excommunicated them.[7] They
refused to obey a human ordinance, and they were shut out from the kingdom of the Gospel.
This was the first peal of those thunders which were in after times to roll so often and
so terribly from the Seven Hills.
Riches, flattery, deference, continued to wait upon the Bishop of Rome. The emperor
saluted him as Father; foreign Churches sustained him as judge in their disputes;
heresiarchs sometimes fled to him for sanctuary; those who had favors to beg extolled his
piety, or affected to follow his customs; and it is not surprising that his pride and
ambition, fed by continual incense, continued to grow, till at last the presbyter of Rome,
from being a vigilant pastor of a single congregation, before whom he went in and out,
teaching them from house to house, preaching to them the Word of Life, serving the Lord
with all humility in many tears and temptations that befell him, raised his seat above his
equals, mounted the throne of the patriarch, and exercised lordship over the heritage of
Christ. The gates of the sanctuary once forced, the stream of corruption continued to flow
with ever-deepening volume. The declensions in doctrine and worship already introduced had
changed the brightness of the Church's morning into twilight; the descent of the Northern
nations, which, beginning in the fifth, continued through several successive centuries,
converted that twilight into night. The new tribes had changed their country, but not
their superstitions; and, unhappily, there was neither zeal nor vigor in the Christianity
of the age to effect their instruction and their genuine conversion. The Bible had been
withdrawn; in the pulpit fable had usurped the place of truth; holy lives, whose silent
eloquence might have won upon the barbarians, were rarely exemplified; and thus, instead
of the Church dissipating the superstitions that now encompassed her like a cloud, these
superstitions all but quenched her own light. She opened her gates to receive the new
peoples as they were. She sprinkled them with the baptismal water; she inscribed their
names in her registers; she taught them in their invocations to repeat the titles of the
Trinity; but the doctrines of the Gospel, which alone can enlighten the understanding,
purify the heart, and enrich the life with virtue, she was little careful to inculcate
upon them. She folded them within her pale, but they were scarcely more Christian than
before, while she was greatly less so. From the sixth century down-wards Christianity was
a mongrel system, made up of pagan rites revived from classic times, of superstitions
imported from the forests of Northern Germany, and of Christian beliefs and observances
which continued to linger in the Church from primitive and purer times. The inward power
of religion was lost; and it was in vain that men strove to supply its place by the
outward form. They nourished their piety not at the living fountains of truth, but with
the "beggarly elements" of ceremonies and relics, of consecrated lights and holy
vestments. Nor was it Divine knowledge only that was contemned; men forbore to cultivate
letters, or practice virtue. Baronius confesses that in the sixth century few in Italy
were skilled in both Greek and Latin. Nay, even Gregory the Great acknowledged that he was
ignorant of Greek. "The main qualifications of the clergy were, that they should be
able to read well, sing their matins, know the Lord's Prayer, psalter, forms of exorcism,
and understand how to compute the times of the sacred festivals. Nor were they very
sufficient for this, if we may believe the account some have given of them. Musculus says
that many of them never saw the Scriptures in all their lives. It would seem incredible,
but it is delivered by no less an authority than Amama, that an Archbishop of Mainz,
lighting upon a Bible and looking into it, expressed himself thus: 'Of a truth I do not
know what book this is, but I perceive everything in it is against us.'"[8]
Apostasy is like the descent of heavy bodies, it proceeds with ever-accelerating
velocity. First, lamps were lighted at the tombs of the martyrs; next, the Lord's Supper
was celebrated at their graves; next, prayers were offered for them and to them;[9] next, paintings and images began
to disfigure the walls, and corpses to pollute the floors of the churches. Baptism, which
apostles required water only to dispense, could not be celebrated without white robes and
chrism, milk, honey, and salt.[10] Then
came a crowd of church officers whose names and numbers are in striking contrast to the
few and simple orders of men who were employed in the first propagation of Christianity.
There were sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, readers, choristers, and porters; and as work
must be found for this motley host of laborers, there came to be fasts and exorcisms;
there were lamps to be lighted, altars to be arranged, and churches to be consecrated;
there was the Eucharist to be carried to the dying; and there were the dead to be buried,
for which a special order of men was set apart. When one looked back to the simplicity of
early times, it could not but amaze one to think what a cumbrous array of curious
machinery and costly furniture was now needed for the service of Christianity. Not more
stinging than true was the remark that "when the Church had golden chalices she had
wooden priests."
So far, and through these various stages, had the declension of the Church proceeded. The
point she had now reached may be termed an epochal one. From the line on which she stood
there was no going back; she must advance into the new and unknown regions before her,
though every step would carry her farther from the simple form and vigorous life of her
early days. She had received a new impregnation from an alien principle, the same, in
fact, from which had sprung the great systems that covered the earth before Christianity
arose. This principle could not be summarily extirpated; it must run its course, it must
develop itself logically; and having, in the course of centuries, brought its fruits to
maturity, it would then, but not till then, perish and pass away.
Looking back at this stage to the change which had come over the Church, we cannot fail to
see that its deepest originating cause must be sought, in the inability of the world to
receive the Gospel in all its greatness. It was a boon too mighty and too free to be
easily understood or credited by man. The angels in their midnight song in the vale of
Bethlehem had defined it briefly as sublimely, "goodwill to man." Its greatest
preacher, the Apostle Paul, had no other definition to give of it. It was not even a rule
of life but "grace," the "grace of God," and therefore sovereign, and
boundless. To man fallen and undone the Gospel offered a full forgiveness, and a complete
spiritual renovation, issuing at length in the inconceivable and infinite felicity of the
Life Eternal. But man's narrow heart could not enlarge itself to God's vast beneficence. A
good so immense, so complete in its nature, and so boundless in its extent, he could not
believe that God would bestow without money and without price; there must be conditions or
qualifications. So he reasoned. And hence it is that the moment inspired men cease to
address us, and that their disciples and scholars take their place — men of apostolic
spirit and doctrine, no doubt, but without the direct knowledge of their predecessors
— we become sensible of a change; an eclipse has passed upon the exceeding glory of
the Gospel. As we pass from Paul to Clement, and from Clement to the Fathers that
succeeded him, we find the Gospel becoming less of grace and more of merit. The light
wanes as we travel down the Patristic road, and remove ourselves farther from the
Apostolic dawn. It continues for some time at least to be the same Gospel, but its glory
is shorn, its mighty force is abated; and we are reminded of the change that seems to pass
upon the sun, when after contemplating him in a tropical hemisphere, we see him in a
northern sky, where his slanting beams, forcing their way through mists and vapors, are
robbed of half their splendor. Seen through the fogs of the Patristic age, the Gospel
scarcely looks the same which had burst upon the world without a cloud but a few centuries
before.
This disposition — that of making God less free in His gift, and man less dependent
in the reception of it: the desire to introduce the element of merit on the side of man,
and the element of condition on the side of God — operated at last in opening the
door for the pagan principle to creep back into the Church. A. change of a deadly and
subtle kind passed upon the worship. Instead of being the spontaneous thanksgiving and joy
of the soul, that no more evoked or repaid the blessings which awakened that joy than the
odors which the flowers exhale are the cause of their growth, or the joy that kindles in
the heart of man when the sun rises is the cause of his rising — worship, we say,
from being the expression of the soul's emotions, was changed into a rite, a rite akin to
those of the Jewish temples, and still more akin to those of the Greek mythology, a rite
in which lay couched a certain amount of human merit and inherent efficacy, that partly
created, partly applied the blessings with which it stood connected. This was the moment
when the pagan virus inoculated the Christian institution.
This change brought a multitude of others in its train. Worship being transformed into
sacrifice — sacrifice in which was the element of expiation and purification —
the "teaching ministry" was of course converted into a "sacrificing
priesthood." When this had been done, there was no retreating; a boundary had been
reached which could not be recrossed till centuries had rolled away, and transformations
of a more portentous kind than any which had yet taken place had passed upon the Church.
CHAPTER 3 Back to Top
DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY FROM THE TIMES OF CONSTANTINE TO THOSE OF HILDEBRAND.
Imperial Edicts — Prestige of Rome — Fall of the Western Empire — The
Papacy seeks and finds a New Basis of Power — Christ's Vicar — Conversion of
Gothic Nations — Pepin and Charlemagne — The Lombards and the Saracens —
Forgeries and False Decretals — Election of the Roman Pontiff.
BEFORE opening our great theme it may be needful to sketch
the rise and development of the Papacy as a politico-ecclesiastical power. The history on
which we are entering, and which we must rapidly traverse, is one of the most wonderful in
the world. It is scarcely possible to imagine humbler beginnings than those from which the
Papacy arose, and certainly it is not possible to imagine a loftier height than that to
which it eventually climbed. He who was seen in the first century presiding as the humble
pastor over a single congregation, and claiming no rank above his brethren, is beheld in
the twelfth century occupying a seat from which he looks down on all the thrones temporal
and spiritual of Christendom. How, we ask with amazement, was the Papacy able to traverse
the mighty space that divided the humble pastor from the mitered king?
