The Protesting Pope

In the 500 years since its inception, the Protestant revolt has evolved from the erroneous opinions of a single mad monk into a thousand-headed hydra of heresy, with each head snapping at the other almost as frequently as at the Catholic Church itself. Nonetheless, the many heads have remained joined at one common point - a point which Protestant theologians such as Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer desired to see writ large on the flag of modern Protestantism: Ecclesia semper reformanda est, i.e. "The Church is always to be reformed."

Today, speaking to bishops and faithful gathered in Florence, Pope Francis made this profoundly Protestant thesis his own, quoting it verbatim.

As disturbing as that may be, it was not the most unsettling part of Pope Francis' speech. That honor goes to his diatribe against what is becoming a major theme of his pontificate, i.e. the "Pelagianism" he sees as infecting the Church. National Catholic Register's Edward Pentin reports:

Pelagianism, the Pope told faithful gathered in Florence cathedral, "prompts the Church not to be humble, selfless and blessed. And it does so with the appearance of being a good." Such an approach, he added, "brings us confidence in structures, organizations, in perfect planning because it’s abstract." 

But often "it leads us also to take a controlling, hard, regulatory style," he said. "The law gives to the Pelagian security to feel superior, to have a precise orientation. This is its strength, not the light of the breath of the Spirit." 

"In facing evils or the problems of the Church," the Pope went on, "it is useless to look for solutions in conservatism and fundamentalism, in the restoration of practices and outdated forms that aren’t even able to be culturally meaningful."

Of course, we've heard Pope Francis speak on the subject of Pelagianism before. In fact, his barbed quip "self-absorbed promethean neopelagians" - aimed squarely at faithful Catholics of the traditional sort - has become something of a defiant self-appellation among the same. And that Pope Francis frowns upon any effort to restore the time-honored traditions of the Church - including her ancient liturgy - is not exactly news. So, what's so unsettling about this speech?

A combination of context and historical precedent. 

It was none other than Martin Luther himself who leveled the charge of "Pelagianism" against the Catholic Church on the eve of his own revolution. In his monograph entitled Augustine of Hippo and Martin Luther on Original Sin and Justification of the Sinner, Jairzinho Lopes Pereira of the University of Helsinki explains (p. 312):

Complaints against the Pelagian trend of theology of his own time is recurrent in young Luther. One of the most striking is found in Operationes in Psalmos (1519-1521). What is worse, he stressed in this work, is the fact that there was a new form of Pelagianism; the one he was fighting. It was worse than any other because it was not declared. It was Pelagianism disguised as an orthodox doctrine. The Reformer regarded Pelagianism as the most dangerous and pernicious of heresies (Inter omnes autem gladios imiorum maximum et nocentissimum meo iuditio merito pelagianam impietatem censebimus) and the source of all sorts of idolatries (hic error fons est universae idolatriae). Not surprisingly, he identified it with the very human tendency to state human righteousness (iustitia hominis) to the detriment of that of faith (iusitia fidei). 

Augustine, Luther pointed out, fought Pelagians as declared heretics. He himself was fighting the very same heretical trend in men protected by the Church, under the skin of orthodox theologians. So Pelagianism, Luther stressed, is a timeless threat to Christian faith. [...] After Augustine's death the heresy rose; it not only did not find opposition, but also was openly allowed to rule within the Roman Church and universities. Nothing can be more dangerous, yet it remained in the Church, Luther claimed (pelagianos error vere omnium saeculorum error est, saepius opressus quidem, sed nunquam extinctus).

Sound familiar?

As one brave priest noted, the once-rhetorical question, "Is the Pope a Catholic?" no longer provokes laughter. Perhaps it is time to replace it with a more pointed question: "Is the Pope a Protestant?"

The Reformation in Ireland, France and the Netherlands

Twelfth and Last in a series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

We have so far sketched in rapid outlines the establishment of the Reformation in most of those European lands in which it obtained permanent dominion. The situation about A.D. 1560 is thus described by Prescott in his History of Philip II:

Scarcely forty years had elapsed since Luther had thrown down the gauntlet to the Vatican by publicly burning the Papal bull at Wittenberg. Since that time, his doctrines had been received in Denmark and Sweden. In England, after a vacillation of three reigns, Protestantism, in the peculiar form which it still wears, had become the established religion of the state. The fiery cross had gone over the hills and valleys of Scotland, and thousands and ten of thousands had gathered to hear the word of life from the lips of Knox. The doctrines of Luther were spread over the northern parts of Germany, and freedom of worship was finally guaranteed there by the treaty of Passau. The Low Countries were the 'debatable land' on which the various sects of Reformers, the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the English Protestant, contended for mastery with the established Church. Calvinism was embraced by some of the cantons of Switzerland, and at Geneva its apostle had fixed his headquarters. His doctrines were widely circulated through France till the divided nation was prepared to plunge into that worst of all wars, in which the hand of brother is raised against brother. The cry of reform had passed even over the Alps, and was heard at the walls of the Vatican. It had crossed the Pyrenees; the King of Navarre declared himself a Protestant, and the spirit of the Reformation had insinuated itself secretly into Spain, and had taken hold, as we have seen, of the middle and southern provinces of the kingdom.

Contemporary depiction of the iconoclasm of the Reformers
Zurich, Switzerland (1584)

The more carefully one studies the Reformation, especially in its early stages, the more clearly he understands that "religious liberty" in the mind of those secretaries meant the liberty to tear down what they called the idolatrous worship of the Catholic Church, the Holy Mass, the altars, the sacred images, the monasteries of the monks, the convents of the nuns, driving out and murdering the faithful bishops and priests, and vesting the spiritual power in temporal princes, who at once proceeded to plunder whatever riches the piety of centuries had dedicated to the Divine service. This was the Reformation in a nutshell.

It was absolutely necessary for every Catholic nation to refuse and forcibly put down that species of religious liberty, and to use for the purpose inquisitions, imprisonments, banishments, executions of the leaders in heresy, etc. All this was at times carried to excess, as is always the case in civil wars as well as in foreign wars. Catholics waged war on rebellious citizens; for, in those days, heresy meant war upon the old religion, and nowhere, in no single country, did Protestantism prevail except by war. The Protestant Bishop Stubbs writes:

Where Protestantism was an idea only, as in France and Italy, it was crushed out by the Inquisition; where, in conjunction with political power, and sustained by ecclesiastical confiscation, it became a physical force, there it was lasting. It is not a pleasant view to take of the doctrinal changes, to see that where the movements toward it were pure and unworldly, it failed; where it was seconded by territorial greed and political animosity, it succeeded.

And again:

The instruments by which it [i.e. the Reformation] was accomplished were despotic monarchs, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, and venal, slavish parliaments. It sprung from brutal passion, was nurtured in selfish and corrupt policy, and was consummated in bloodshed and horrid crime.

The Reformation in Ireland

Ireland is a striking example of all this. If ever any land was made desolate by the burning zeal of fanatics who strove to force their own novel notions upon an unwilling population, it was the fair isle of Erin; and the crushing process was continued during three long centuries. I would not attempt to write the history of that bloody business; for to write history, a man must be cool and unperturbed by passion, and I do not see how I could keep cool while handling such a theme. I am no Irishman, nor of Irish descent; but I feel my pen warming in my hand, and my cheeks glowing, and my heart throbbing with indignation and compassion at the thought of such wrongs, such cruel and persistent violence used for generations to stamp their religion out of a faithful, heroic people.

Let a bigoted Protestant, the poet Spencer, speak in my place. He was in Ireland at the close of the Desmond rebellion, and he got three thousand acres of the confiscated Irish land as his share of the booty. He wrote:

Out of every corner of the woods and glens they [i.e. the Catholic people] came creeping forth on their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat dead carrion; happy were they who could find it. In a short space, there was none almost left; and a most populous and plentiful country was suddenly void of man and beast.

