The Age of the Reformation | Page 8

. . . As the Reformation was
primarily a religious movement, some account of the church in the later
Middle Ages must be given. How Christianity was immaculately
conceived in the heart of the Galilean carpenter and born with words of
beauty and power such as no other man ever spoke; how it inherited
from him its background of Jewish monotheism and Hebrew Scripture;
how it was enriched, or sophisticated, by Paul, who assimilated it to the
current mysteries with their myth of a dying and rising god and of
salvation by sacramental rite; how it decked itself in the white robes of
Greek philosophy and with many a gewgaw of ceremony and custom
snatched from the flamen's vestry; how it created a pantheon of saints
to take the place of the old polytheism; how it became first the chaplain
and then the heir of the Roman Empire, building its church on the
immovable rock of the Eternal City, asserting like her a dominion
without bounds of space or time; how it conquered and tamed the
barbarians;--all this lies outside the scope of the present work to
describe. But of its later fortunes some brief account must be given.

[Sidenote: Innocent III 1198-1216]
By the year 1200 the popes, having emerged triumphant from their long
strife with the German emperors, successfully asserted their claim to
the {14} suzerainty of all Western Europe. Innocent III took realms in
fief and dictated to kings. The pope, asserting that the spiritual power
was as much superior to the civil as the sun was brighter than the moon,
acted as the vicegerent of God on earth. But this supremacy did not last
long unquestioned. Just a century after Innocent III, Boniface VIII
[Sidenote: Boniface VIII 1294-1303] was worsted in a quarrel with
Philip IV of France, and his successor, Clement V, a Frenchman, by
transferring the papal capital to Avignon, virtually made the supreme
pontiffs subordinate to the French government and thus weakened their
influence in the rest of Europe. This "Babylonian Captivity" [Sidenote:
The Babylonian Captivity 1309-76] was followed by a greater
misfortune to the pontificate, the Great Schism, [Sidenote: The Great
Schism 1378-1417] for the effort to transfer the papacy back to Rome
led to the election of two popes, who, with their successors,
respectively ruled and mutually anathematized each other from the two
rival cities. The difficulty of deciding which was the true successor of
Peter was so great that not only were the kingdoms of Europe divided
in their allegiance, but doctors of the church and canonized saints could
be found among the supporters of either line. There can be no doubt
that respect for the pontificate greatly suffered by the schism, which
was in some respects a direct preparation for the greater division
brought about by the Protestant secession.
[Sidenote: Councils--Pisa, 1409, Constance, 1414-18]
The attempt to end the schism at the Council of Pisa resulted only in
the election of a third pope. The situation was finally dealt with by the
Council of Constance which deposed two of the popes and secured the
voluntary abdication of the third. The synod further strengthened the
church by executing the heretics Huss and Jerome of Prague, and by
passing decrees intended to put the government of the church in the
hands of representative assemblies. It asserted that it {15} had power
directly from Christ, that it was supreme in matters of faith, and in

matters of discipline so far as they affected the schism, and that the
pope could not dissolve it without its own consent. By the decree
Frequens it provided for the regular summoning of councils at short
intervals. Beyond this, other efforts to reform the morals of the clergy
proved abortive, for after long discussion nothing of importance was
done.
For the next century the policy of the popes was determined by the
wish to assert their superiority over the councils. The Synod of Basle
[Sidenote: Basle 1431-43] reiterated all the claims of Constance, and
passed a number of laws intended to diminish the papal authority and to
deprive the pontiff of much of his ill-gotten revenues--annates, fees for
investiture, and some other taxes. It was successful for a time because
protected by the governments of France and Germany, for, though
dissolved by Pope Eugene IV in 1433, it refused to listen to his
command and finally extorted from him a bull ratifying the conciliar
claims to supremacy.
In the end, however, the popes triumphed. The bull Execrabilis
[Sidenote: 1458] denounced as a damnable abuse the appeal to a future
council, and the Pastor Aeternus [Sidenote: 1516] reasserted in
sweeping terms the supremacy of the pope, repealing all decrees of
Constance and Basle to the contrary, as well as other papal bulls.
[Sidenote: The secularization of the papacy]
At Rome