We traced in the foregoing chapter the decay of doctrine and manners within the Church.
Among the causes which contributed to the exaltation of the Papacy this declension may be
ranked as fundamental, seeing it opened the door for other deteriorating influences, and
mightily favored their operation. Instead of "reaching forth to what was
before," the Christian Church permitted herself to be overtaken by the spirit of the
ages that lay behind her. There came an after-growth of Jewish ritualism, of Greek
philosophy, and of Pagan ceremonialism and idolatry; and, as the consequence of this
threefold action, the clergy began to be gradually changed, as already mentioned, from a
"teaching ministry" to a "sacrificing priesthood." This made them no
longer ministers or servants of their fellow-Christians; they took the position of a
caste, claiming to be superior to the laity, invested with mysterious powers, the channels
of grace, and the mediators with God. Thus there arose a hierarchy, assuming to mediate
between God and men.
The hierarchical polity was the natural concomitant of the hierarchical doctrine. That
polity was so consolidated by the time that the empire became Christian, and Constantine
ascended the throne (311), that the Church now stood out as a body distinct from the
State; and her new organization, subsequently received, in imitation of that of the
empire, as stated in the previous chapter, helped still further to define and strengthen
her hierarchical government. Still, the primacy of Rome was then a thing unheard of.
Manifestly the 300 Fathers who assembled (A.D. 325) at Nicaea knew nothing of it, for in
their sixth and seventh canons they expressly recognize the authority of the Churches of
Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and others, each within its own boundaries, even as Rome
had jurisdiction within its limits; and enact that the jurisdiction and privileges of
these Churches shall be retained.[1] Under
Leo the Great (440 — 461) a forward step was taken. The Church of Rome assumed the
form and exercised the sway of an ecclesiastical principality, while her head, in virtue
of an imperial manifesto (445) of Valentinian III., which recognized the Bishop of Rome as
supreme over the Western Church, affected, the authority and pomp of a spiritual
sovereign.
Still further, the ascent of the Bishop of Rome to the supremacy was silently yet
Powerfully aided by that mysterious and subtle influence which appeared to be indigenous
to the soil on which his chair was placed. In an age when the rank of the city determined
the rank of its pastor, it was natural that the Bishop of Rome should hold something of
that pre-eminence among the clergy which Rome held among cities. Gradually the reverence
and awe with which men had regarded the old mistress of the world, began to gather round
the person and the chair of her bishop. It was an age of factions and strifes, and the
eyes of the contending parties naturally turned to the pastor of the Tiber. They craved
his advice, or they submitted their differences to his judgment. These applications the
Roman Bishop was careful to register as acknowledgments of his superiority, and on fitting
occasions he was not forgetful to make them the basis of new and higher claims. The Latin
race, moreover, retained the practical habits for which it had so long been renowned; and
while the Easterns, giving way to their speculative genius, were expending their energies
in controversy, the Western Church was steadily pursuing her onward path, and skillfully
availing herself of everything that could tend to enhance her influence and extend her
jurisdiction.
The removal of the seat of empire from Rome to the splendid city on the Bosphorus,
Constantinople, which the emperor had built with becoming magnificence for his residence,
also tended to enhance the power of the Papal chair. It removed from the side of the Pope
a functionary by whom he was eclipsed, and left him the first person in the old capital of
the world. The emperor had departed, but the prestige of the old city — the fruit of
countless victories, and of ages of dominion — had not departed. The contest which
had been going on for some time among the five great patriarchates — Antioch,
Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome — the question at issue being the
same as that which provoked the contention among the disciples of old, "which was the
greatest," was now restricted to the last two. The city on the Bosphorus was the seat
of government, and the abode of the emperor; this gave her patriarch Powerful claims. But
the city on the banks of the Tiber wielded a mysterious and potent charm over the
imagination, as the heir of her who had been the possessor of all the power, of all the
glory, and of all the dominion of the past; and this vast prestige enabled her patriarch
to carry the day. As Rome was the one city in the earth, so her bishop was the one bishop
in the Church. A century and a half later (606), this pre-eminence was decreed to the
Roman Bishop in an imperial edict of Phocas. Thus, before the Empire of the West fell, the
Bishop of Rome had established substantially his spiritual supremacy. An influence of a
manifold kind, of which not the least part was the prestige of the city and the empire,
had lifted him to this fatal pre-eminence. But now the time has come when the empire must
fall, and we expect to see that supremacy which it had so largely helped to build up fall
with it. But no! The wave of barbarism which rolled in from the North, overwhelming
society and sweeping away the empire, broke harmlessly at the feet of the Bishop of Rome.
The shocks that overturned dynasties and blotted out nationalities, left his power
untouched, his seat unshaken. Nay, it was at that very hour, when society was perishing
around him, that the Bishop of Rome laid anew the foundations of his power, and placed
them where they might remain immovable for all time. He now cast himself on a far stronger
element than any the revolution had swept away. He now claimed to be the successor of
Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and the Vicar of Christ. The canons of Councils, as
recorded in Hardouin, show a stream of decisions from Pope Celestine, in the middle of the
fifth century, to Pope Boniface II. in the middle of the sixth, claiming, directly or
indirectly, this august prerogative.[2] When
the Bishop of Rome placed his chair, with all the prerogatives and dignities vested in it,
upon this ground, he stood no longer upon a merely imperial foundation. Henceforward he
held neither of Caesar nor of Rome; he held immediately of Heaven. What one emperor had
given, another emperor might take away. It did not suit the Pope to hold his office by so
uncertain a tenure. He made haste, therefore, to place his supremacy where no future
decree of emperor, no lapse of years, and no coming revolution could overturn it. He
claimed to rest it upon a Divine foundation; he claimed to be not merely the chief of
bishops and the first of patriarchs, but the vicar Of the Most High God.
With the assertion of this dogma the system of the Papacy was completed essentially and
doctrinally, but not as yet practically. It had to wait the full development of the idea
of vicarship, which was not till the days of Gregory VII. But here have we the embryotic
seed — the vicarship, namely — out of which the vast structure of the Papacy has
sprung. This it is that plants at the center of the system a pseudo-divine jurisdiction,
and places the Pope above all bishops with their flocks, above all king with their
subjects. This it is that gives the Pope two swords. This it is that gives him three
crowns. The day when this dogma was proclaimed was the true birthday of the Popedom. The
Bishop of Rome had till now sat in the seat of Caesar; henceforward he was to sit in the
seat of God. From this time the growth of the Popedom was rapid indeed. The state of
society favored its development. Night had descended upon the world from the North; and in
the universal barbarism, the more prodigious any pretensions were, the more likely were
they to find both belief and submission. The Goths, on arriving in their new settlements,
beheld a religion which was served by magnificent cathedrals, imposing rites, and wealthy
and powerful prelates, presided over by a chief priest, in whose reputed sanctity and
ghostly authority they found again their own chief Druid. These rude warriors, who had
overturned the throne of the Caesars, bowed down before the chair of the Popes. The
evangelization of these tribes was a task of easy accomplishment. The "Catholic
faith," which they began to exchange for their Paganism or Arianism, consisted
chiefly in their being able to recite the names of the objects of their worship, which
they were left to adore with much the same rites as they had practiced in their native
forests. They did not much concern themselves with the study of Christian doctrine, or the
practice of Christian virtue. The age furnished but few manuals of the one, and still
fewer models of the other.
The first of the Gothic princes to enter the Roman communion was Clovis, King of the
Franks. In fulfillment of a vow which he had made on the field of Tolbiac, where he
vanquished the Allemanni, Clovis was baptized in the Cathedral of Rheims (496), with every
circumstance of solemnity which could impress a sense of the awfulness of the rife on the
minds of its rude proselytes. Three thousand of his warlike subjects were baptized along
with him.[3] The Pope styled him "the
eldest son of the Church," a title which was regularly adopted by all the subsequent
Kings of France. When Clovis ascended from the baptismal font he was the only as well as
the eldest son of the Church, for he alone, of all the new chiefs that now governed the
West, had as yet submitted to the baptismal rite.
The threshold once crossed, others were not slow to follow. In the next century, the
sixth, the Burgundians of Southern Gaul, the Visigoths of Spain, the Suevi of Portugal,
and the Anglo-Saxons of Britain entered the pale of Rome. In the seventh century the
disposition was still growing among the princes of Western Europe to submit themselves and
refer their disputes to the Pontiff as their spiritual father. National assemblies were
held twice a year, under the sanction of the bishops. The prelates made use of these
gatherings to procure enactments favorable to the propagation of the faith as held by
Rome. These assemblies were first encouraged, then enjoined by the Pope, who came in this
way to be regarded as a sort of Father or protector of the states of the West. Accordingly
we find Sigismund, King of Burgundy, ordering (554) that all assembly should be held for
the future on the 6th of September every year, "at which time the ecclesiastics are
not so much engrossed with the worldly cares of husbandry."[4] The ecclesiastical conquest of Germany was in this century
completed, and thus the spiritual dominions of the Pope were still farther extended.
