severer Churchmen, of Popes, of Legates, of Councils. The marriage, or, as it was termed, the concubinage, of the Clergy was the least evil. The example set in high places (to deny the dissoluteness of the Papal Court at Avignon, would be to discard all historical evidence) could not be without frightful influence. The Avignonese Legates bore with them the morals of Avignon. The last strong effort to break the bonds of celibacy at the council of Basle warned but warned in vain. It is the solemn attestation to the state of Germany and the northern kingdoms. Even in his own age, no doubt, Henry Bishop of Liège was a monster of depravity. The frightful revelation of his life is from an admonitory letter of the wise and good Pope Gregory X. His lust was promiscuous. He kept as his concubine a Benedictine Abbess. He had boasted in a public banquet that in twenty-two months he had had fourteen children born. This was not the worst-there was foul incest, and with nuns. But the most extraordinary part of the whole is that in the letter the Pope seems to contemplate only the repentance of the Prelate, which he urges with the most fervent solemnity. Henry's own prayers, and the intercessory prayers of the virtuous-some such, no doubt, there must be in Liège-are to work the change; and then he is to administer his Pontifical office, so as to be a model of holiness, as he had been of vice, to his subjects. As to suspension, degradation, deposition, there is not a word. The Pope's lenity may have been meant to lure him to the Council of Lyons, * Look back to vol. viii. p. 457. Before the Council of Trent, the Elector of Bavaria declared in a public document, that of 50 Clergy very few were not concubinarii.-Sarpi, viii. 7, p. 414. See for Italy references to Justiniani, where he was persuaded to abdicate his See. Hardly less repulsive, in some respects more so, as it embraces the Clergy and some of the convents of a whole province, is the disclosure, as undeniable and authentic, of sacerdotal morals, in the Register of the Visitations of Eudes Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen, from 1248 to 1269. We must suppose that only the Clergy of notorious and detected incontinence were presented at the Visitation. The number is sufficiently appalling: probably it comprehends, without much distinction, the married and concubinarian, as well as looser Clergy. There is one convent of females, which might almost have put Boccaccio to the blush. I am bound to confess that the Records of the Visitations from St. Paul's, some of which have been published not without reserve, too fully vindicate the truth of Langland, Chaucer, and the Satirists against the English Clergy and Friars in the fourteenth century. And these Visitations, which take note only of those publicly accused, hardly reached, if they did reach, the lowest and the loosest. Only some of the Monks, none of the Wandering Friars, were amenable to Episcopal or Archidiaconal jurisdiction. a "Circa divinum quoque et pontificale officium sic te sedulum et devotum exhibere" "Subditi." Henry of Liège was of princely race, of the house of Gueldres, Cousin-German to the Priest-Emperor, William of Holland; he became Bishop when a mere boy. Concilia sub ann. 1274. Hocsemius, Vit. Episcop. Leodens., p. 299. Registrum Archep. Rotomagensium, published by M. Bonnin, Rouen, 1846. It is full of other curious and less unedifying matter. a Precedents in Criminal Causes edited by Archdeacon Hale, London, 1847. There is enough in these, the Visitations themselves make matters worse. It is curious that much earlier under the reign of K. Stephen, the Dean Ralph de Diceto speaks of the "focariæ" of the canons. Mr. Froude has published from the Records (in Fraser's Magazine, Feb. 1857) the visitation of a later time, of Archbishop Morton. The great Abbey of St. Alban's was in a state which hardly bears description. Whether we call it by the holier name of marriage, or the more odious one of concubinage, this, the weakness or the sin of the Clergy, could not be committed by the Monks and Friars. They, mostly with less education and less discipline, spread abroad through the world, had far greater temptations, more fatal opportunities. Though they had, no doubt, their Saints, not only Saints, but numberless nameless recluses of admirable piety, unimpeachable holiness, fervent love of God and of man, yet of the profound corruption of this class there can be no doubt. But Latin, Roman Christianity, would not, could not, surrender this palladium of her power." b Time and the vicissitudes