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 GIFT OF 
 NELSON GLENN McCREA 
 
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A SHORT 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
A SHORT HISTORY 
 OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 
 SALOMON REINACH 
 
 AUTHOR OF " APOLLO," ETC. 
 
 BY 
 
 FLORENCE SIMMONDS 
 
 OFFICIER DE l'ACAD^IMTE FRANCAlSE 
 
 A Florentine painting of the fifteenth century 
 at Narbonne, France, 
 
 
 
 J « J J ' O 1 » 
 
 NEW YORK: G, ?. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 •' MCMXXir* ■ • •" • 
 
 » » »' » , 
 
'P19- 
 
 TO 
 
 N. C. B. 
 
 S, R. 
 
 ^/J..^ ' V, 
 
 
 ■^<„ 
 
 • «- • •«* *^^ •• •• ••••• 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This study is founded on the five concluding chapters of 
 Orpheus, Histoire generale des Religions, first published in 1909, 
 of which, in spite of the war, more than 30,000 copies have 
 been sold. It has been translated into English, German, 
 Russian, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. Certain chapters of it 
 have become somewhat antiquated ; all require revision. While 
 rewriting in part the history of Christianity, I have been 
 careful not to alter its character as a sketch. The bibliography, 
 an important feature even in such attempts, has been brought 
 up to date. 
 
 Although I know more than I did thirteen years ago, my 
 general ideas have not varied. Christianity, like all other 
 religions, should be treated by history as a purely human 
 institution ; but it is the greatest of all, not excepting Buddhism, 
 because it suits the temper of progressive and laborious nations, 
 and adapts itself to the most various conditions of society. 
 Civilisation and Christianity are united as by an indissoluble 
 marriage tie. Whatever may have been the mishaps and 
 misdeeds of dogmatic theology and ambitious priestcraft, things 
 which I have not tried to conceal, it is certain that Christianity, 
 while opposing a veto to unbridled and degraded superstition, 
 has taught and teaches the world the only moral lessons 
 accessible to every one, thus preserving and propagating the 
 most enduring elements of Hebrew and Hellenic wisdom, and 
 cleansing and softening the animal instincts of the human race. 
 If those gospel lessons, though preached to thousands of millions 
 for twenty centuries, have not yet been assimilated by mankind, 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 they have at least acted as a permanent antidote against 
 egotism and cruelty. Their beneficent influence is not only 
 a thing of the past, but of the future. I do not share the 
 opinion that they have as yet been superseded by some sort 
 of a lay philosophy or theosophy. 
 
 S. R. 
 
 *Si^ Germain-en-Laye 
 March 1922. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAQB 
 CHRISTIAN ORIGINS ........ 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHRISTIANITY : FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN ... 40 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CHRISTIANITY : FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V . . .62 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CHRISTIANITY: FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA . .108 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CHRISTIANITY : FROM THE ENCYCLOPEDIA TO THE CONDEMNATION 
 
 OF MODERNISM ........ 151 
 
 EPILOGUE 212 
 
 INDEX .......... 217 
 
 ni 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 CHRISTIAN 0RIGIK9 
 
 Myth and history — The Canon of the New Testament — The orthodox tradition 
 as to the Evangelists — The conclusions of criticism on this point — The 
 date of our Gospels — The synoptical Gospels — Testimony of Papias — 
 The composition of the synoptical Gospels— The Fourth Gospel — The 
 lack of historical authority for the Gospels — The idea of the Messiah — 
 The silence of secular writers — The testimony of Tacitus — Uncertain 
 chronology of the life of Jesus — Uncertainty as to His trial and death — 
 The Docetes— The Christ of St. Paul— The supposed fulfilment of prophe- 
 cies—The apocryphal Gospels — The Epistles of St. Paul— Chronology of 
 St. Paul's apostolate— The Catholic Epistles— The Epistle of St. John 
 and the verse of the "three witnesses" — The Apocalypse of St. John — 
 The Apocalypse of St. Peter— Various Epistles— The Pastor of Hernias— 
 The Symbols and the Doctrine of the Apostles — The pseudo-Clementine 
 writings — Simon M agus — Antichrist. 
 
 1. The beginning of every history is shrouded in legend; 
 Christianity is no exception to the rule. The Churches insist 
 that the legends of Christianity are pure history ; if this were 
 so, it would be the greatest of miracles. 
 
 2. Christianity belongs to a group of religions quite different 
 from the official creeds of Judaea, Greece and Rome. The 
 essential feature of the former group consists of initiation into 
 the cult of a Saviour-God, who assumed human form, taught, 
 suffered, died and rose from the dead; the reward of the 
 initiated is salvation. Such were the religions of Osiris, Diony- 
 sos, Orpheus, Adonis, Attis, and the like. Christianity is the 
 most recent of its class, the only perfectly moral and decent one, 
 and the only one that has triumphed and survived. But it 
 differs from all the others in a very striking peculiarity : the 
 Saviour-God of the Christians lived in historical times, not in 
 a remote, obscure and unattainable past. So what we may call, 
 for analogy's sake, the myth of Christ, the evolution of which 
 can be clearly traced from the time of St. Paul and of the 
 Fourth Gospel, must be distinguished from the history of Jesus : 
 
2 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 a most difficult task, the more so as our earliest documents 
 relating to Jesus are already steeped in miracle and myth. 
 