In the eighth century there came a moment of supreme peril to Rome. At almost one and the
same time she was menaced by two dangers, which threatened to sweep her out of existence,
but which, in their issue, contributed to strengthen her dominion. On the west the
victorious Saracens, having crossed the Pyrenees and overrun the south of France, were
watering their steeds at the Loire, and threatening to descend upon Italy and plant the
Crescent in the room of the Cross. On the north, the Lombards — who, under Alboin,
had established themselves in Central Italy two centuries before — had burst the
barrier of the Apennines, and were brandishing their swords at the gates of Rome. They
were on the point of replacing Catholic orthodoxy with the creed of Arianism. Having taken
advantage of the iconoclast disputes to throw off the imperial yoke, the Pope could expect
no aid from the Emperor of Constantinople. He turned his eyes to France. The prompt and
powerful interposition of the Frankish arms saved the Papal chair, now in extreme
jeopardy. The intrepid Charles Martel drove back the Saracens (732), and Pepin, the Mayor
of the palace, son of Charles Martel, who had just seized the throne, and needed the Papal
sanction to color his usurpation, with equal promptitude hastened to the Pope's help
(Stephen II.) against the Lombards (754). Having vanquished them, he placed the keys of
their towns upon the altar of St. Peter, and so laid the first foundation of the Pope's
temporal sovereignty. The yet more illustrious son of Pepin, Charlemagne, had to repeat
this service in the Pope's behalf. The Lombards becoming again troublesome, Charlemagne
subdued them a second time. After his campaign he visited Rome (774). The youth of the
city, bearing olive and palm branches, met him at the gates, the Pope and the clergy
received him in the vestibule of St. Peter's, and entering "into the sepulcher where
the bones of the apostles lie," he finally ceded to the pontiff the territories of
the conquered tribes.[5] It
was in this way that Peter obtained his "patrimony," the Church her dowry, and
the Pope his triple crown.
The Pope had now attained two of the three grades of power that constitute his stupendous
dignity. He had made himself a bishop of bishops, head of the Church, and he had become a
crowned monarch. Did this content him? No! He said, "I will ascend the sides of the
mount; I will plant my throne above the stars; I will be as God." Not content with
being a bishop of bishops, and so governing the whole spiritual affairs of Christendom, he
aimed at becoming a king of kings, and so of governing the whole temporal affairs of the
world. He aspired to supremacy, sole, absolute, and unlimited. This alone was wanting to
complete that colossal fabric of power, the Popedom, and towards this the pontiff now
began to strive.
Some of the arts had recourse to in order to grasp the coveted dignity were of an
extraordinary kind. An astounding document, purporting to have been written in the fourth
century, although unheard of till now, was in the year 776 brought out of the darkness in
which it had been so long suffered to remain. It was the "Donation" or Testament
of the Emperor Constantine. Constantine, says the legend, found Sylvester in one of the
monasteries on Mount Soracte, and having mounted him on a mule, he took hold of his bridle
rein, and walking all the way on foot, the emperor conducted Sylvester to Rome, and placed
him upon the Papal throne. But this was as nothing compared with the vast and splendid
inheritance which Constantine conferred on him, as the following quotation from the deed
of gift to which we have referred will show: — "We attribute to the See of Peter
all the dignity, all the glory, all the authority of the imperial power. Furthermore, we
give to Sylvester and to his successors our palace of the Lateran, which is incontestably
the finest palace on the earth; we give him our crown, our miter, our diadem, and all our
imperial vestments; we transfer to him the imperial dignity. We bestow on the holy Pontiff
in free gift the city of Rome, and all the western cities of Italy. To cede precedence to
him, we divest ourselves of our authority over all those provinces, and we withdraw from
Rome, transferring the seat of our empire to Byzantium; inasmuch as it is not proper that
an earthly emperor should preserve the least authority, where God hath established the
head of his religion."[6]
A rare piece of modesty this on the part of the Popes, to keep this invaluable document
beside them for 400 years, and never say a word about it; and equally admirable the policy
of selecting the darkness of the eighth century as the fittest time for its publication.
To quote it is to refute it. It was probably forged a little before A.D. 754. It was
composed to repel the Longobards on the one side, and the Greeks on the other, and to
influence the mind of Pepin. In it, Constantine is made to speak in the Latin of the
eighth century, and to address Bishop Sylvester as Prince of the Apostles, Vicar of
Christ, and as having authority over the four great thrones, not yet set up, of Antioch,
Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. It was probably written by a priest of the
Lateran Church, and it gained its object — that is, it led Pepin to bestow on the
Pope the Exarchate of Ravenna, with twenty towns to furnish oil for the lamps in the Roman
churches.
During more than 600 years Rome impressively cited this deed of gift, inserted it in her
codes, permitted none to question its genuineness, and burned those who refused to believe
in it. The first dawn of light in the sixteenth century sufficed to discover the cheat.
In the following century another document of a like extraordinary character was given to
the world. We refer to the "Decretals of Isidore." These were concocted about
the year 845. They professed to be a collection of the letters, rescripts, and bulls of
the early pastors of the Church of Rome — Anacletus, Clement, and others, down to
Sylvester — the very men to whom the terms "rescript" and "bull"
were unknown. The burden of this compilation was the pontifical supremacy, which it
affirmed had existed from the first age. It was the clumsiest, but the most successful, of
all the forgeries which have emanated from what the Greeks have reproachfully termed
"the native home of inventions and falsifications of documents." The writer, who
professed to be living in the first century, painted the Church of Rome in the
magnificence which she attained only in the ninth; and made the pastors of the first age
speak in the pompous words of the Popes of the Middle Ages. Abounding in absurdities,
contradictions, and anachronisms, it affords a measure of the intelligence of the age that
accepted it as authentic. It was eagerly laid hold of by Nicholas I. to prop up and extend
the fabric of his power. His successors made it the arsenal from which they drew their
weapons of attack against both bishops and kings. It became the foundation of the canon
law, and continues to be so, although there is not now a Popish writer who does not
acknowledge it to be a piece of imposture. "Never," says Father de Rignon,
"was there seen a forgery so audacious, so extensive, so solemn, so
persevering."[7] Yet
the discovery of the fraud has not shaken the system. The learned Dupin supposes that
these decretals were fabricated by Benedict, a deacon of Mainz, who was the first to
publish them, and that, to give them greater currency, he prefixed to them the name of
Isidore, a bishop who flourished in Seville in the seventh century. "Without the
pseudo-Isidore," says Janus, "there could have been no Gregory VII. The
Isidorian forgeries were the broad foundation which the Gregorians built upon."[8]
All the while the Papacy was working on another line for the emancipation of its
chief from interference and control, whether on the side of the people or on the side of
the kings. In early times the bishops were elected by the people.[9] By-and-by they came to be elected by the clergy, with consent of
the people; but gradually the people were excluded from all share in the matter, first in
the Eastern Church, and then in the Western, although traces of popular election are found
at Milan so late as the eleventh century. The election of the Bishop of Rome in early
times was in no way different from that of other bishops — that is, he was chosen by
the people. Next, the consent of the emperor came to be necessary to the validity of the
popular choice. Then, the emperor alone elected the Pope. Next, the cardinals claimed a
voice in the matter; they elected and presented the object of their choice to the emperor
for confirmation. Last of all, the cardinals took the business entirely into their own
hands. Thus gradually was the way paved for the full emancipation and absolute supremacy
of the Popedom.
CHAPTER 4 Back to Top
DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY FROM GREGORY VII. TO BONIFACE VIII.
The Wax of Investitures — Gregory VII. and Henry IV. — The Miter Triumphs over
the Empire — Noon of the Papacy under Innocent III. — Continued to Boniface
VIII. — First and Last Estate of the Roman Pastors Contrasted — Seven Centuries
of Continuous Success — Interpreted by Some as a Proof that the Papacy is Divine
— Reasons explaining this Marvelous Success — Eclipsed by the Gospel's Progress
WE come now to the last great struggle. There lacked one
grade of power to complete and crown this stupendous fabric of dominion. The spiritual
Supremacy was achieved in the seventh century, the temporal sovereignty was attained in
the eighth; it wanted only the pontifical supremacy — sometimes, although improperly,
styled the temporal supremacy to make the Pope supreme over kings, as he had already
become over peoples and bishops, and to vest in him a jurisdiction that has not its like
on earth — a jurisdiction that is unique, inasmuch as it arrogates all powers,
absorbs all rights, and spurns all limits. Destined, before terminating its career, to
crush beneath its iron foot thrones and nations, and masking an ambition as astute as
Lucifer's with a dissimulation as profound, this power advanced at first with noiseless
steps, and stole upon the world as night steals upon it; but as it neared the goal its
strides grew longer and swifter, till at last it vaulted over the throne of monarchs into
the seat of God.
