Necessity for the Reformation.
CORRUPTION IN THE CHURCH.
THE rural districts were the scene of numerous excesses. The abodes of the clergy were frequently the resorts of the dissolute. Cornelius Adrian, at Bruges, the Abbot Trinkler, at Cappel, imitated the customs of the East, and had their harems. Priests consorted with abandoned characters, frequented the taverns, played dice, and finished their orgies by quarrels and blasphemy. The council of Schaffhausen prohibited the clergy from dancing in public except at weddings; from carrying two kinds of weapons; and decreed that a priest who should be found in a house of ill-fame should be stripped of his ecclesiastical habit. In the archbishopric of Mentz they scaled the walls in the night, committed disturbances and disorders of all kinds in the inns and taverns, and broke open doors and locks. In several places the priest paid to the bishop a regular tax for the woman with whom he lived, and for every child he had by her. A German bishop who was present at a grand entertainment, publicly declared that in one year eleven thousand priests had presented themselves to him for that purpose. It is Erasmus who records this. The higher orders of the hierarchy were equally corrupt. Dignitaries of the church preferred the tumult of camps to the service of the altar. To be able, lance in hand, to compel his neighbors to do him homage, was one of the most conspicuous qualifications of a bishop. Baldwin, archbishop of Treves, was constantly at war with his neighbors and vassals, razing their castles, building fortresses of his own, and thinking only how to enlarge his territory. A certain bishop of Eichstadt, when dispensing justice, wore under his habit a coat of mail, and held in his hand a long sword. He used to say he did not fear five Bavarians, provided they would but attack him in the open field. Everywhere the bishops were engaged in constant war with the towns, the citizens demanding freedom, and the bishops requiring implicit obedience. If the latter triumphed, they punished the revolters by sacrificing numerous victims to their vengeance; but the flame of insurrection broke out again at the very moment when it was thought to be extinguished. And what a spectacle was presented by the pontifical throne in the generation immediately preceding the Reformation! Rome, it must be acknowledged, has seldom been witness to so much infamy. Rodrigo Borgia, after living in illicit intercourse with a Roman lady, had continued a similar connection with one of her daughters, by name Rosa Vanozza, by whom he had five children. He was living at Rome with Vanozza and other abandoned women—as cardinal and archbishop, visiting the churches and hospitals—when the death of Innocent VIII. created a vacancy in the pontifical chair. He succeeded in obtaining it by bribing each of the cardinals at a stipulated price. Four mules, laden with silver, were publicly driven into the palace of Sforza, the most influential of the cardinals. Borgia became pope under the name of Alexander VI., and rejoiced in the attainment of the pinnacle of pleasures. The very day of his coronation he created his son Cæsar, a ferocious and dissolute youth, archbishop of Valencia and bishop of Pamplona. He next proceeded to celebrate in the Vatican the nuptials of his daughter Lucrezia, by festivities, at which his mistress Julia Bella was present, and which were enlivened by farces and indecent songs. "Most of the ecclesiastics," says a historian, "had their mistresses, and all the convents of the capital were houses of ill-fame." Cæsar Borgia espoused the cause of the Guelphs, and when by their assistance he had annihilated the power of the Ghibelines, he turned upon the Guelphs, and crushed them in their turn. But he would allow none to share in the spoils of his atrocities. In the year 1497, Alexander conferred upon his eldest son the duchy of Benevento. The duke suddenly disappeared. That night a faggot-dealer on the banks of the Tiber saw some persons throw a corpse into the river; but he said nothing of it, for such things were common. The duke's body was found. His brother Cæsar had been the instigator of the murder. He did not stop there. His brother-in-law stood in the way of his ambition. One day Cæsar caused him to be stabbed on the stair-case of the pope's palace, and he was carried, covered with blood, to his own apartments. His wife and sister never left him. Dreading lest Cæsar should employ poison, they were accustomed to prepare his meals with their own hands. Alexander placed guards before his door, but Cæsar ridiculed these precautions, and on one occasion when the pope visited him, dropped the remark. "What cannot be done at Cæsar may be at supper." Accordingly, he one day gained admittance to the chamber of the wounded man, turned out his wife and sister, and calling Michilotto, the executioner of his horrors, and the only man in whom he placed any confidence, commanded him to strangle his victim before his eyes. Alexander had a favorite named Peroto, whose preferment offended the young duke. Cæsar rushed upon him; Peroto sought refuge under the papal mantle, clasping the Pontiff in his arm; Cæsar stabbed him, and the blood of the victim spirted in the Pontiff's face. "The pope," adds a contemporary and witness of these atrocities, "loves the duke his son, and lives in great fear of