 3. Twenty-seven little Greek compositions, all the work of 
 Christian writers, compose what is known as the Canon or rule 
 of the New Testament. They are : the four so-called canonical 
 Gospels ^ (the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and 
 John), the Acts of the Apostles, twenty-one letters attributed 
 to Apostles (Paul, Peter, John, James and Jude), and the 
 Apocalypse or Revelation attributed to St. John. 
 
 4. This Canon was practically established about 350 a.d., 
 after the Council of Nicaea (a.d. 325), and was confirmed for the 
 Western churches by St. Augustine in 397 ; the only doubtful 
 item was the Apocalypse, and this was still considered not 
 altogether above suspicion in France during the eighth century. 
 But the first idea of a Canon dates from a.d. 150; it was the 
 reputed heretic, Marcion, who then formed the first collection 
 of the kind, which included Luke and the majority of the 
 Pauline epistles. Down to this time all quotations from " the 
 Scriptures "" in the works of the Apostolic Fathers (or early 
 orthodox Christian writers) refer almost exclusively to the Old 
 Testament.^ 
 
 5. A mutilated Latin catalogue, discovered at Milan by the 
 Italian scholar Muratori (1672-1750) and dating from about 
 150 to 200 A.D., enumerates all the essentials of our Canon, but 
 adds the Apocalypse of St. Peter, which has been discovered in 
 Egypt in our own times. This catalogue was probably the 
 Canon of the Roman Church in the second century. 
 
 6. It is supposed that the definitive Canon was formed of 
 the collected writings which w^ere read in the majority of the 
 large Churches, and considered in harmony with the average 
 opinion of Christendom. There could, of course, have been no 
 question in those days of a scientific criterion, based on the 
 origin and history of these writings. " If it be true that the 
 Church applied a certain critical judgment to the choice and 
 
 ^ Euavgdion (Greek), i.e. "good news." 
 
 * " It ma}' be confideutly asserted that these writers [Christians of tlie first 
 half of the second century] did not know our Gospels, or, if they did know 
 them, that they never mention or quote them, which comes to the same thing 
 for us." (Michel Nicolas, Etudes sur la Bible, vol. ii. p. 5). 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 3 
 
 acceptance of the sacred books, it was not the critical judgment 
 of the modern historian, but an opinion inspired by faith and 
 based upon the value of these writings from the point of view 
 of faith." 1 
 
 7. Matthew or Levi was, according to tradition, a publican 
 or tax-collector who attached himself to Jesus. Mark is said to 
 have been the secretary of Peter, whom he accompanied to 
 Rome, and the founder of the Church of Alexandria. A 
 companion of St. Paul, Luke, a physician of Antioch, wrote 
 the Acts of the Apostles as a sequel to his Gospel. John the 
 Evangelist, the son of Zebedee, was one of the twelve Apostles, 
 the one to whom Jesus commended His mother from the Cross. 
 After living at Ephesus, he was banished to Patmos, and there 
 he is supposed to have written the Apocalypse in his old age. 
 
 Thus, if the tradition were well founded, we should possess 
 the writings of two eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus, Matthew 
 and John, and of two intimate friends of Peter and Paul. It 
 matters little that the Gospels purport to be according to 
 St. Matthew, according to St. Luke, &c, ; the prologue to 
 St. Luke's Gospel sufficiently shows that he claims to be the 
 author, not only the inspirer of his book. 
 
 8. The tradition of the Church is no longer tenable. Not 
 one of the Gospels is the work of an eye-witness ; we need only 
 read them attentively to be convinced of this. It is true that 
 certain passages seem to suggest the converse, and it is therefore 
 necessary to examine them here. John xix. 35 (a soldier has 
 pierced the side of Jesus with a spear) : " And he that saw it 
 bare record, and his record is true ; and he knoweth that he 
 saith true, that ye might believe." This means that the witness 
 invoked is John, whom the Fourth Gospel calls " the disciple 
 whom Jesus loved,"" and who was the only one of the Apostles 
 present at the Passion. But this mode of expression is ob- 
 viously inappropriate to the author of the book ; it is an 
 appeal to the testimony of another person ; so the writer of 
 the Gospel cannot have been an eye-witness of what he describes. 
 The second passage is to be found at the end of the same 
 Gospel, as an early addition to the original text (xxi. 24) : " This 
 
 1 Loisy, SUnples Reflexions (1908), p. 33. 
 
4 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these 
 things, and we know that his testimony is true. And there are 
 also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they 
 should be written every one, I suppose that even the world 
 itself could not contain the books that should be written." 
 Here it is even more evident that the writer is attesting the 
 veracity of the disciple ; for, " if this disciple had been known 
 to all as the author of the Gospel, it would not have been 
 necessary to affirm the fact." ^ Thus we find that these two 
 texts prove the exact opposite of what they are supposed to 
 demonstrate, and further suggest the presumption of a pious 
 fraud on the part of the ultimate compiler. 
 
