CHAPTER VIII. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH TO 1648. GALLICANISM. FROM the Middle Ages date the efforts in France to secure a degree of liberty for the National Church, inconsistent with papal absolutism. This movement, which is technically known as Gallicanism, was strengthened by the pragmatic sanction of Bourges (1438), and still further recognized by the concordat of 1516. The crown of France had secured its power over the French hierarchy in spite of the demands of the pope. The Reformation in France made the Roman Catholic clergy more than ever dependent upon the king, since they must have his sanction in order to suppress heresy. All efforts to secure the acceptance of the decrees of Trent by the parliament proved fruitless. The pope was obliged to submit to the crowning of Henry IV. Pierre Pithou wrote in 1594 his Libertes de l'église gallicane, in which it was openly proclaimed that the pope had no power in secular and political affairs, while his authority even in spiritual things was limited by the canons of the old synods recognized in France; and, although councils may not be called without the authority of the pope, yet his holiness is bound by the decisions of the councils. The Jesuits, by their doctrine of the justifiability of the murder of tyrants, brought about a still more intense hatred of papal rule. Even the Sorbonne took sides against the doctrines that in faith and morals the pope cannot err, that a council is in no case superior to the pope, and that the pope has the right to lay doubtful questions before the council, but to reserve the final decision of them to himself.' But under Richelieu, owing to political necessities, Gallicanism lost much of its hold, although there were always those who maintained the rights of the National Church as against the pope.* In France and Spain, subsequent to the council of Trent, a form of mysticism manifested itself which was in fact a protest partly against the ordinary forms of piety and partly against the Reformation. Duns Scotus had taught that the ideal of blessedness 'These were propositions which the Dominicans had offered for disputation in 1611. Richer, syndic of the Sorbonne, opposed them, but was compelled to yield, while those who accepted his views were subsequently persecuted. 9 Comp. Möller, iii, 236-239. FRENCH AND TICISM. was that in the love of God the will should find its perfect rest. With this Quietism was often combined a refined asceticism which destroyed the idea of mystical rest in the interest of SPANISH MYS- ecstasy. Peter of Alcantara and Francis of Osuna worked out the idea of mental prayer according to these mystical conceptions. Teresa de Jesus, of Avila, and John of the Cross prayed in spirit without the use of words, and in connection with due subjection of themselves to pain attained to the enjoyment of ecstatic visions. THE ILLUMI- In 1520 the Illuminati appeared in Spain. Their wordless prayers made the prayers of the Church worthless, while their essential union with God, made possible by the lifting of their souls above mere belief into perfection, made the sacraments unnecessary, as did also the sinless condition to which they had attained. This mystical form of piety was recognized by the Church as an offset to the piety of the Protestant Church, and its most active propagators were canonized or beatified. It found favor with all classes of people, Romanists and Evangelicals, and the manuals of devotion which it produced had thousands of readers. While it was generally connected with those who were loyal to ecclesiastical forms, yet in fact it was inconsistent with their use.' The Reformation had drawn off from the Church about all the elements which could in any way disturb the unity of its faith.' Nevertheless there were unsettled questions within Romanism which caused difficulty notwithstanding all the definitions and decisions which had been authoritatively given out. To the teachings of the Jesuits it was owing that the doctrines of Augustine, which had been made fundamental in Protestantism, were completely eradicated from Roman Catholic thinking. Michael Bajus, professor in the Louvain University, had held the Augustinian doctrines. The Scotist Franciscans took up the dispute against Bajanism and induced Pope Pius V to condemn seventy-six of the propositions which it taught. But this did not end the strife, and in 1587 the faculty of Louvain, still holding fast to their Augustinian views, condemned thirty-four propositions of the Jesuit teachers of the city. This aroused the Jesuits, and in 1589 Ludwig Molina, professor of theology at Evora, in Portugal, taught that the doctrine of irresistible grace was to be understood only in such a sense as would admit that the responsibility of human salvation rested upon each individual 1 Möller, iii, 244, 245. 'Möller, iii, 234. MICHAEL 9 Baur, iv, 256. "Not to be confused with Michael Molinos, who lived nearly a century later. LUDWIG MO- man supported by the grace of God. Some of the Jesuits themselves thought Molina had gone too far, while the Dominicans unitedly rose up against his doctrines. The settlement of the dispute was left to the pope. But he was unwilling to take the responsibility of deciding,' and established the so-called Congregationes de auxiliis gratiæ. The question was not settled, however, and in 1611 the disputants were required to desist from further strife, which, however, continued for more than a century, although in a somewhat different form. JANSENISM. The controversy was renewed in this way: Cornelius Jansen, professor at Louvain University from 1630 to 1636 and from 1636 to his death in 1638 bishop of Ypres, had gathered together the results of his studies in a work which was published after his death under the title of Augustinus s. doctrina S. Augustini de humanæ naturæ sanitate. His doctrines, like those of Bajus, were strongly Augustinian, and while not directed immediately at the Molinists, were so framed as diametrically to oppose them. He taught the incapacity of fallen man to do good, and asserted that the scholastic theology had taught the superiority of the reason at the expense of the doctrine of the ruin wrought by sin. The Jesuits felt called upon to defend their position, and Molinists and Jansenists entered into a long struggle. In 1641 the book of Jansen was placed