1417-1517 - Martin V To Martin Luther
The Great Western Schism was a terrible misfortune. Every claimant to the papacy sought to increase the number of his followers by generous grants of privileges and concessions. Thus authority was weakened and the seeds of rebellion were fostered. The contest of Philip IV against Boniface VIII caused a spirit of disloyalty to spread among the French; and the Avignon residence affected the other nations unfavorably.
Owing to the papal claim to name successors for vacant benefices, numerous complaints were raised against the Holy See. Further, the heavy ecclesiastical taxes became a fruitful source of discontent. The prevalent system of filling ecclesiastical benefices had some advantages, for it counteracted the spirit of caste and the ambition prevailing in many monasteries and prebends that were inclined to grant admission only to the nobility. It also often tended to encourage learning and virtue and to discourage worldliness. The tribute paid to the Holy See went for the support of the Crusades, for the foundation and maintenance of the higher institutions of learning, and for objects of general good.
John Wiclif, born in the village of Wiclif, England (1324), denounced the custom of paying Peter's Pence to the Holy See. He gained the favor of the king and was appointed professor of divinity at Oxford, where he openly taught pantheism and numerous other errors.1 It was not long until Wiclif's adherents excited the peasants to insurrection, for which they were condemned and punished by the king and the parliament.
John Hus, an enthusiastic Bohemian patriot, and a professor at the university of Prague, became an ardent defender of the errors of Wiclif. He stirred up animosity between the Czechs and the Germans; and the Germans were deprived of their standing at the university. Twenty thousand students left Prague and the university lost its rank. Hus publicly defended the doctrines of Wiclif. He denounced ecclesiastical censures, and brought upon himself the excommunication of the pope. Despite his suspension, he continued to preach against the Church, while his adherents engaged in deeds of violence. Hus was obliged to admit before the council that he had advised his followers to use force of arms against " the enemies of truth." Like Wiclif, he flattered the masses and excited them to persecute priests and monks. Having been denounced as a heretic and rebel, he was condemned by Ludwig, the Count Palatinate, to die at the stake according to the established law (1415). His friend, Jerome of Prague, who had abused and murdered monks, underwent the same punishment the following year. The proceedings against Hus were conducted by the anti-pope, John XXIII, and by the unlawful Council of Constance. And as for the assertion that the council declared it is lawful to break faith with heretics, that story rests upon two documents, one of which is an eighteenth century forgery, and the other a private resolution, or scheme, which was never even submitted to the council.
The discovery of America (1492), by Christopher Columbus, opened a new field for the missionary activity of the Church. Pope Alexander VI commissioned Ferdinand the Catholic to have Christianity introduced into the New World. The first missionaries were chiefly Franciscans and Dominicans. Their labors were in a great measure frustrated by the avarice and cruelty of the Spanish settlers, who compelled the natives to work as slaves.
The missionaries denounced the enslavement of the Indians as a violation of their natural rights and of the laws of Christianity. For a while, negroes were brought from Africa to replace the Indian slaves; but Cardinal Ximenes, regent of Spain after the death of Ferdinand, forbade this practice. The Dominican, Bartholomew de las Casas, wished to have the negroes who were slaves employed in the heavier labors of the colonies, instead of the weaker Indians. For this reason he has been unjustly accused of introducing the slave-trade, whereas he was the true apostle of the Indians, and the staunch defender of their personal freedom. He crossed the ocean sixteen times in his efforts to defend their rights against Europeans who alleged that Indians were but irrational beasts and born to slavery.
Pope Paul III (1534-1540), in a Bull issued in 1537, vindicated the liberty of the Indians and maintained that they belong to the human race and are heirs to the natural rights of man. The decrees of this Bull were frequently renewed by succeeding popes; and the example of the popes was followed by the kings of Spain.
The various religious orders sent many missionaries into the new countries; and these missionaries were true friends of the persecuted natives. They compiled grammars, dictionaries, and religious books; and succeeded in winning many of the most savage tribes to the Christian faith. The Franciscans were at work before 1500, and the Dominicans soon after. The Jesuits began to arrive in 1549; and their martyrs in Spanish America numbered more than seventy. Before the year 1600, there had been founded thirty-two dioceses and four hundred monasteries in Latin America.
In mediaeval times, little attention had been paid to classical, or humanistic studies, as more emphasis was placed upon solidity of matter than upon beauty of form. Men did not love or treasure foreign works as much as they did their own vigorous national literature embodying the healthy, lively spirit of their own race. It was only in the fifteenth century, after the decline of Germany had begun, that the classical studies cultivated by the humanists came to the fore. This event was occasioned largely by intercourse with the East during the negotiations for the union of the Greek and Latin churches and then, later, by the coming of the Greek refugees, who fled west after the conquest of Constantinople (1453). Classical studies (called humanities) and the promoters of classical studies (humanists), were encouraged by churchmen; and the movement exercised a refining influence upon literature, especially upon ecclesiastical Latin.
