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IN the summer of the year 1270, terrible news came to France from
Africa, and to all Christian Europe. The King of France, St. Louis, had
died of fever in the camp before Tunis, and the crusade was over. A
world of effort, of sacrifice, and of suffering had gone for just
nothing; and something unique had passed from a singularly troubled
world. The one leader whom, for his righteousness, all Christendom
might have trusted was dead.
In that summer of 1270 the figure of the great French king stood out
with especial significance. It was now sixteen years since the last of
the emperors had died, vanquished by that papacy which his house had
striven to enthrall. In those sixteen years Germany had been given over
to anarchy, while the popes, with very varied success, had worked to
consolidate their new, precarious, hold on independence. In the end no
way had offered itself to them but the old way, the protection of some
Christian sovereign's defensive arm. To find some such prince, and
install him in southern Italy as king of their vassal state of Sicily,
was, then, a first obvious aim of papal policy. No less obviously, St.
Louis IX was the ideal champion. Years of negotiation, however, had
failed to persuade him to become a partner in any such scheme. The
saint was by no means accustomed to accept unquestioningly the papal
solutions for political problems. But, in the end, ten years'
experience convinced him that, so long as the chaos in southern Italy
continued. the popes must be wholly absorbed by the single problem of
how to remain independent amid the ceaseless war of political factions.
On the other hand, the general affairs of Christendom stood in too
urgent need of the papacy's constructive direction for any such papal
absorption in Italian politics to be tolerable: the Italian disorder
must be ended; and so St. Louis had not only assented to the papal
policy but had allowed his youngest brother, Charles of Anjou, to
become the pope's man, and to lead a French army into Italy for the
defeat of the last remnants of the Hohenstaufen kings of Sicily. [ ]
The pope's chosen champion had now destroyed the pope's enemies -- but
the papal problem remained. Already, by the time Charles had to fight
his second battle, it was becoming evident to the pope who crowned him
and blessed his arms -- Clement IV -- that the victorious champion
threatened to be as dangerous to the papal freedom as ever the
Hohenstaufen had been. Strong protests against the new king's cruelty
and tyranny began to be heard from the apostolic see. This pope, French
by birth and for the greater part of his life a highly trusted
counsellor of Louis IX, bound closely to the king by similarity of
ideals and mutual esteem, was ideally equipped for the difficult task
of guiding the new French venture through its first critical years. His
sudden death, in November 1268, only two months after Tagliacozzo, was
an immense loss; and this swelled into a catastrophe; first of all when
the cardinals left the Holy See vacant for as long as three years, [ ]
and then when, while the Church still lacked a pope, death claimed St.
Louis too. For long there had been no emperor, there was no pope, and
now the King of France had died. The last sure hope of checking the
ambitions of Charles of Anjou had gone. In St. Louis's place there
would reign the rash simplicity of his son, Philip III. Charles would
have an open field, every chance he could desire to build up a
situation which the future popes would have to accept -- unless they
were prepared to start a new war to destroy him, as he had destroyed
for them the heirs of Frederick II.
Of the two deaths the more important by far was that of St. Louis.
Sanctity is rare in rulers, and rarest of all is the sanctity that
shows itself in the perfection of the ruler's characteristic virtue of
prudent practical ability. The pope's death found the Church in crisis
-- it did not create the crisis; but the French king alone could have
brought the papacy and Christendom safely through the crisis. One thing
alone could have saved it, and he alone could have done that one thing
-- namely, maintain the tradition, now two centuries old, of French
support for the popes in the difficulties which arose out of their
office as guardians of political morality, while yet refusing to be a
mere instrument for the execution of the popes' political judgments.
The papacy needed the French -- but it needed also to be independent of
them; and Christendom needed that the French should retain their
independence too, and not become mere tools of popes who happened to be
politicians as well as popes. This difficult and delicate part St.
Louis managed to fit to perfection -- as none, before or since, has
fitted it. And never was the lack of a prince to fit the part
productive of greater mischief than in the twenty-five years that
followed his death. For one main event of those years was the reversal
of the traditional Franco-Papal entente that had been a source of so
much good to both powers and, indeed, a main source of the peace of
Christendom.
The Holy See, when Clement IV's death in 1268 delivered it over to the
unprecedented calamity of a three years, vacancy, was already gravely
embarrassed by the opposition of various Catholic powers to its leading
policies. The popes were, for example, determined on a renewal of the
crusade; but the great maritime republics of Genoa and Venice were all
for peace with the Turks: war would mean the loss of valuable trade,
defeat be the end of their commercial empire. The popes, again, had
been favourably impressed by the Byzantine emperor's moves to end the
schism between Constantinople and Rome that had gone on now for two
hundred years; but Charles of Anjou wanted nothing so little as peace
with Michael VIII, whom he was planning to supplant as emperor. The
Lombard towns were the scenes of continual strife, the feuds bred by
generations of civil war still active. The anti-papal forces in these
cities found a curious ally in that wing of the great Franciscan
movement which demanded a return to the most primitive form of the
Franciscan life, and saw in this the kind of life all Church
dignitaries ought to lead. The anarchic element in this movement, which
threatened the existence of all ecclesiastical authority, was naturally
welcome to rulers who, in every city of Italy, and beyond Italy too,
aspired to restore the arbitrary omnipotence of the emperors of ancient
Rome and secure thereby the exclusive triumph of material interests. [
] This active unnatural alliance of Franciscan Spirituals and
totalitarian capitalists of one kind and another, the popes were bound
to fight; and here they were gravely hampered by a legacy from the
papacy's own recent past. In the long struggle against the last great
Hohenstaufen emperor, Frederick II, the central authority in the
Church, under the popes Gregory IX (1227-1241) and Innocent IV
(1243-1254) "saw itself compelled to turn all its activity towards
those resources and influences of a temporal kind that were necessary
for its defence, and to expand the whole system of its temporal
activity in order to secure itself against the attacks of its tireless
foe." [ ]
This use, by the Vicar of Christ, of fleets and armies to maintain his
independence -- and the chronic need for this use in the "Ages of
Faith" -- this willing acceptance by the popes of suzerain status in
the feudal world over more or less reluctant royal vassals, John of
England in one generation, Charles of Sicily in another; this raising
of huge sums of money by loans from bankers and by levies on all the
sees of Christendom in turn; this use of the crusade ideal and formulae
to describe and characterise wars against European princes who remained
the popes' children in the Faith despite their disobedience; all this,
to the modern reader, seems often to need a great deal of explanation.
And the popes who defended, in this particular way, those rights and
that independent status which, undeniably, were the bases of the
general recovery of Europe from barbarism, had to meet, as we shall
see, much criticism of a similar kind from their own Catholic
contemporaries.
Naturally enough the first form the criticism took was resentment,
well-nigh universal, at the financial levies. From the moment when, in
1261, the newly elected French pope, Urban IV, began the great move to
haul the papacy out of the political slough where he found it, the
popes' need of money never ceases. Both the bad effect on those who
collected the money, and the resentment of those from whom it was
extorted, are henceforth permanent active elements of the state-of-
the-Church problem. Already by the time Charles of Anjou had
established himself in the kingdom of Sicily (1266) there was -- we can
now see -- cause for anxiety on this score.
At the other pole of the main axis of European affairs the French
State, too, had its serious chronic problems. The traditional policy
which had, by 1270, secured the Capetian kings' uniquely strong hold as
rulers of a great nation, has been well described as "the slow
collaboration of interests and public opinion." [ ] In a century when
popes are to be counted by the dozen, France had been so lucky as to
have but two kings and both of them really great rulers. [ ] Their
achievement was very great, but it was not complete; and a modern
French historian [ ] has well described some elements of the problem
St. Louis left to his son, Philip III, and which, aggravated by the
fifteen years of this king's weak rule, faced the next king, one of the
most enigmatic figures of medieval history. This was Philip the Fair,
whose reign (1285-1314) was a turning point in the history of the
papacy and the Church. " France was falling to pieces. One after
another the institutions upon which the whole fabric rested were
breaking up and giving way. . . . Some of the feudatories were as
powerful as the king himself, the Duke of Aquitaine, for example, who
was also King of England; others, such as the Duke of Brittany or the
Count of Flanders, ruled provinces that were really foreign countries
in their way of life; in Languedoc the people detested the French. From
one end of the country to the other, a myriad contradictory uses,
customs, traditions, jurisdictions, privileges contended and struggled;
none of them subject to royal regulation. The great mass of the nation
was set against the classes that ruled. . . everywhere the national
life was disorganised; anarchy seemed imminent, and it seemed only too
likely that several important provinces would become independent states
or fall under foreign rule."
Philip the Fair would meet his problems with new resources and a wholly
new combination of strength and ruse. In his bid to be really master of
every element of French life, not only would he come into violent
conflict with the papacy -- as other French kings had done in their
time -- but he would inaugurate a new tradition in the relations of the
principal monarchy in Europe with the Holy See. He would not be the
partner of the pope, but his master. In his grandfather, St. Louis,
there had been seen the perfection of the older conception, the French
king allied with the papacy in an implicit pact of mutual assistance, a
true defender of the independence of religion and at the same time just
as truly defender of the rights of the French clergy-rights to property
-- against the papacy itself. This devotion of St. Louis to the cause
of the papacy did not ever entail any blind following of every detail
of the papal policies. The king refused to allow Frederick II to
capture Lyons while the General Council assembled there that was to
condemn him; he even assembled an army in case Frederick should move.
But, on the other hand, he did not, once Frederick was condemned and
excommunicated and deposed by the pope, offer the pope his aid to carry
out the sentence. St. Louis remained carefully neutral. Again "In his
relations with the French episcopate, whether it was a matter of fiefs
or even of applying disciplinary power, Louis IX showed a care to
exercise control, and a susceptibility about his rights which
conflicted only in appearance with his zeal for the interests of
religion. It was his conviction that the prerogatives of the crown were
necessary to the good order of the community, and thus the saint made
it as much a matter of conscience to defend them well as to use them
rightly; the prestige of those to whom religious jurisdiction was
confided did not obscure the saint's clear vision of what was right,
and in all matters he paid less attention to the noisy demands of the
representatives of the clergy than to the canonical rules which ought
to be the inspiration of their conduct." [ ]
Such was the delicate situation and such the prince lost to the Church,
to Christendom no less than to France, on August 25, 1270. Charles of
Anjou, supreme for the moment, took charge of the crusade. He made a
pact with the Sultan which brought the whole affair to an end (October
20) and, a month later, re-embarked the armies and sailed back to
Europe.
Meanwhile, at Viterbo, the papal election continued to drag on. Holy
men appeared to harangue and to warn the sixteen cardinals. The General
of the new Servite Friars, St. Philip Benizi, fled from the offer of
the honour. The kings of France and Sicily tried what a personal visit
might effect. Then the people of Viterbo, in desperation with the
cardinals' indifference to the scandal caused by their incompetence,
took a hand and stripped of its roof the palace where the electors met.