in political affairs had made a great difference in the power of the Clergy in the principal kingdoms of Europe. In Italy, in his double character of Italian potentate and as the Pontiff of Christendom, the Pope, after the discomfiture of the Council of Basle, had resumed in great measure his ascendancy. He now aspired to reign supreme over Letters and Arts. But from this time, or from the close of this century, the Italian Potentate, as has been said, began to predominate over the Pope. The successor of St. Peter was either chosen from one of the great Italian families, or aspired to found a great family. Nepotism became at once the strength and the infirmity, the glory and the shame, of the Papacy: the strength, b The Roman view is thus given in an argument before the Pope by the Cardinal de Carpi :-" Dal matrimonio de' Preti ne seguirà che avendo casa, moglie, è figli, non dipenderanno dal Papa, ma dal suo Principe, e la carità della prole gli farà condescendere ad ogni pregiudizio della Chiesa; cercaranno anco di far i benefici ereditari, In ed in brevissimo spazio la Sede Apos- as converting the Popes into the highest rank of Italian princes; the weakness, as inducing them to sacrifice the interests of the Holy See to the promotion of their own kindred: the glory, as seeing their descendants holding the highest offices, occupying splendid palaces, possessors of vast estates, sovereigns of principalities; the shame, as showing too often a feeble fondness for unworthy relatives, and entailing on themselves some complicity in the guilt, the profligacy or wickedness of their favoured kindred. Italy. While the Pope thus rose, the higher Prelates of Italy seemed to sink, with no loss, perhaps, of real dignity, into their proper sphere. The Archbishops of Milan, Florence, Genoa, Ravenna, are obscured before the Viscontis and Sforzas, the Medicis and Dorias, the hereditary Sovereigns, the princely Condottieri, the republican Podestàs, or the Dukes. Venice adhered to her ancient jealous policy; she would have no ambitious, certainly no foreign, Prelate within her lagunes. She was for some time content to belong to the province of an Archbishop hardly within her territory; and that Archbishop, if not a stranger within her walls, had no share in Venetian power or wealth. The single Bishop in Venice was Bishop of one of the small islands, Castello. Venice was first erected, and submitted to be erected, into a patriarchate by Nicolas V. When she admitted a Bishop or a Patriarch (perhaps because no one of inferior dignity must appear in St. Mark's), that Bishop received his investiture of his temporal possessions, his ring and pastoral staff, from the Doge. No Synods could be held without permission of the Council. It was not till after her humiliation by Ughelli, Italia Sacra. the League of Cambray that Venice would admit the collation of Bishops to sees within her territories; even then they must be native Venetians. The Superiors of the Monasteries and Orders were Venetians. Even Papal vacancies were presented to by the Venetian Cardinals. The Republic maintained and exercised the right of censure on Venetian Bishops and on Cardinals. If they were absent or contumacious their offences were visited on their families; they were exiled, degraded, banished. The parish priests were nominated by the proprietors in the parish. There was a distinct, severe, inflexible prohibition to the Clergy of all Orders to intermeddle in political affairs. Thus did Venice insulate herself in her haughty independence of Papal as of all other powers. Paolo Sarpi could write, without fear of the fulminations of Rome: he had only to guard against the dagger of the papalising fanatic. There was a complete, universal toleration for foreign rites; Greek, Armenian, and Mohammedan were under protection. Prosecutions for heresy were discouraged. Ravenna had long ceased to be the rival of Rome; the Malatestas, not the Archbishop, were her Lords. The younger branches of the great princely families, those who were disposed to ease, lettered affluence, and more peaceful pomp, by no means disdained the lofty titles, the dignity, the splendid and wealthy palaces of the Prelature: some aspired to the Popedom. Those too, and they were by no means wanting, who were possessed with a profound sense of religion, rose, from better motives and with the noblest results, to the honours of the Church. The Roman Colonnas, the Venetian d Daru, Hist. de Venise, L. xxviii. c. xi. The saying " Siamo Venetiani, poi Christiani '—was their boast or their reproach. |