him." Cæsar was one of the handsomest and most powerful men of his age. Six wild bulls fell beneath his hand in single combat. Nightly assassinations took place in the streets of Rome. Poison often destroyed those whom the dagger could not reach. Every one feared to move or breathe lest he should be the next victim. Cæsar Borgia was the hero of crime. The spot on earth where all iniquity met and overflowed was the pontiff's seat. When man has given himself over to the power of evil, the higher his pretensions before God, the lower he is seen to sink in the depths of hell. The dissolute entertainments given by the pope and his son Cæsar and his daughter Lucrezia, are such as can neither be described nor thought of. The most impure groves of ancient worship saw not the like. Historians have accused Alexander and Lucrezia of incest, but the charge is not sufficiently established. The pope, in order to rid himself of a wealthy cardinal, had prepared poison in a small box of sweetmeats, which was to be placed on the table after a sumptuous feast; the cardinal receiving a hint of the design, gained over the attendant, and the poisoned box was placed before Alexander. He ate of it and perished. The whole city came together, and could hardly satiate themselves with the sight of this dead viper. Such was the man who filled the pontifical throne at the commencement of the age of the Reformation. Thus the clergy had disgraced religion and themselves. Well might a powerful voice exclaim: "The ecclesiastic order is opposed to God and to his glory. The people well know it; and it is but too evident, from the many songs, proverbs, and jests on the priests, current amongst the common people, as also from the figures of monks and priests scrawled on the walls, and even on the playing cards, that every one has a feeling of disgust at the sight or name of a priest." It is Luther who thus speaks. The evil had spread through all ranks; a spirit of delusion had been sent among men; the corruption of morals corresponded to the corruption of the faith; the mystery of iniquity weighed down the enslaved church of Christ. Another consequence necessarily ensued from the neglect into which the fundamental doctrine of the gospel had fallen. From the darkness of the understanding resulted the corruption of the heart. The priests having taken into their own hands the dispensing a salvation which belonged only to God, had thereby secured a sufficient hold on the respect of the people. What need had they to study sacred learning? It was no longer their office to explain the Scriptures, but to grant letters of indulgence; and for the fulfilling of that ministry, it was unnecessary to have acquired any great learning. In country parts, says Wimpheling, they appointed as preachers poor wretches whom they had taken from beggary, and who had been cooks, musicians, huntsmen, stable boys, and even worse. The superior clergy themselves were sunk in great ignorance. A bishop of Dunfeldt congratulated himself on never having learned Greek or Hebrew. The monks asserted that all heresies arose from these languages, but especially from the Greek. "The New Testament," said one of them, "is a book full of serpents and thorns. Greek," continued he, "is a modern language, but recently invented, and against which we must be upon our guard. As to Hebrew, my dear brethren, it is certain that whoever studies it immediately becomes a Jew." Heresbach, a friend of Erasmus, and a respectable writer, reports these very words. Thomas Linacer, a learned and celebrated divine, had never read the New Testament. Drawing near his end (in 1524) he called for it, but quickly threw it from him with an oath, because his eye had caught the words, "But I say unto you, Swear not at all." "Either this is not the gospel," said he, "or we are not Christians." Even the school of theology in Paris did not scruple to declare before the Parliament, "There is an end of religion if the study of Hebrew and Greek is permitted." If here and there among the clergy some learning existed, it was not in sacred literature. The Ciceronians of Italy affected a great contempt for the Bible on account of its style; men who arrogated to themselves the title of priests of Christ's church translated the words of the Holy Ghost into the style of Virgil and of Horace, to accommodate them to the ears of men of taste. The Cardinal Bembo wrote always, instead of the Holy Spirit, "the breath of the celestial zephyr;" for remission of sins he substituted the "pity of the manes and of the gods;" and instead of Christ the Son of God, "Minerva sprung from the brows of Jupiter." Finding one day the respectable Sadoletus employed on a translation of the Epistle to the Romans, "Leave these childish productions," said he; "such puerilities do not become a sensible man." Behold some of the consequences of the system that then weighed down Christendom. This picture no doubt exhibits in strong colors both the corruption of the church and the need of reformation. It is for that reason we have sketched it. The vital doctrines of Christianity had almost disappeared, and with them the life and light which constitute the essence of true religion. The internal strength of the church was gone, and its lifeless and exhausted frame lay stretched over the Roman world.—D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation.