Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (7)

§ 165.4. =The Counter-Reformation= (§ 153, 2).--Charles XII. of
Sweden, in A.D. 1707, forced the Emperor Joseph I. to give the
Protestants of =Silesia= the benefits of the Westphalian Peace
and to restore their churches. But in =Poland= in A.D. 1717,
the Protestants lost the right of building new churches, and in
A.D. 1733 were declared disqualified for civil offices and places
in the diet. In the Protestant city of Thorn the insolence of
the Jesuits roused a rebellion which led to a fearful massacre
in A.D. 1724. The Dissenters sought and obtained protection
in Russia from A.D. 1767, and the partition of Poland between
Russia, Austria, and Prussia in A.D. 1772 secured for them
religious toleration. In =Salzburg= the archbishop, Count Firmian,
attempted in A.D. 1729 a conversion of the evangelicals by force,
who had, with intervals of persecution in the seventeenth century,
been tolerated for forty years as quiet and inoffensive citizens.
But in A.D. 1731 their elders swore on the host and consecrated
salt (2 Chron. xiii. 5) to be true to their faith. This “covenant
of salt” was interpreted as rebellion, and in spite of the
intervention of the Protestant princes, all the evangelicals,
in the severe winter of A.D. 1731, 1732, were driven, with
inhuman cruelty, from hearth and home. About 20,000 of them
found shelter in Prussian Lithuania; others emigrated to America.
The pope praised highly “the noble” archbishop, who otherwise
distinguished himself only as a huntsman and a drinker, and by
maintaining a mistress in princely splendour.

§ 165.5. In =France= the persecution of the Huguenots continued
(§ 153, 4). The “pastors of the desert” performed their duties at
the risk of their lives, and though many fell as martyrs, their
places were quickly filled by others equally heroic. The first
rank belongs to Anton Court, pastor at Nismes from A.D. 1715; he
died at Lausanne A.D. 1760, where he had founded a theological
seminary. He laboured unweariedly and successfully in gathering
and organizing the scattered members of the Reformed church,
and in overcoming fanaticism by imparting sound instruction.
Paul Rabaut, his successor at Nismes, was from A.D. 1730 to
1785 the faithful and capable leader of the martyr church. The
judicial murder of =Jean Calas= at Toulouse in A.D. 1762 presents
a hideous example of the fanaticism of Catholic France. One of
his sons had hanged himself in a fit of passion. When the report
spread that it was the act of his father, in order to prevent
the contemplated conversion of his son, the Dominicans canonized
the suicide as a martyr to the Catholic faith, roused the mob,
and got the Toulouse parliament to put the unhappy father to the
torture of the wheel. The other sons were forced to abjure their
faith, and the daughters were shut up in cloisters. Two years
later Voltaire called attention to the atrocity, and so wrought
on public opinion that on the revision of the proceedings by the
Parisian parliament, the innocence of the ill-used family was
clearly proved. Louis XV. paid them a sum of 30,000 livres; but
the fanatical accusers, the false witnesses, and the corrupt
judges were left unpunished. This incident improved the position
of the Protestants, and in A.D. 1787 Louis XVI. issued the Edict
of Versailles, by which not only complete religious freedom
but even a legal civil existence was secured them, which was
confirmed by a law of Napoleon in A.D. 1802.

§ 165.6. =Conversions.=--Pecuniary interests and prospect of
marriage with a rich heiress led to the conversion, in A.D. 1712,
of Charles Alexander while in the Austrian service; but when he
became Duke of Württemburg [Württemberg] he solemnly undertook
to keep things as they were, and to set up no Catholic services
in the country save in his own court chapel. Of other converts
Winckelmann and Stolberg are the most famous. While Winckelmann,
the greatest of art critics, not a religious but an artistic
ultramontane, was led in A.D. 1754 through religious indifference
into the Romish church, the warm heart of Von Stolberg was
induced, mainly by the Catholic Princess Gallitzin (§ 172, 2)
and a French emigrant, Madame Montague, to escape the
chill of rationalism amid the incense fumes of the Catholic
services.--Continuation, § 175, 7.

§ 165.7. =The Second Stage of Jansenism= (§ 157, 5).--=Pasquier
Quesnel=, priest of the Oratory at Paris, suspected in 1675 of
Gallicanism, because of notes in his edition of the works of
Leo the Great, fled into the Netherlands, where he continued his
notes on the N.T. Used and recommended by Noailles, Archbishop
of Paris, and other French bishops, this “Jansenist” book was
hated by the Jesuits and condemned by a brief of Clement XI.
in A.D. 1708. The Jesuit confessor of Louis XIV., Le Tellier,
selected 101 propositions from the book, and induced the king to
urge their express condemnation by the pope. In the =Constitution
Unigenitus= of A.D. 1713, Clement pronounced these heretical,
and the king required the expulsion from parliament and church
of all who refused to adopt this bull, which caused a division
of the French church into _Acceptants_ and _Appellants_. As many
of the condemned propositions were quoted literally by Quesnel
from Augustine and other Fathers, or were in exact agreement
with biblical passages, Noailles and his party called for an
explanation. Instead of this the pope threatened them with
excommunication. In A.D. 1715 the king died, and under the Duke
of Orleans’ regency in A.D. 1717, four bishops, with solemn
appeal to a general council, renounced the papal constitution
as irreconcilable with the Catholic faith. They were soon
joined by the Sorbonne and the universities of Rheims and Nantes,
Archbishop Noailles, and more than twenty bishops, all the
congregations of St. Maur and the Oratorians with large numbers
of the secular clergy and the monks, especially of the Lazarists,
Dominicans, Cistercians, and Camaldulensians. The pope, after
vainly calling them to obey, thundered the ban against the
Appellants in A.D. 1718. But the parliament took the matter
up, and soon the aspect of affairs was completely changed. The
regent’s favourite, Dubois, hoping to obtain a cardinal’s hat,
took the side of the Acceptants and carried the duke with him,
who got the parliament in 1720 to acknowledge the bull, with
express reservation, however, of the Gallican liberties, and
began a persecution of the Appellants. Under Louis XV. the
persecution became more severe, although in many ways moderated
by the influence of his former tutor, Cardinal Fleury. Noailles,
who died in 1729, was obliged in 1728 to submit unconditionally,
and in A.D. 1730 the parliament formally ratified the bull. Amid
daily increasing oppression, many of the more faithful Jansenists,
mostly of the orders of St. Maur and the Oratory, fled to the
Netherlands, where they gave way more and more to fanaticism. In
1727 a young Jansenist priest, Francis of Paris, died with the
original text of the appeal in his hands. His adherents honoured
him as a saint, and numerous reports of miracles, which had been
wrought at his grave in Medardus churchyard at Paris, made this a
daily place of pilgrimage to thousands of fanatics. The excited
enthusiasts, who fell into convulsions, and uttered prophecies
about the overthrow of church and state, grew in numbers and,
with that mesmeric power which fanaticism has been found in all
ages to possess powerfully influenced many who had been before
careless and profane. One of these was the member of parliament
De Montgeron, who, from being a frivolous scoffer, suddenly, in
1732, fell into violent convulsions, and in a three-volumed work,
“_La Vérité des Miracles Opérés par l’Intercession de François
de Paris_,” 1737, came forward as a zealous apologist of the
party. The government, indeed, in 1732 ordered the churchyard
to be closed, but portions of earth from the grave of the saint
continued to effect convulsions and miracles. Thousands of
convulsionists throughout France were thrown into prison, and
in 1752, Archbishop Beaumont of Paris, with many other bishops,
refused the last sacrament to those who could not prove that
they had accepted the constitution. The grave of “St. Francis,”
however, was the grave of Jansenism, for fanatical excess
contains the seeds of dissolution and every manifestation of it
hastens the catastrophe. Yet remnants of the party lingered on
in France till the outbreak of the Revolution, of which they had
prophesied.