This great war we shall now proceed to consider. When the Popes, at an early stage,
claimed to be the vicars of Christ, they virtually challenged that boundless jurisdiction
of which their proudest era beheld them in actual possession. But they knew that it would
be imprudent, indeed impossible, as yet to assert it in actual fact. Their motto was Spes
messis in semine. Discerning "the harvest in the seed," they were content
meanwhile to lodge the principle of supremacy in their creed, and in the general mind of
Europe, knowing that future ages would fructify and ripen it. Towards this they began to
work quietly, yet skillfully and perseveringly. At length came overt and open measures. It
was now the year 1073. The Papal chair was filled by perhaps the greatest of all the
Popes, Gregory VII., the noted Hildebrand. Daring and ambitious beyond all who had
preceded, and beyond most of those who have followed him on the Papal throne, Gregory
fully grasped the great idea of Theocracy. He held that the reign of the Pope was but
another name for the reign of God, and he resolved never to rest till that idea had been
realized in the subjection of all authority and power, spiritual and temporal, to the
chair of Peter. "When he drew out," says Janus, "the whole system of Papal
omnipotence in twenty-seven theses in his 'Dictatus,' these theses were partly mere
repetitions or corollaries of the Isidorian decretals; partly he and his friends sought to
give them the appearance of tradition and antiquity by new fictions."[1] We may take the following as
samples. The eleventh maxim says, "the Pope's name is the chief name in the
world;" the twelfth teaches that "it is lawful for him to depose emperors;"
the eighteenth affirms that "his decision is to be withstood by none, but he alone
may annul those of all men." The nineteenth declares that "he can be judged by
no one." The twenty-fifth vests in him the absolute power of deposing and restoring
bishops, and the twenty-seventh the power of annulling the allegiance of subjects.[2] Such was the gage that Gregory
flung down to the kings and nations of the world — we say of the world, for the
pontifical supremacy embraces all who dwell upon the earth.
Now began the war between the miter and the empire; Gregory's object in this war being to
wrest from the emperors the power of appointing the bishops and the clergy generally, and
to assume into his own sole and irresponsible hands the whole of that intellectual and
spiritual machinery by which Christendom was governed. The strife was a bloody one. The
miter, though sustaining occasional reverses, continued nevertheless to gain steadily upon
the empire. The spirit of the times helped the priesthood in their struggle with the civil
power. The age was superstitious to the core, and though in no wise spiritual, it was very
thoroughly ecclesiastical. The crusades, too, broke the spirit and drained the wealth of
the princes, while the growing power and augmenting riches of the clergy cast the balance
ever more and more against the State.
For a brief space Gregory VII. tasted in his own case the luxury of wielding this more
than mortal power. There came a gleam through the awful darkness of the tempest he had
raised — not final victory, which was yet a century distant, but its presage. He had
the satisfaction of seeing the emperor, Henry IV. of Germany — whom he had smitten
with excommunication — barefooted, and in raiment of sackcloth, waiting three days
and nights at the castle-gates of Canossa, amid the winter drifts, suing for forgiveness.
But it was for a moment only that Hildebrand stood on this dazzling pinnacle. The fortune
of war very quickly turned. Henry, the man whom the Pope had so sorely humiliated, became
victor in his turn. Gregory died, an exile, on the promontory of Salerno; but his
successors espoused his project, and strove by wiles, by arms, and by anathemas, to reduce
the world under the scepter of the Papal Theocracy. For well-nigh two dismal centuries the
conflict was maintained. How truly melancholy the record of these times! It exhibits to
our sorrowing gaze many a stricken field, many an empty throne, many a city sacked, many a
spot deluged with blood!
But through all this confusion and misery the idea of Gregory was perseveringly pursued,
till at last it was realized, and the miter was beheld triumphant over the empire. It was
the fortune or the calamity of Innocent III. (1198-1216) to celebrate this great victory.
Now it was that the pontifical supremacy reached its full development. One man, one will
again governed the world. It is with a sort of stupefied awe that we look back to the
thirteenth century, and see in the foreground of the receding storm this Colossus,
uprearing itself in the person of Innocent III., on its head all the miters of the Church,
and in its hand all the scepters of the State. "In each of the three leading objects
which Rome has pursued," says Hallam — "independent sovereignty, supremacy
over the Christian Church, control over the princes of the earth it was the fortune of
this pontiff to conquer."[3] "Rome,"
he says again, "inspired during this age all the terror of her ancient name; she was
once more mistress of the world, and kings were her vassals."[4] She had fought a great fight, and now she celebrated an unequaled
triumph. Innocent appointed all bishops; he summoned to his tribunal all causes, from the
gravest affairs of mighty kingdoms to the private concerns of the humble citizen. He
claimed all kingdoms as his fiefs, all monarchs as his vassals; and launched with
unsparing hand the bolts of excommunication against all who withstood his pontifical will.
Hildebrand's idea was now fully realized. The pontifical supremacy was beheld in its
plenitude — the plenitude of spiritual power, and that of temporal power. It was the
noon of the Papacy; but the noon of the Papacy was the midnight of the world.
The grandeur which the Papacy now enjoyed, and the jurisdiction it wielded, have received
dogmatic expression, and one or two selections will enable it to paint itself as it was
seen in its noon. Pope Innocent III. affirmed "that the pontifical authority so much
exceeded the royal power as the sun doth the moon."[5] Nor could he find words fitly to describe his own formidable
functions, save those of Jehovah to his prophet Jeremiah: "See, I have set thee over
the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to
throw down." "The Church my spouse," we find the same Pope saying, "is
not married to me without bringing me something. She hath given me a dowry of a price
beyond all price, the plenitude of spiritual things, and the extent of things temporal;[6] the greatness and abundance of
both. She hath given me the miter in token of things spiritual, the crown in token of the
temporal; the miter for the priesthood, and the crown for the kingdom; making me the
lieutenant of him who hath written upon his vesture, and on his thigh, 'the King of kings
and the Lord of lords.' I enjoy alone the plenitude of power, that others may say of me,
next to God, 'and out of his fullness have we received.'"[7] "We declare," ,says Boniface VIII. (1294-1303), in his
bull Unam Sanetam, "define, pronounce it to be necessary to salvation for every human
creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff." This subjection is declared in the bull
to extend to all affairs. "One sword," says the Pope, "must be under
another, and the temporal authority must be subject to the spiritual power; whence, if the
earthly power go astray, it must be judged by the spiritual."[8] Such are a few of the "great words" which were heard to
issue from the Vatican Mount, that new Sinai, which, like the old, encompassed by fiery
terrors, had upreared itself in the midst of the astonished and affrighted nations of
Christendom.
What a contrast between the first and the last estate of the pastors of the Roman Church!
— between the humility and poverty of the first century, and the splendor and power
in which the thirteenth saw them enthroned! This contrast has not escaped the notice of
the greatest of Italian poets. Dante, in one of his lightning flashes, has brought it
before us. He describes the first pastors of the Church as coming—
And addressing Peter, he says: —
Petrarch dwells repeatedly and with more amplification on the same theme. We quote only the first and last stanzas of his sonnet on the Church of Rome: —
There is something here out of the ordinary course. We have
no desire to detract from the worldly wisdom of the Popes; they were, in that respect, the
ablest race of rulers the world ever saw. Their enterprise soared as high above the
vastest scheme of other potentates and conquerors, as their ostensible means of achieving
it fell below theirs. To build such a fabric of dominion upon the Gospel, every line of
which repudiates and condemns it! to impose it upon the world without an army and without
a fleet! to bow the necks not of ignorant peoples only, but of mighty potentates to it!
nay, to persuade the latter to assist in establishing a power which they could hardly but
foresee would clash themselves! to pursue this scheme through a succession of centuries
without once meeting any serious check or repulse — for of the 130 Popes between
Boniface III. (606), who, in partnership with Phocas, laid the foundations of the Papal
grandeur, and Gregory VII., who tint realized it, onward through other two centuries to
Innocent III. (1216) and Boniface VIII. (1303), who at last put the top-stone upon it, not
one lost an inch of ground which his predecessor had gained! — to do all this is, we
repeat, something out of the ordinary course. There is nothing like it again in the whole
history of the world. This success, continued through seven centuries, was audaciously
interpreted into a proof of the divinity of the Papacy. Behold, it has been said, when the
throne of Caesar was overturned, how the chair of Peter stood erect! Behold, when the
barbarous nations rushed like a torrent into Italy, overwhelming laws, extinguishing
knowledge, and dissolving society itself, how the ark of the Church rode in safety on the
flood! Behold, when the victorious hosts of the Saracen approached the gates of Italy, how
they were turned back! Behold, when the miter waged its great contest with the empire, how
it triumphed! Behold, when the Reformation broke out, and it seemed as if the kingdom of
the Pope was numbered and finished, how three centuries have been added to its sway!