in the Index. The university at Louvain and many of the bishops of the Netherlands refused to publish the bull of condemnation because it condemned doctrines taught verbally by Augustine. The strife spread to France, where the Jesuits secured the cooperation of the court, the parliament, the higher clergy, and the universities, with the exception of the faculty of the Sorbonne, which under the leadership of Anton Arnauld upheld the Jansenist doctrines. In 1653 Innocent X condemned five propositions of Jansen, and because the Jansenists claimed that Jansen had not taught these doctrines in a heretical manner Alexander VII cut off all further controversy by asserting that the pope had condemned the propositions in the sense in which Jansen had meant them to be taken (1656). The recluses of Port Royal were the strongest defenders of Jansen's book, Augustinus, and in consequence they drew the fiercest opposition from the Jesuits of which that order was capable. Louis XIV, spurred on by Jesuitical misrepresentations of the purposes 'So Baur, iii, 257. Möller says that he was about to decide against the Jesuits, when he suddenly died, according to the prophecy of the Jesuit Bellarmine.-iii, 235. and convictions of the scholarly and conscientious Port Royalists, brought the civil authorities into array by the side of these ecclesiastical persecutors. Not satisfied with the imprisonment of hundreds who for conscience sake refused to sign the formula condemning the five propositions, the enemies of Arnauld secured in 1656 the expulsion of that noble spirit and of sixty others who agreed with him from the theological faculty of the Sorbonne, and a little later an order from the civil magistrates that every scholar and novice should be sent away from the monastery at Port Royal. This brought to the rescue Blaise Pascal, who had recently, though without assuming any vows, taken up his abode in the convent. The sharpest and most effectual defense of the Jansenists and the wittiest and most stunning attack upon the moral system of the Jesuits soon appeared in his celebrated Provincial Letters.' PASCAL'S PROVINCIAL LITERARY OF ROMAN 2 Many years elapsed after the Reformation began before there arose in Roman Catholicism any writers who were able successfully to combat the Protestant doctrines. When they did appear they sprang chiefly from the ranks of the Jesuits. Peter Canisius published in 1555 his larger catechism, which was followed in 1556 by a smallest, and in 1558 or 1559 by his smaller catechism. These, together with his other works, were CATHOLICISM. all aimed at the catechetical works of the Reformation. The Jesuit cardinal Bellarmine produced, through his lectures in the Jesuit college in Rome, a work entitled Disputationes de Controversiis Christianæ Fidei adversus huius temporis hæreticos, in which he defended the Roman Catholic doctrine against the Protestant. Cæsar Baronius wrote his Annales Ecclesiastici in twelve volumes in order to meet the Magdeburg Centuries, written in the interest of Protestantism, by Flacius at Magdeburg. The Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists were also called forth by the Centuries, as also the Roma Sotteranea (1632) of A. Bosio, in which he strove to prove the very early existence of the doctrines and rites of the Church. Dionysius Petavius took up the history of dogma in his De Theologicis Dogmatibus. Maldonatus and Estius wrote commentaries respectively on the gospels and epistles of the New Testament. Cornelius à Lapide also wrote commentaries rich in patristic materials and widely read, but lacking in the sobriety displayed by Maldonatus and Estius." 1 See above, p. 544. 'So Braunsberger, Entstehung u. erste Entwickelung der Katechismen des seligen Petrus Canisius. 3 Comp. Möller, iii, 232, 233. But the Do- ROMAN CATH OLIC MISSION ARIES IN NORTH AMER ICA. As the principal literary activity of the Church against Protestantism was the product of Jesuitism, and the chief influences leading to the overthrow of the Reformation in several countries were exerted by Jesuits, so also they were the leaders in missionary endeavor abroad. minicans and Franciscans, following the explorers in America, found fields of activity suited to their zeal. Las Casas spent fifty years in the labors of proving by actual results the capability of the American Indians for conversion and in the attempt to soften the treatment which they received from the conquerors. The Franciscans claimed in 1535 to have converted one million two hundred thousand Indians.' 2 FRANCIS XAVIER. Among the Jesuits perhaps the most celebrated missionary is Francis Xavier. He landed in Goa, the Portuguese capital of East India, in 1542, accompanied by two brothers of his order, and with the authority and title of Apostolic Delegate. The Franciscans had been there before him, but Xavier got control of the seminary which had there been erected for the education of young natives as missionaries among their own people; and by the generosity of the king of Portugal soon developed it into a flourishing Jesuit college. From Goa he traveled to the Pearl Coast, Travancor, Malacca, and Ceylon. Although he labored under the difficulty of ignorance of the native languages, he claimed to have baptized hundreds of thousands, not, however, without the use of force in the abolition of idols from Goa. In 1549 he went to Japan, where the external forms of religion were not unlike those of Romanism, but whose priests, the Bonzes, gave him much trouble. In the different portions of Japan his success varied; but on the whole he claimed large results, and, partly in order to convince the Bonzes of the truth of Christianity by the conversion of the Chinese, started for China.' He died in 1552, before reaching his destination. The work was carried forward with good success by other Jesuits. But at length the Bonzes convinced the authorities that it was a political rather than a religious interest which lent the Jesuits so much zeal, and the order was banished from the realm. Persecutions at the hands of the authorities followed. After much suffering 1 Möller, iii, 248. "He gave his limited instructions by means of a small catechism in the native tongue, which he had committed to memory. 3 The Bonzes had often declared that the acceptance of Christianity by the Chinese would be a proof of its truthfulness. |