§ 165.8. =The Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands.=--The
first Jesuits appeared in Holland in A.D. 1592. The form of piety
fostered by superior and inferior clergy in the Catholic church
there, a heritage from the times of the Brethren of the Common
Life (§ 112, 9), was directed to the deepening of Christian
thought and feeling; and this, as well as the liberal attitude
of the Archbishop of Utrecht, awakened the bitter opposition of
the Jesuits. At the head of the local clergy was Sasbold Vosmeer,
vicar-general of the vacant archiepiscopal see of Utrecht. Most
energetically he set himself to thwart the Jesuit machinations,
which aimed at abolishing the Utrecht see and putting the church
of Holland under the jurisdiction of the papal nuncio at Cologne.
On the ground of suspicions of secret conspiracy Vosmeer was
banished. But his successors refused to be overruled or set
aside by the Jesuits. Meanwhile in France the first stage of
the Jansenist controversy had been passed through. The Dutch
authorities had heartily welcomed the condemned book of their
pious and learned countryman; but when the five propositions
were denounced, they agreed in repudiating them, without, however,
admitting that they had been taught in the sense objected to by
Jansen. The Jesuits, therefore, charged them with the Jansenist
heresy, and issued in A.D. 1697 an anonymous pamphlet full of
lying insinuations about the origin and progress of Jansenism
in Holland. Its beginning was traced back to a visit of Arnauld
to Holland in A.D. 1681, and its effects were seen in the
circulation of prayer-books, tracts, and sermons, urging diligent
reading of Scripture, in the depreciation of the worship of Mary,
of indulgences, of images of saints and relics, rosaries and
scapularies (§ 186, 2), processions and fraternities, in the
rigoristic strictness of the confessional, the use of the
common language of the country in baptism, marriage, and extreme
unction, etc. The archbishop of that time, Peter Codde, in order
to isolate him, was decoyed to Rome, and there flattered with
hypocritical pretensions of goodwill, while behind his back his
deposition was carried out, and an apostolic vicar nominated for
Utrecht in the person of his deadly foe Theodore de Cock. But
the chapter refused him obedience, and the States of Holland
forbad him to exercise any official function, and under threat
of banishment of all Jesuits demanded the immediate return of
the archbishop. Codde was now sent down with the papal blessing,
but a formal decree of deposition followed him. Meanwhile the
government pronounced on his rival De Cock, who avoided a trial
for high treason by flight, a sentence of perpetual exile. But
Codde, though persistently recognised by his chapter as the
rightful archbishop, withheld on conscientious grounds from
discharging official duties down to his death in A.D. 1710. Amid
these disputes the Utrecht see remained vacant for thirteen years.
The flock were without a chief shepherd, the inferior clergy
without direction and support, the people were wrought upon
by Jesuit emissaries, and the vacant pastorates were filled by
the nuncio of Cologne. Thus it came about that of the 300,000
Catholics remaining after the Reformation, only a few thousands
continued faithful to the national party, while the rest became
bitter and extreme ultramontanes, as the Catholic church of
Holland still is. Finally, in A.D. 1723, the Utrecht chapter
took courage and chose a new archbishop in the person of
Cornelius Steenowen. Receiving no answer to their request for
papal confirmation, the chapter, after waiting a year and a
half, had him and also his three successors consecrated by a
French missionary bishop, Varlet, who had been driven away by
the Jesuits. But in order to prevent the threatened loss of
legitimate consecration for future bishops after Varlet’s death
in A.D. 1742, a bishop elected at Utrecht was in that same year
ordained to the chapter of Haarlem, and in A.D. 1758 the newly
founded bishopric of Deventer was so supplied. All these, like
all subsequent elections, were duly reported to Rome, and a
strictly Catholic confession from electors and elected sent
up; but each time, instead of confirmation, a frightful ban
was thundered forth. This, however, did not deter the Dutch
government from formally recognising the elections.--Meanwhile
the second and last act of the Jansenist tragedy had been played
in France. Many of the persecuted Appellants sought refuge in
Holland, and the welcome accorded them seemed to justify the
long cherished suspicion of Jansenism against the people of
Utrecht. They repelled these charges, however, by condemning the
five propositions and the heresies of Quesnel’s book; but they
expressly refused the bull of Alexander VII. and its doctrine
of papal infallibility. This put a stop to all attempts at
reconciliation. The church of Utrecht meanwhile prospered. At
a council held at Utrecht in A.D. 1765 it styled itself “The
Old Roman Catholic Church of the Netherlands,” acknowledged the
pope, although under his anathema, as the visible head of the
Christian church, accepted the Tridentine decrees as their creed,
and sent this with all the acts of council to Rome as proof of
their orthodoxy. The Jesuits did all in their power to overturn
the formidable impression which this at first made there;
and they were successful. Clement XIII. declared the council
null, and those who took part in it hardened sons of Belial.
But their church at this day contains, under one archbishop
and two bishops, twenty-six congregations, numbering 6,000
souls.[494]--Continuation, § 200, 3.

§ 165.9. =Suppression of the Order of Jesuits, A.D. 1773.=--The
Jesuits had striven with growing eagerness and success after
worldly power, and instead of absolute devotion to the interests
of the papacy, their chief aim was now the erection of an
independent political and hierarchical dominion. Their love
of rule had sustained its first check in the overthrow of the
Jesuit state of Paraguay; but they had secured a great part of
the world’s trade (§ 156, 13), and strove successfully to control
European politics. The Jansenist controversy, however, had called
forth against them much popular odium; Pascal had made them
ridiculous to all men of culture, the other monkish orders were
hostile to them, their success in trade roused the jealousy of
other traders, and their interference in politics made enemies
on every hand. The Portuguese government took the first decided
step. A revolt in Paraguay and an attempt on the king’s life were
attributed to them, and the minister Pombal, whose reforms they
had opposed, had them banished from Portugal in A.D. 1759, and
their goods confiscated. =Clement XIII.=, A.D. 1758-1769, chosen
by the Jesuits and under their influence, protected them by a
bull; but Portugal refused to let the bull be proclaimed, led the
papal nuncio over the frontier, broke off all relations with Rome,
and sent whole shiploads of Jesuits to the pope. France followed
Portugal’s example when the general Ricci had answered the king’s
demand for a reform of his orders: _Sint ut sunt, aut non sint_.
For the enormous financial failure of the Jesuit La Valette,
the whole order was made responsible, and at last, in A.D. 1764,
banished from France as dangerous to the state. Spain, Naples,
and Parma, too, soon seized all the Jesuits and transported them
beyond the frontiers. The new papal election on the death of
Clement XIII. was a life and death question with the Jesuits,
but courtly influences and fears of a schism prevailed. The
pious and liberal Minorite Ganganelli mounted the papal throne
as =Clement XIV.=, A.D. 1769-1774. He began with sweeping
administrative reforms, forbad the reading of the bull _In cœna
Domini_ (§ 117, 3), and, pressed by the Bourbon court, issued in
A.D. 1773 the bull _Dominus ac Redemtor Noster_ suppressing the
Jesuit order. The order numbered 22,600 members and the pope felt,
in granting the bull, that he endangered his own life. Next year
he died, not without suspicion of poisoning. All the Catholic
courts, even Austria, put the decree in force. But the heretic
Frederick II. tolerated the order for a long time in Silesia, and
Catherine II. and Paul I. in their Polish provinces.--=Pius VI.=,
A.D. 1775-1799, in many respects the antithesis of his
predecessor, was the secret friend of the exiled and imprisoned
ex-Jesuits. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, a
proposal was made at Rome, in A.D. 1792, for the formal
restoration of the order, as a means of saving the seriously
imperilled church, but it did not find sufficient encouragement.

§ 165.10. =Anti-hierarchical Movements in Germany and
Italy.=--Even before Joseph II. could carry out his reforms in
ecclesiastical polity, the noble elector =Maximilian Joseph III.=,
A.D. 1745-1777, with greater moderation but complete success,
effected a similar reform in the Jesuit-overrun Bavaria. Himself
a strict Catholic, he asserted the supremacy of the state over a
foreign hierarchy, and by reforming the churches, cloisters, and
schools of his country he sought to improve their position. But
under his successor, Charles Theodore, A.D. 1777-1799, everything
was restored to its old condition.--Meanwhile a powerful voice
was raised from the midst of the German prelates that aimed a
direct blow at the hierarchical papal system. =Nicholas von
Hontheim=, the suffragan Bishop of Treves, had under the name
_Justinus Febronius_ published, in A.D. 1763, a treatise _De
Statu Ecclesiæ_, in which he maintained the supreme authority of
general councils and the independence of bishops in opposition to
the hierarchical pretensions of the popes. It was soon translated
into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. The book
made a great impression, and Clement XIII. could do nothing
against the bold defender of the liberties of the church. In
A.D. 1778, indeed, Pius VI. had the poor satisfaction of extorting
a recantation from the old man of seventy-seven years, but he
lived to see yet more deadly storms burst upon the church. Urged
by Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, the pope, in A.D. 1785,
had made Munich the residence of a nuncio. The episcopal electors
of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, and the Archbishop of Salzburg,
seeing their archiepiscopal rights in danger, met in congress
at Ems in A.D. 1786, and there, on the basis of the Febronian
proofs, claimed, in the so called =Punctation of Ems=, practical
independence of the pope and the restoration of an independent
German national Catholic church. But the German bishops found
it easier to obey the distant pope than the near archbishops.
So they united their opposition with that of the pope, and the
undertaking of the archbishops came to nothing.--More threatening
still for the existence of the hierarchy was the reign of
=Joseph II.= in Austria. German emperor from A.D. 1765, and
co-regent with his mother Maria Theresa, he began, immediately
on his succession to sole rule in A.D. 1780, a radical reform of
the whole ecclesiastical institutions throughout his hereditary
possessions. In A.D. 1781 he issued his =Edict of Toleration=,
by which, under various restrictions, the Protestants obtained
civil rights and liberty of worship. Protestant places of worship
were to have no bells or towers, were to pay stole dues to the
Catholic priests, in mixed marriages the Catholic father had the
right of educating all his children and the Catholic mother could
claim the education at least of her daughters. By stopping all
episcopal communications with the papal curia, and putting all
papal bulls and ecclesiastical edicts under strict civil control,
the Catholic church was emancipated from Roman influences, set
under a native clergy, and made serviceable in the moral and
religious training of the people, and all her institutions that
did not serve this end were abolished. Of the 2,000 cloisters,
606 succumbed before this decree, and those that remained were
completely sundered from all connexion with Rome. In vain the
bishops and Pius VI. protested. The pope even went to Vienna in
A.D. 1782; but though received with great respect, he could make
nothing of the emperor. Joseph’s procedure had been somewhat
hasty and inconsiderate, and a reaction set in, led by interested
parties, on the emperor’s early death in A.D. 1790.--The
Grand-duke =Leopold of Tuscany=, Joseph’s brother, with the
aid of the pious Bishop Scipio von Ricci, inclined to Jansenism,
sought also in a similar way to reform the church of his land
at the Synod of Pistoia, in A.D. 1786. But here too at last the
hierarchy prevailed.

§ 165.11. =Theological Literature.=--The Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, A.D. 1685, gave the deathblow to the French Reformed
theology, but it also robbed Catholic theology =in France= of its
spur and incentive. The Huguenot polemic against the papacy, and
that of Jansenism against the semi-pelagianism of the Catholic
church, were silenced; but now the most rabid naturalism, atheism,
and materialism held the field, and the church theology was so
lethargic that it could not attempt any serious opposition. Yet
even here some names are worthy of being recorded. Above all,
=Bernard de Montfaucon= of St. Maur, the ablest antiquarian of
France, besides his classical works, issued admirable editions of
Athanasius, Chrysostom, Origen’s “_Hexapla_,” and the “_Collectio
Nova Patrum_.” =E. Renaudot=, a learned expert in the oriental
languages, wrote several works in vindication of the “_Perpétuité
de la Foi cath._,” a history of the Jacobite patriarchs of
Alexandria, etc., and compiled a “_Collectio liturgiarum
Oriental_,” in two vols. Of permanent worth is the “_Bibliotheca
Sacra_” of the Oratorian =Le Long=, which forms an admirable
literary-historical apparatus for the Bible. The learned Jesuit
=Hardouin=, who pronounced all Greek and Latin classics, with
few exceptions, to be monkish products of the thirteenth century,
and denied the existence of all pre-Tridentine general councils,
edited a careful collection of Acts of Councils in twelve vols.
folio in Paris, 1715, and compiled an elaborate chronology
of the Old Testament. His pupil, the Jesuit =Berruyer=, wrote
a romancing “_Hist. du Peuple de Dieu_,” which, though much
criticised, was widely read. Incomparably more important was
the Benedictine =Calmet=, died A.D. 1757, whose “_Dictionnaire de
la Bible_” and “_Commentaire Littéral et Critique_” on the whole
Bible are really most creditable for their time. And, finally,
the Parisian professor of medicine, =Jean Astruc=, deserves to
be named as the founder of the modern Pentateuch criticism, whose
“_Conjectures sur les Mémoires Originaux_,” etc., appeared in
Brussels A.D. 1753.--Within the limits of the French Revolution
the noble theosophist =St. Martin=, died A.D. 1805, a warm
admirer of Böhme, wrote his brilliant and profound treatises.

§ 165.12. =In Italy= the most important contributions were in
the department of history. =Mansi=, in his collection of Acts of
Councils in thirty-one vols. folio, A.D. 1759 ff., and =Muratori=,
in his “_Scriptores Rer. Italic._,” in twenty-eight vols., and
“_Antiquitt. Ital. Med. Ævi_,” in six vols., show brilliant
learning and admirable impartiality. =Ugolino=, in a gigantic
work, “_Thesaurus Antiquitt. ss._,” thirty-four folio vols.,
A.D. 1744 ff., gathers together all that is most important for
biblical archæology. The three =Assemani=, uncle and two nephews,
cultured Maronites in Rome, wrought in the hitherto unknown
field of Syrian literature and history. The uncle, Joseph Simon,
librarian at the Vatican, wrote “_Bibliotheca Orientalis_,”
in four vols., A.D. 1719 ff., and edited Ephraem’s [Ephraim’s]
works in six vols. The elder nephew, Stephen Evodius, edited
the “_Acta ss. Martyrum Orient. et Occid._,” in two vols.,
and the younger, Joseph Aloysius, a “_Codex Liturgicus Eccles.
Univ._,” in thirteen vols. Among dogmatical works the “_Theologia
hist.-dogm.-scholastica_,” in eight vols. folio, Rome, 1739, of
the Augustinian =Berti= deserves mention. =Zaccaria= of Venice,
in some thirty vols., proved an indefatigable opponent of
Febronianism, Josephinism, and such-like movements, and a careful
editor of older Catholic works. The Augustinian =Florez=, died
A.D. 1773, did for =Spain= what Muratori had done for Italy
in making collections of ancient writers, which, with the
continuations of the brethren of his order, extended to fifty
folio volumes.--In =Germany= the greatest Catholic theologian
of the century was =Amort=. Of his seventy treatises the
most comprehensive is the “_Theologia Eclectica, Moralis et
Scholastica_,” in four vols. folio, A.D. 1752. He conducted
a conciliatory polemic against the Protestants, contested
the mysticism of Maria von Agreda (§ 156, 5), and vigorously
controverted superstition, miracle-mongering, and all manner
of monkish extravagances. To the time of Joseph II. belongs the
liberal, latitudinarian supernaturalist =Jahn= of Vienna, whose
“Introduction to the Old Testament,” and “Biblical Antiquities”
did much to raise the standard of biblical learning. For
his anti-clericalism he was deprived of his professorship in
A.D. 1805, and died in A.D. 1816 a canon in Vienna. To this
century also belongs the greatly blessed literary labours of
the accomplished mystic, =Sailer=, beginning at Ingolstadt in
A.D. 1777, and continued at Dillingen from A.D. 1784. Deprived
in A.D. 1794 of his professorship on pretence of his favouring
the Illuminati, it was not till A.D. 1799 that he was allowed to
resume his academic work in Ingolstadt and Landshut. By numerous
theological, ascetical, and philosophical tracts, but far more
powerfully by his lectures and personal intercourse, he sowed
the seeds of rationalism, which bore fruit in the teachings
of many Catholic universities, and produced in the hearts of
many pupils a warm and deep and at the same time a gentle and
conciliatory Catholicism, which heartily greeted, even in pious
Protestants, the foundations of a common faith and life. Compare
§ 187, 1.--Continuation, § 191.