At last, on September 1, 1271, the cardinals gave power to a commission
of six of their number to elect a pope, and that same day the six found
their man. He was Theobaldo Visconti, not a cardinal, nor a bishop, nor
even a priest, but the Archdeacon of Liege; and at this moment away in
the Holy Land, encouraging the heir to the English crown in the forlorn
hours of the last of the crusades. It was weeks before the archdeacon
heard of his election, and months before he landed in Italy to be
ordained, consecrated and crowned as Pope Gregory X (March 27, 1272).
The new pope, a man perhaps sixty years of age, was one of those
figures whose unexpected entry into the historical scene seems as
evident a sign of God's care for mankind as was ever the appearance of
a prophet to Israel of old. He was largehearted, he was disinterested,
a model of charity in his public life no less than in private, free
from any taint of old political associations, simple, energetic,
apostolic. His first anxiety was the restoration of Christian rule in
the East: to this the European situation was secondary. But for the
sake of the Crusade, the European complications must be speedily
resolved, despite all the vested interests of long-standing feuds. In
this work of reconciliation Gregory X's apostolic simplicity, and his
aloofness from all the quarrels of the previous thirty years, gave to
the papal action a new strength. A vision now inspired it that
transcended local and personal expediency.
There was, the pope saw, no hope for the future of Catholicism in the
Holy Land, no hope of holding off the Saracen from fresh conquests, so
long as Rome and Constantinople remained enemies; and it was the first
action of his reign to take up, and bring to a speedy conclusion, those
negotiations to end the schism which had trailed between the two courts
for now many years. That this policy of reunion, an alliance with the
Greek emperor, Michael VIII, cut clean across the plans of Charles of
Anjou to renew the Latin empire at Constantinople, with himself as
emperor, and across his pact with Venice to divide up the Christian
East between them, did not for a moment daunt the pope. Nor did the
claims of Alfonso X of Castile to be emperor in the West hinder the
pope from a vigorous intervention in Germany which resulted in the
unchallenged election of Rudolf of Habsburg, and a close to nineteen
years of civil war and chaos. A Germany united and at peace with itself
was a fundamental condition of a peaceful Christendom.
This admirable pope knew the problems of Franco-German Europe by
personal experience, from the vantage point of life in the middle lands
that lay between the rival cultures. His direct diplomacy had thwarted
the plan of Charles of Anjou to force the election of his nephew, the
King of France, as emperor, and now the pope so managed the diplomatic
sequence to the election of Rudolf of Habsburg that it brought these
rivals into friendly collaboration. And he managed, also, in a personal
interview at Beaucaire, to soothe the disappointed Alfonso of Castile.
Nowhere, at any time, did Gregory X's action leave behind it resentment
or bitterness.
The Crusade, reunion of the separated churches of the East, and the
reform of Catholic life, thrown back everywhere by the fury of the long
war with the Hohenstaufen, were Gregory X's sole, and wholly spiritual,
anxieties. Christendom must be organised anew, refitted throughout for
the apostolic work that lay ahead. The first, most obvious step, was to
survey its resources, to study its weaknesses and then find suitable
remedies. This would best be done in a General Council, and only four
days after Gregory's coronation the letters went out to kings and
prelates, convoking a council to meet at Lyons in the summer of 1274.
Gregory X is, above all else, the pope of this second General Council
of Lyons. Nowhere in his well-filled reign is his largehearted trust in
the better side of human nature more evident, his confidence that
charity and a right intention in the pope would call out the same
virtues in others. And certainly the greatest charity was needed in
whoever hoped to heal the long, poisoned dissension that kept the
churches of the East estranged from Rome. The schism, in its causes,
went back centuries. Latin despised Greek as shifty and treacherous:
Greek despised Latin as barbarous and uncivilised. The association of
the two during the various crusades had steadily sharpened the
antagonism. Finally there was the memory of the Latin conquest of
Constantinople in 1204, the sack of the great city, the massacres, the
expulsion of the Greek ruler and his replacement by a Latin, with a
Latin bishop enthroned as patriarch in the see of Photius and
Cerularios. That Latin regime had endured for less than sixty years. On
July 25, 1261, the Greeks had returned under Michael VIII.
Constantinople fell to him with scarcely a struggle, and with the Latin
empire there crashed the Latin ecclesiastical establishment. That the
immediate reaction of the then pope -- Urban IV -- himself a one-time
Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, was to plan a great crusade of recovery,
was most natural. That never before in their history were the Greeks so
hostile to the Latins, was natural no less. And if this was the moment
when Michael VIII proposed to the pope to bring the schism to an end,
the observer might see in his action no more than the clearest of signs
that the Greek emperor realised how slender was his hold on the new
conquest. The King of France -- St. Louis -- had taken the cross in
response to Pope Urban's appeal; and Venice, the real author of the
piratical conquest of 1204, was also actively preparing. No pope,
however, would hesitate between a restoration of obedience forced at
the sword's point and a general return to obedience on the part of
Constantinople and all its dependent churches. Michael’s shrewd move
held up the military expedition. From the day when Urban IV sent his
Franciscan envoys to discuss Michael’s proposal (28 July, 1263) the
emperor knew his immediate danger was past.
Urban IV died (October 2, 1264) before much more had been done than to
make clearer than clear how diverse were the intentions of emperor and
pope. Michael had proposed first of all to complete the work of
national unity; to drive out of the imperial territories, that is to
say, what Latin rulers still remained. Urban thought that the religious
reunion should come first.