This is but one scene in a tragedy of woes, more pathetic than Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear. But all this is deeply written in the mind and the heart of the entire Irish race, and need not be recounted to prove that God has heroic servants in every age, and that He will not allow the gates of hell to prevail against His own faithful friends. Here are a few more scenes of this sad tragedy. I will give the words of D'Arcy McGee:

While the war against the Desmonds was raging in the south, under pretense of suppressing rebellion, no one could help seeing that, in reality, it was directed against the Catholic religion. If any had doubted the real objects, events which quickly followed Elizabeth's victory soon convinced them. Dermot O'Hurley, archbishop of Cashel, being taken by the victors, was brought to Dublin in 1552. Here, the Protestant primate Loftus besieged him in vain for nearly a year to deny the Pope's supremacy, and acknowledge the Queen's. Finding him of unshaken faith, he was brought out for martyrdom on Stephen's Green, adjoining the city; and there he was tied to a tree, his boots filled with combustibles, and his limbs stripped and smeared with oil and alcohol. Alternately they lighted and quenched the flames which enveloped him, prolonging his tortures through four successive days. Still remaining firm, before dawn of the fifth day, they finally consumed his last remains of life, and left his calcined bones among the ashes at the foot of his stake.* The relics gathered by some pious friends were hidden away in the half-ruined church of St. Kevin, near that outlet of Dublin called Kevinsport. In Desmond's tour of Kilmallock were then taken Patrick O'Haley, bishop of Mayo; Fr. Cornelius, a Franciscan, and some others. To extort from them confessions of the new faith, their thighs were broken with hammers, and their arms crushed by levers. They died without yielding, and the instruments of their torture were buried with them in the Franciscan convent of Askeaton. The Most Rev. Richard Creigh, primate of all Ireland, was the next victim.

Catholicity in Ireland has outlived the storm of three centuries of persecution, and has become the seed of salvation to as many millions in our age all over the earth as there were thousands of victims in the age of Queen Elizabeth and after.

The Reformation in France

The Reformation failed in Ireland because it drowned in the blood of it's victims; it also failed in France, but there it was drowned in the blood of Catholics and Huguenots alike. Spalding's History of the Reformation briefly sums up the story as follows:

The whole history of the Reformation in France may be related in two sentences: The Calvinists sought by intrigue and by force of arms to gain the ascendancy and to establish the new religion on the ruins of the old; but after a long struggle, they signally failed, and France was preserved to the Church. Long and terrible was the contest between the turbulent Protestant minority and the determined Catholic majority, to settle the momentous questions which should finally control the destinies of France; for nearly a hundred years, civil war, rendered still fiercer by the infusion of the element of religious zeal and fanaticism, waged with but brief intervals of pacification throughout the country, which it distracted and rendered desolate. Finally, the Catholics, meeting intrigue with intrigue, and repelling force by force, remained in the ascendant, and the Protestant party, once so aspiring, dwindled down into an insignificant fraction of the population.

The expression "meeting intrigue with intrigue" refers to the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Protestants everywhere, and all along their lines of conquest, used intrigue and deceit, as we have shown in these essays; for once they were outdone in the use of that vile weapon in France, not by the Catholic Church, nor by Catholic bishops or priests, but by an unprincipled Queen dowager, Catherine de Medicis, an infidel at heart, though happening to belong to the Catholic party. We detest her wicked plot, even though without it France might have been lost to the Church, for no evil may ever be done that good may come of it. Yet, let Protestants remember, they have no right to complain that they were that time outwitted in wickedness.

The Reformation in the Netherlands

The Netherlands we will consider last. This region comprised the present kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, with some minor provinces, part of which are now in France. The country was very prosperous when the Reformation began, but it was subject to the dominion of the Spanish crown. It became restless of the foreign yoke, when the Calvinists from France, Protestant immigrants from England, the intrigue and subsidies of Elizabeth, and the Lutheran notions which the youths of Flanders brought home on their return from the German universities, made that region a hotbed of rebellion against Philip II and his Catholic governors. Civil independence was the boon in sight, the union of all the malcontents were chiefly heretics. The result was there, as in every land to which the new gospel came, a period of war, which in the Netherlands lasted about half a century. It finished in the establishment of the Dutch republic. As soon as this was established, it proceeded to stamp out Catholicity within its boundaries. The Protestant historian Menzel puts the matter thus:

The Calvinistic tenets and forms of worship were established to the exclusion of those of the Catholics and Lutherans. The cruelties practiced by the Catholics were equaled by those inflicted on the opposing party by the Reformers. The most horrid cruelties were perpetrated by Sonoi, by whom the few Catholics remaining in Holland were exterminated, A.D. 1577.

So says Menzel. But how can we believe that the remaining Catholics were few, since the first Protestant service had been held only three years before, as he informs us? Either there must have been very many, or there must have been a vast exodus of the faithful. The extent to which the Reformation had taken possession of Europe by 1570 is thus stated by Macaulay in his Criticism of Ranke's History of the Popes:

In fifty years from the day in which Luther publicly renounced communion with the Church of Rome and burned the bull of Leo before the gates of Wittenberg, Protestantism attained its highest ascendancy - an ascendancy which it soon lost, and which it has never regained. In England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Livonia, Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Wurtemburg, the Palatinate, in several cantons of Switzerland, in the northern Netherlands, the Reformation had completely triumphed, and in all other countries on this side of the Alps and the Pyrenees, it seemed on the point of triumphing.

***

Conclusion to the Series

We had undertaken, in this series of essays, to explain the origin of the Reformation, so as to show that it was not the work of the Holy Ghost, and of the calm, prayerful co-operation of holy men, full of that charity by which the true Church is animated; and we have finished that task, in a brief but truthful account. While many minor points, here and there occurring in our statements, will, no doubt, be controverted, our main line of thought is unassailable.

We will conclude this brief sketch of the first origin of Protestantism with some remarks of Macaulay on what we may call the second stage of the Reformation. He writes:

At first, the chances seemed to be decidedly in favor of Protestantism, but the victory remained with the Church of Rome. On every point it was successful. If we proceed another half-century, we find her victorious and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria and Hungary. Nor has Protestantism, in the course of two hundred years, been able to reconquer any portion of what it then lost. It is, moreover, not to be dissembled that this wonderful triumph of the Papacy is to be chiefly attributed, not to force of arms, but to a great reflux in public opinion.

*  D'Arcy McGee's depiction of the martyrdom of Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley is not entirely correct: while the archbishop did, indeed, suffer barbarous torture, including having his legs boiled over a roaring fire, he was finally executed outside of Dublin, at Hoggen Green, by hanging.

The Reformation in Denmark, Norway and Iceland

Eleventh in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

[Note: As the countries of Denmark, Norway and Iceland were closely linked together through the person of Christian II, the advance of Protestantism in all three countries is here treated together. - RC]

The Reformation in Denmark

Christian II of Denmark (1481-1559)

Christian, or Christiern, II ruled over Denmark from 1513 to 1523. Being exceedingly fond of autocratic power, he undertook to break down the influence of the nobility and the clergy in all portions of his dominions. We have seen how he attempted to do so in Sweden by the massacre of the Bloody Bath; and how utterly he was foiled by the insurrection of Gustav Vasa, who achieved the independence of his native country.

In Denmark, Christiern chiefly attacked the clergy, who were very powerful there. The means he chose for this purpose was the introduction into the country of Lutheranism, and its ordinary accompaniment, the confiscation of all Church property. It is the same story, only diversified in its details.

Christiern was not as wily as Vasa; he went straight to the point, not doubting that he could crush all opposition. He invited to Copenhagen a disciple of Luther, Martin by name, and he installed him a bishop in his capital city. The indignant nation protested with a common voice; but he heeded not. On the contrary, the deposed archbishop was put to death, and laws oppressive of the clergy were proclaimed. Then all parties combined to dethrone Christiern; he fled, and, after various vicissitudes, he was cast into a frightful prison, from which he did not come forth alive.

The throne of Denmark was next offered to Christiern's uncle, Frederick I of Holstein. He too, unfortunately, believed in reformation and confiscation, which was the great temptation of the times. Yet when accepting the kingly crown, he took a solemn oath to maintain the Catholic religion. He soon began a secret, and next an open persecution of the clergy; and he defended his conduct, in 1527, before the diet of Odessa, on the plea that he had pledged himself to maintain the Catholic religion, but not to tolerate its abuses. Among these alleged abuses he counted the primacy of the Apostolic See. He arrogated to himself the confirmation of all elections to bishoprics. He granted to the Lutherans all the rights which had been enjoyed so far by Catholics alone; a measure which, as the result proved, practically meant the protecting of heresy and the oppression of the ancient Church.