§ 165.13. =The German-Catholic Contribution to the
Illumination.=--The Catholic church of Germany was also carried
away with the current of “the Illumination,” which from the
middle of the century had overrun Protestant Germany. While the
exorcisms and cures of Father Gassner in Regensburg were securing
signal triumphs to Catholicism, though these were of so dubious
a kind that the bishops, the emperor, and finally even the curia,
found it necessary to check the course of the miracle worker,
=Weishaupt=, professor of canon law in Ingolstadt, founded,
in A.D. 1776, the secret society of the =Illuminati=, which
spread its deistic ideas of culture and human perfectibility
through Catholic South Germany. Though inspired by deadly
hatred of the Jesuits, Weishaupt imitated their methods, and
so excited the suspicion of the Bavarian government, which, in
A.D. 1785, suppressed the order and imprisoned and banished its
leaders.--Catholic theology too was affected by the rationalistic
movement. But that the power of the church to curse still
survived was proved in the case of the Mainz professor, =Laurence
Isenbiehl=, who applied the passage about Immanuel, in Isaiah
vii. 14, not to the mother of Christ, but to the wife of the
prophet, for which he was deposed in A.D. 1774, and on account
of his defective knowledge of theology was sent back for two
years to the seminary. When in A.D. 1778 he published a learned
treatise on the same theme, he was put in prison. The pope too
condemned his exposition as pestilential, and Isenbiehl “as
a good Catholic” retracted. =Steinbühler=, a young jurist of
Salzburg, having been sentenced to death in A.D. 1781 for some
contemptuous words about the Catholic ceremonies, was pardoned,
but soon after died from the ill-treatment he had received. The
rationalistic movement got hold more and more of the Catholic
universities. In Mainz, =Dr. Blau=, professor of dogmatics,
promulgated with impunity the doctrine that in the course of
centuries the church has often made mistakes. In the Austrian
universities, under the protection of the Josephine edict, a
whole series of Catholic theologians ventured to make cynically
free criticisms, especially in the field of church history. At
Bonn University, founded in A.D. 1786 by the Elector-archbishop
of Cologne, there were teachers like =Hedderich=, who sportively
described himself on the title page of a dissertation as “_jam
quater Romæ damnatus_,” =Dereser=, previously a Carmelite monk,
who followed Eichhorn in his exposition of the biblical miracles,
and =Eulogius Schneider=, who, after having made Bonn too hot
for him by his theological and poetical recklessness, threw
himself into the French Revolution, for two years marched through
Alsace with the guillotine as one of the most dreaded monsters,
and finally, in A.D. 1794, was made to lay his own head on the
block.--At the Austrian universities, under the protection of
the tolerant Josephine legislation, a whole series of Catholic
theologians, Royko, Wolff, Dannenmayr, Michl, etc., criticised,
often with cynical plainness, the proceedings and condition of
the Catholic church. To this class also, in the first stage of
his remarkably changeful and eventful career, belongs Ign. Aur.
=Fessler=. From 1773, a Capuchin in various cloisters, last of
all in Vienna, he brought down upon himself the bitter hatred
of his order by making secret reports to the emperor about the
ongoings that prevailed in these convents. He escaped their
enmity by his appointment, in 1784, as professor of the oriental
languages and the Old Testament at Lemberg, but was in 1787
dismissed from this office on account of various charges against
his life, teaching, and poetical writings. In Silesia, in 1791,
he went over to the Protestant church, joined the freemasons,
held at Berlin the post of a councillor in ecclesiastical and
educational affairs for the newly won Catholic provinces of
Poland, and, after losing this position in consequence of the
events of the war of 1806, found employment in Russia in 1809;
first, as professor of oriental languages at St. Petersburg,
and afterwards, when opposed and persecuted there also on
suspicion of entertaining atheistical views, as member of a legal
commission in South Russia. Meanwhile having gradually moved from
a deistical to a vague mystical standpoint, he was in 1819 made
superintendent and president of the evangelical consistory at
Saratov, with the title of an evangelical bishop, and after the
abolition of that office in 1833 he became general superintendent
at St. Petersburg, where he died in 1839. His romances and
tragedies as well as his theological and religious writings
are now forgotten, but his “Reminiscences of his Seventy Years’
Pilgrimage,” published in 1824, are still interesting, and his
“History of Hungary,” in ten volumes, begun in 1812, is of
permanent value.

§ 165.14. =The French Contribution to the Illumination.=--The
age of Louis XIV., with the morals of its Jesuit confessors, the
lust, bigotry, and hypocrisy of its court, its dragonnades and
Bastille polemic against revivals of a living Christianity among
Huguenots, mystics, and Jansenists, its prophets of the Cevennes
and Jansenist convulsionists, etc., called forth a spirit of
freethinking to which Catholicism, Jansenism, and Protestantism
appeared equally ridiculous and absurd. This movement was
essentially different from English deism. The principle of
the English movement was _common sense_, the universal moral
consciousness in man, with the powerful weapon of rational
criticism, maintaining the existence of an ideal and moral
element in men, and holding by the more general principles of
religion. French naturalism, on the other hand, was a philosophy
of the _esprit_, that essentially French lightheartedness
which laughed away everything of an ideal sort with scorn and
wit. Yet there was an intimate relationship between the two.
The philosophy of common sense came to France, and was there
travestied into a philosophy _d’esprit_. The organ of this French
philosophy was the “_Encyclopédie_” of Diderot and D’Alembert,
and its most brilliant contributors, Montesquieu, Helvetius,
Voltaire, and Rousseau. =Montesquieu=, A.D. 1689-1755, whose
“_Esprit des Lois_” in two years passed through twenty-two
editions, wrote the “_Lettres Persanes_,” in which with biting
wit he ridiculed the political, social, and ecclesiastical
condition of France. =Helvetius=, A.D. 1715-1771, had his book,
“_De l’Esprit_,” burnt in A.D. 1759 by order of parliament,
and was made to retract, but this only increased his influence.
=Voltaire=, A.D. 1694-1778, although treating in his writings
of philosophical and theological matters, gives only a hash
of English deism spiced with frivolous wit, showing the same
tendency in his historical and poetical works, giving a certain
eloquence to the commonest and filthiest subjects, as in his
“_Pucelle_” and “_Candide_.” He obtained, however, an immense
influence that extended far past his own days. To the same class
belongs =Jean Jacques Rousseau=, A.D. 1712-1778, belonging to the
Roman Catholic church only as a pervert for seventeen years in
the middle of his life. Of a nobler nature than Voltaire, he
yet often sank into deep immorality, as he tells without reserve,
but also without any hearty penitence, in his _Confessions_.
His whole life was taken up with the conflict for his ideals
of freedom, nature, human rights, and human happiness. In
his “_Contrat Social_” of A.D. 1762, he commends a return
to the natural condition of the savage as the ideal end of
man’s endeavour. His “_Emile_” of A.D. 1761 is of epoch-making
importance in the history of education, and in it he eloquently
sets forth his ideal of a natural education of children,
while he sent all his own (natural) children to a foundling
hospital.--The physician =De la Mettrie=, who died at the court
of Frederick the Great in A.D. 1751, carried materialism to
its most extreme consequences, and the German-Frenchman Baron
=Holbach=, A.D. 1723-1789, wrote the “_Système de la Nature_,”
which in two years passed through eighteen editions.[495]