Behold, in fine, when revolution broke out in France, and swept like a whirlwind over
Europe, bearing down thrones and dynasties, how the bark of Peter outlived the storm, and
rode triumphant above the waves that engulfed apparently stronger structures! Is not this
the Church of which Christ said, "The gates of hell shall not prevail against
it?"
What else do the words of Cardinal Baronius mean? Boasting of a supposed donation of the
kingdom of Hungary to the Roman See by Stephen, he says, "It fell out by a wonderful
providence of God, that at the very time when the Roman Church might appear ready to fall
and perish, even then distant kings approach the Apostolic See, which they acknowledge and
venerate as the only temple of the universe, the sanctuary of piety, the pillar of truth,
the immovable rock. Behold, kings — not from the East, as of old they came to the
cradle of Christ, but from the North — led by faith, they humbly approach the cottage
of the fisher, the Church of Rome herself, offering not only gifts out of their treasures,
but bringing even kingdoms to her, and asking kingdoms from her. Whoso is wise, and will
record these things, even he shall understand the lovingkindness of the Lord."[11]
But the success of the Papacy, when closely examined, is not so surprising as it
looks. It cannot be justly pronounced legitimate, or fairly won. Rome has ever been
swimming with the tide. The evils and passions of society, which a true benefactress would
have made it her business to cure — at least, to alleviate — Rome has studied
rather to foster into strength, that she might be borne to power on the foul current which
she herself had created. Amid battles, bloodshed, and confusion, has her path lain. The
edicts of subservient Councils, the forgeries of hireling priests, the arms of craven
monarchs, and the thunderbolts of excommunication have never been wanting to open her
path. Exploits won by weapons of this sort are what her historians delight to chronicle.
These are the victories that constitute her glory! And then, there remains yet another and
great deduction from the apparent grandeur of her success, in that, after all, it is the
success of only a few — a caste — the clergy. For although, during her early
career, the Roman Church rendered certain important services to society — of which it
will delight us to make mention in fitting place when she grew to maturity, and was able
to develop her real genius, it was felt and acknowledged by all that her principles
implied the ruin of all interests save her own, and that there was room in the world for
none but herself. If her march, as shown in history down to the sixteenth century, is ever
onwards, it is not less true that behind, on her path, lie the wrecks of nations, and the
ashes of literature, of liberty, and of civilization.
Nor can we help observing that the career of Rome, with all the fictitious brilliance that
encompasses it, is utterly eclipsed when placed beside the silent and sublime progress of
the Gospel. The latter we see winning its way over mighty obstacles solely by the force
and sweetness of its own truth. It touches the deep wounds of society only to heal them.
It speaks not to awaken but to hush the rough voice of strife and war. It enlightens,
purifies, and blesses men wherever it comes, and it does all this so gently and
unboastingly! Reviled, it reviles not again. For curses it returns blessings. It
unsheathes no sword; it spills no blood. Cast into chains, its victories are as many as
when free, and more glorious; dragged to the stake and burned, from the ashes of the
martyr there start up a thousand confessors, to speed on its career and swell the glory of
its triumph. Compared with this how different has been the career of Rome! — as
different, in fact, as the thunder-cloud which comes onward, mantling the skies in gloom
and scathing the earth with fiery bolts, is different from the morning descending from the
mountain-tops, scattering around it the silvery light, and awakening at its presence songs
of joy.
CHAPTER 5 Back to Top
MEDIAEVAL PROTESTANT WITNESSES.
Ambrose of Milan — His Diocese — His Theology — Rufinus, Presbyter of
Aquileia — Laurentius of Milan — The Bishops of the Grisons — Churches of
Lombardy in Seventh and Eighth Centuries — Claude in the Ninth Century — His
Labors — Outline of his Theology — His Doctrine of the Eucharist — His
Battle against Images — His Views on the Roman Primacy — Proof thence arising
— Councils in France approve his Views — Question of the Services of the Roman
Church to the Western Nations.
The apostasy was not universal. At no time did God leave His
ancient Gospel without witnesses. When one body of confessors yielded to the darkness, or
was cut off by violence, another arose in some other land, so that there was no age in
which, in some country or other of Christendom, public testimony was not borne against the
errors of Rome, and in behalf of the Gospel which she sought to destroy.
The country in which we find the earliest of these Protesters is Italy. The See of Rome,
in those days, embraced only the capital and the surrounding provinces. The diocese of
Milan, which included the plain of Lombardy, the Alps of Piedmont, and the southern
provinces of France, greatly exceeded it in extent.[1] It is an undoubted historical fact that this powerful diocese was
not then tributary to the Papal chair. "The Bishops of Milan," says Pope
Pelagius I. (555), "do not come to Rome for ordination." He further informs us
that this "was an ancient custom of theirs."[2] Pope Pelagius, however, attempted to subvert this "ancient
custom," but his efforts resulted only in a wider estrangement between the two
dioceses of Milan and Rome. For when Platina speaks of the subjection of Milan to the Pope
under Stephen IX.,[3] in
the middle of the eleventh century, he admits that "for 200 years together the Church
of Milan had been separated from the Church of Rome." Even then, though on the very
eve of the Hildebrandine era, the destruction of the independence of the diocese was not
accomplished without a protest on the part of its clergy, and a tumult on the part of the
people. The former affirmed that "the Ambrosian Church was not subject to the laws of
Rome; that it had been always free, and could not, with honor, surrender its
liberties." The latter broke out into clamor, and threatened violence to Damianus,
the deputy sent to receive their submission. "The people grew into higher
ferment," says Baronius;[4] "the
bells were rung; the episcopal palace beset; and the legate threatened with death."
Traces of its early independence remain to this day in the Rito or Culto Ambrogiano, still
in use throughout the whole of the ancient Archbishopric of Milan.
One consequence of this ecclesiastical independence of Northern Italy was, that the
corruptions of which Rome was the source were late in being introduced into Milan and its
diocese. The evangelical light shone there some centuries after the darkness had gathered
in the southern part of the peninsula. Ambrose, who died A.D. 397, was Bishop of Milan for
twenty-three years. His theology, and that of his diocese, was in no essential respects
different from that which Protestants hold at this day. The Bible alone was his rule of
faith; Christ alone was the foundation of the Church; the justification of the sinner and
the remission of sins were not of human merit, but by the expiatory sacrifice of the
Cross; there were but two Sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and in the latter
Christ was held to be present only figuratively.[5] Such is a summary of the faith professed and taught by the chief
bishop of the north of Italy in the end of the fourth century.[6]
Rufinus, of Aquileia, first metropolitan in the diocese of Milan, taught
substantially the same doctrine in the fifth century. His treatise on the Creed no more
agrees with the catechism of the Council of Trent than does the catechism of Protestants.[7] His successors at Aquileia, so
far as can be gathered from the writings which they have left behind them, shared the
sentiments of Rufinus.
To come to the sixth century, we find Laurentius, Bishop of Milan, holding that the
penitence of the heart, without the absolution of a priest, suffices for pardon; and in
the end of the same century (A.D. 590) we find the bishops of Italy and of the Grisons, to
the number of nine, rejecting the communion of the Pope, as a heretic, so little then was
the infallibility believed in, or the Roman supremacy acknowledged.[8] In the seventh century we find
Mansuetus, Bishop of Milan, declaring that the whole faith of the Church is contained in
the Apostles' Creed; from which it is evident that he did not regard as necessary to
salvation the additions which Rome had then begun to make, and the many she has since
appended to the apostolic doctrine. The Ambrosian Liturgy, which, as we have said,
continues to be used in the diocese of Milan, is a monument to the comparative purity of
the faith and worship of the early Churches of Lombardy.