At the death of Frederick I in 1533, his son Christian III, though a Protestant, was made King, on the explicit condition that he would not be an enemy to Catholicity. How far he violated this promise, and forced the country into apostasy, can be clearly understood from the following account taken word for word from a Protestant writer in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia:

As soon as Christian III was firmly seated on the throne, he turned his attention to the state of religion, and resolved to carry into execution a plan which had been communicated to him by Gustavus (Vasa) for reducing the power of the clergy. He accordingly assembled the senate with great secrecy, and they immediately came to the resolution to annex all the Church lands, towns, fortresses and villages to the crown, and to abolish forever the temporal power of the clergy. All the bishops in the different parts of the kingdom were arrested about the same time; and, that the nation might not be alarmed by this extraordinary measure, the King convoked the states at Copenhagen; the nobility were ordered to be there in person, the commons by their deputies, but the clergy were not summoned to attend. After a strong speech from the King against the rapacity of the clergy, the senate confirmed the decree of the diet; and the power and privileges of the clergy were declared to be annihilated forever. The senate next settled the succession in the Duke Frederick, the King's eldest son. In return for these concessions, the King confirmed the nobility in all their rights, particularly in what they called the right of life and death over their vassals, and of punishing them in what manner they thought proper. Thus was the power of the clergy destroyed in Denmark; but the conclusion which the nobles drew from this, i.e. that their own authority and power would be so much the more augmented, was soon proved to be erroneous. For, as a great part of the crown lands had fallen into the hands of the clergy, these lands being again annexed to the crown, the royal authority was considerably increased. The oppression of the farmers still continued, and the nobles displayed a restless and increasing desire to prevent them from ever rising in the state; for the senate passed a law forbidding any person, either ecclesiastic or secular, who was not noble, to buy any freehold lands in the kingdom, or to endeavor to acquire such lands by any other title.

The existence of the Catholic Church in Denmark and the liberty of the people thus fell together at one blow. It should here be remarked that in all other lands, too, in which the Reformation was established by main force, tyranny at the same time began to rule supreme and popular rights were greatly impaired. And yet, such has been the falsification of modern history, especially in English speaking countries, that the impression generally prevails that the Reformation meant the end of tyranny and the dawn of popular liberty. With the exception of the Netherlands, whose story is peculiar, the direct contrary is everywhere in evidence.

The diet of Copenhagen had taken place in 1536. The bishops cast into prison at the time could not regain their liberty except on condition of resigning their sees. All did so, except the heroic bishop Roennow, who remained in prison till death, eight years later, came to make his a glorious martyr for the faith. To complete the work of the Reformation in Denmark, a Lutheran preacher, Bugenhagen, was imported from Wittenberg. By his advice, the King appointed seven "superintendents" to replace the deposed bishops. In 1546, a new diet, held at Copenhagen, abolished all the civil and political rights of the Catholics, who could thenceforth hold no civil office, or even inherit any possessions; while death was decreed against all priests and again those who should harbor them.

The Reformation in Norway

Norway remained subject to Denmark after Sweden had thrown off the yoke. The bishop of Drontheim was unfortunately a great friend of Christiern II, and promoted the introduction of the novel doctrines. But the Norwegians were attached to the ancient faith; nothing but violence could conquer them.

When Christiern II was expelled from Denmark, the bishop of Drontheim was forced to fly from Norway. Later on, in 1536, the Norwegians refused to accept Christiern III as their King; they rebelled and slew or expelled his supporters. He sent an army into Norway and completely conquered it. Then he totally deprived it of its autonomy, and placed his own creatures in all the leading offices. As for religion, stringent laws were passed by which all the inferior clergy were compelled either to embrace Lutheranism or to fly the country. Many, chiefly monks, preferred exile to apostasy. here again, as in so many other lands, civil liberty and Catholicity perished together.

The Reformation in Iceland

Iceland had been converted to Christianity about 1,000 A.D. From the ninth to the thirteenth century, it was the center of Northern enterprise. Its government was a species of republic; its laws were wise; it was in the golden age of its civilization. But in 1380, it was annexed to the Danish crown; in 1482, it lost by a plague one-half of its population. Yet the land was beginning to regain something of its former prosperity when the Reformation came to inflict on its people a sadder and more permanent injury than the plague had done.

The history of this catastrophe is simple enough, and can be told in a few lines. Christiern III of Denmark attempted to Protestanize Iceland. Clergy and people rose in rebellion against his tyranny. The King sent over a numerous and well-equipped body of foreign troops, which ultimately overpowered the brave but ill-organized citizens. Their leading bishop, John Areson, was seized and put to death. The same violent and arbitrary laws were imposed upon the conquered land which had destroyed the Church in Denmark and Norway. Once more, the Reformation was forced upon an unwilling nation by means of foreign bayonets.

The Reformation in Sweden

Tenth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

Gustav Vasa (1496-1560)

Few American readers are familiar with the events which brought about the Reformation in Sweden; and yet it is a very interesting chapter in history. There is in it a striking absence of even the pretext of abuses to be reformed. The people generally were pious Catholics, the pastors faithful and devout in the discharge of their sacred duties, the religious, male and female, led lives of fervor and charity, which endeared them to God and man; the bishops in particular gave the good example of every Christian virtue. Sins there were, of course, but few, if any, gross scandals are recorded. Here still more than anywhere else, Lutheranism was imposed upon an unwilling population by a cruel tyrant with the aid of a foreign army.

The tyrant was Gustav Vasa, who had begun his public career as the deliverer of his country from the foreign and unbearable yoke of Christiern II of Denmark. This signal service to his native land gained him the boundless love and confidence of his grateful fellow countrymen. They had bravely flocked to his standard at the time of common oppression, and when the victory was achieved and liberty secured, they enthusiastically offered him and pressed upon his apparent reluctance the Kingly crown of rescued Sweden. This was in 1523.

Before allowing himself to be crowned by the Catholic hierarchy, who would have made him swear fidelity to the Church, he planned and executed a religious revolution as thorough as his civil revolution had been. For during the tyrannous rule of Christiern, he had spent some months in Germany, and he had there become enamored by the Protestant plan, suggested by Luther, of vesting the spiritual power in the temporal ruler, and allowing him to appropriate the riches of the Church. This plan he undertook to adopt for Sweden.

For this purpose, carefully concealed at first, he needed an obsequious parliament and a body of foreign heretical troops.

The troops he could easily hire, and the religious treasures would readily furnish the money to pay them; and circumstances were exceptionally favorable for a total reorganization of the parliament. For in 1521, the Danish monarch Christiern, on occasion of his being crowned as King of Sweden, had invited the leading nobles and bishops to a banquet, and during it made a general butchery of his guests. This "Bloody Bath," as it is called in Swedish history, had left the government disorganized. So Vasa managed to have new senators chosen from among his friends, and he appointed bishops of his own choice; still, even of these bishops some proved to be in time of trial faithful to their sacred trust.

His further plan of action, to make himself spiritual head of the realm and master of all the ecclesiastical property, was skillfully devised and vigorously carried out. The Lutheran doctrine was the means, not the end intended by the monarch. But it was a necessary means, for as long as Sweden remained sound in doctrine, his most violent measures could have no lasting effect. For this purpose, he invited to his court some learned Lutherans, in particular two brothers, Olaus and Lawrence Petri, and, to give them credit with the people, he treated them with the utmost reverence. Olaus was allowed publicly to defend Lutheranism in presence of the diet, and was appointed preacher in the cathedral of Stockholm, while his brother Lawrence was made to teach theology at Uppsala. The former declaimed boldly against "the errors of Popery," the latter instilled the poison of heresy into the young theologians.

Vasa next required the Church to pay his foreign troops out of the revenue of the clergy. He removed an obnaxious bishop, and forced the chapter to depose the archbishop and to choose another, John Magnus by name, whom he selected to fill the vacancy thus created. This was a prelate of gentle character, whom he expected to make his pliant tool. But soon after, finding him unyielding in his fidelity to duty, he publicly mocked and insulted him, and banished him from Sweden. The good man died at last in poverty in a hospital at Rome.