§ 165.15. These seeds bore fruit in the =French Revolution=.
Voltaire’s cry “_Écrasez l’infame_,” was directed against the
church of the Inquisition, the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
and the dragonnades, and Diderot had exclaimed that the world’s
salvation could only come when the last king had been strangled
with the entrails of the last priest. The constitutional National
Assembly, A.D. 1789-1791, wished to set aside, not the faith of
the people, but only the hierarchy, and to save the state from
a financial crisis by the goods of the church. All cloisters
were suppressed and their property sold. The number of bishops
was reduced to one half, all ecclesiastical offices without
a pastoral sphere were abolished, the clergy elected by the
people paid by the state, and liberty of belief recognised as
an inalienable right of man. The legislative National Assembly,
A.D. 1791, 1792, made all the clergy take an oath to the
constitution on pain of deposition. The pope forbad it under
the same threat. Then arose a schism. Some 40,000 priests who
refused the oath mostly quitted the country. Avignon (§ 110, 4)
had been incorporated in the French territory. The terrorist
National Convention, A.D. 1792-1795, which brought the king
to the scaffold on January 21st, A.D. 1793, and the queen on
October 16th, prohibited all Christian customs, on 5th October
abolished the Christian reckoning of time, and on November 7th
Christianity itself, laid waste 2,000 churches and converted
_Notre Dame_ into a _Temple de la Raison_, where a ballet-dancer
represented the goddess of reason. Stirred up by the fanatical
baron, “Anacharsis” Cloots, “the apostle of human freedom and the
personal enemy of Jesus Christ,” the Archbishop Gobel, now in his
sixtieth year, came forward, proclaiming his whole past life a
fraud, and owning no other religion than that of freedom. On the
other hand, the noble Bishop Gregoire of Blois, the first priest
to support the constitution, who voted for the abolition of
royalty, but not the execution of the king, was not driven by
the terrorism of the convention, of which he was a member, from
a bold and open profession of Christianity, appearing in his
clerical dress and unweariedly protesting against the vandalism
of the Assembly. Robespierre[496] himself said, “_Si Dieu
n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer_,” passed in A.D. 1794
the resolution, _Le peuple français reconnait l’Être suprême et
l’immortalité de l’âme_, and issued an order to celebrate the
_fête de l’Être suprême_. The Directory, A.D. 1795-1799, restored
indeed Christian worship, but favoured the deistical sect of the
=Theophilanthropists=, whose high-swelling phrases soon called
forth public scorn, while in A.D. 1802 the first consul banished
their worship from all churches. But meanwhile, in A.D. 1798, in
order to nullify the opposition of the pope, French armies had
overrun Italy and proclaimed the Church States a Roman Republic.
=Pius VI.= was taken prisoner to France, and died in A.D. 1799 at
Valence under the rough treatment of the French, without having
in the least compromised himself or his office.[497]

§ 165.16. =The Pseudo-Catholics.=

1. =The Abrahamites or Bohemian Deists.= When Joseph II. issued
his edict of toleration in A.D. 1781, a sect which had
hitherto kept itself secret under the mask of Catholicism
made its appearance in the Bohemian province of Pardubitz.
The Abrahamites were descended from the old Hussites,
and professed to follow the faith of Abraham before his
circumcision. Their fundamental doctrine was deistic
monotheism, and of the Bible they accepted only the ten
commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. But as they would
neither attend the Jewish synagogue nor the churches of any
existing Christian sect, the emperor refused them religious
toleration, drove them from their homes, and settled them
in A.D. 1783 on the eastern frontiers. Many of them, in
consequence of persecution, returned to the Catholic church,
and even those who remained steadfast did not transmit their
faith to their children.

§ 165.17.