In the eighth century we find Paulinus, Bishop of Aquileia, declaring that "we feed
upon the divine nature of Jesus Christ, which cannot be said but only with respect to
believers, and must be understood metaphorically." Thus manifest is it that he
rejected the corporeal manducation of the Church at Rome. He also warns men against
approaching God through any other mediator or advocate than Jesus Christ, affirming that
He alone was conceived without sin; that He is the only Redeemer, and that He is the one
foundation of the Church. "If any one," says Allix, "will take the pains to
examine the opinions of this bishop, he will find it a hard thing not to take notice that
he denies what the Church of Rome affirms with relation to all these articles, and that he
affirms what the Church of Rome denies."[9]
It must be acknowledged that these men, despite their great talents and their
ardent piety, had not entirely escaped the degeneracy of their age. The light that was in
them was partly mixed with darkness. Even the great Ambrose was touched with a veneration
for relics, and a weakness for other superstitious of his times. But as regards the
cardinal doctrines of salvation, the faith of these men was essentially Protestant, and
stood out in bold antagonism to the leading principles of the Roman creed. And such, with
more or less of clearness, must be held to have been the profession of the pastors over
whom they presided. And the Churches they ruled and taught were numerous and widely
planted. They flourished in the towns and villages which dot the vast plain that stretches
like a garden for 200 miles along the foot of the Alps; they existed in those romantic and
fertile valleys over which the great mountains hang their pine forests and snows, and,
passing the summit, they extended into the southern provinces of France, even as far as to
the Rhone, on the banks of which Polycarp, the disciple of John, in early times had
planted the Gospel, to be watered in the succeeding centuries by the blood of thousands of
martyrs. Darkness gives relief to the light, and error necessitates a fuller development
and a clearer definition of truth. On this principle the ninth century produced the most
remarkable perhaps of all those great champions who strove to set limits to the growing
superstition, and to preserve, pure and undefiled, the faith which apostles had preached.
The mantle of Ambrose descended on Claudius, Archbishop of Turin. This man beheld with
dismay the stealthy approaches of a power which, putting out the eyes of men, bowed their
necks to its yoke, and bent their knees to idols. He grasped the sword of the Spirit,
which is the Word of God, and the battle which he so courageously waged, delayed, though
it could not prevent, the fall of his Church's independence, and for two centuries longer
the light continued to shine at the foot of the Alps. Claudius was an earnest and
indefatigable student of Holy Scripture. That Book carried him back to the first age, and
set him down at the feet of apostles, at the feet of One greater than apostles; and, while
darkness was descending on the earth, around Claude still shone the day.
The truth, drawn from its primeval fountains, he proclaimed throughout his diocese, which
included the valleys of the Waldenses. Where his voice could not reach, he labored to
convey instruction by his pen. He wrote commentaries on the Gospels; he published
expositions of almost all the epistles of Paul, and several books of the Old Testament;
and thus he furnished his contemporaries with the means of judging how far it became them
to submit to a jurisdiction so manifestly usurped as that of Rome, or to embrace tenets so
undeniably novel as those which she was now foisting upon the world.[10] The sum of what Claude
maintained was that there is but one Sovereign in the Church, and He is not on earth; that
Peter had no superiority over the other apostles, save in this, that he was the first who
preached the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles; that human merit is of no avail for
salvation, and that faith alone saves us. On this cardinal point he insists with a
clearness and breadth which remind one of Luther. The authority of tradition he
repudiates, prayers for the dead he condemns, as also the notion that the Church cannot
err. As regards relics, instead of holiness he can find in them nothing but rottenness,
and advises that they be instantly returned to the grave, from which they ought never to
have been taken.
Of the Eucharist, he writes in his commentary on Matthew (A.D. 815) in a way which shows
that he stood at the greatest distance from the opinions which Paschasius Radbertus
broached eighteen years afterwards.
Paschasius Radbertus, a monk, afterwards Abbot of Corbei, pretended to explain with
precision the manner in which the body and blood of Christ are present in the Eucharist.
He published (831) a treatise, "Concerning the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of
Christ." His doctrine amounted to the two following propositions: —
This new doctrine excited the astonishment of not a few, and
called forth several powerful opponents — amongst others, Johannes Scotus.[11] Claudius, however, thought that
the Lord's Supper was a memorial of Christ's death, and not a repetition of it, and that
the elements of bread and wine were only symbols of the flesh and blood of the Savior.[12] It is clear from this that
transubstantiation was unknown in the ninth century to the Churches at the foot of the
Alps. Nor was it the Bishop of Turin only who held this doctrine of the Eucharist; we are
entitled to infer that the bishops of neighboring dioceses, both north and south of the
Alps, shared the opinion of Claude. For though they differed from him on some other
points, and did not conceal their difference, they expressed no dissent from his views
respecting the Sacrament, and in proof of their concurrence in his general policy,
strongly urged him to continue his expositions of the Sacred Scriptures. Specially was
this the case as regards two leading ecclesiastics of that day, Jonas, Bishop of Orleans,
and the Abbot Theodemirus. Even in the century following, we find certain bishops of the
north of Italy saying that "wicked men eat the goat and not the lamb," language
wholly incomprehensible from the lips of men who believe in transubstantiation.[13]
The worship of images was then making rapid strides. The Bishop of Rome was the great
advocate of this ominous innovation; it was on this point that Claude fought his great
battle. He resisted it with all the logic of his pen and all the force of his eloquence;
he condemned the practice as idolatrous, and he purged those churches in his diocese which
had begun to admit representations of saints and divine persons within their walls, not
even sparing the cross itself.[14] It
is instructive to mark that the advocates of images in the ninth century justified their
use of them by the very same arguments which Romanists employ at this day; and that Claude
refutes them on the same ground taken by Protestant writers still. We do not worship the
image, say the former, we use it simply as the medium through which our worship ascends to
Him whom the image represents; and if we kiss the cross we do so in adoration of Him who
died upon it. But, replied Claude — as the Protestant polemic at this hour replies in
kneeling to the image, or kissing the cross, you do what the second commandment forbids,
and what the Scripture condemns as idolatry. Your worship terminates in the image, and is
the worship not of God, but simply of the image. With his argument the Bishop of Turin
mingles at times a little raillery. "God commands one thing," says he, "and
these people do quite the contrary. God commands us to bear our cross, and not to worship
it; but these are all for worshipping it, whereas they do not bear it at all. To serve God
after this manner is to go away from Him. For if we ought to adore the cross because
Christ was fastened to it, how many other things are there which touched Jesus Christ! Why
don't they adore mangers and old clothes, because He was laid in a manger and wrapped in
swaddling clothes? Let them adore asses, because He, entered into Jerusalem upon the foal
of an ass."[15]
On the subject of the Roman primacy, he leaves it in no wise doubtful what his
sentiments were. "We know very well," says he, "that this passage of the
Gospel is very ill understood — 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my
church: and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,' under pretense of
which words the stupid and ignorant common people, destitute of all spiritual knowledge,
betake themselves to Rome in hopes of acquiring eternal life. The ministry belongs to all
the true superintendents and pastors of the Church, who discharge the same as long as they
are in this world; and when they have paid the debt of death, others succeed in their
places, who enjoy the same authority and power. Know thou that he only is apostolic who is
the keeper and guardian of the apostle's doctrine, and not he who boasts himself to be
seated in the chair of the apostle, and in the meantime doth not acquit himself of the
charge of the apostle."[16]
We have dwelt the longer on Claude, and the doctrines which he so powerfully
advocated by both voice and pen, because, although the picture of his times — a
luxurious clergy but an ignorant people, Churches growing in magnificence but declining in
piety, images adored but the true God forsaken — is not a pleasant one, yet it
establishes two points of great importance. The first is that the Bishop of Rome had not
yet succeeded in compelling universal submission to his jurisdiction; and the second that
he had not yet been able to persuade all the Churches of Christendom to adopt his novel
doctrines, and follow his peculiar customs. Claude was not left to fight that battle
alone, nor was he crushed as he inevitably would have been, had Rome been the dominant
power it came soon thereafter to be. On the contrary, this Protestant of the ninth century
received a large amount of sympathy and support both from bishops and from synods of his
time. Agobardus, the Bishop of Lyons, fought by the side of his brother of Turin [17] In fact, he was as great an
iconoclast as Claude himself.[18] The
emperor, Louis the Pious (le Debonnaire), summoned a Council (824) of "the most
learned and judicious bishops of his realm," says Dupin, to discuss this question.
For in that age the emperors summoned synods and appointed bishops. And when the Council
had assembled, did it wait till Peter should speak, or a Papal allocution had decided the
point? "It knew no other way," says Dupin, "to settle the question, than by
determining what they should find upon the most impartial examination to be true, by plain
text of Holy Scripture, and the judgment of the Fathers."[19] This Council at Paris justified most of the principles for which
Claude had contended,[20] as
the great Council at Frankfort (794) had done before it. It is worthy of notice further,
as bearing on this point, that only two men stood up publicly to oppose Claude during the
twenty years he was incessantly occupied in this controversy. The first was Dungulas, a
recluse of the Abbey of St. Denis, an Italian, it is believed, and biased naturally in
favor of the opinions of the Pope; and the second was Jonas, Bishop of Orleans, who
differed from Claude on but the one question of images, and only to the extent of
tolerating their use, but condemning as idolatrous their worship — a distinction
which it is easy to maintain in theory, but impossible to observe, as experience has
demonstrated, in practice.