Two recently deposed bishops, Knut and Sunnanwader, true Catholics - else he would not have discarded them - were accused of stirring up a revolt of the faithful. The King appeared himself as principal accuser, and, of course, they were condemned. We will let a Lutheran historian of Sweden, Anders Fryxell, describe the scene of their execution; it is a specimen page of the record of cruelty which disgraced the reign of Vasa, even according to so devoted a patriot and pronounced a Lutheran. He writes:

The seditionaries were forced to make a degrading entry into Stockholm, riding backwards on two half-starved horses, dressed in ragged palls, Master Knut wearing a bark mitre on his head, Peter Sunnanwader a crown of straw and a wooden sword by his side. Crowds of people in disguise followed them, mocking and teasing the unfortunates. The procession passed through some of the principle streets of the town, and stopped at last on the great square, where they were led to the whipping post, and made to drink with the executioner, hooted at and derided by the mob all the while. Shortly after this ungenerous treatment, they were both conducted to the place of execution, beheaded and impaled; Peter Sunnanwader in Uppsala, 18th of February, 1527, and Master Knut three days later in Stockholm. The fame of these proceedings spread like wild fire through the kingdom. Gustav had ordered the ignominious procession through Stockholm in order to decrease the reverence of the people for their bishops, but it was interpreted as an ungenerous victor's mockery over the vanquished, and the execution itself excited still greater displeasure. Such an attempt against such men was extraordinary, nay, unheard of. The priests represented the criminals as the fallen defenders of clerical freedom; the friends of the Stures as innocent victims of their devotion to the family, and the Roman Catholics as martyrs to the true faith, sacrificed by the hand of a heretic and godless King.

The foreign mercenaries were the chief means by which Vasa was enabled to accomplish his wicked designs. He played them off on all occasions, whether to cajole his people, and especially the clergy, out of their money, or to threaten them into servile compliance with his will. The same Lutheran historian, Fryxell, writes:

At the meeting held at Wastena in 1521, it was determined that the foreign cavalry should be quartered in the cloister; at the meeting of Stockholm (1525), that the tithes of that year should be employed to pay off the foreign soldiery. The priests opposed it, but the King clearly proved that these expenses were necessary, and the nobility, citizens and peasants, glad at not having to pay themselves, were well satisfied that the priests should do it. This bait Gustav often employed to get the people on his side against the prelates of Rome.

At last, in 1527, the King convened a diet at Westeras, at which he struck the final blow. He caused the Lutherans and Catholics to discuss the Reformation doctrines before himself and the whole assembly, terrorizing the Catholic champions and putting them designedly at a disadvantage. Before the meeting began, the bishops held a secret session in the cathedral, and there pledged themselves to one another to stand firmly by the ancient faith and union with the Holy See; but they were so overawed by the dangers awaiting them that they buried the parchment recording their agreement under a stone, whence it was not produced till in later years.

At the diet, the law was reluctantly passed which the tyrant dictated, abolishing the Catholic religion, and establishing Lutheranism in its stead, and confiscating to the King all the ecclesiastical property. Again, Fryxell says:

The diet of Westeras did not last long; scarcely eight days passed ere it was closed; but never at any diet has more been executed; never have any resolutions brought about a more complete change. The whole tremendous power of Popery in all its members was crushed. Deprived of their riches, their priviliges, their great consideration, they (the clergy) were open to the continued and often unjust exactions of the crown and the nobility, to the attacks of the Lutheran priests, and left without power to protect themselves from the encroachments of enemies on every side. The crown of Sweden, which before had been utterly impoverished and unable to pay half its expenses, became rich at once.

The King now appointed the Protestant Lawrence Petri to be archbishop of Uppsala; by wily promises that the Pope would sanction the appointment, he induced four bishops, his former appointees, to perform the consecration. Bishop Spalding makes the following important statement on this subject:

The consecration having been duly performed by bishops having undoubtedly the episcopal character themselves, though uncanonical and unlawful, was certainly valid; and thus the present Swedish Lutheran bishops, unless the rite of consecration has since been materially altered, are invested with the episcopal character; though, being severed from the communion of the Church, they have not canonical jurisdiction or any lawful authority whatever.

Soon after the consecration of the archbishop, he was publically married in his cathedral. Then, as Fryxell says, "a general murmur was heard; the ignorant populace threatened to kill the foreign heretic and the apostate King." Innovation after innovation was introduced; the people could stand it no longer; unsurrections arose, were repressed, and sprung up again. But the foreign troops were well armed and well disciplined; and the skillfull tyrant forced the rebels after each rising to deliver their leaders into his hands; and so new combinations to shake off the yoke of the foreign religion became impossible. Gradually, violent opposition subsided, the faithful clergy and the soundest layment died off, and the Reformation remained in undisputed possession.

The Reformation in Scotland

Ninth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

John Knox (1514-1572)

In England, as we have seen, the Reformation began with the throne and was forced upon the people; in Scotland, it began with a small but active portion of the people and was forced upon the government; once seated on the throne, it worked downward on the entire nation. It resembled a vast conflagration which begins with a match applied at the bottom of a pile of wood, shoots upward and spreads over the surface, kindling first all the dry portions it meets, and gradually consuming everything from the top to the bottom.

The dry branches were the corrupt members of the Church; and they were many in that land, more than elsewhere, especially among the clergy. For the freedom of ecclesiastical elections had been much violated, the rights of the Sovereign Pontiffs over the appointment of bishops ignored, and the Kings had often thrust their favorites into vacant bishoprics and other important benefices. For instance, King James V had made his illegitimate sons abbots and priors of Holyrood House, Kelso, Melrose, Codingham and St. Andrew's. Under such circumstances, inferior benefices were often openly put up for sale, or bestowed on unworthy candidates, sometimes on illiterate minions of courtiers.

Among such clergymen, religious scandals were frequent, and all manners of abuses were multiplied. The land was among the most remote corners of the Church, so that supervision and interference of the Roman Pontiff were very difficult, and therefore rare and inefficient. Such demoralization of the clergy could not fail to react on the laity, extinguishing in their hearts all reverence and confidence. Certainly there were at the time still large numbers of holy priests and monks and nuns; multitudes among the laity remained pious, fervent and faithful Catholics; but the depraved members of society are apt to be the most noisy and most active, and are always the most unprincipled in their use of means.

Such is the ordinary source of religious corruption in history; the secular power usurps the appointment of the Church dignitaries, the unworthy bishops install unworthy men in lower benefices, scandals and abuses degrade the clergy in the eyes of the laity, who lose confidence in their spiritual guides and reverence for religion itself.

The disgust of the good Catholics in Scotland, and the gibes and insults of the ill-disposed attracted more attention year after year. It was the time when Luther had just succeeded in revolutionizing religion in Germany, Calvin was triumphant in Geneva, Henry VIII had made himself the head of the Church in England. The most restless malcontents in Scotland were looking for a religious revolution in their own country as a cure of the existing evils. But many of them had a further design. They noticed that in all regions where the Reformation gained ground, the lords were enriched by the appropriation of Church lands and the treasures of the altars and the monasteries; only there was no sovereign in Scotland willing to promote the confiscation. They plotted among themselves secretly and perseveringly and at last accomplished their wicked purpose.

Their first effort was to foster the popular discontent. Revilings and ridicule of the demoralized clergy went far towards discrediting the ancient doctrine. Poetry contributed its aid, and fostered heretical views there as it had done in Germany. Sir David Lindsay thrilled the heart of the nation by lines as vigorous as they were elegant. The same wordy warfare was there used to discredit the clergy and the Church which was afterwards so successfully emploed by Voltaire to destroy the nobles and Christianity in France, where he prepared the way for the Reign of Terror.

The soul of the Reformation in Scotland, the counterpart of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin on the continent, was John Knox, the founder of the Presbyterians. he was born in 1505, ordained a priest in 1530; he was a man of learning and uncommon ability, a powerful preacher, but exceedingly coarse in his language. From 1535, he was a Protestant at heart, though he wore the mask of orthodoxy till 1542. A few years later, in open violation of his solemn vow of celibacy, he married a Miss Bowes, at Berwick, on the Scottish borders.

In 1544, Henry VIII plotted with some Scottish traitors to get possession of Mary, the heir to the throne of Scotland, who was then an infant only one year old. He was thwarted in his criminal design by a true Scottish patriot, Cardinal Beatoun. But he had his revenge in the murder of that noble prelate, perpetrated by the foiled conspirators. Knox openly approved the crime, and defended it as a "godly deed," which was to promote the work of the Reformation. he joined the band of guilty wretches, furnished them with armed defenders, with whom he was taken prisoner and carried to France by the allies of Mary.