But far greater was the influence of exaggerated humanism, which developed an extreme and ridiculous preference for everything classical. German surnames were translated into Greek and Latin. A tendency to overrate pagan philosophy placed the works of Plato and Aristotle on the same level with the Bible. Scholasticism, even when profound, was scorned as inelegant; and a false enthusiasm for pagan ideas, combined with contempt for the Church, together with a tendency to indifferentism, frivolity, and obscenity prevailed. Many humanists ridiculed priests and monks, and even mocked the saints. Ulrich von Hutten sang in classical Latin of the immorality which later caused his death in 1523. Side by side with the revival of classical letters, went the return to pagan forms of art. "The Renaissance" was the name given to this movement.
In the year 1517, Europe possessed more than one hundred universities, forty-five of which had existed since the year 1400. Germany possessed twenty. The attendance, when compared to that of the present time, seems almost incredible. The University of Prague had over 30,000 students and 700 professors; and many institutions had over 20,000 pupils. In the year 1905, the twenty-one universities of Germany, taken together, held about 40,000 students. Scholasticism, with some teachers, degenerated into a mass of useless subtleness; but the better masters of this system taught the principles of St. Thomas, whose works were printed more than two hundred times in the fifteenth century, each edition containing from 300 to 1,000 copies.
About the time that Marco Polo related his travels, the simplest form of printing began to be practised in Europe. Printing with wood-engravings was effected in 1285 by the two Cunios, relatives of Pope Honorius IV. Initially most of the books which had been printed had been printed with wooden types.
The art of printing exercised a great influence upon the life of the Church. The clergy, finding in it a valuable auxiliary to their missionary labors, made every effort to promote its development. The Church also granted indulgences to aid in its progress. The Bible was the first book printed by Gutenberg (started in 1450). Italy — especially Rome and Venice — published excellent editions of the Bible and of the church Fathers. The people soon learned to read and to derive great benefit from good books.
The Gutenberg Bible, the first substantial book printed with movable type, is one of the greatest treasures in the Ransom Center's collections. It was printed at Johann Gutenberg's shop in Mainz, Germany and completed in 1454 or 1455. It is to Peter Schoeffer that the world owes the invention of cast metal types in 1459. The casting of types at once reduced the cost of their production to less than a hundredth part of what it must have cost to cut them, and thus insured the eventual spread of the printer's art as an ordinary trade. Where one written book was sold, a thousand printed books were required.
Among the most absurd Protestant errors is the notion that the Bible in the vernacular was not allowed. The whole Bible existed in English long before Wiclif was born (1324). Before the year of Luther's outbreak (1517), there were fourteen complete editions of the Bible in the High German, and four in the Low German, dialect, together with numerous German editions of separate parts. In addition to these, there were ninety-eight complete Latin editions, all published before the time of Luther. In the various European languages there existed many pre-Lutheran translations of the Bible, for instance, in Italian (Venice, 1471), French (Paris, 1487), Spanish (Valencia, 1478), and Dutch (Delft, 1475). A complete Swedish edition existed in the fifteenth century. Janssen reports that despite the enormous number of books that had been lost, he knew of 22,000 works published between the years 1450 and 1500 — a striking evidence of the intellectual activity of the time.
Many books of devotion and instruction were printed, such as Bibles of the Poor, pictorial catechisms, and manuals of confession. Of the sermon books containing Sunday Epistles and Gospels, together with prayers, a hundred editions antedate Luther. The doctrine of penance and of indulgence was set forth clearly and precisely in books of instruction; and particular stress was laid on the need of true, interior sorrow. From 1470-1518, more than thirty collections of German hymns were published, a sufficient proof that the German folksong was cultivated before the appearance of Luther.
The older, Christian humanism, was represented by Agricola, Reuchlin, Trithemius, Sebastian Brant, and their less worthy fellow, the famous Erasmus. 2°. The later pagan period was represented by humanists who used their talents and linguistic accomplishments in favor of irreligion and schism, and against God and the Church. They were men of ignoble character, without faith or morality, servile flatterers, and shameless calumniators. Their pagan humanism soon gained preponderance. Its spirit may be seen in the "Del Principe" of Nicholas Macchiavelli (+ 1530), and in " The Letters of Obscure Men" (1514-1517), written by Hutten and others, ridiculing the authority of the Church and paving the way for schism.
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