Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

there on November 1, 1542.

But the King of France would not play. He forbade the publication,

in his realm, of the papal summons, and threatened to arrest any

French clergyman who should try to attend a council held on his

enemy's terrain. When the council opened, only a few bishops, all

Italian, were present, and Paul adjourned the meeting to some time

when Charles and Francis would allow a full assembly. The Peace of

Crepy seemed to clear the way, and Paul called for the council to

reconvene on March 14, 1545. But now the renewal of danger from the

Turks compelled the Emperor again to conciliate the Protestants; he

asked for another postponement; and it was not till December 13, 1545,

that the "Nineteenth Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church" began

its active sessions at Trent.

Even that beginning was unpropitious, and far from "half the

deed." The Pope, nearing eighty, stayed in Rome, and presided, so to

speak, in absentia; but he sent three cardinals to represent him-

Del Monte, Cervini, and Pole. Cardinal Madruzzo of Trent, four

archbishops, twenty bishops, five generals of monastic orders, some

abbots, and a few theologians made up the gathering; it could hardly

claim as yet to be "ecumenical"- universal. `063936 Whereas at the

councils of Constance and Basel priests, princes, and certain

laymen, as well as prelates, could vote, and voting was by national

groups, here only the cardinals, bishops, generals, and abbots could

vote, and the voting was by individuals; hence the Italian bishops-

most of them indebted or for other reasons loyal to the papacy-

dominated the assembly with their numerical majority.

"Congregations" sitting in Rome under the supervision of the Pope

prepared the issues which alone could be submitted for debate. `063937

Since the Council claimed to be guided by the Holy Ghost, a French

delegate remarked that the third person of the Trinity regularly

came to Trent in the courier's bag from Rome. `063938

The first debate was on procedure: should the faith be first defined

and then reforms considered, or vice versa? The Pope and his Italian

supporters desired first a definition of dogmas. The Emperor and his

supporters sought reform first: Charles in the hope of appeasing,

weakening, or further dividing the Protestants; the German and Spanish

prelates in the hope that reforms would reduce the power of the Pope

over the bishops and the councils. A compromise was reached:

concurrent commissions would prepare resolutions on dogma and

reform, and these would be presented to the Council alternately.

In May 1546, Paul sent two Jesuits, Laynez and Salmeron, to help his

legates in matters of theology and papal defense; later they were

joined by Peter Canisius and Claude Le Jay. The unequaled erudition of

the Jesuits soon gave them paramount influence in the debates, and

their unbending orthodoxy guided the Council to declare war against

Reformation ideas rather than seek conciliation or unity. It was

apparently the judgment of the majority that no concessions to the

Protestants would heal the schism; that Protestant sects were

already so numerous and diverse that no compromise could satisfy

some without offending others; that any substantial alteration of

traditional dogmas would weaken the whole doctrinal structure and

stability of Catholicism; that the admission of priestly powers in the

laity would undermine the moral authority of the priesthood and the

Church; that that authority was indispensable to social order; and

that a theology frankly founded on faith would stultify itself by

submitting to the vagaries of individual reasoning. Consequently the

fourth session of the Council (April 1546) reaffirmed every item of

the Nicene Creed, claimed equal authority for Church tradition and

Scripture, gave the Church the sole right to expound and interpret the

Bible, and declared the Latin Vulgate of Jerome to be the definitive

translation and text. Thomas Aquinas was named as the authoritative

exponent of orthodox theology, and his Summa theologica was placed

on an altar only below the Bible and the Decretals. `063939

Catholicism as a religion of infallible authority dates in practice

from the Council of Trent, and took form as an uncompromising response

to the challenge of Protestantism, rationalism, and private

judgment. The "Gentlemen's Agreement" of the Renaissance Church with

the intellectual classes came to an end.

But if faith was so vital was it also sufficient of itself to

merit salvation, as Luther claimed? The fifth session (June 1546)

heard violent debates on this point; one bishop clutched another by

the beard and plucked out a handful of white hairs; hearing which, the

Emperor sent the Council word that if it could not quiet down he would

have a few prelates thrown into the Adige to cool them off. `063940

Reginald Pole argued for a view so dangerously close to Luther's

that Cardinal Caraffa (the future Paul IV) branded him as a heretic;

Pole retired from the battle to Padua, and excused himself, on the

ground of illness, from continued attendance at the Council. `063941

Cardinal Seripando defended the compromise formula that Contarini, now

dead, had offered at Ratisbon; but Laynez persuaded the Council to

stress, in full opposition to Luther, the importance of good works and

the freedom of the will.

Measures of ecclesiastical reform moved less actively than

definitions of dogma. The Bishop of St. Mark had opened the session of

January 6, 1546, by painting a somber picture of the corruption

prevailing in the world, which he thought posterity would never

surpass, and he had attributed this degeneration "solely to the

wickedness of the pastors"; the Lutheran heresy, he said, had been

caused chiefly by the sins of the clergy, and the reform of the clergy

was the best way of suppressing the rebellion. `063942 But the only

substantial reform accomplished in these early sessions was one

forbidding bishops to reside away from their sees, or to hold more

than one. The Council suggested to the Pope that the reform of the

Dataria should advance from theoretical recommendations to actual

directives. Paul, however, wished matters of reform to be left to

the papacy; and when the Emperor insisted on greater speed in reform

discussions at the conference, the Pope ordered his legates to propose

the removal of the Council to Bologna- which, being in the Papal

States, would allow a more expeditious control of conciliar actions by

Rome. The Italian bishops agreed; the Spanish and Imperial prelates

protested; a minor plague conveniently appeared in Trent and killed

a bishop; the Italian majority moved to Bologna (March 1547); the rest

stayed at Trent. Charles refused recognition to the Bologna

sessions, and threatened to convene a separate council in Germany.

After two years of argument and maneuvering Paul yielded, and

suspended the Bologna assembly (September 1549).

The situation was eased by Paul's death. Julius III came to an

understanding with the Emperor: in return for Charles's promise to

withhold support from any measure that would reduce papal authority,

he summoned the Council to meet again at Trent in May 1551, and agreed

that the Lutherans should be given a hearing. Henry II of France,

resenting this rapprochement between Pope and Emperor, declined to

recognize the Council. When it met it was so meagerly attended that it

had to adjourn. It assembled again on September 1, with eight

archbishops, thirty-six bishops, three abbots, five generals,

forty-eight theologians, Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg, and

ambassadors from Charles and Ferdinand.

The thirteenth session of the Council (October 1551) reaffirmed

the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation: the priest, in

consecrating the bread and wine of the Eucharist, actually changes

each of them into the body and blood of Christ. Thereafter it seemed

useless to hear the Protestants, but Charles insisted on it. The

Duke of Wurttemberg, Elector Maurice of Saxony, and some south

German towns chose the members of a Protestant delegation, and

Melanchthon drew up a statement of Lutheran doctrine to be submitted

to the Council. Charles gave the delegates a safe-conduct, but

these, remembering Constance and Huss, required also a safe-conduct

from the Council itself. After much discussion this was granted.

However, a Dominican friar, preaching on the parable of tares, in

the very cathedral in which the sessions were held, pointed out that

the heretic tares might be endured for a time, but in the end they

would have to be burned. `063943

On January 24, 1552, the Protestant deputies addressed the assembly.

They proposed that the decrees of the Councils of Constance and

Basel on the superior authority of councils over the popes should be

confirmed; that the members of the present body should be released

from their vows of fealty to Julius III; that all decisions hitherto

reached by the Council should be annulled; and that fresh

discussions of the issues should be held by an enlarged synod in which

the Protestants would be adequately represented. `063944 Julius III

forbade consideration of these proposals. The Council voted to

postpone action on them till March 19, when additional Protestant

delegates were expected.