Thence, after two years' detention, he passed into England, where he fraternized with Cranmer and his friends, who were then engaged in drawing up the Book of Common Prayer. When Mary restored Catholicity there, he fled to Geneva, to imbibe, from Calvin's teachings, the predestinarianism and the fanaticism which he was to infuse into his own followers. In 1555, he entered Scotland secretly, and encouraged the lords, who, that same year, entered into their first "Solemn League and Covenant" to bring about the establishment of the new gospel. Two years later, they went further, and swore to uproot the "abominations and idolatry" of the ancient faith.

Mary of Guise, the Queen Dowager

The Queen dowager, who was governing the country during the minority of Mary, strove to conciliate the rebels. She offered them full liberty of worship in the practice of the reformed doctrines, but they would not accept the offer; they had covenanted together for the total destruction of the Catholic religion. This is admitted by Knox himself, for in a letter which he wrote in 1559, he said that his party obtained permission for eight days to practice "religious liberty" as they understood it, and he adds:

In the which (days), the abbey of Lindores, a place of black monks, twelve miles distant from St. Andrew's, we reformed: their altars we overthrew; their idols, vestments of idolatry and Mass books we burned in their presence, and commanded them to cast away their monkish habits.

Knox and his brother preachers marched through the land, with the assistance of the covenanted rebels, establishing along their route the glorious Reformation, in the light of burning churches and monasteries, with their burning libraries and works of art. The preaching aroused the mob, and the mob did the work of destruction; for it was a solemn injunction of the Calvinistic creed, still contained, we believe, in the Presbyterian confession of faith, forcibly to remove all "false worship" and all "monuments of idolatry."

The Protestant Hutchinson writes:

The Reformation, in its violence, was a greater disgrace to religion than all the errors it was intended to subvert. Reformation has hitherto always appeared in the form of a zealot full of fanatic fury, with violence subduing, but through madness creating almost as many mischiefs in its oversight as it overthrew errors in its pursuits. Religion has received a greater shock from the present struggle to suppress some formularies and save some scruples than it ever did by the growth of superstition.

The dowager Queen-regent offered, over again, the free exercise of their religion to the covenanted Protestant lords, but these would not accept the offer in good faith; they claimed besides the right to remove "false worship and the monuments of idolatry." By this term, they meant especially the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the center of Catholic worship. Protestants generally in our day have no conception of the bitter fanaticism with which the early Reformers in various lands persecuted their fellow countrymen who persevered in their ancestral faith.

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots

In Scotland particularly, they carried their ferocity to the most shocking excesses. They did not even allow their young Queen Mary, when she came home from France, to have Mass said by her chaplains in her own palace. Miss Agnes Strickland, herself a Protestant, writes in her valuable work Lives of the Queens of Scotland as follows:

On that morning, being Sunday (the first day of her return), Mary ordered Mass to be said in the Chapel Royal, resolutely claiming for herself and the Catholic members of her household the same liberty of conscience and freedom of worship which she frankly guaranteed to her subjects in general, without reservation or exceptions. The hearts of the congregation (the Protestants) were wonderfully moved when they learned that the Queen, though she refrained from persecuting interference with their mode of worship, meant to go to Heaven her own way. Patrick, Lord Lindsay, braced on his armour, and, rushing into the close at the head of a party of the Church militant, brandished his sword and shouted: "The idolater priest shall die the death!" They attacked the Queen's almoner, and would have slain him, if he had not fled for refuge into the presence of his royal mistress.

On the following Sunday, Knox preached on the evil of idolatry, and he expressed in his sermon such fanatical hatred of the ancient worship as to say one Mass was more fearful unto him than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in one part of the realm on purpose to suppress the whole religion. These very words are attributed to him by his warm admirer, the historian of his life, the preacher McCrie. The acts of open violence by which the Reformation was spread from one city to another, by the desecration of churches, the plundering and sacking of monasteries, etc., had begun in 1559. In 1560, the rebels had formed a parliament without commission from their sovereign, and they had established in that meeting the new religion on the ruins of the old; they had abolished the papal power and enacted punishments against all who still had recourse to it; they had abolished the Holy Mass, and enacted, for the priests who should continue to offer it and the faithful who attended the service, forfeiture for the first offense, banishment for the second, and death for the third. The new confession of faith was modeled on that of Calvin. The dowager Queen marched with an army against the rebels, and had got the better of them so that their power was on the point of being crushed, when it was saved and made triumphant by the open support of Queen Elizabeth, who had so far aided them in secret ways. The same Protestant historian of Knox, McCrie, quoted above, and who substantially admits nearly everything we have narrated, says, on this matter:

The disaster, which caused the Protestant army to leave Edinburgh, turned out to the advantage of their cause. It obliged the English court to abandon the line of cautious policy, which they had hitherto pursued. On February 27, 1560, they concluded a formal treaty with the lords of the congregation; and in the beginning of April, the English army entered Scotland.

What secret plotting had begun was consummated by open violence, as far as the establishment of the Reformation in Scotland was concerned.

As to the subsequent life of the unfortunate but truly glorious Queen Mary, and her heroic death, we shrink from entering here upon the sickening story of the intrigues, slanders, treason, murder and forgeries by which all this was brought about. Of forgeries, the Anglican parson Whitaker says, and with his words we can appropriate close the narrative of the Reformation in Scotland:

Forgery - I blush for the honor of Protestantism while I write - seems to have been peculiar to the Reformed. I look in vain for one of the accursed outrages among the disciples of Popery.

The Bloody Rise of the Anglican Church

Eighth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by
Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

Canterbury Cathedral

Most Anglicans take it for granted that their ancestors deliberately left the Catholic Church on account of its corruptions. They are much mistaken. In England, as in most other lands, the people were driven into the Reformation by fines, imprisonments, terrorism, the rack, the scaffold, and foreign soldiers; all this process was promoted by slanders, misunderstandings and all manners of deplorable deceptions. Look at the facts of history.

When Henry VIII died in 1547, the faith of the English people was still the same that it had been for nearly a thousand years, ever since St. Austin, with his monks, had brought it to them from Rome. True, the Pope was no longer acknowledged by the party in power to be the spiritual head of the Church in the realm; the King had usurped his place. But the people generally clung to the ancient doctrine as firmly as ever. Lingard writes:

To dispel these prejudices, Henry issued injunctions that the very name 'Pope' should be carefully erased out of all books employed in the public worship; that every schoolmaster should diligently inculcate the new doctrine on the children entrusted to his care; that all clergymen, from the bishop to the curate, should on every Sunday and holiday teach that the King was the true head of the Church, and that the authority hitherto exercised by the Popes was a usurpation, tamely submitted to by the carelessness or timidity of his predecessors; and the sheriffs in each county should keep a vigilant eye over the conduct of the clergy, and should report to the council the names, not only of those who might neglect these duties, but also of those who might perform them in deed, but with coldness and indifference.

A general espionage was organized to suppress all murmurings. Many priests and laymen were punished with death for resistance to this tyranny. In the north of England, the opposition was so vigorous as to lead to a succession of rebellions; but the Duke of Norfolk, with the aid of disciplined troops, put down the unorganized multitude.

When open opposition was suppressed, and the citizens were cowed by terror, the King drew up a brief summary of religious faith in six articles, the Bloody Six, as even Froude calls them, because those who denied any of them were burned at the stake. The Catholics who refused to take the oath of Henry's supremacy in spiritual matters were hanged and quartered. There was no free choice in those days in any country that is now Protestant.

After Henry's death, his son, Edward VI, a boy of nine years, succeeded him, with the Duke of Somerset as temporal and Cranmer as spiritual ruler during the minority. The latter had been till then a Protestant in secret; he now threw off the mask and imposed the Reformed doctrines on the realm. At his discretion, one law after another was enacted by parliament to change the religion of the people. The celibacy of the clergy was abolished. The Mass was at first retained "until a better order of service could be devised;" but Communion under both kinds was enjoined. The election of bishops was withdrawn from the deans and chapters and vested wholly in the crown. The Book of Common Prayer was completed and adopted by parliament in 1549, as having been "dictated by the aid of the Holy Ghost." All beneficed clergymen had to subscribe to this decree and use the new service instead of Holy Mass. The Six Articles of Henry were suppressed, and forty-two others substituted for them.