 9. In the narrative of the arrest of Jesus as related by 
 St. Mark (xiv. 51, 52) we read of the flight of the disciples, and 
 of a young man who followed Jesus, " having a linen cloth cast 
 about his naked body ; and the young men laid hold on him, 
 and he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked," It was 
 long supposed that this young man was Mark himself, and this 
 passage has been compared to an artist's signature hidden away 
 in the corner of a picture. Were this the case, it would give 
 immense authority to Mark's narrative, such as none of the 
 Gospel texts possess. But the source of this episode is a pro- 
 phecy by Amos (ii. 16) : " And he that is courageous among 
 the mighty shall flee away naked in that day." Here we have 
 a detail, apparently characteristic, because it seems insignificant, 
 which was inserted in the narrative to mark in the most puerile 
 fashion the fulfilment of a prophecy. The same preoccupation 
 caused the insertion of numerous episodes in our Gospels (§ 45). 
 What confidence can we feel in texts which have been so 
 tampered with ? 
 
 10. The conclusion of liberal exegesis in this delicate matter 
 has been formulated as follows by the Abbe Loisy : " To allege 
 that the earliest testimony as to the origin of the Gospels is 
 certain, precise, traditional and historical is to falsify its 
 character entirely ; it is, on the contrary, hypothetical, vague, 
 legendary and partisan ; it shows that at the period when the 
 Gospels were brought forward by the Church to check the 
 
 1 Loisy, Quatrihne Evangile, p. 250, 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 5 
 
 extravagances of Gnostic heresy, only the vaguest information 
 existed as to their origin." ^ 
 
 11. Why are there only ^be^r canonical Gospels .? " Because," 
 says St. Irenaeus (c. 170), " there are four cardinal points." This 
 reply cannot be taken seriously. There were indeed a great 
 many writings called Gospels. The Church finally adopted four, 
 guaranteeing their inspiration and absolute veracity, no doubt 
 because they were in favour in four very influential churches, 
 Matthew at Jerusalem, Mark at Rome or at Alexandria, Luke 
 at Antioch, John at Ephesus. When the Canon was constituted, 
 these Gospels were so well known that it was no longer possible 
 to make an abstract from them in the shape of a single narrative, 
 at the cost of destroying the sources. Such a single narrative — 
 known as a harmonised Gospel — would have greatly facilitated 
 the task of a Church, embarrassed by four Gospels claiming to be 
 inspired which are contradictory and irreconcilable. If then we 
 have four Canonical Gospels, when the inception of the Canon 
 dates from a.d. 150, our Gospels are evidently considerably earlier 
 than this in date, a conclusion which does not, however, exclude 
 the hypothesis of later modifications. 
 
 12. It is possible to fix the approximate date of our Gospels 
 in the form in which they have come down to us. Matthew 
 makes Jesus predict the destruction of Jerusalem (xxiv. 29-31), 
 and, as its sequel, the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds. 
 This can only have been written a very short time before or 
 after the catastrophe of a.d. 70, when it was still possible to 
 believe in the speedy advent of Christ in glory, heralded by the 
 great upheaval. In Luke (xxi. 9-24) the second coming (called 
 Parotisia, presence) is foretold for a later period. " These things 
 must first come to pass," said Jesus, " but the end is not by-and- 
 by."2 Here we are between a.d. 80 and 100, and nearer to the 
 second than to the first of these dates. The parallel passage in 
 Mark (chap, xiii.) is valueless, for in it Jesus predicts the 
 sufferings of the Apostles and the propagation of the Gospel 
 among all nations ; it is an obvious interpolation. But as the 
 material in Mark was evidently used by Matthew, we may date 
 
 ' Loisy, Quelques Riflexiom, p. 127. 
 ^ See Michel Nicolas, iltudes, ii. p. 8. 
 
6 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 it between a.d. 60 and 70. As to the Gospel of St. John, if it 
 is by the same hand as the Apocalypse, which dates from a.d. 93, 
 we may place it towards the end of the first, or the beginning of 
 the second century ; but it is probably somewhat later (a.d. 130). 
 