During this delay military developments supervened upon theology. In

January 1552, the King of France signed an alliance with the German

Protestants; in March Maurice of Saxony advanced toward Innsbruck;

Charles fled, and no force could prevent Maurice, if he wished, from

capturing Trent and swallowing the Council. The bishops one by one

disappeared, and on April 28 the Council was formally suspended. By

the treaty of Passau (August 2) Ferdinand conceded religious freedom

to the militantly victorious Protestants. They took no further

interest in the Council.

Paul IV thought it prudent to let the Council hibernate during his

pontificate. Pius IV, a kindly old man, played with the thought that

the granting of communion in both kinds might appease the Protestants,

as it had done the Bohemians. He summoned the Council to reconvene

at Trent on April 6, 1561, and invited to it all Christian princes,

Catholic or Protestant. To this new session the French delegates

brought an imposing list of the reforms they desired: Mass in the

vernacular, communion in bread and wine, the marriage of priests,

the subordination of the papacy to general councils, and an end to the

system of papal dispensations and exemptions; `063945 apparently the

French government was for the moment in a semi-Huguenot mood.

Ferdinand I, now Emperor, seconded these proposals, and added that

"the Pope... should humble himself, and submit to a reform in his

own person, his state, and the Curia"; the legends of the saints

should be purified of absurdities, and monasteries should be

reformed so "that their great wealth might no longer be expended in so

profligate a manner." `063946 Matters loomed perilous for Pius, and

his legates looked with some trepidation to the opening of the

session.

After leisurely or strategic delays the seventeenth session of the

Council convened on January 18, 1562, with five cardinals, three

patriarchs, eleven archbishops, ninety bishops, four generals, four

abbots, and sundry lay representatives of Catholic princes. At

Ferdinand's request a safe-conduct was offered to any Protestant

delegate who might care to attend; none came. The Archbishop of

Granada and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, led a movement to reduce

the prerogatives of the pope by asserting that the bishops held

their power not through him but by direct "divine right"; and the

Bishop of Segovia repeated one of Luther's heresies by denying that

the pope was supreme over the other bishops in the early

Church. `063947 This episcopal uprising was snuffed out by the

parliamentary skill of the papal legates, the loyalty of the Italian

and Polish bishops to the Pope, and some timely papal courtesies to

the Cardinal of Lorraine. In the end the papal authority was not

lessened but enlarged, and every bishop was required to take an oath

of complete obedience to the Pope. Ferdinand was appeased by the

promise that on the termination of the Council the Pope would allow

administration of the Eucharist in both kinds.

This basic quarrel over, the Council quickly dispatched its

remaining business. Clerical marriage was forbidden, and severe

penalties were decreed against priestly concubinage. Many minor

reforms were enacted to improve the morals and discipline of the

clergy. Seminaries were to be established where candidates for the

priesthood could be trained to habits of austerity and piety. The

powers of the Curia were curbed. Rules were laid down for the reform

of Church music and art; nude figures were to be sufficiently

covered to avoid stimulating the sensual imagination. A distinction

was drawn between the worship of images and the worship of the persons

represented by them; in the latter sense the use of religious images

was upheld. Purgatory, indulgences, and the invocation of the saints

were defended and redefined. Here the Council frankly recognized the

abuses that had sparked Luther's rebellion; one decree read:

-

In granting indulgences the Council... decrees that all criminal

gain therewith connected shall be entirely done away with, as a source

of grievous abuse among the Christian people; and as to other

disorders arising from superstition, ignorance, irreverence, or any

cause whatsoever- since these, on account of the widespread

corruption, cannot be removed by special prohibitions- the Council

lays upon each bishop the duty of finding out such abuses as exist

in his own diocese, of bringing them before the next provincial synod,

and of reporting them, with the assent of the other bishops, to the

Roman Pontiff. `063948

-

Pope and Emperor agreed that the Council had now reached an end of

its usefulness; and on December 4, 1563, it was finally dissolved amid

the happy acclamations of the wearied delegates. The course of the

Church had been fixed for centuries.

-

The Counter Reformation succeeded in its principal purposes. Men

continued, in Catholic as much as in Protestant countries, to lie

and steal, seduce maidens and sell offices, kill and make war. `063949

But the morals of the clergy improved, and the wild freedom of

Renaissance Italy was tamed to a decent conformity with the

pretensions of mankind. Prostitution, which had been a major

industry in Renaissance Rome and Venice, now hid its head, and

chastity became fashionable. The authorship or publication of

obscene works was made a capital offense in Italy; so Niccolo

Franco, secretary and enemy of Aretino, was hanged by order of Pius

V for his Priapeia. `063950 The effect of the new restrictions on

art and literature was not indisputably harmful; baroque art is

emerging timidly from disrepute; and from a purely literary standpoint

Tasso, Guarini, and Goldoni do not fall precipitately from the level

of Boiardo, Ariosto, and the dramatist Machiavelli. Spain's greatest

age in literature and art came in the fullness of the "Catholic

Reaction." But the joyous character of Renaissance Italy faded;

Italian women lost some of the charm and exhilaration that had come

from their pre-Reformation freedom; a somber and conscious morality

produced an almost puritan age in Italy. Monasticism revived. From the

point of view of the free mind it was a loss to mankind that the

comparative Renaissance liberty of thought was ended by ecclesiastical

and political censorship; and it was a tragedy that the Inquisition

was restored in Italy and elsewhere just when science was breaking

through its medieval shell. The Church deliberately sacrificed the

intellectual classes to the pious majority, which applauded the

suppression of ideas that might dissolve its consoling faith.

The ecclesiastical reforms were real and permanent. Though the papal

monarchy was exalted as against the episcopal aristocracy of the

councils, this was in the spirit of the times, when aristocracies

everywhere, except in Germany, were losing power to the kings. The

popes were now morally superior to the bishops, and the discipline

required for ecclesiastical reform could be better effected by a

centralized than by a divided authority. The popes ended their

nepotism, and cured the Curia of its costly procrastinations and

flagrant venality. The administration of the Church, according to

non-Catholic students of the matter, became a model of efficiency

and integrity. `063951 The dark confessional box was introduced (1547)

and made obligatory (1614); the priest was no longer tempted by the

occasional beauty of his penitents. Indulgence peddlers disappeared;

indulgences, for the most part, were reserved for pious devotions

and works of charity rather than for financial contributions.

Instead of retreating before the advance of Protestantism or free

thought, the Catholic clergy set out to recapture the mind of youth

and the allegiance of power. The spirit of the Jesuits, confident,

positive, energetic, and disciplined, became the spirit of the

militant Church.

All in all it was an astonishing recovery, one of the most brilliant

products of the Protestant Reformation.

Epilogue: RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND

ENLIGHTENMENT

-

THE Renaissance and the Reformation are the two springs of modern

history, rival sources of the intellectual and moral freshening of

modern life. Men might be divided by their preference and lineage

here, by their conscious debt to the Renaissance for liberating the

mind and beautifying life, or their gratitude to the Reformation for

quickening religious belief and the moral sense. The debate between

Erasmus and Luther goes on, and will, for in these large matters

such truth as men can attain is begotten by the union of opposites,

and will ever feel its double parentage.