In all this change of religion, the people had no choice, nor the clergy either. Bishop Gardiner objected vigorously, saying we should obey God rather than man; he was sent to the Tower. The people rose in rebellion throughout the kingdom, but they were crushed with the aid of foreign troops. The Protestant historian Hallam writes:

The common people looked to their own teachers as guides in faith, and the main body of clergy were certainly very reluctant to tear themselves, at the pleasure of a disappointed monarch, in the most dangerous crisis of religion, from the bosom of Catholic unity.

And again:

This is a somewhat humiliating admission, that the Protestant faith was imposed upon our ancestors by a foreign army.

Edward died young, July 6, 1553. But his death was first kept secret till another Protestant could have been installed in his stead. Happily Mary, the legitimate heir, was notified by the Earl of Arundel. She at once unfurled her banner and the country rallied to her support. She who was dubbed by her enemies "Bloody Mary" spared Cranmer and other leaders of the plot for nearly two years before she consented to sign their death warrant; many she pardoned entirely. It was only after Wyatt's rebellion that she adopted really severe measures against the restless rebels who plotted for the restoration of Protestantism. In this, she followed the bad example of her enemies, of whom Hallam writes:

Persecution is the deadly sin of the Reformed churches, that which cools every honest man's zeal for their cause in proportion as his reading becomes more extensive.

Nearly the whole of English literature for three hundred years was a conspiracy to hide this truth.

Of course, Mary restored the Catholic religion, which was still that of eleven-twelfths of her subjects. She reinstated the Catholic bishops who had remained faithful; the married bishops and clergy retired or were removed. Cranmer had purposely so changed the forms of ordination for priests and consecration for bishops as to make these sacred Orders invalid. Of the men thus ordained, some were ordained anew in the proper manner, others retired among the laity, where they belonged.

Elizabeth I of England

The greatest difficulty in the way of reunion with Rome was the large number of influential men who had fattened on the Church property. Bishop Gardiner, Mary's lord chancellor, obtained from the supreme Pontiff leave for them to retain spoils; it was like throwing the cargo overboard to save the ship. Cardinal Pole, of the royal blood of England, was sent to his native country from Rome as legate of the Pope; everything was done that conscience allowed to restore peace to all. The entire nation was solemnly absolved in parliament of all censures incurred under Henry's and Edward's reign. Unfortunately for all concerned, Mary died in 1558, and was succeeded by Elizabeth, who had become a Catholic and had sworn to the sincerity of her conversion. But finding that the Pope would not acknowledge her legitimacy, she determined to follow her father's example and make herself the head of Church and state. She took up the Reformed doctrines as a matter of state policy, and by forty-four years of persecution she forced Protestantism on the English people.

She chose William Cecil as the principal instrument of her tyranny. The plan he devised was this: to forbid all Catholic sermons, to terrorize the clergy, to make them odious to the laity, to remove obnoxious magistrates, to restore the Edwardine liturgy, and to do all this cautiously under various false pretenses. He packed a new parliament, lords and commons, at the opening of which the Queen assumed the imperious tone of her father, stating she would do what she thought best, but would prefer to have their assent rather than to act without it. Next, she forced the parliament to abolish the Catholic religion. The convocation of the clergy and the faculties of the two great universities entered a vigorous protest against this apostasy. Thereupon, the two most influential bishops were sent to the Tower. The rest, though terrorized, did not yield, but their protest was simply ignored. All the acts of Henry and Edward abolished under Mary were re-enacted. The new worship was enforced under penalty of fines, confiscations and death. Under Henry, the articles to be believed were six; under Edward, these were abolished and forty-two others were put instead; under Elizabeth, there were thirty-nine, which remain to this day. They are sworn to by every Anglican clergyman in England; but half of these ministers do not believe in them. Only one bishop consented to take the oath required, that he might keep his see; all the others were deposed, many of them imprisoned. So many of the lower clergy withdrew that laymen, mostly mechanics, had to be employed in some places to read the service. Priests who said Mass in secret were hunted like wolves, and when found they were hanged, disemboweled while still alive, and their limbs exposed in public placed. The faithful who harbored them or who assisted them at Holy Mass were imprisoned and tortured to make them betray their friends. By such persecutions, continued under several reigns, Protestantism was gradually propagated among the English people. Once separated from Rome, private judgment gradually divided the nation into countless sects.

Henry VIII and the Break with Rome

Seventh in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

Henry VIII of England

England had been an integral portion of the Catholic Church since A.D. 596, at which date St. Austin, with his forty monks, arrived there on a mission from Pope Gregory the Great, and soon converted a large portion of the inhabitants. During the nine centuries that had since elapsed, piety had flourished in the land to such an extent that the country was fondly called by its people "the Dowry of Mary;" whereby they wished to signify that they were more devoted than most other nations to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is so near and dear to her Divine Son. All the cities and towns contained substantial churches, many of them costly and beautiful, and from all of them rose one concordant voice of worship; from every pulpit the same doctrine was taught; and few persons there were in whose mind and heart religion did not hold an honored place.

Monasteries dotted the land, more than twenty to a county, homes of prayer, of learning and labor, from whose portals streams of charity and consolation ever poured forth to all the needy and afflicted of the neighborhood. And England was happy, happy in the blessings of time and of eternity; it was "merry England" then, but it is so no more. The Kingdom was powerful and prosperous, having a full treasury, an industrious, intelligent and contented people, at the time when our story begins, namely in 1509, when Henry VIII, then a most promising youth of eighteen years, succeeded his father, Henry VII, whose many good qualities had been somewhat dimmed by his well-known avarice.

The new King soon became the idol of his people. High ran the universal joy, when, but two months after his ascension to the throne, he was solemnly united in the holy bonds of matrimony to the virtuous princess Catherine, a daughter of Ferdinand, King of Castile and Aragon.

With this affectionate wife, he lived seventeen years, during which she bore him three sons and two daughters; but all these died in their infancy, except the princess Mary, who was afterwards Queen of England. In his public life he was generally reputed to be a model ruler, a model man and a model Christian. He had entered the lists as a foremost champion of the Catholic faith, by publishing a book in defense of the Seven Sacraments against the attacks of Luther, and he had obtained from Pope Leo X, in reward of his zeal, the title of "Defender of the Faith," which he was to wear till death, but which the Kings of England have unjustly retained to the present day. But in his private life, Henry wanted one important virtue; he was all along very unfaithful to his stainless spouse. When he was thirty-five years of age, Queen Catherine being then forty-three, he allowed himself to become infatuated with a young lady of twenty-two, the coquettish Anne Boleyn, and he put no check on his criminal passion. Of course, he could not marry her during the life-time of his lawful wife. It was secretly suggested to him by some flatterers that, with his powerful influence at Rome, he might perhaps obtain a separation from her, on the plea that she had formerly been married to his elder brother Arthur. But the latter had died when a mere boy of fourteen, and the marriage had never been consummated. Besides, whatever impediment existed had been removed by a formal dispensation of the Church before Henry's marriage.

However, in 1527 the King undertook to plead that this dispensation was invalid, that therefore Queen Catherine was not his lawful wife, and that his delicate conscience did not allow him to live with her. How hypocritical was this pretense is shown to evidence by many facts; in particular by his conduct during the epidemic called "the sweating sickness," which then visited England, and soon entered the royal palace. While he saw the danger of death before him, he became very pious, he confessed his sins every day, and received Holy Communion once a week; and during this season of piety he resumed his marital relations with the Queen until the plague was gone. Then he banished Catherine, recalled Anne Boleyn, and urged the suit for the divorce with renewed energy. But the Supreme Pontiff, Clement VII, thought at the time in extraordinary need of Henry's help against powerful enemies, remained firm during the five years that the divorce suit lasted, and finally refused any further litigation in the matter.

In that situation of affairs, an unprincipled courtier, Thomas Cromwell, made a wicked suggestion to the King, advising him to throw off the yoke of Rome, and to declare himself the head of the Church within his own realm; he could then appoint his own ecclesiastical court to dissolve the marriage; many princes in Germany had thus made themselves independent in spiritual things, and they had reaped a rich harvest in appointing to themselves the lands and buildings of the churches and monasteries.

