V CHAP clude nothing could have staved off for long a virtual, if not an actual, repudiation of the Pope's jurisdiction in England. characters of the Popes It cannot but have been, indeed, that the papal office was brought into great disrepute by the miserable vices and secularity of those who occupied it: and for sixty years (to say no more) before the final breach was made, there had not been a pope, except The bad Clement VII., who could be called even a decent Christian. This fact must be looked in the face, for it goes far to explain the feelings which stimulated such men as Savonarola and Luther to such extreme and bitter hostility towards the Popes: and there can be no reasonable doubt that the schisms of Europe, though not the reformation of its churches, would have been greatly hindered if there had been men of personal holiness on the papal throne. But what were the popes of that fifty years? For Sixtus IV one decade and more, there was Sixtus IV., an accomplice in the attempted assassination of the Medici at Florence, when Giuliano de Medici was stabbed to the heart before the altar, and his brother Lorenzo just escaped. In this vile conspiracy, the Archbishop of Pisa (who was hung in his robes on the instant) was the Pope's agent and deputy, and gave the signal to the assassins by elevating the Blessed Sacrament at the altar! For nearly a Innocent second decade Innocent VIII. was Pope, whose one object seems to have been to found a family by heaping benefices upon his children and other relatives and who had so little moral sense, not to say spirituality, that he made a boy of fourteen a cardinal, and tried to get a French archbishopric VIII was Alexander For a V conferred on him. For a third decade, the episcopal CHAP head of Western Christendom VI., a monster of iniquity, whose crimes were too vile to name, and too many to number. fourth decade, we have Julius II., commander-in- Julius II chief of the papal army before his election to the papacy itself, and nothing more like a Christian bishop during the whole of his reign. The fifth decade takes in the reign of Leo X., the boy cardinal Leo X above-mentioned. All the good that has ever been said of him amounts to this, that he was "a munificent patron of the arts," though his patronage was neither more nor less than the encouragement of Pagan instead of Christian art. He was as secular in his tastes as any emperor of Rome, and his episcopal office was treated by him merely as one of the accidents of his position. During the last decade of the period (except for the short reign of the good Adrian VI.o) 5 During these early years of Leo X. the boy cardinal was also, according to Audin, canon of the Cathedral of Florence, of Fiesole, and of Arezzo; rector of Carmignano, of Giogoli, of San Casciano, of San Giovanni in Val d'Arno, of San Pietro di Casale, of San Marcellino di Cacchiano; prior of Monte Varchi; precentor of S. Antonio, at Florence; provost of Prato; Abbot of Monte Cassino, of San Giovanni di Passignano, of Sta. Maria di Morimondo, of St. Martin de Font-Douce, of S. Salvadore at Vajano, of S. Bartolommeo d'Anghiari, of S. Lorenzo di Coltibuono, of Sta. Maria di Monte Piano, of St. Julien de Tours, of S. Giusto and S. Clemente at Volterra, of S. Stefano at Bologna, of S. Michele at Arezzo, of Chiaravalle near Milan, of Pin in Poitou, of Chaise-Dieu near Clermont. [Audin's Histoire de 6 This was the only one of these VII. a vic But CHAP Clement VII. was Pope, and the official duplicity of V the transactions carried on in his name were a prinClement cipal reason why the papal office was treated with tim of his so little respect by Wolsey and Henry VIII. predeces his personal character was very different from that of his immediate predecessors, and his adversities, like those of many other well-meaning rulers, were brought upon him chiefly as the result of their iniquities and worldliness. sors Nor may we leave out the condition of Rome and the Roman Church, when enumerating the causes which led Englishmen to despise the papacy. The The profli- Italy of that day was sunk in the very deeps of Rome and profligacy, and the clergy had been dragged down gacy of Italy into the mire. There were, doubtless, many exceptions, but they are not conspicuous in history. The many who are conspicuous exhibit themselves as secular, intriguing, and even criminal; for what else can be said of a clerical community which could so readily provide assassins and conspirators? Luther spent a fortnight at Rome in 1510, and the recollection of what he saw and heard used to make him shudder. Among other things that he records, is the conversation of priests about the mysteries of religion, and this is so awfully profane, that one can come to no other conclusion than this, that Rome then abounded with profligate infidels even among its clergy. "I would not have missed seeing Rome," specting it he used to say, "for a thousand florins. At Rome, one may be anything save a good man." And Luther was very far from being the only one who Luther's saying re 7 The very celebration of the Eucharist was vitiated by a parody of the words of consecration. Worsley's Life of Luther, i. 61, looked with horror and contempt on the condition of CHAP the great centre of Christendom. V siastical Thus the moral weight of the papacy was reduced to its lowest point. The character of these popes was well known to the two generations during which they lived; and we may venture firmly to say that such a character had no parallel among English bishops, No ecclesuch as might have led to its being excused or parallel in leniently thought of. Ambassadors, moreover, lay England and clerical, were continually being sent from England to Rome; they saw the corruptions of the Roman court and the Roman Church, and they came home despising the clergy both as courtiers and as priests. The consequence was, that when the imperious will of Henry VIII. was set against the court of Rome, no one cared to apologize for or defend it: and when the principle of papal jurisdiction came to be called in question, there came no voice raised to plead that if the principle was bad, the lives and rule of the popes were such as to claim respect even for an usurped office. England away And thus the jurisdiction of the papal see over the Papal Church of England was already rotting away before power over Henry VIII. laid the axe to its roots and it was rotting moral rottenness which made its destruction so comparatively easy. It is far from improbable that the spirit thus growing up would have led to entire alienation before long, even without the momentum given to events by Henry's pride and passions. Such an idea was evidently in the mind of Sir Thomas More; and, no doubt, in that of the still more astute and far-seeing Wolsey. When More was about to be sent to the Tower, he was examined before Cranmer, Cromwell, and Lord Chancellor V sees quarrel between and Henry VIII CHAP Audley; and among other accusations which were brought against him was that of having put a sword into the King's "enemy, the Pope's hands, by inducing the King to make a book for the maintenance of the Pope's authority and the seven sacraments." More replies that when the King showed him the MS. after it was completed, he found "the Pope's More fore- authority highly advanced, and with many good reasons mightily defended," and that he offered a the Pope remonstrance on the subject. "I must put your Grace in mind of one thing,"" he reports himself to have said, "and that is this, the Pope, as your Grace knoweth, is a great prince as you are. It may hereafter fall out that your Grace and he may vary on some points, whereupon may grow breach of amity and war between you both. I think it therefore best, in my simple judgment, that this place be mended, and his authority more slenderly touched.' The King's Nay (quoth his grace), that shall not be. We and all Christians are so much bound to the See of Rome that we cannot do it too much honour.' Then I put him in mind of a statute of præmunire, made in the time of Richard the Second, by which a part of the Pope's pastoral cure here in England was pared away. To that his Highness answered, 'Whatsoever impediment be to the contrary, we will set forth, for our parts, his authority to the utmost as it deserved; for from that See we first received our faith, and after our imperial crown and sceptre,' which, till his Grace with his own mouth. More's sar- told me," adds More sarcastically, "I never heard of specting it before."8 It is amusing to find what a change thirteen years had made in the King's opinions 8 Wordsw. Eccl. Biog., ii. 169. early view of papalsu premacy casm re |