 13. The diffusion of our Gospels in Christian communities 
 was a slow process. With the exception of Papias (c. 120), 
 who speaks of a narrative by Mark, and a collection of the 
 sayings of Jesus, no Christian writer of the first half of the 
 second century quotes the Gospels or their reputed authors (| 4). 
 It is true that St. Justin (c. 150) mentions the Memoirs of 
 the Apostles, but the extracts he gives from these are never 
 textually identical with passages in our Gospels. Some of them 
 come from unrecognised gospels, called apocryphal, others from 
 unknown sources. The teaching of Jesus was still in a confused 
 state, comprising those numerous narratives mentioned by 
 Luke in his preamble, and a still more considerable body 
 of oral tradition, which was transmitted by preaching. It 
 is probable that our Evangelists acquired the authority faith 
 has retained for them when the Church came into conflict 
 with the Gnostic sects, which based their teaching upon 
 books perhaps hardly less historical, but certainly much more 
 extravagant. 
 
 14. The three Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke relate 
 more or less the same facts in a similar order ; they may be 
 printed side by side in three columns ; ^ this collation or 
 synopsis of the three works has caused them to be known as the 
 synoptical gospels. The Gospel of St. John does not lend itself 
 to any comparative study of this sort, and must be examined 
 by itself. 
 
 15. Here we are confronted with the most difficult question 
 of Gospel exegesis. When the three synoptical writers relate the 
 same facts, they do not usually describe them as taking place 
 under identical circumstances. When they do agree, it is not in 
 a general way, but often literally, in every detail of a series of 
 long phrases. These documents must therefore have had a 
 common source, or several common sources. But this well- 
 
 1 See the convenient edition published by Chastand and l!<lorG\,Concordance 
 des Evangilcs, Neufchatel, 1901. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 7 
 
 spring cannot have been a lost Gospel, richer in details than 
 those we possess, for in that case we should not find in one or 
 the other of the three lacunae and important variations in a 
 narrative of the same event. There must have been several 
 sources, which we must endeavour to trace. We have, to 
 help us in this task, two very important evidences : Luke's 
 preamble, and certain fragments by Papias, transcribed about 
 330 A.D. by Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea. Papias' own Avork 
 is lost. 
 
 16. This is Luke's exordium: "Forasmuch as many have 
 taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those 
 things which are most surely believed among us, even as they 
 delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye- 
 witnesses and ministers of the word ; it seemed good to me 
 also, having had perfect understanding of all things from 
 the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent 
 Theophilus,! ^^i^^t thou mightest know the certainty of those 
 things wherein thou hast been instructed." This clearly means 
 that when St. Luke wrote his Gospel, many evangelical narratives 
 based on the testimony of the Apostles existed, but that they 
 lacked proper co-ordination. Luke was therefore a compiler, 
 working from written documents. If everything important in 
 Matthew and Mark were to be found in Luke, we should suppose 
 that he had referred to these two Gospels ; but, on the contrary, 
 certain essential episodes, such as the Massacre of the Innocents 
 and the Flight into Egypt, are found only in Matthew, and 
 a few others only in Mark, about an eighth part of whose 
 Gospel belongs exclusively to himself. It is evident therefore 
 that Luke cannot have known either our Gospel according to 
 St. Matthew or our Gospel according to St. Mark. We now 
 perceive that Luke had no first-hand information, and that our 
 Matthew and Mark are not the narratives of eye-witnesses, but 
 are based upon records no longer in existence. 
 
 17. Let us now examine the texts of Papias, Bishop of 
 Hierapolis in Asia about 120 a.d., who had known presbyters or 
 elders said to have known the Apostles. An elder said this : 
 
 1 The epithet kratiste applied by Luke to this unknown personage has 
 suggested the idea that he was a converted Roman official. 
 
8 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 " Mark, the mouthpiece of Peter, carefully wrote down all he 
 could remember, but he did not write all that Jesus did and 
 said in proper order, for he had not heard or followed the 
 Lord ; but at a later period, he had followed Peter, who gave 
 instruction as occasion arose, but did not set forth the Lord's 
 discourses in due order ; Mark is therefore not to be blamed for 
 having written down certain things from memory, for he was 
 careful not to omit anything he had heard, and not to introduce 
 any errors. . . . Matthew had written down the Lord's speeches 
 (or oracles) in Hebrew, and each one interpreted them as best he 
 could." 
 
 In spite of the obvious mediocrity of the writer, these texts 
 are of the utmost importance. They prove, in the first place, 
 that the Mark referred to by the elder who gave this in- 
 formation to Papias was not our Mark, whose Gospel shows no 
 lack of order, but merely one of the sources drawn upon by our 
 Mark ; and further, that our Matthew was not the original 
 Matthew, which consisted of the sayings of Jesus recorded in 
 Hebrew, and in a somewhat obscure manner. There is no 
 reason whatever to doubt the good faith of Papias' informant. 
 