The King was delighted with this counsel. He at once made Cromwell a member of his privy council, and followed his advice in all its details. For three years, he had secretly been living in adulterous union with Anne Boleyn, when, in 1533, her condition of pregnancy made it imperative that some decisive step should be taken to prevent public disgrace. Therefore, he married her privately on January 25, but it was given out that the ceremony had taken place on Nov. 24, 1532, because the child was born on September 7, less than eight months after the real nuptials. This child of sin was Elizabeth, who in course of time did probably more harm to England than anyone else has ever done, for she was the principal cause of establishing Protestantism in that land.

To bring about the divorce from Catherine, Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and made him the judge of the case, though the Pope had explicitly reserved the decision to himself. The servile court at last pronounced the sentence of divorce. Carnmer was well chosen for this disgraceful task, for he had himself, after ordination, secretly married a daughter of the Protestant leader, Osiander. Yet this is the infamous man who later on introduced the doctrine of the Reformers into England, and who composed the Book of Common Prayer.

On May 28, 1533, he solemnly declared that the King had been lawfully married to Anne Boleyn, and that he now confirmed the marriage by his pastoral and judicial authority, which he derived from the successors of the Apostles. And yet only four years later, May 28, 1537, this same man again openly and solemnly pronounced "in the name of Christ and for the honor of God," that this same marriage was an always had been null and void. For Henry had become suspicious of his new wife, he had consigned her to the tower and condemned her to death for adultery, and she was beheaded on the day after her divorce.

The Many Wives of Henry VIII

Only five months after this, on October 12, his third wife, Jane Seymour, brought forth his son, whe became later King Edward VI; the mother died in childbirth. His fourth wife was Anne of Cleves, but he soon divorced her, too, and he punished Cromwell with death for having promoted that marriage. He next espoused Catherine Howard, but her also he soon divorced, accusing her of adultery committed before her marriage, and he had her beheaded for constructive treason, as her supposed sin was called. His sixth wife, Catherine Parr, barely escaped the like fate for having presumed to differ from him on a religious question; but when the officers arrived to convey her to the tower, she had appeased his wrath by a most humble apology.

And yet this monstrous tyrant and scandalous adulterer is supposed by many simply folk to have been the chosen instrument of Providence for separating the English Church from dependence on the one pastor of the one fold. When a Pope is bad, he is an exception in his line; but with "Reformers," badness is the rule, and Christ assures us that the tree is known by its fruit.

When Cromwell had advised separation from Rome, in 1532, Henry had immediately accomplished the design. For he at once summoned a convocation of the clergy, and required of it a recognition of his supreme headship of the Church of England. The act was passed, with the clause added, "as far as the law of Christ will allow." By this clause, the terrified clergy tried to save their conscience; but it was ignored by the tyrant. At once, he appointed the layman Cromwell to be spiritual vicar-general of the realm, and thus he set him over all the bishops. Their powers were suspended, and each of them had to sue for faculties from the King to enable him to govern his flock. Bishops and parliament trembled before the tyrant, and became mere tools of his will. At his bidding, parliament passed bills for divorcing and beheading the Queens, for settling the succession to the throne as pleased him, for condemning anyone to death.

To resist his will was to court death, to court death requires a hero, and few courtiers of politicians are heroes. The lord-chancellor, Blessed Thomas More, and Blessed Cardinal Fisher, bishop of Rochester, boldly refused to take the oath of Henry's spiritual supremacy. They were cast into the Tower and beheaded for the faith. So were many religious and seculars, men and women. The religious houses were confiscated, first the smaller ones; these were charged with relaxation, but the larger ones were declared to be above reproach. Yet, soon after, the larger ones also were suppressed, and their land and treasure usurped to enrich the King and his flatterers, while the poor people who used to be supported by their charity were left to starve of want, and later on were branded with a red hot iron for begging their bread, or given over as slaves to whoever convicted them of vagrancy. It is hard to trace the finger of God in Henry's work, but it is easy to see in it the influence of the Devil, the world and the flesh.

Origin of Calvinism

Sixth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

John Calvin, ca. 1560

John Calvin was a very different character from Martin Luther. Like one another in their uncommon power of intellect and strength of will, in their rejection of all authority on earth that claimed to control their independent thought, speech and action - these two standard-bearers of the Reformation were in most other respects the opposites of each other.

Luther was by nature and principle a destroyer and disorganizer in religion and morality, fond of breaking through all bonds, of throwing down all bars for himself and for other men generally; Calvin, on the contrary, had a remarkable genius for organization, and delighted in imposing bonds. He built up a novel structure of dogma and morals, tightening the yoke on the multitude, but releasing himself and a few elect souls from all fear of future punishment. We shall understand this better when we shall get acquainted with his personal history.

Calvin was born at Moyen, in Picardy, France, on July 10, 1509, when Luther, as a young monk, was beginning his professorial career at the University of Wittenberg. His father was a faithful Christian, blessed with a good wife and six children, but not with ample means for their support. Of the children, John was the most talented and the most ambitious. In the same town, the noble family of Mommors, with a charity common in Catholic times, took him into their home to be educated with their own children by a private tutor. When he was twelve years old, they sent him with two of their own sons to Paris, where John was to continue his studies for the priesthood.

While attending lectures at the great Paris University, the poor boy was lodged and supported gratis by his paternal uncle, Richard, who made an honest living as a locksmith. The boy was thus described by an early writer:

His body was dry and slender, but he already exhibited a sharp and vigorous intellect, prompt at repartee, bold in attack. He was great at fasting, he spoke but little; his language was serious and always to the point. He entered seldom into company and sought retirement.

Meanwhile, the errors of Luther, his fierce assaults on the Pope, his condemnation of penance and morals restraints, etc., had begun to attract public attention in France, and was creating a wild excitement, particularly among the students of the Paris University. Calvin was soon infected with the new spirit. While his good Uncle Richard daily attended Mass, abstained from flesh meat every Friday and Saturday, and piously told his beads daily, John had begun to scoff at such devout practices. For, already at 14, he had read some of Luther's books; he had admitted doubt and then proud contempt into his conceited mind. The influence of his principle professor at the time was in favor of the novel errors, and soon the boy was no longer a Catholic except in name.

Still, he found it his interest to conceal his sentiments, and at the age of 19, having been enrolled among the clergy by receiving the tonsure, he obtained a considerable ecclesiastical benefice, which enabled him to live on the Church without discharging any sacred duties. He never recevied the priesthood nor even the Minor Orders, though he held the title of pastor of a considerable parish.

For a while, he studied law at Orleans, where, under the tuition of an excellent master, he greatly improved in logical thought and trenchant expression; but he was never unpopular among his fellow students, with whom his habit of fault-finding earned for him the sobriquet of "the accusative case." Next, he studied at Bourges, where he made the acquaintence of Beza, Wolmar and other enthusiastic admirers of Luther. Thence he returned to Paris to complete his theological course, living all along on the income of a Church benefice, while he was maturing in his active mind the plan of his heretical system of predestination. While he paused on the brink of the precipice, he was a prey to racking torments of conscience.

At last, his mind was made up, for, to use his own words: "God, by a sudden conversion, subdued his heart and made it docile." From Audin's Life of Calvin we are led to conceive the genesis of his system in this way. He had a powerful intellect, and an iron will to execute whatever he resolved upon; but he had no love of any person but himself, no kindness, no tenderness, no pity on the miserable. Being such, he formed to himself a conception of God after his own image and likeness, a God all intellect and strength of will, but wanting in the element of goodness. This God, in Calvin's system, created the world simply to exercise His arbitrary power, without any regard to the happiness of His creatures. Some of these He predestined to be saved, happy forever, others to be lost in endless woe; without leaving any influence on their lot to either the elect of the reprobate. To the elect. God gives sooner or later an intimate conviction of their election; this pledge, once received, can never be lost. Calvin calls this conviction "faith," taking this word in a novel sense of his own. This faith prompts the happy recipients of it to lead holy lives. Those who have it not are a mass of damnation; they have nothing to gain by the practice of virtue, but they should be kept in order by the elect, by force if necessary.

Calvin, while still openly professing the Catholic religion, held conventicles at night with his secret followers, whom he indoctrinated with his new tenets. His position became dangerous. So, he sold his ecclesiastical benefice and fled to the court of Navarre, where Queen Margaret patronized the Reformation. In that kingdom, he composed the gospel of his sect, which he entitled The Christian Institutes.