In a sense the debate is ethnic and geographical, between the Latins

and the Teutons, the plein-air, sensuous South and the misty, hardy

North; between peoples conquered by Rome and receiving the classic

heritage, and peoples resisting Rome- some conquering Rome- and loving

their own roots and climes far more than Greeks bringing gifts or

Romans bearing laws. Italy and Germany divided between them the

forming of the modern soul: Italy by going back to classic literature,

philosophy, and art, Germany by going back to early Christian faith

and ritual. Italy was almost succeeding in its second effort to

conquer Germany- now through tithes and humanism; Germany resisted

again, expelled the Church, and silenced the humanists. The

Reformation repudiated the Renaissance and its emphasis on earthly

affairs and joys, and returned to that aspect (only one!) of the

Middle Ages which counted human achievements and delights trivial

and vain, called life a vale of tears, and summoned sinful man to

faith, repentance, and prayer. To the Italian of the Renaissance,

reading Machiavelli and Aretino, this seemed a medieval reaction, a

restoration of the Age of Faith in the struggling adolescence of the

Age of Reason. The Italian who had heard Pomponazzi, and lived under

the easy rule of the Renaissance popes, smiled to find Luther and

Calvin and Henry VIII keeping all the marvelous dogmas of the medieval

creed- a God-dictated Bible, a triune deity, predestination,

creation by divine fiat, original sin, incarnation, virgin birth,

atonement, the last judgment, heaven, and hell- and rejecting

precisely those elements of medieval Christianity- the worship of

the Virgin, a God of love and mercy, the invocation of intercessory

saints, a ritual adorned with all the arts- which had given to that

faith a tenderness, solace, and beauty warranting a wink at the

myths that allowed enjoyment of the arts.

The sincerely believing Catholic had his own argument against the

Reformation. He too resented tithes, but he could not dream of

destroying the Church. He knew quite well that the monks were

getting out of hand, but he felt that there should be room and

institutions in the world for men dedicated to contemplation, study,

and prayer. He accepted every word of the Bible with two provisos:

that the law of Christ had abrogated the law of Moses, and that the

Church, having been founded by the Son of God, had equal authority

with the Bible, and should have the final right to interpret it and

adjust it to the changing needs of life. What would happen if

ambiguous and apparently contradictory passages in Scripture were left

to the free interpretation and judgment of the individual man?-

would not the Bible be torn to pieces by a thousand minds, and

Christianity be shattered into a thousand warring sects?

The modern Catholic continues the argument through every phase of

modern life. "Your emphasis on faith as against works was ruinous, and

led to a religion whose coldness of heart was concealed behind the

piety of its phrases; for a hundred years charity almost died in the

centers of your victory. You ended the confessional and generated a

thousand tensions in the soul of men struggling between instinct and

civilization, and now you belatedly restore that healing institution

under dubious forms. You destroyed nearly all the schools we had

established, and you weakened to the verge of death the universities

that the Church had created and developed. Your own leaders admit that

your disruption of the faith led to a dangerous deterioration of

morals in both Germany and England. You let loose a chaos of

individualism in morals, philosophy, industry, and government. You

took all the joy and beauty out of religion, and filled it with

demonology and terror; you condemned the masses of mankind to

damnation as "reprobates," and consoled an insolent few with the pride

of "election" and salvation. You stifled the growth of art, and

wherever you triumphed classical studies withered. You expropriated

Church property to give it to the state and the rich, but you left the

poor poorer than before, and added contempt to misery. You condoned

usury and capitalism, but you deprived the workers of the restful

holydays a merciful Church had given them. You rejected the papacy

only to exalt the state; you gave to selfish princes the right to

determine the religion of their subjects, and to use religion as a

sanction for their wars. You divided nation against nation, and many a

nation and city against itself; you wrecked the international moral

checks on national powers, and created a chaos of warring national

states. You denied the authority of a Church founded, on your own

admission, by the Son of God, but you sanctioned absolute monarchy,

and exalted the divine right of kings. Unwittingly you destroyed the

power of the Word, which is the only alternative to the power of money

or the sword. You claimed the right of private judgment, but you

denied it to others as soon as you could; and your refusal to tolerate

dissent was less understandable than ours, for we had never defended

toleration; no man can be tolerant except where he is indifferent.

Meanwhile see what your private judgment has led to. Every man becomes

a pope, and judges the doctrines of religion before he is old enough

to comprehend the functions of religion in society and morals, and the

need of the people for a religious faith. A kind of disintegrative

mania, unhindered by any integrative authority, throws your

followers into such absurd and violent disputes that men begin to

doubt all religion, and Christianity itself would be dissolved, and

men would be left spiritually naked in the face of death, were it

not that the Church stands firm amid all the fluctuations of opinion

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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