 18. A careful comparative study of the synoptical writers 
 authorises, I think, the following propositions, as to which, 
 however, critics are not entirely agreed : 
 
 a. The passages common to Matthew and Luke, which are 
 absent from Mark, are derived from a Greek translation of the 
 Aramaic collected sayings (in Greek Log'ia) of Jesus, attributed 
 to Matthew. This collection further included certain narrative 
 passages serving to connect the sayings, but, strangely enough, 
 it did not include the Passion. It is designated by the letter Q 
 (the initial of the German word Quelle^ source). 
 
 h. Our Mark, the conclusion of which (xvi. 9-20) is an 
 addition made at the end of the first century, and not to be 
 found in the earliest manuscripts, is a compilation, perhaps 
 written in Rome, from two older texts ; the first may have been 
 Aramaic, and it is not certain that it described the Passion ; 
 the writer of the second, who does describe it, was acquainted 
 with Q ; the writer of oiir Mark was acquainted with Matthew 
 and even with Luke and Paul. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 9 
 
 c. Our Matthew is based upon Q, a collection which was 
 enlarged and recast several times, notably by the help of the 
 second version of Mark. The Pauline epistles were not unknown 
 to the writer. 
 
 d. Our Luke is perhaps a second and more complete edition, 
 due to the same writer as the first, of a text owned by Marcion 
 in A.D. 150. The Fathers of the Church (Tertullian, Epiphanius, 
 &c.) accused Marcion of having mutilated the text of Luke, and 
 pointed out various passages he had suppressed. In reality, he 
 seems to have possessed the original Luke, compiled from a 
 revised edition of Q, an ancient edition of Mark, and perhaps 
 Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, together with other 
 lost documents. Otir Luke attests a knowledge of Josephus' 
 Antiquities, published a.d. 93, or at least of some Greek source 
 drawn upon in that work. It is notable that entire passages 
 given by Matthew, but not by Mark {e. g. xvii. 24-7 ; xx. 1-16) 
 are not to be found in Luke, and that not a single discourse in 
 Matthew is reproduced in Luke. 
 
 e. The Church has always called Matthew the First Gospel, 
 and Mark the Second Gospel. As a fact, the basis of Mark is 
 earher than our Matthew, but the basis of Matthew may be 
 earlier than our Mark. 
 
 /. The Fourth Gospel, called that of St. John, is neither 
 the work of St. John nor of a contemporary. The author is 
 inspired by the Alexandrine theosophy of Philo the Jew. He 
 knows the synoptical Gospels, but contradicts them; he adds 
 some historical material of uncertain origin and suspicious 
 quality. But he is not interested in history nor in anecdotes : 
 he is a theologian, justly called lio theologos by the Greek 
 Fathers. St. John's Christ is, from the beginning, God Him- 
 self; His miracles are few, but stupendous; He does not cast 
 out devils, as in the Synoptics. St. John knows nothing of the 
 contrast between Jewish law and Christianity ; he knows very 
 little about the Jews of former days. The speeches addressed 
 to them are, in reality, for the readers only. The object of 
 the book is the spiritual teaching of Christianity, which is 
 indeed founded upon it. Some later additions to the original 
 text have been recognised ; but the question of the sources 
 
10 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 and successive editions of the Fourth Gospel remains very 
 obscure. 
 
 19. Those who are disquieted by the discrepancies between 
 the three synoptical writers and of their three Gospels with that 
 of John, are generally assured that the " Gospels complete each 
 other." This is not true. Far from completing, they con- 
 tradict each other, and when they do not contradict, they 
 repeat each other. The Christ of Mark is, however, compatible 
 with the Christ of Matthew and Luke ; but the Christ of John 
 is a totally different person. " If there is one thing above others 
 that is obvious, but as to which the most powerful of theological 
 interests has caused a deliberate or unconscious blindness, it is 
 the profound, the irreducible incompatibility of the synoptical 
 Gospels and the Fourth Gospel. If Jesus spoke and acted as He 
 is said to have spoken and acted in the first three Gospels, He 
 did not speak and act as He is reported to have done in the 
 fourth." 1 It is only necessary to have an open mind, and to be 
 able to read, to convince ourselves of this. 
 
 20. Broadly speaking, our Gospels tell us what different 
 Christian communities believed concerning Jesus between the 
 years 70 and 100 a.d. They reflect a legendary and expository 
 labour carried on for at least forty years in the bosom of the 
 communities. As John has no historic value and Luke comes to 
 us at third hand, there remain the sources of Mark and of 
 Matthew, notably Q, and the basis of Mark. Thus all that may 
 be sound in Mark and Matthew is derived from two lost 
 sources, of whose authority we have no guarantee. It is, indeed, 
 certain that the basis of Mark cannot go back to Peter, an 
 eye-witness, for all that relates to Peter in Mark is vague or 
 hostile. As to the sayings in Q, it is obvious that no one had 
 transcribed them at the moment ; at most we can only see in 
 them an echo of the words that the disciples of Jesus repeated 
 long after His death, and that more skilful men, influenced by 
 the preaching of St. Paul, arranged, completed and transcribed. 
 To speak of the authenticity of the Sermon on the Mount (the 
 mountain itself being a fiction, intended to serve as a pendant 
 to Sinai), is hardly consistent with serious criticism. Nay, more ; 
 