And here let us interpose an observation. We speak at times of the signal benefits which
the "Church" conferred upon the Gothic nations during the Middle Ages. She put
herself in the place of a mother to those barbarous tribes; she weaned them from the
savage usages of their original homes; she bowed their stubborn necks to the authority of
law; she opened their minds to the charms of knowledge and art; and thus laid the
foundation of those civilized and prosperous communities which have since arisen in the
West. But when we so speak it behooves us to specify with some distinctness what we mean
by the "Church" to which we ascribe the glory of this service. Is it the Church
of Rome, or is it the Church universal of Christendom? If we mean the former, the facts of
history do not bear out our conclusion. The Church of Rome was not then the Church, but
only one of many Churches. The slow but beneficent and laborious work of evangelizing and
civilizing the Northern nations, was the joint result of the action of all the Churches
— of Northern Italy, of France, of Spain, of Germany, of Britain — and each
performed its part in this great work with a measure of success exactly corresponding to
the degree in which it retained the pure principles of primitive Christianity. The
Churches would have done their task much more effectually and speedily but for the adverse
influence of Rome. She hung upon their rear, by her perpetual attempts to bow them to her
yoke, and to seduce them from their first purity to her thinly disguised paganisms.
Emphatically, the power that molded the Gothic nations, and planted among them the seeds
of religion and virtue, was Christianity — that same Christianity which apostles
preached to men in the first age, which all the ignorance and superstition of subsequent
times had not quite extinguished, and which, with immense toil and suffering dug up from
under the heaps of rubbish that had been piled above it, was anew, in the sixteenth
century, given to the world under the name of Protestantism.
CHAPTER 6 Back to Top
THE WALDENSES — THEIR VALLEYS
Submission of the Churches of Lombardy to Rome — The Old Faith maintained in the
Mountains — The Waldensian Churches — Question of their Antiquity —
Approach to their Mountains — Arrangement of their Valleys — Picture of blended
Beauty and Grandeur.
WHEN Claude died it can hardly be said that his mantle was
taken up by any one. The battle, although not altogether dropped, was henceforward
languidly maintained. Before this time not a few Churches beyond the Alps had submitted to
the yoke of Rome, and that arrogant power must have felt it not a little humiliating to
find her authority withstood on what she might regard as her own territory. She was
venerated abroad but contemned at home. Attempts were renewed to induce the Bishops of
Milan to accept the episcopal pall, the badge of spiritual vassalage, from the Pope; but
it was not till the middle of the eleventh century (1059), under Nicholas II., that these
attempts were successful.[1] Petrus
Damianus, Bishop of Ostia, and Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, were dispatched by the Pontiff to
receive the submission of the Lombard Churches, and the popular tumults amid which that
submission was extorted sufficiently show that the spirit of Claude still lingered at the
foot of the Alps. Nor did the clergy conceal the regret with which they laid their ancient
liberties at the feet of a power before which the whole earth was then bowing down; for
the Papal legate, Damianus, informs us that the clergy of Milan maintained in his
presence, "That the Ambrosian Church, according to the ancient institutions of the
Fathers, was always free, without being subject to the laws of Rome, and that the Pope of
Rome had no jurisdiction over their Church as to the government or constitution of
it."[2]
But if the plains were conquered, not so the mountains. A considerable body of
Protesters stood out against this deed of submission. Of these some crossed the Alps,
descended the Rhine, and raised the standard of opposition in the diocese of Cologne,
where they were branded as Manicheans, and rewarded with the stake. Others retired into
the valleys of the Piedmontese Alps, and there maintained their scriptural faith and their
ancient independence. What we have just related respecting the dioceses of Milan and Turin
settles the question, in our opinion, of the apostolicity of the Churches of the
Waldensian valleys. It is not necessary to show that missionaries were sent from Rome in
the first age to plant Christianity in these valleys, nor is it necessary to show that
these Churches have existed as distinct and separate communities from early days; enough
that they formed a part, as unquestionably they did, of the great evangelical Church of
the north of Italy. This is the proof at once of their apostolicity and their
independence. It attests their descent from apostolic men, if doctrine be the life of
Churches. When their co-religionists on the plains entered within the pale of the Roman
jurisdiction, they retired within the mountains, and, spurning alike the tyrannical yoke
and the corrupt tenets of the Church of the Seven Hills, they preserved in its purity and
simplicity the faith their fathers had handed down to them. Rome manifestly was the
schismatic, she it was that had abandoned what was once the common faith of Christendom,
leaving by that step to all who remained on the old ground the indisputably valid title of
the True Church.
Behind this rampart of mountains, which Providence, foreseeing the approach of evil days,
would almost seem to have reared on purpose, did the remnant of the early apostolic Church
of Italy kindle their lamp, and here did that lamp continue to burn all through the long
night which descended on Christendom. There is a singular concurrence of evidence in favor
of their high antiquity. Their traditions invariably point to an unbroken descent from the
earliest times, as regards their religious belief. The Nobla Leycon, which dates from the
year 1100, [3] goes to prove that the Waldenses of Piedmont did not owe their rise
to Peter Waldo of Lyons, who did not appear till the latter half of that century (1160).
The Nobla Leycon, though a poem, is in reality a confession of faith, and could have been
composed only after some considerable study of the system of Christianity, in
contradistinction to the errors of Rome. How could a Church have arisen with such a
document in her hands? Or how could these herdsmen and vine-dressers, shut up in their
mountains, have detected the errors against which they bore testimony, and found their way
to the truths of which they made open profession in times of darkness like these? If we
grant that their religious beliefs were the heritage of former ages, handed down from an
evangelical ancestry, all is plain; but if we maintain that they were the discovery of the
men of those days, we assert what approaches almost to a miracle. Their greatest enemies,
Claude Seyssel of Turin (1517), and Reynerius the Inquisitor (1250), have admitted their
antiquity, and stigmatized them as "the most dangerous of all heretics, because the
most ancient."
Rorenco, Prior of St. Roch, Turin (1640), was employed to investigate the origin and
antiquity of the Waldenses, and of course had access to all the Waldensian documents in
the ducal archives, and being their bitter enemy he may be presumed to have made his
report not more favorable than he could help. Yet he states that "they were not a new
sect in the ninth and tenth centuries, and that Claude of Turin must have detached them
from the Church in the ninth century."
Within the limits of her own land did God provide a dwelling for this venerable Church.
Let us bestow a glance upon the region. As one comes from the south, across the level
plain of Piedmont, while yet nearly a hundred miles off, he sees the Alps rise before him,
stretching like a great wall along the horizon. From the gates of the morning to those of
the setting sun, the mountains run on in a line of towering magnificence. Pasturages and
chestnut-forests clothe their base; eternal snows crown their summits. How varied are
their forms! Some rise strong and massy as castles; others shoot up tall and tapering like
needles; while others again run along in serrated lines, their summits torn and cleft by
the storms of many thousand winters. At the hour of sunrise, what a glory kindles along
the crest of that snowy rampart! At sunset the spectacle is again renewed, and a line of
pyres is seen to burn in the evening sky.
Drawing nearer the hills, on a line about thirty miles west of Turin, there opens before
one what seems a great mountain portal. This is the entrance to the Waldensian territory.
A low hill drawn along in front serves as a defense against all who may come with hostile
intent, as but too frequently happened in times gone by, while a stupendous monolith
— the Castelluzzo — shoots up to the clouds, and stands sentinel at the gate of
this renowned region. As one approaches La Torre the Castelluzzo rises higher and higher,
and irresistibly fixes the eye by the perfect beauty of its pillar-like form. But; to this
mountain a higher interest belongs than any that mere symmetry can give it. It is
indissolubly linked with martyr-memories, and borrows a halo from the achievements of the
past. How often, in days of old, was the confessor hurled sheer down its awful steep and
dashed on the rocks at its foot! And there, commingled in one ghastly heap, growing ever
the bigger and ghastlier as another and yet another victim was added to it, lay the
mangled bodies of pastor and peasant, of mother and child! It was the tragedies connected
with this mountain mainly that called forth Milton's well-known sonnet: —
The elegant temple of the Waldenses rises near the foot of
the Castelluzzo. The Waldensian valleys are seven in number; they were more in ancient
times, but the limits of the Vaudois territory have undergone repeated curtailment, and
now only the number we have stated remain, lying between Pinerolo on the east and Monte
Viso on the west — that pyramidal hill which forms so prominent an object from every
part of the plain of Piedmont, towering as it does above the surrounding mountains, and,
like a horn of silver, cutting the ebon of the firmament.