Once a new pope was elected, Clement IV (February 5, 1265), Michael was
able to begin all over again. It was a great advantage that Clement's
plans for a crusade were directed to an expedition against the Holy
Land itself. Constantinople now seemed secure against any western
attack, and the emperor could safely begin the theological hedging and
jousting. The Greeks, seemingly, proposed a council in which the
differences of belief should be discussed. The pope replied, in the
traditional Roman way, that the Faith being a thing that was settled,
such discussionwas impossible. The pope's ambassadors could indeed go
into the questions raised by the Greeks and, once the union was a fact,
there could be a council to ratify it. And Clement sent a declaration
of faith to the emperor (March 1267).
Constantinople was, however, at this moment in the throes of an
ecclesiastical upheaval, which produced three successive patriarchs in
eighteen months. Politics had the main share in this and now,
unfortunately, although the patriarch in possession was a strong
supporter of Michael as emperor, he had the disadvantage of being
violently anti-Latin. Michael, perforce, must go slowly; and then,
while he was considering Clement's reply, the pope died (29 November,
1268) and there began one of the longest vacancies the Holy See has
ever known. [ ]
If the long vacancy solved, for Michael, the immediate problem how to
frame a submission to Rome that would be palatable also to his
patriarch, it raised once more the problem of the security of his
empire from western attacks. His chief danger in the West lay in the
King of Sicily, Charles of Anjou. For this leading Guelf had no sooner
overcome the Sicilian Ghibelline (1266), than he began to show himself,
in the East, a most faithful follower of Ghibelline policy. To all the
kings of Sicily-Norman, Hohenstaufen, and now Angevin -- the emperor at
Constantinople was the traditional enemy. It was an antagonism that
went back before the crusades, dating from those days when the Normans
first conquered from the Greek emperor these Italian lands. And when
the Sicilian kingdom fell to kings who were also German emperors, the
traditional Mediterranean policy they inherited cut across the
simplicities of the papally planned crusade. For these imperialists
were enemies, first, of Byzantium. They might conquer the Turk
ultimately, but their present thought was rather the Eastern Empire. An
assault of this kind had been in the mind of the Emperor Henry VI when
death so prematurely carried him off (1197). Seven years later, with
the active assistance of his brother, the Emperor Philip, the plan was
realised and Constantinople torn from the Greeks -- though not to the
profit of Sicily. In the next generation Frederick II, Henry's son was
the champion of the imperialistic idea and, surrendering the whole
substance of the crusade, he negotiated a settlement with the Turks
without any pretence of destroying their power. And now the conqueror
of Frederick II's heirs was showing himself just as hostile to
Byzantium, just as openly averse to any war against the Turks.
In 1267, while Clement IV and Michael VIII were seemingly planning a
reunion of Latin west and Greek east, Charles began to style himself
King of Jerusalem, and made the claim that he was heir to the last
Latin emperor of the East. He was carefully building up a strong
position for the future, gathering in claims and rights which, once
Michael VIII was conquered, would become political realities. Clement
out of the way, what should stay him? By the spring of 1270 his plans
were completed, and to Michael VIII the end seemed very near. In his
desperation he appealed to the cardinals and also to St. Louis. The
saint, sympathetic to the scheme for reunion, and ever the enemy of
such schemes of realpolitik as Charles of Anjou was promoting, halted
his brother most effectively by summoning him to take his place in the
crusade then preparing against Tunis.
St. Louis' tragic death (25 August, 1270) set Charles free to renew his
efforts against Michael VIII, and he had already done much by
negotiations with the Latin princes in Achaia and the Peloponnesus,
when he met the greatest check of all, the election as pope of one
resolved, before all else, to bring together Greek and Latin to defend
Christendom against their common foe the Turk. Charles might now style
himself King of Albania, and ally himself with Michael’s Greek rivals
(1272), and even send Angevin forces and some of his own Saracen
archers to attack Michael in Greece (1273): the new pope had passed too
speedily from desires to action, the work of the Council of Lyons was a
political fact, and on May 1, 1275 the King of Sicily was compelled to
sign a truce with Michael.
The motives of the Greek emperor in offering his submission to the
various popes and so proposing to bring to an end the schism that had
endured for two hundred and twenty years were, then, evidently no more
than political. Such practical statesmen as Urban IV and Clement IV
would no doubt have grasped this, and acted accordingly, long before
any formal act of reunion was completed. Gregory X was more optimistic
than such papal realists. He readily listened to Michael VIII's new
offers and sent a distinguished commission of theological experts and
diplomatists to Constantinople to initiate the good work.
The four envoys [ ] -- Friars Minor -- took with them the creed or
profession of faith, drafted by Clement IV. This the emperor, the
bishops, and the people were to accept, and thereupon emperor and
prelates were to take their places at the coming council. The arrival
of this commission at Constantinople was the beginning of an immense
theological excitement. It was immediately evident that the bishops
would by no means obey mechanically any order from the emperor to
submit themselves.
The leading theological question was the Latin doctrine that the Holy
Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, or rather whether the
Latins had any right to express this doctrine by adding to the
so-called creed of the Council of Nicaea the words "and from the Son".
[ ] The Greek bishops began by denying their right to do so, and gave
the Latins an ultimatum to end the scandal by withdrawing the phrase.
The emperor then took charge, and explained to his bishops, in private,
that if this proposed arrangement with the Latins fell through, the
empire was lost. As to the Latin formulae, no one could object to them
as a matter of conscience, for the doctrines they expounded were
perfectly orthodox. And he brought theological authority, and also
earlier declarations of the Greek episcopate, to support the statement.
The most learned man of the day was John Beccos, the chartophylax, [ ]
and to him the bishops now looked for the reply that would non-suit the
emperor's plea. Beccos, however, contented neither party. He did not
refute the emperor; but he declared the Latins to be heretics.