2. =The Frankists.=--Jacob Leibowicz, the son of a Jewish rabbi
in Galicia, attached himself in Turkey, where he assumed the
name of =Frank=, to the Jewish sect of the Sabbatarians, who,
repudiating the Talmud, adopted the cabbalistic book Sohar
as the source of their more profound religious teaching.
Afterwards in Podolia, which was then still Polish, he was
esteemed among his numerous adherents as a Messiah sent of
God. Bitterly hated by the rabbinical Jews, and accused of
indulging in vile orgies in their assemblies, many of those
Soharists were thrown into prison at the instigation of
Bishop Dembowski of Kaminetz. But when they turned and
accused their opponents of most serious crimes against
Christendom, and, at Frank’s suggestion, pointing out what
they alleged to be an identity between the book Sohar and
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and incarnation, made
it known that they were inclined to become converts, they
won the favour of the bishop. He arranged a disputation
between the two parties, pronounced the Talmudists beaten,
confiscated all available copies of the Talmud, dragged
them through the streets tied to the tail of a horse, and
then burnt them. Dembowski, however, died soon after in
A.D. 1757, and the cathedral chapter expelled the Soharists
from Kaminetz. They appealed to King Augustus III. and to
Archbishop Lubienski of Lemberg, renewing their profession
of faith in the Trinity, and promising to be subject to the
pope. In a disputation with the Talmudists lasting three
days they sought to prove that the Talmudists used Christian
blood in their services, which afterwards led to the death
of five of the Jews thus accused. By Frank’s advice, who
took part neither in this nor in the former disputation,
but was the secret leader of the whole movement, they now
formally applied for admission into the Catholic church,
and their leader now entered Lemberg in great state. They
actually submitted to be thus driven by him, and 1,000 of
his adherents were baptized at Lemberg. Frank was baptized
at Warsaw under the name of =Joseph=, the king himself
acting as sponsor. In all Catholic journals this event was
celebrated as a signal triumph for the Catholic church.
But Frank among his own disciples continued to play the
_rôle_ of a miracle-working Messiah. Hence in A.D. 1760
the Inquisition stepped in. Some of his followers were
imprisoned, others banished, and he himself as a heresiarch
condemned to confinement for life with hard labour, from
which after thirteen years he was liberated on the first
partition of Poland in A.D. 1772, through the favour of
Catherine II., who employed him as secret political agent.
Feeling that his life was insecure in Poland, he went to
Moravia, and at Brünn reorganized his numerous and attached
followers into a well-knit society, by which he was revered
as the incarnation of the Deity, and his beautiful daughter
Eva, brought up by her noble godmother, as “the divine
Emuna.” How he was permitted, under the protection of the
Catholic church, to continue here for sixteen years, playing
the _rôle_ of a Messiah, and to amass such wealth as enabled
him to purchase, in A.D. 1788, from the impoverished prince
of Homburg-Birstein his castle at Offenbach, with all the
privileges attached to it, is an insoluble mystery. He now
called himself Baron von Frank, formed with his followers
from Moravia and Poland a brilliant establishment, which
outwardly adhered to the Roman Catholic church, although he
very seldom attended the Catholic services. Frank died in
A.D. 1791, and was buried with great pomp, but without the
presence of the Catholic clergy. His daughter Eva was able
to maintain the extravagant establishment of her father
for twenty-six years, when the debt resting on the castle
reached three million florins. At last, in A.D. 1817, the
long-threatened catastrophe occurred. Eva died suddenly,
and a coffin said to contain her body was actually with
all decorum laid in the grave.

§ 166. THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES.

The oppressed condition of the orthodox church in the Ottoman empire continued unchanged. It had a more vigorous development in Russia, where its ascendency was unchallenged. Although the Russian church, from the time of its obtaining an independent patriarchate at Moscow, in A.D. 1589, was constitutionally emancipated from the mother church of Constantinople, it yet continued in close religious affinity with it. This was intensified by the adoption of the common confession, drawn up shortly before by Peter Mogilas (§ 152, 3). The patriarchal constitution in Russia, however, was but short-lived, for Peter I., in 1702, after the death of the Patriarch Hadrian, abolished the patriarchate, arrogated to himself as emperor the highest ecclesiastical office, and in A.D. 1721 constituted “the Holy Synod,” to which, under the supervision of a procurator guarding the rights of the state, he assigned the supreme direction of spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs. To these proposals the Patriarch of Constantinople gave his approval. In this reform of the church constitution Theophanes Procopowicz, Metropolitan of Novgorod, was the emperor’s right hand.--The monophysite church of Abyssinia was again during this period the scene of Christological controversies.

§ 166.1. =The Russian State Church.=--From the time of the
liturgical reformation of the Patriarch Nikon (§ 163, 10) a
new and peculiar =service of song= took the place of the old
unison style that had previously prevailed in the Russian church.
Without instrumental accompaniment, it was sustained simply by
powerful male voices, and was executed, at least in the chief
cities, with musical taste and charming simplicity. Among
the =theologians=, the above-named Procopowicz, who died in
A.D. 1736, occupied a prominent position. His “Handbook of
Dogmatics,” without departing from the doctrines of his church,
is characterized by learning, clearness of exposition, and
moderation. From the middle of the century, however, especially
among the superior clergy, there crept in a Protestant tendency,
which indeed held quite firmly by the old theology of the
œcumenical synods of the Greek Church, but set aside or laid
little stress upon later doctrinal developments. Even the
celebrated and widely used catechism, drawn up originally for the
use of the Grand-duke Paul Petrovich, by his tutor, the learned
Platón, afterwards Metropolitan of Moscow, was not quite free
from this tendency. It found yet more decided expression in
the dogmatic handbook of Theophylact, archimandrite of Moscow,
published in A.D. 1773.--Continuation, § 206, 1.

§ 166.2. =Russian Sects.=--To the sects of the seventeenth
century (§ 163, 10) are to be added spiritualistic gnostics of
the eighteenth, in which we find a blending of western ideas with
the old oriental mysticism. Among those were the =Malakanen=, or
consumers of milk, because, in spite of the orthodox prohibition,
they used milk during the fasts. They rejected all anointings,
even chrism and priestly consecration, and acknowledged only
spiritual anointing by the doctrine of Christ. They also
volatilized the idea of baptism and the Lord’s supper into that
of a merely spiritual cleansing and nourishing by the word of the
gospel. Otherwise they led a quiet and honourable life. More
important still in regard to numbers and influence were the
=Duchoborzen=. Although belonging exclusively to the peasant
class, they had a richly developed theological system of a
speculative character, with a notable blending of theosophy,
mysticism, Protestantism, and rationalism. They idealized the
doctrine of the sacraments after the style of the Quakers, would
have no special places of worship or an ordained clergy, refused
to take oaths or engage in military service, and led peaceable
and useful lives. They made their first appearance in Moscow in
the beginning of the eighteenth century under Peter the Great,
and spread through other cities of Old Russia.--Continuation,
§ 210, 3.