The first three valleys run out somewhat like the spokes of a wheel, the spot on which we
stand — the gateway, namely — being the nave. The first is Luserna, or Valley of
Light. It runs right out in a grand gorge of some twelve miles in length by about two in
width. It wears a carpeting of meadows, which the waters of the Pelice keep ever fresh and
bright. A profusion of vines, acacias, and mulberry-trees fleck it with their shadows; and
a wall of lofty mountains encloses it on either hand. The second is Rora, or Valley of
Dews. It is a vast cup, some fifty miles in circumference, its sides luxuriantly clothed
with meadow and corn-field, with fruit and forest trees, and its rim formed of craggy and
spiky mountains, many of them snow-clad. The third is Angrogna, or Valley of Groans. Of it
we shall speak more particularly afterwards. Beyond the extremity of the first three
valleys are the remaining four, forming, as it were, the rim of the wheel. These last are
enclosed in their turn by a line of lofty and craggy mountains, which form a wall of
defense around the entire territory. Each valley is a fortress, having its own gate of
ingress and egress, with its caves, and rocks, and mighty chestnut-trees, forming places
of retreat and shelter, so that the highest engineering skill could not have better
adapted each several valley to its end. It is not less remarkable that, taking all these
valleys together, each is so related to each, and the one opens so into the other, that
they may be said to form one fortress of amazing and matchless strength — wholly
impregnable, in fact. All the fortresses of Europe, though combined, would not form a
citadel so enormously strong, and so dazzlingly magnificent, as the mountain dwelling of
the Vaudois. "The Eternal, our God," says Leger "having destined this land
to be the theater of His marvels, and the bulwark of His ark, has, by natural means, most
marvelously fortified it." The battle begun in one valley could be continued in
another, and carried round the entire territory, till at last the invading foe,
overpowered by the rocks rolled upon him from the mountains, or assailed by enemies which
would start suddenly out of the mist or issue from some unsuspected cave, found retreat
impossible, and, cut off in detail, left his bones to whiten the mountains he had come to
subdue.
These valleys are lovely and fertile, as well as strong. They are watered by numerous
torrents, which descend from the snows of the summits. The grassy carpet of their bottom;
the mantling vine and the golden grain of their lower slopes; the chalets that dot their
sides, sweetly embowered amid fruit-trees; and, higher up, the great chestnut-forests and
the pasture-lands, where the herdsmen keep watch over their flocks all through the summer
days and the starlit nights: the nodding crags, from which the torrent leaps into the
light; the rivulet, singing with quiet gladness in the shady nook; the mists, moving
grandly among the mountains, now veiling, now revealing their majesty; and the far-off
summits, tipped with silver, to be changed at eve into gleaming gold — make up a
picture of blended beauty and grandeur, not equaled perhaps, and certainly not surpassed,
in any other region of the earth.
In the heart of their mountains is situated the most interesting, perhaps, of all their
valleys. It was in this retreat, walled round by "hills whose heads touch
heaven," that their barbes or pastors, from all their several parishes, were wont to
meet in annual synod. It was here that their college stood, and it was here that their
missionaries were trained, and, after ordination, were sent forth to sow the good seed, as
opportunity offered, in other lands. Let us visit this valley. We ascend to it by the
long, narrow, and winding Angrogna. Bright meadows enliven its entrance. The mountains on
either hand are clothed with the vine, the mulberry, and the chestnut. Anon the valley
contracts. It becomes rough with projecting rocks, and shady with great trees. A few paces
farther, and it expands into a circular basin, feathery with birches, musical with falling
waters, environed atop by naked crags, fringed with dark pines, while the white peak looks
down upon one out of heaven. A little in advance the valley seems shut in by a mountainous
wall, drawn right across it; and beyond, towering sublimely upward, is seen an assemblage
of snow-clad Alps, amid which is placed the valley we are in quest of, where burned of old
the candle of the Waldenses. Some terrible convulsion has rent this mountain from top to
bottom, opening a path through it to the valley beyond. We enter the dark chasm, and
proceed along on a narrow ledge in the mountain's side, hung half-way between the torrent,
which is heard thundering in the abyss below, and the summits which lean over us above.
Journeying thus for about two miles, we find the pass beginning to widen, the light to
break in, and now we arrive at the gate of the Pra.
There opens before us a noble circular valley, its grassy bottom watered by torrents, its
sides dotted with dwellings and clothed with corn-fields and pasturages, while a ring of
white peaks guards it above. This was the inner sanctuary of the Waldensian temple. The
rest of Italy had turned aside to idols, the Waldensian territory alone had been reserved
for the worship of the true God. And was it not meet that on its native soil a remnant of
the apostolic Church of Italy should be maintained, that Rome and all Christendom might
have before their eyes a perpetual monument of what they themselves had once been, and a
living witness to testify how far they had departed from their first faith?[4]
CHAPTER 7 Back to Top
THE WALDENSES — THEIR MISSIONS AND MARTYRDOMS
Their Synod and College — Their Theological Tenets — Romaunt Version of the New
Testament — The Constitution of their Church — Their Missionary Labors —
Wide Diffusion of their Tenets — The Stone Smiting the Image.
ONE would like to have a near view of the barbes or pastors, who presided over the school of early Protestant theology that existed here, and to know how it fared with evangelical Christianity in the ages that preceded the Reformation. But the time is remote, and the events are dim. We can but doubtfully glean from a variety of sources the facts necessary to form a picture of this venerable Church, and even then the picture is not complete. The theology of which this was one of the fountainheads was not the clear, well-defined, and comprehensive system which the sixteenth century gave its; it was only what the faithful men of the Lombard Churches had been able to save from the wreck of primitive Christianity. True religion, being a revelation, was from the beginning complete and perfect; nevertheless, in this as in every other branch of knowledge, it is only by patient labor that man is able to extricate and arrange all its parts, and to come into the full possession of truth. The theology taught in former ages, in the peak-environed valley in which we have in imagination placed ourselves, was drawn from the Bible. The atoning death and justifying righteousness of Christ was its cardinal truth. This, the Nobla Leycon and other ancient documents abundantly testify. The Nobla Leycon sets forth with tolerable clearness the doctrine of the Trinity, the fall of man, the incarnation of the Son, the perpetual authority of the Decalogue as given by God,[1] the need of Divine grace in order to good works, the necessity of holiness, the institution of the ministry, the resurrection of the body, and the eternal bliss of heaven.[2] This creed, its professors exemplified in lives of evangelical virtue. The blamelessness of the Waldenses passed into a proverb, so that one more than ordinarily exempt from the vices of his time was sure to be suspected of being a Vaudes.[3] If doubt there were regarding the tenets of the Waldenses, the charges which their enemies have preferred against them would set that doubt at rest, and make it tolerably certain that they held substantially what the apostles before their day, and the Reformers after it, taught. The indictment against the Waldenses included a formidable list of "heresies." They held that there had been no true Pope since the days of Sylvester; that temporal offices and dignities were not meet for preachers of the Gospel; that the Pope's pardons were a cheat; that purgatory was a fable; that relics were simply rotten bones which had belonged to no one knew whom; that to go on pilgrimage served no end, save to empty one's purse; that flesh might be eaten any day if one's appetite served him; that holy water was not a whit more efficacious than rain water; and that prayer in a barn was just as effectual as if offered in a church. They were accused, moreover, of having scoffed at the doctrine of transubstantiation, and of having spoken blasphemously of Rome, as the harlot of the Apocalypse.[4] There is reason to believe, from recent historical researches, that the Waldenses possessed the New Testament in the vernacular. The "Lingua Romana" or Romaunt tongue was the common language of the south of Europe from the eighth to the fourteenth century. It was the language of the troubadours and of men of letters in the Dark Ages. Into this tongue — the Romaunt — was the first translation of the whole of the New Testament made so early as the twelfth century. This fact Dr. Gilly has been at great pains to prove in his work, The Romaunt Version [5] of the Gospel according to John. The sum of what Dr. Gilly, by a patient investigation into facts, and a great array of historic documents, maintains, is that all the books of the New Testament were translated from the Latin Vulgate into the Romaunt, that this was the first literal version since the fall of the empire, that it was made in the twelfth century, and was the first translation available for popular use. There were numerous earlier translations, but only of parts of the Word of God, and many of these were rather paraphrases or digests of Scripture than translations, and, moreover, they were so bulky, and by consequence so costly, as to be utterly beyond the reach of the common people. This Romaunt version was the first complete and literal translation of the New Testament of Holy Scripture; it was made, as Dr Gilly, by a chain of proofs, shows, most probably under the superintendence and at the expense of Peter Waldo of Lyons, not later than 1180, and so is older than any complete version in German, French, Italian, Spanish, or English. This version was widely spread in the south of France, and in the cities of Lombardy. It was in common use among the Waldenses of Piedmont, and it was no small part, doubtless, of the testimony borne to truth by these mountaineers to preserve and circulate it. Of the Romaunt New Testament six copies have come down to our day. A copy is preserved at each of the four following places, Lyons, Grenoble, Zurich, Dublin; and two copies are at Paris. These are plain and portable volumes, contrasting with those splendid and ponderous folios of the Latin Vulgate, penned in characters of gold and silver, richly illuminated, their bindings decorated with gems, inviting admiration rather than study,