We can best understand the spirit of his teachings by seeing how he reduced it to practice during the twenty-two years from 1542 to 1564, while he was all-powerful in Geneva, Switzerland. Considering himself and his partisans as the elect of God, he looked down contemptuously upon the "Libertines," as he styled the unconverted Genevese, just as the Pharisees of old used to look down upon the Publicans. In the spirit of Phariseeism, he enacted a code of the most rigid morality, and he organized a consistory to enforce it on the people. Geneva had been for generations a city of comfort, of cheerfulness and moderate conviviality, of simple pleasures and happiness. The new code abolished all public amusements, all games, all dances, all that had the appearance of frivolity. Domiciliary visits were instituted and various inquisitorial measures were taken to watch the conduct of every citizen. Offences against sanctimonious decorum, and against the very appearance of vanity, were severely punished. Thus we read that a lady was put in prison for having arranged her hair too coquettishly, so was her chambermaid for having assisted her. Imprisonment was inflicted on merchants for playing cards, on peasants for using rude language to their oxen, on burghers, for not extinguishing their lamps in the evening at the appointed hour. Such was the origin of that legislation which caused his followers in English-speaking lands to be called "Puritans," from the external purity of morals which they affected.

Calvin crushed all opposition by the severest punishments. Every word uttered against him was a crime, of which banishment was a common penalty. James Grunet, whom Calvin in open council had called a dog, and who, thus provoked, had written some threatening words against the dictator, was punished with death. All the world knows how he caused Servetus to be seized and condemned for having published, though in another land, some heretical theses against the Holy Trinity, and history blames Calvin for the public burning of the stranger.

The worst feature of Calvanism is that it presents the great, good God as an odious tyrant. What human heart can love a heartless autocrat? In our day, a strong revulsion against this leading feature of Calvanism has caused some branches of that unfortunate system to revise their creed, and return in part to the ancient doctrines of the Catholic Church.

Origin of the Anabaptists and Baptists

Fifth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

Thomas Müntzer, ca. 1520

We are not inquiring here what kind of men the Baptists are today, but what was their origin, what their early history. They state in their writings that their origin is wrapped in obscurity. But history has of late torn away the veil of many pretences, and it has done so in the present case. It is now clearly known that the Baptists have come from the Anabaptists; they have dropped the first two syllables of their original name in order to escape the odium attached to those early sectaries. The history of the Anabaptists is as well known as any ordinary event of the past four centuries.

The word anabaptist etymologically means a person who baptizes over again. It was used to designate the fact that their new doctrine held infants' baptisms to be of no avail, since the sacrament could benefit those only who desired it. Now as all Christians before the Reformation began had been baptized in their infancy, those who joined this sect were re-baptized. This error was origininated by Thomas Müntzer, the Lutheran pastor of Zwickau in Saxony, in the year 1520. He and his followers carried the principles of the Reformation to their furthest consequences: everyone was to interpret the Bible for himself, and they professed to find texts in the Sacred Volume that justified rebellion against princes as well as against bishops and popes. They were socialists, mystics, fanatics; they rejected all authority, all tradition, all control of any kind. Intoxicated with individual liberty, they went about committing such excesses, such outrages on morality, as disgraced the name of Anabaptists for all future generations.

Müntzer gave a fresh impulse and a new character to the "Peasants' War," as it was called, which was directed by him to the establishment of an ideal Christian commonwealth with communistic institutions. In 1525, his army was defeated at Frankenhausen. He was tried, condemned and executed.

But this well-deserved punishment was looked upon by the Anabaptists as a form of most unjust persecution. New associations were formed among them, new prophets and teachers arose, the propaganda was extended among the peasants and serfs of Germany, Austria and Hungary in every direction. They summarized their tenets as follows:

Impiety prevails everywhere. It is therefore necessary that a new family of holy persons be founded, enjoying, without distinction of sex, the gift of prophecy, and skilled to interpret Divine Revelation. No need of learning; for the internal law is more than the outward expression. No Christian is allowed to go to law, to hold an office in the civil government, to take an oath in a court of justice, or to possess any personal property; everything among Christians must be in common.

They went about burning all books but the Bible, and destroying all churches within their reach. Catholics are often blamed for being intolerant of heretics, for refusing them liberty of conscience. But when they saw what heresy and liberty of conscience meant during the first decades of the Reformation, how could they help being intolerant? Who, if he knows the facts, can blame them for defending their own liberty of worship, their churches, their altars, their priests, bishops and the Supreme Pontiff against all manner of insult and violence? Must a man stand by and see what is nearest and dearest to his heart outraged by mobs and fanatical leaders of mobs? I do not think the Catholics today would patiently submit to such mob violence if it were offered, and I do not know that any would expect it from high-spirited citizens.

A few years later, John of Leiden, a tailor by trade, was proclaimed King of New Zion. He put all the laws of morality, of decency and moderation at defiance. He was a tyrant to his subjects; yet, he pleased them by introducing polygamy. He pronounced anathemas against Luther as well as against the Pope of Rome. At last Munster, the capital of his kingdom, was taken in 1535; and he and others of the leaders were tortured with hot pincers till they expired.

The most fanatical of their leaders being thus removed, new prophets arose, who objected to polygamy and to other most revolting disorders. In many places, the better element among the Anabaptists prevailed, and the sect became more like the ordinary followers of the Reformation. But its name has ever since remained one of extremely bad repute, and its members have often been persecuted by other Protestant bodies. Some of them went to settle in the Netherlands, and thence passed over into England, in company with some English dissenters who had fled from the persecution in their own country, and who in Holland had taken up the main tenets of the Anabaptists. As early as 1535, we read of ten Anabaptists suffering death for their heresy under Henry VIII in England, and in 1538 of three men and one woman executed for the same opinions. Yet their tenets gradually spread, and now there are said to be about 500,000 of those sectaries in Europe; but the name Anabaptists had been changed to that of Baptists.

In America, they are far more numerous. In 1533, a colony of Welsh Anabaptists had come over to settle in Massachusetts. Here the celebrated Roger Williams undertook to defend the same errors as the Anabaptists in Europe, as far as Baptism was concerned. But instead of the lawlessness and the excesses of the early leader of the Anabaptists, he displayed a spirit of moderation and tolerance which has made him one of the most honored pioneers of religious liberty in the United States.

From the beginning of the heresy, its followers objected to the name "Anabaptists," because they said infants were incapable of receiving baptism, and therefore were not re-baptized but simply baptized when they desired it in riper age. They claimed the name Antipaedobaptists, "against the baptism of children." But the appellation was cumbersome; and, besides, the term Anabaptists was not incorrect, for the vast multitudes of Christians in all ages have considered infant baptism valid, and therefore the repeating of the ceremony in later life was an attempt to repeat baptism, to baptize over again. History has consecrated the term Anabaptists and it will no doubt remain till the end of time.

But the Baptists of the present day have another objection against the name as applied to themselves. In this, they are right. For although they are historically connected by descent of origination, and still more evidently by sameness of their leading doctrine, with the Anabaptists of Reformation times, yet, as it is a given or proper, not a common name, and the appellation has been historically disgraced, they have an undoubted right to disown it as the designation of their present organization. We respect their reasonable wishes in this matter, and therefore we have headed this essay Origin of the Anabaptists and Baptists, admitting the distinction, yet tracing both divisions to their common historical origin.

It would certainly be unjust to blame the modern branch for the wild fruit produced by older branches which are now dead and cut off. But the root of the entire tree is evil; at most, the defence can be made that the Baptist sect is the growth of human passion pruned by human reason, but it is in no sense the work of God. It is the same with many others of the early Reformation sects. Their modern members have, to a great extent, disowned the most objectionable principles of their founders. Thus, most Lutherans of the present day no longer believe in the total depravity of human nature, in the slavery of our will and the needlessness of good works. The Presbyterians, too, have recently so amended their Calvinistic profession of faith as to strike from it the most offensive tenets.

In fact, even in Luther's time, the fruit produced by the tree which he had planted had become so bad that he was forced by what he saw and heard on all sides to lament the sad results. Thus he complained, saying:

The world grows worse and worse, and becomes more wicked every day. Men are now more given to revenge, more avaricious, more devoid of mercy, less modest, and more incorrigible, in fine, more wicked than in the Papacy.

In his Table Talk, he commented thus:

One thing no less astonishing than scandalous is to see that, since the pure doctrine of the Gospel has been brought to light, the world daily grows from bad to worse.

He would willingly have corrected some of his own teachings if he could have done so without stultifying himself before the whole world.