§ 166.3. =The Abyssinian Church= (§§ 64, 1; 73, 2).--About the
middle of the century a monk appeared, proclaiming that, besides
the commonly admitted twofold birth of Christ, the eternal
generation of the Father and the temporal birth of the Virgin
Mary, there was a third birth through anointing with the Holy
Spirit in the baptism in Jordan. He thus convulsed the whole
Abyssinian church, which for centuries had been in a state of
spiritual lethargy. The _abuna_ with the majority of his church
held by the old doctrine, but the new also found many adherents.
The split thus occasioned has continued till the present time,
and has played no unimportant part in the politico-dynastic
struggles of the last ten years (§ 184, 9).

II. The Protestant Churches.

§ 167. THE LUTHERAN CHURCH BEFORE “THE ILLUMINATION.”

By means of the founding of the University of Halle in A.D. 1694 a fresh impulse was given to the pietist movement, and too often the whole German Church was embroiled in violent party strifes, in which both sides failed to keep the happy mean, and laid themselves open to the reproach of the adversaries. Spener died in A.D. 1705, Francke in A.D. 1727, and Breithaupt in A.D. 1732. After the loss of these leaders the Halle pietism became more and more gross, narrow, unscientific, regardless of the Church confession, frequently renouncing definite beliefs for hazy pious feeling, and attaching undue importance to pious forms of expression and methodistical modes of life. The conventionalism encouraged by it became a very Pandora’s box of sectarianism and fanaticism (§ 170, 1). But it had also set up a ferment in the church and in theology which created a wholesome influence for many years. More than 6,000 theologians from all parts of Germany had down to Francke’s death received their theological training in Halle, and carried the leaven of his spirit into as many churches and schools. A whole series of distinguished teachers of theology now rose in almost all the Lutheran churches of the German states, who, avoiding the onesidedness of the pietists and their opponents, taught and preached pure doctrine and a pious life. From Calixt they had learnt to be mild and fair towards the Reformed and Catholic churches, and by Spener they had been roused to a genuine and hearty piety. Gottfried Arnold’s protest, onesided as it was, had taught them to discover, even among heretics and sectaries, partial and distorted truths; and from Calov and Löscher they had inherited a zeal for pure doctrine. Most eminent among these were Albert Bengel, of Württemberg, who died in A.D. 1752, and Chr. Aug. Crusius of Leipzig, who died in A.D. 1775. But when the flood of “the Illumination” came rushing in upon the German Lutheran Church about the middle of the century, it overflowed even the fields sown by these noble men.

§ 167.1. =The Pietist Controversies after the Founding of the
Halle University= (§ 159, 3).--Pietism, condemned by the orthodox
universities of Leipzig and Wittenberg, was protected and
encouraged in Halle. The crowds of students flocking to this new
seminary roused the wrath of the orthodox. The Wittenberg faculty,
with Deutschmann at its head, issued a manifesto in A.D. 1695,
charging Spener with no less than 264 errors in doctrine. Nor
were those of Leipzig silent, Carpzov going so far as to style
the mild and peace-loving Spener a _procella ecclesiæ_. Other
leading opponents of the pietists were Schelwig of Dantzig,
Mayer of Wittenberg, and Fecht of Rostock. When Spener died in
A.D. 1705 his opponents gravely discussed whether he could be
thought of as in glory. Fecht of Rostock denied that it could
be. Among the later champions of pure doctrine the worthiest
and ablest was the learned Löscher, superintendent at Dresden,
A.D. 1709-1747, who at least cannot be reproached with dead
orthodoxy. His “_Vollständiger Timotheus Verinus_,” two vols.,
1718, 1721, is by far the most important controversial work
against pietism.[498] Francis Buddeus of Jena for a long time
sought ineffectually to bring about a reconciliation between
Löscher and the pietists of Halle. In A.D. 1710 Francke and
Breithaupt obtained a valorous colleague in Joachim Lange;
but even he was no match for Löscher in controversy. Meanwhile
pietism had more and more permeated the life of the people, and
occasioned in many places violent popular tumults. In several
states conventicles were forbidden; in others, _e.g._ Württemberg
and Denmark, they were allowed.

§ 167.2. The orthodox regarded the pietists as a new sect,
with dangerous errors that threatened the pure doctrine of the
Lutheran Church; while the pietists maintained that they held by
pure Lutheran orthodoxy, and only set aside its barren formalism
and dead externalism for biblical practical Christianity. The
controversy gathered round the doctrines of the new birth,
justification, sanctification, the church, and the millennium.

a. The new birth. The orthodox maintained that regeneration
takes place in baptism (§ 141, 13), every baptized person
is regenerate; but the new birth needs nursing, nourishment,
and growth, and, where these are wanting, reawakening.
The pietists identified awakening or conversion with
regeneration, considered that it was effected in later
life through the word of God, mediated by a corporeal and
spiritual penitential struggle, and a consequent spiritual
experience, and sealed by a sensible assurance of God’s
favour in the believer’s blessed consciousness. This
inward sealing marks the beginning, introduction into the
condition of babes in Christ. They distinguished a _theologia
viatorum_, _i.e._ the symbolical church doctrine, and a
_theologia regenitorum_, which has to do with the soul’s
inner condition after the new birth. They have consequently
been charged with maintaining that a true Christian who has
arrived at the stage of spiritual manhood may and must in
this life become free from sin.

b. Justification and Sanctification. In opposition to an
only too prevalent externalizing of the doctrine of
justification, Spener has taught that only living faith
justifies, and if genuine must be operative, though not
meritorious. Only in faith proved to be living by a pious
life and active Christianity, but not in faith in the
external and objective promises of God’s word, lies the sure
guarantee of justification obtained. His opponents therefore
accused him of confounding justification and sanctification,
and depreciating the former in favour of the latter.
And, though not by Spener, yet by many of his followers,
justification was put in the background, and in a onesided
manner stress was laid upon practical Christianity.
Spener and Francke had expressly preached against worldly
dissipation and frivolity, and condemned dancing, the
theatre, card-playing, as detrimental to the progress of
sanctification, and therefore sinful; while the orthodox
regarded them as matters of indifference. Besides this, the
pietists held the doctrine of a day of grace, assigned to
each one within the limit of his earthly life (_terminism_).