Whereupon Michael ordered his imprisonment. The patriarch, for his
part, organised his bishops to refute the emperor's case and all swore
an oath to resist the proposed union.
The prospects of reunion seemed slight indeed. But the emperor could
not afford not to buy off the danger that threatened from Sicily and
Venice. He was helped by the conversion of Beccos to his views. In
prison the chartophylax had set himself to study in the Greek Fathers
the doctrine of the processions in the Blessed Trinity. St. Athanasius,
St. Cyril and St. Maximus attested that the Latin teaching was the
Catholic faith. Beccos, thereupon, revoked his judgment that the Latins
were heretics and became the emperor's most enthusiastic aid. While the
convert argued with the bishops for the orthodoxy of the Latin
position, Michael tried a mixture of diplomacy and pressure. All that
would be asked of them, he asserted, was a recognition of the primacy
of the Roman see, of Rome's right to judge all cases in final appeal,
and that they should pray for the pope publicly in the liturgy. It was
in this last point that the final difficulty lay. The popes had
tampered with the sacred wording of the creed: how could an orthodox
bishop give them any countenance? Michael retorted by threatening the
opposition with the penalties of high treason; at the same time he
pledged himself that the bishops would not be asked to add so much as
an iota to the creed. Reassured, the bishops consented now to accept
the emperor's three points; also to make a joint protestation of
obedience to the pope.
When the Greek deputation reached Lyons (24 June, 1274) the council had
been in session for seven weeks. It had opened on May 7 with elaborate
ceremonial and a sermon from the pope. Then, on May 18, it had passed
the decree establishing the point of faith about the Filioque, [ ] and
on June 7 twelve decrees regulating the procedure to be followed in
elections of bishops and abbots.
The arrival of the Greeks interrupted these legislative proceedings.
The ambassadors were received with solemn ceremony; they presented the
letters from the emperor and the Greek bishops; they declared they had
come to show their obedience to the Roman Church and to learn from it
the true faith. Five days later was the feast of SS. Peter and Paul. At
the mass, sung by the pope, the epistle and gospel were chanted in
Greek as well as Latin, and the credo likewise (with the Filioque
clause repeated three times by the Greeks). St. Bonaventure preached a
great sermon. On the octave day, July 6, the formal act of reunion and
reconciliation took place. The letters from Constantinople were read;
in the emperor's, he repeated the creed sent to him by the pope and
declared it to be the true faith, accepted as such by him because it
came from the Roman church. He pledged his eternal fidelity to this
doctrine, his obedience to the papal primacy. In return he asked that
the Greeks be allowed to keep the creed unaltered by any reference to
the procession of the Holy Ghost from God the Son, and also that their
ancient rite be left untouched. And the emperor's ambassador confirmed
all this by an oath made in his master's name.
The General Council which met at Lyons in 1274 was summoned as a great
assize to find means for the restoration of Catholic life no less than
for the recovery of the Holy Land. With this in view, Gregory X had
asked bishops in various countries to send in statements setting out
the main reasons for the spiritual decay which he deplored, and to
propose remedies.
By far the greater part of the reforms enacted in the thirty decrees of
the Council [ ] have reference to evils in the life of the clergy. .
The pope, indeed, was to bring the council to a close with a sermon in
which he declared that bad bishops were the principal cause of all that
was wrong. [ ] In the council he made no scruple about a direct attack
on scandal in the highest place of all, the negligence of the cardinals
in allowing vacancies of the Holy See to drag on for months and for
years. On more than one occasion already, the faithful people had
intervened to coerce the indifference of the cardinals by locking them
up until they came to a decision, and a decree of the council [ ] now
authorised and regularised these extreme measures, imposing the
conclave as the rule henceforward. On the death of the pope the
cardinals present in the city where he died were to await ten days, but
no more, for their absent brethren. Then, with but a single servant
each, they were to take up their residence in the palace, living
together in a single locked room without any curtains or screens to
shut off any part of it. This conclave [ ] was to be so arranged that
none might enter or leave it unseen by the rest, that there would be no
means of access to the electors or of secret communications with them;
no cardinal must admit any visitor except such as were allowed in by
the whole body to treat of the arrangement of the conclave. The new
pope -- so Gregory X seems to have intended -- would thus be speedily
elected, for his law next provides that should the election be delayed
beyond three days "which God forbid', the cardinals' food was to be
restricted to a single dish at each of their two daily meals; after
five days more they were to be given only bread with wine and water.
There are regulations for the admission of latecomers, for the care of
sick cardinals who may leave and then wish to return. The cardinals are
forbidden to occupy themselves with any other business than the
election, and all pacts or conventions made between them are declared
null, even though they be confirmed with an oath. Nor is any cardinal
to receive anything of his ecclesiastical revenues as long as the
vacancy of the Holy See endures; these are sequestrated and at the
disposal of the future pope. Finally, in order that these provisions
may not become a dead letter, the responsibility for providing the
conclave and guarding it is laid on the civic authority of the town
where it takes place; heavy penalties being provided for those who
over-act the rigour towards the cardinals which the new law demands.
The cardinals objected strongly to the proposed law, and for a time
there was a brisk duel between them and the pope, each striving to
enlist supporters from among the bishops. And it would seem that the
general sense of the council was against the reform as proposed, for it
was not promulgated until some months after the council had dispersed.
The most usual way of appointing bishops or abbots was still, in 1274,
by an election, where the canons or monks had each a vote. A whole
series of decrees enacted in this council shows the many serious abuses
which affected the system, and how thoroughly, in these last years
before something was devised in its place, the Holy See strove to
reform them. Appeals against elections (or provisions) to churches are
to be made in writing and to be countersigned by witnesses who swear
their own belief in the truth of the objections made and that they can
prove this: penalties are provided for those who fail to make good
their charges. [ ] The elect must await confirmation before entering
upon his charge. [ ] He is to be informed of his election as soon as
possible, to signify his acceptance within a month, and, under penalty
of losing the place, seek confirmation within three months. [ ] Voters
who knowingly vote for one who is unworthy sin mortally, and are liable
to severe punishment. [ ] No voter is allowed to appeal against the one
for whom he has voted -- certain special cases apart. [ ] Far too many
appeals are sent to Rome where the motive is not really serious. This
practice is to cease [ ] and in cases where a double election has been
made no objection will be allowed for the future against the majority
on the score of lack of zeal, of worth, or of authority, where the
majority numbers two-thirds of the voters. [ ] If objection be made
that there is an evident defect, whether of due knowledge or otherwise,
there must be an immediate enquiry into this. Should the objection be
shown devoid of foundation, those who made it lose all right to pursue
any further objection they have raised, and they are to be punished as
though they had failed to prove the whole of their objections. [ ]
Finally, to protect the successful against the malice of the
disappointed, it is laid down that those who revenge themselves on
electors for not supporting them by pillaging the electors' property or
that of the Church or of the electors' relatives, or who molest the
electors or their families are by the very fact excommunicated. [ ]
The elective system was already beginning to raise problems almost as
serious as those it solved. In another hundred years it would have
disappeared in the greater part of the Church, and bishops be directly
appointed or "provided" by the pope. The foundation of the new system
was the decree Licet (1268) of Gregory X's immediate predecessor
Clement IV, a lawyer pope who had come to the service of the Church
after a great career as jurist and administrator in the service of St.
Louis IX. By that decree Clement IV had reserved to the Holy See the
appointment to all benefices vacated by death, if the holder at the
time he died had been a member of the Roman curia or had died in the
city where the curia then was. [ ] This new law had caused much
dissatisfaction among the bishops, no less than among other patrons of
benefices. At the General Council they strove to have it revoked. But
though Gregory X was not, apparently, unsympathetic, he would do no
more than modify it slightly, [ ] and allow that vacancies falling
under the reservation might be filled by the patron if the pope had
failed to fill them within a month from the holder's death. [ ]
What of the man appointed? and especially of the man who was the
foundation of the whole system, the parish priest? It had already been
laid down, a hundred years before this time, [ ] that no one must be
appointed to a parish who was younger than twenty-five. But this law
had too often been disregarded, and so the Council now declared [ ]
that all appointments which violated the law were null and of no
effect. It also reminded the nominee that he was bound to live in his
parish and, if he were not a priest already, that he must seek
ordination within a year or else ipso facto lose his benefice.
Non-residence of beneficiaries -- of bishops and of parish priests
especially -- was one of the chronic weaknesses of the seemingly
powerful structure of medieval Catholicism. The popes never succeeded
in their war against it, nor against the related mischief that the same
man held more than one benefice: only too often, indeed, policy led the
different popes to connive at these evils, and in the end, more almost
than anything else, it was these that brought the imposing structure
down to the dust. At Lyons, in 1274, laws were made to control the
pluralist. No parish was to be given in commendam [ ] unless to a
priest; he must be of the canonical age of twenty-five and not already
provided with a parish in commendam, and the necessity (on the part of
the Church) must be evident; furthermore such appointments are good for
six months only. Any Contravention of these conditions invalidates the
appointment ipso iure. [ ] As to pluralists -- clerics who hold more
than one benefice -- bishops are to make a general enquiry and if one
of the benefices held entails a cure of souls, the holder is to produce
the dispensation authorising this. If this is not forthcoming, all but
the first received of his benefices are to be taken as vacant and given
to others. If, however, he is lawfully authorised he may retain all he
lawfully holds, but it is put upon the bishop's conscience to see that
the cure of souls is not neglected. Bishops are specifically warned to
make certain, when they confer a benefice that entails a cure of souls,
that if the beneficiary already holds such a benefice he is dispensed
to hold the second with a dispensation which explicitly mentions his
possession of the first cura animarum. [ ]
Episcopal control of the clergy is strengthened by a canon which
forbids bishops to ordain another bishop's subjects without his leave:
bishops who transgress, lose automatically the right to ordain at all
for twelve months. [ ] The clergy are given a useful protection against
the bishop in a new rule [ ] about visitation expenses. Bishops were
already allowed to exact a certain support in kind when they made the
official visitation of a parish. The custom was, however, doveloping of
asking money or gifts; another abuse was to exact procurations -- the
payments in kind – without making the visitations. The council deals
with these abuses (already noted and condemned by Innocent IV) by
decreeing that all who have exacted these unlawful presents must
restore double their amount to the victims. If the restitution is not
made within a month, the bishop loses all right to enter a church until
payment is made; his officials, if they are guilty, are suspended from
office and benefice. Nor is any willingness of the injured party to
remit the amount due, or part of it, to affect the automatic operation
of the law.
Clerical immunity from the jurisdiction of the lay ruler was an ancient
institution more and more contested in the last centuries of the Middle
Ages. Gregory X at Lyons made a concession to the princes, enacting [ ]
that the cleric in minor orders who contracted a second marriage lost
all his clerical privileges and was henceforth wholly their subject. On
the other hand, another canon [ ] denouncing yet again [ ] the
barbarous custom called ‘reprisals', -- by which, if the guilty party
were beyond the law's power, the nearest innocent members of the
community were made to suffer in his stead -- fixed a special penalty
of excommunication and interdict for those who subjected ecclesiastics
to this abuse.
There are two new laws to safeguard Church property, whether from lay
rapacity or from cowardly negligence on the part of the clergy who
should be its special defenders. Excommunication is henceforward to
fall automatically on anyone -- whatever his rank -- who, unauthorised,
takes upon himself the occupation and administration of the property of
a vacant see or abbey, and also upon the clerics or monks who abet this
usurpation. Those who enjoy such right of administration are warned not
to go beyond their right, and that they are bound not to neglect the
properties entrusted to their care. [ ] The second law [ ] forbids
prelates -- without the leave of their chapter and the Holy See -- to
make over their lands to the lay lord as the price of his protection,
retaining for the Church a mere use of the property. All contracts of
this kind hitherto made without leave are now annulled, even though
confirmed with an oath. Offending prelates are to suffer a three years
suspension from their office and their revenues, and the lords who
force such contracts upon them, or who have not restored what they
obtained through past contracts of this sort, are excommunicated.
The reform legislation of the Council did not only touch the layman in
his relations with the clergy. In two canons, on usury and usurers, it
strove to halt a mischief that lay at the very roots of social life.
Already, by a law of 1179, as the Council recalls, the notorious usurer
[ ] was barred from the sacraments, and if he died he was forbidden
Christian burial, and the clergy were not allowed to take offerings
from him. These prohibitions had been largely ignored, and now, not
only are they renewed, but it is forbidden [ ] to states and rulers to
allow usurers to take up residence within their territories, or to
allow those already there to remain. Within three months they must be
expelled. If the lord is an ecclesiastic, disregard of this new law
entails automatically suspension from his office, a lay lord incurs
excommunication, and a community or corporation interdict. As for the
usurer himself, [ ] he is not to have Christian burial, even though his
will directs that restitution be made, until this has actually been
done or substantial pledges given according to forms now provided.
Members of religious orders -- and others too -- who bury usurers in
disregard of this law are themselves to be punished as usurers. Unless
a usurer first make restitution, or give a real guarantee that he will
do so, no one is to witness his will or hear his confession, or absolve
him. If his will does not provide for restitution it is, by the fact,
null and void.
There is also a canon [ ] about conduct in church and abuses of the
church fabric from which much may be gleaned about the day to day
religious life of the time. Churches are places built for prayer,
places where silence should reign, and this especially during the time
of mass. All are to bow their heads in reverence whenever the holy name
of Jesus Christ is pronounced, especially during the mass. The church
is not to be used for secular purposes, such as meetings, or
parliaments, nor as a court of law; if trials are held there the
sentences rendered are, ipso facto, null and void. Churchyards are not
to be used for fairs. It is a terrible thing, says the canon, if places
set apart for man to ask forgiveness for his sins become to him
occasions of further sin. This canon inaugurated the popular devotion
to the Holy Name, and the great confraternity still so flourishing,
founded by the Dominicans at the command of Gregory X [ ] to further
the devotion.
Five of the remaining canons are directed to the reform of legal
procedure; most of them relate to the law governing the punishment of
excommunication. Excommunication is not incurred by those who hold
intercourse with the excommunicated unless these have been
excommunicated by name. This is a clarification of a canon of the last
General Council. [ ] Absolution, from any censure, which has been
extorted by violence or threats is not only null and void absolutely,
but also involves those using such threats in a further
excommunication. [ ] Those who give permission to their servants or
subjects to murder, imprison or injure in any way, whether it be the
officials responsible for a sentence of excommunication against them,
or relatives of the officials, or those who refuse all intercourse with
them since the excommunication, are by the fact excommunicated a second
time; so too are those who carry out these orders. If within two months
they have not sought absolution from this second excommunication, they
can only be absolved from it by the Holy See. [ ] Another new law [ ]
is directed to check the hastiness of ecclesiastics in issuing
penalties whose effects are general. Canons who, as a punishment,
propose to suspend the church services, must now give notice of this in
writing, with their reasons, to the person or persons against whom this
action is directed. If the canons fail to do this, or if the reasons
assigned are insufficient, they lose all right to their revenues for
the time the services were suspended and must moreover make
satisfaction for any losses thereby incurred to those they meant to
punish. Also, and here is a reference to a superstitious instinct not
yet wholly departed from our midst, it is most strictly forbidden to
emphasise the fact of the divine displeasure, to which the suspension
of offices supposedly testifies, by such detestable practices as
treating the sacred images irreverently -- for example, throwing them
to the ground and covering them with nettles and thorns. This the
bishops are to punish with the utmost severity.
To check the growing tendency to drag out law suits by maliciously
contrived delays, and thereby to fleece the litigant, the council now
enacted a most stringent canon. All advocates and proctors are
henceforward to declare on oath, not only that they will do their
utmost for their client, but also that should anything transpire in the
course of the trial to convince them that his cause is not just, they
will immediately withdraw from the case. This oath is to be taken at
the opening of every judicial year, and heavy penalties are provided
for neglect to do so or for any breach of the oath. Also, the canon
fixes maximum fees for both advocates and proctors and puts upon them
the obligation to restore anything accepted in excess of these amounts
-- again under heavy penalties. [ ]
Perhaps the Council’s most important piece of legislation, after the
law establishing the conclave, was the twenty-third canon Religionum
diversitatem nimiam, on the new religious orders. From the moment when
religious -- men formed by the discipline of the monastic vows and life
-- had first begun to give themselves to the apostolic work of
preaching the gospel and reconciling sinners to God, there had been
trouble with the parochial clergy whose peculiar business and charge
this work had always been. It was from among the religious that the
missionaries had come who had converted the West from heathendom. On
their labours was built the greater part of the present fabric of
parishes and sees. It was the religious who was the trained man, in the
early Middle Ages, the parochial priest the more or less well-gifted
amateur; and as with habits of life so was it with professional
learning. The vast mass of the parochial clergy had nothing like the
chances of study which were open to the monk. The revival of learning
which produced the universities no doubt improved their chances
enormously, and indeed it was the chief function of the universities to
educate the clergy. But, even so, universities were never so many that
the whole body of the clergy passed through them. And long before the
medieval universities reached the peak of their achievement as
seminaries for the education of the parochial clergy, St. Dominic first
and then St. Bonaventure had provided the church with a new kind of
religious who was primarily a missionary priest, and the last word in
the professional clerical sciences and arts, theologian, preacher and
confessor. By the time of the Council of Lyons in 1274 Dominican and
Franciscan priests were to be numbered by tens of thousands, and almost
as numerous again were the priests of other new orders that had sprung
up in imitation. Some of the new orders were as admirable as the models
which had inspired them. Others were less so. For very different
reasons the appearance of both types ruffled the peace of the clerical
mind.
Already sixty years before the Council of Lyons, the Church had shown
itself anxious and troubled by the task of controlling the new
spiritual enthusiasm as it showed itself in the new missionary
brotherhoods. These were almost always lay movements in origin; rarely
was it to a priest that the inspiration to) lead this kind of life
seemed to come. If there was zeal in plenty in these movements there
was rarely any theological learning, or any appreciation that this was
at all necessary for the preacher. Very often there was a definite
anti-clerical spirit; sometimes there was heresy too. For very many
reasons, then, the first rumours that a new brotherhood had been formed
to preach penance and the remission of sins, and that it was sweeping
all before it in some city of Languedoc or Umbria, can hardly have
brought anything but deep anxiety to the Roman curia or to its head.
When the bishops poured into Rome for the General Council of 1215 they
brought with them from every see of Christendom the tale of disputes
between clergy and religious. Sixty years later, with the new mendicant
missionary orders at the flood of their first fervent activity, they
took similar tales to Lyons. From Olmuc in Bohemia, for example, came
complaints that the Dominicans and Franciscans had gradually ousted the
parochial clergy from all contact with their people. Baptism was the
only sacrament for which the parish priest was ever approached. And
where the people went, there they took their offerings. The bishop's
suggestions, in this instance, were drastic indeed. These mendicant
orders should lose their general power to hear confessions, or to
preach except in the parish churches. Only those should preach or hear
confessions whom the local bishop chose and authorised. Nor should any
new friary be founded without the local bishop's leave.
The mendicants no doubt put forward once again the solid reason for
their admittedly wide privileges; once they lost their exemption from
all jurisdiction but that of the pope, how long would they survive in a
world where there were bishops? In France, in the early days, the
Dominicans, for example, found themselves treated just as layfolk,
bidden to attend mass on Sundays, with the rest, in the parish church,
and to confess to the parish priest as other parishioners were bound. [
] Twenty years nearly before this time (1274) the differences between
clergy and mendicants had blown into a great conflagration at Paris,
where the university had demanded from the pope all but the suppression
of the orders and, at the pope's bidding, St. Thomas and St.
Bonaventure had stated the orders' case. Now, at Lyons, the question
was raised again: it had already become, what it was to remain for
centuries, one of the chronic problems of the Church, and one of the
chronic evidences how harsh a soil human nature is to divine charity.
The decree now enacted deals drastically with all abuses, with
institutes inaugurated in despite of existing law, and with lawfully
founded institutes which have degenerated or seem to be tending that
way. But it goes out of its way to protect and to praise the two great
orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis.
The Council of 1215 -- says the new law -- had forbidden [ ] the
foundation of any new orders. This prohibition was now renewed,
because, despite that law, rashness and presumption had brought into
existence an unbridled mob of new orders -- of new mendicants
especially -- who did not deserve approbation. Therefore, for the
future, no one is to found any new order, or to enter one if such be
founded. All orders and mendicant orders founded since 1215 and not
approved by the Holy See are abolished, Those founded since and
approved by the Holy See, and which live by alms collected from the
general public and whose rule forbids them any rents or possessions,
and to whom an insecure mendicity through public begging affords a
living, must now follow this rule, namely members already professed may
continue to live this life, but no more novices are to be received; no
new houses are to be opened; no properties may be alienated without
leave of the Holy See, for these properties the Holy See intends to use
in aid of the Holy Land, or the poor and for other pious purposes. Any
violation of this rule entails excommunication, and acts done in
violation of it are legally void. Moreover, members of these orders are
forbidden to preach to those outside their ranks, or to hear their
confessions, or to undertake their funeral services. This 23rd canon,
it is expressly declared, does not however extend to the Dominicans and
Franciscans whose usefulness to the Church in general (it is explicitly
said) is evident. As for the Carmelites, and the Hermits of St.
Augustine, whose foundation dates back beyond the Lateran Council of
1215, they may continue as they now are until further decision about
them is taken. A general scheme, says the canon, is in preparation that
will affect them and indeed all the orders, non- mendicants included.
Meanwhile members of the orders to whom this new rule now made applies,
are given generally a permit to enter other approved orders. But no
order or convent is to transfer itself as a whole without special leave
of the Holy See.
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