 ^ Loisy, Quelques Lcttres (1908), p. 130. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 11 
 
 there are words such as those Jesus is supposed to have uttered 
 during the skuuber of the Apostles (Matt. xxvi. 39 ; Mark xiv. 
 35 ; Luke xxii. 42), of which it may safely be said that they were 
 neither heard nor put on record by any one. "I should not 
 believe in the Gospel," wrote St. Augustine, " if I had not the 
 authority of the Church for so doing." i The situation is 
 unchanged, although science has defined it with singular 
 emphasis. The Gospels, stripped of the authority of the Church, 
 are documents which cannot be utilised for a history of the real 
 life of Jesus. They can and should only serve to teach us what 
 the primitive churches thought of Him, and to acquaint us 
 with the origin of the immense influence those opinions exercised 
 on the human race. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 21. Collation of our Gospels, and perception of the successive 
 strata which compose them prove that even the legend of Jesus 
 as taught by the Church is not supported in all its details by 
 the texts adduced. The miraculous birth is not mentioned in 
 Mark ; it seems to have been deliberately ignored by John, who 
 accepts the Philonian doctrine of the incarnation of the Word, 
 "the first-born God, the second God, the intercessor between 
 God and man," ^ making, however, an essential addition of his 
 own by identifying this " Word " with the Messiah. In Matthew 
 and in Luke the miraculous birth is recorded with conflicting 
 details, elesus himself never alludes to it, and His parents do 
 not understand Him, when they find Him in the Temple and 
 he speaks of His " Father's business " (Luke ii. 50). The fact 
 that Matthew and Luke give two genealogies (irreconcilable one 
 with another), which trace the descent of Jesus from King David 
 through Joseph, is a sufficient evidence that the idea of the 
 miraculous birth was introduced rather late into the tradition. 
 These genealogies, and no doubt others no longer extant, 
 were composed to confirm the Jewish belief that the Messiah 
 would be of the family of David ; the story of the divine birth 
 
 ^ St. Augustine, Against the epistle entitled: Of the Foundation, § 5 (ed. 
 Vivfes, vol. XXV. p. 435). Ego vero Evangelio non credercm, nisi me catholicce 
 ecclesioR commoveret aioctoritas. . . . Ego me ad eos teneam, quihus prcecipientibics 
 Evangelio credidi. 
 
 * Expressions used by Philo, 
 
12 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 was, in its turn, introduced when the idea of the divinity of 
 Jesus had become familiar. 
 
 22. The Gospels speak with great simplicity of the brothers 
 and sisters of Jesus. According to Matthew (i. 25), He was 
 the eldest of the family. The notion that these brothers and 
 sisters were cousins or children of Joseph by a former marriage 
 is a mere theological subtlety. Belief in the virginity of Mary 
 has forced ecclesiastical writers to explain or rather to eliminate 
 the relationship.^ 
 
 23. The idea that Jesus was the Messiah and that He was 
 God is clearly formulated in the Fourth Gospel, but in the first 
 three Gospels it appears in embryo only. The essential feature 
 of the preaching of Jesus in the Gospels is the announcement 
 of the reign of God, the speedy coming of which is indicated 
 (Matt. xvi. 28 ; Mark ix. 1 ; Luke ix. 27). Jesus calls Himself 
 the Son of Man, which in Hebrew is synonymous with man, and 
 Son of God, which means inspired by God. He forbids His dis- 
 ciples to call Him Messiah (Matt. xvi. 20), and He reproves the 
 scribes for teaching that the Messiah would be a descendant of 
 David (Mark xii. 35), a proof that the Davidic affiliation is no 
 less an excrescence than the supernatural affiliation. In the 
 speech ascribed to St. Peter in the Acts (ii. 22) Jesus is no more 
 than a divine man whom God has raised from the dead. Finally, 
 there is no trace of the Jews having accused Jesus of claiming 
 to be God. " It is only in the Gospel of John that the sayings 
 and the acts of Jesus tend to prove His supernatural mission. 
 His celestial origin and His divinity. This peculiarity indicates 
 
 the theological and non-historic character of the Fourth 
 Gospel." 2 
 
 24. Jesus did not institute Peter the head of His Church, He 
 did not " found the Papacy." The passage in Matthew (xvi. 18) : 
 *' Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church . . . 
 and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven," 
 &c. is obviously an interpolation, made at a period when a 
 Church separated from the Synagogue already existed. In the 
 parallel passages in Mark (viii. 27-32) and in Luke (ix. 18-22) 
 there is not a word of the primacy of Peter, a detail Mark, the 
 
 ' Loisy, Qiielques Lettrcs, p. 155. * Loisy, Rifiexions, p. 69. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 13 
 
 reputed disciple of Peter, could hardly have omitted if he had 
 known of it. The interpolation is probably later than the 
 compilation of Luke's Gospel. 
 
 25. Jesus taught no dogma of any sort, nor anything 
 resembling the Sacraments of the Church. Himself baptised 
 by St. John, He baptised no one. The famous words: "This 
 is my body, this is my blood," do not belong to the primitive 
 tradition touching the last Sacrament. "Jesus simply gave 
 bread and wine to His disciples, telling them that He would not 
 eat and drink with them again, until they were together in the 
 kingdom of heaven."! The doctrine of sin and justification is 
 also absent from the teaching of Christ in the Gospels. ^ The 
 idea of redemption appears only in the passages interpolated 
 under the influence of St. Paul's preaching. 
 
 26. The miracles attributed to Jesus by evangelical tradition 
 are exorcisms (casting out devils), or allegories (the multiplication 
 of the loaves and fishes, the transformation of water into wine 
 at the marriage-feast of Cana). The most unequivocal of the 
 miracles, the resurrection of Lazarus, whose body was already 
 decomposed, is itself allegorical ; it is only recorded in the 
 Fourth Gospel. If this had been an actual fact, or even a fact 
 embellished and transformed by ancient tradition, it would be 
 inexplicable that the Synoptic Writers make no reference to it. 
 
 27. The miracle of Christ's resurrection is related by the 
 Synoptic Writers with irreconcilable discrepancies. The dis- 
 covery of the empty tomb is the less credible in that the corpse 
 of Jesus would no doubt have been thrown by the Roman soldiers 
 into the common grave of malefactors. The end of Mark's 
 Gospel (xvi. 9-20) is, as we have seen (§ 18), a later addition, 
 which is not found in the best manuscripts. "The tradition 
 followed by the author of the First Gospel is that of the 
 authentic Mark, according to which the principal appearances 
 took place in Galilee ; the appearances in Jerusalem on the day 
 of the Resurrection notified by Luke and John are simply 
 ignored." ^ Abbe Loisy is of opinion that the author of the 
 Third Gospel purposely concealed the testimony of Mark 
 
 ^ Loisy, Riflexions, p. 90. ^ Loisy, Evangile et ^glise, p. 199. 
 
 * Loisy, Quelques Lettres, p. 226. 
 
14 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 (xvi. 7), corroborated by Matthew, touching the appearances 
 of Jesus in Galilee,^ in order to bring the disciples together 
 on the day of the Resurrection and to keep them at Jerusalem 
 until the Feast of Pentecost. Even in the revised form in 
 which our texts have come down to us, it is evident that if 
 the Resurrection of Jesus was accepted by the early Christian 
 communities and St. Paul, it Avas known to them as a pious 
 belief and not as an historic fact. 
 
 28. Is it even possible to extract the elements of a biography 
 of Jesus from the Gospels .^ It is contrary to every sound 
 method to compose, as even Renan did, a life of Jesus, 
 eliminating the marvellous elements of the Gospel story. It 
 is no more possible to make real history with myths than to 
 make bread with the pollen of flowers. The historic Jesus is 
 essentially intangible, by which I do not mean that He never 
 existed, but simply that we cannot affirm anything precise 
 about Him, lacking, as we do, all evidence incontestably derived 
 from those who saw and heard Him. 
 
 • • ■ • • 
 
 29. The period to which the teaching of Jesus must be 
 referred is fairly well known to us by the works of secular 
 writers; now, all contemporary authors are silent concerning 
 Him. Josephus, a Jew by birth, who wrote about a.d. 80 and 
 enters into details concerning the histoiy of Palestine, and the 
 Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, mentions John the Baptist, 
 who was put to death under Herod Antipas, but ignores the 
 preaching of Jesus. This silence seemed so amazing that at an 
 early date a passage was introduced into his Jezvish Antiquities 
 (xviii. 3, 3), the apocryphal character of which is obvious. It is 
 very doubtful whether any fragment of it should be retained : 
 "At this time appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed He is to be 
 called a man. For He accomplished marvellous things, Avas the 
 master of men who accept truth gladly, and drew many Jcavs 
 and also many Greeks after Him. This man was the Christ. 
 He was denounced by the elders of our nation to Pilate, who 
 condemned Him to be crucified; but those who had loved 
 Him from the beginning did not cease to revere Him ; for He 
 
 ^ Loisy, Quelques Lettres, p. 190. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 15 
 
 appeared on the third day, risen from the dead, as the holy 
 prophets and as a thousand other marvels connected with Him 
 had foretold. And the sect which received the name of 
 Christians from Him still exists." If the Jew Josephus had 
 written this, he would have been a Christian ; and as, since he 
 was a Jew, he could not have written thus, he must either have 
 said nothing of Jesus or have spoken of Him in hostile terms 
 which Christian copyists suppressed.^ 
 
 30. Another historian, Justus of Tiberias, who wrote at the 
 same period, and whose work Photius read in the ninth century, 
 says not a word of Jesus, which Photius attributes to his 
 "malevolence." 
 
 31. We still possess the considerable works of Philo, the 
 Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, 
 who survived Him. Philo never heard of Jesus, or at any rate 
 he does not appear to have done so, a fact which the proximity 
 of Jerusalem and Alexandria makes very singular. 
 
 32. The few words devoted to Jesus in the Talmud present 
 insuperable difficulties. They say, notably, that Rabbi Joshua 
 ben Perahyah fled to Alexandria with his pupil Jesus to escape 
 the persecution of the Jewish king Jannaeus (103-76 b.c). On 
 his return, Jesus founded a sect of apostate Jews. According 
 to this, there were disciples of Jesus nearly a century before the 
 Christian era ! How are we to explain the birth of such a 
 legend, however absurd, if the preaching of Jesus, at the period 
 assigned to it, had left any definite memories ':! 
 
 33. Suetonius, speaking of the events of the year 52 a.d., 
 says that Claudius banished the Jews from Rome, because they 
 were perpetually revolting at the instigation of Christ {impulsore 
 Chresto). He may have referred to some obscure Jew called 
 Chrestus ; but even if he meant Jesus, this curt allusion tells us 
 nothing of import. 
 
 34. The first non-Christian record of Jesus occurs in the 
 Annals of Tacitus (xv. 44), in connection with the Neronian 
 persecution. The emperor "inflicted cruel tortures on men 
 
 * A German historian has recently suggested (1921) that the passage in 
 question, reproducing the chief tenets of Christianity, was inserted by 
 Josephus himself in a late edition of his work in order to appeal to a new 
 class of readers (Christians of Jewish descent). 
 
16 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 hated for their crimes, called by the vulgar Christians. Christ, 
 from whom they took their name, had been put to death under 
 Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Repressed for a 
 time, this detestable superstition broke out again, not only in 
 Judaea, the fount of the evil, but at Rome, whither all irregu- 
 larities and infamies tend to gravitate." The authenticity of 
 these lines has been questioned, but quite groundlessly. How- 
 ever, when Tacitus wrote this (117 a.d.), there were Christians 
 throughout the Empire ; the three synoptical Gospels were in 
 existence, and perhaps even the Fourth Gospel. Tacitus knew — 
 perhaps through his friend the younger Pliny — of a tradition 
 concerning the death of Jesus ; he can hardly be said to 
 confirm it. 
 
 35. Jesus is alleged to have been crucified under Tiberius, by 
 order of Pontius Pilate, because He claimed to be the King of 
 the Jews. Tiberius was a suspicious sovereign, who insisted on 
 being kept informed of all that was happening in his Empire. 
 For instance, he ordered an inquiry to be held because some 
 sailors, passing along the coast of Greece, thought they heard 
 voices crying that the Great Pan was dead. Pontius Pilate 
 would have sent Tiberius a report on the death of Jesus, if only 
 to show his vigilance. The strongest proof of the non-existence 
 of this report is the fact that at the beginning of the second 
 century, the Christians themselves manufactured one which is 
 still extant, and which Justin and Tertullian believed to be 
 authentic ; and in the fourth century the pagans circulated 
 another, also a forgery, which Eusebius read. 
 
 36. Do we know anything definite as to the date of Christ's 
 birth and activity ? Matthew places His birth in the reign of 
 Herod, that is to say, at latest in the year 4 b.c. ; Luke dates 
 it at the time of a census which took place ten years after, in 
 the year 6 a.d. The same Luke says Jesus was thirty in the 
 fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, the year 29 of our era, 
 the date to which he assigns the baptism of Jesus by St. John ; 
 but Luke seems to have taken this date from a passage in 
 Josephus (which speaks of the death of John the Baptist in 
 connection with an event of the year 36) and to have allowed 
 for an interval of seven years between the preaching of John 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 17 
 
 the Baptist and the incident in question. Luke makes the 
 ministry of Jesus last only a year and a half, whereas, according 
 to John, it lasted three and a half years. Luke recounts an 
 episode in the childhood of Jesus, whereas the other evangelists 
 seem to have known nothing of this period of His life. John 
 makes the Jews say to Jesus, " thou art not yet fifty years old," 
 from which the early Church inferred that He was about forty- 
 nine at his death ; but in this case, if He was born in the year 
 4 B.C., He must have died in a.d. 45, not under Tiberius, but 
 under Claudius, and, indeed, the forged report of Pilate fabricated 
 by the Christians is addressed to Claudius. If, on the other 
 hand, Jesus was born in the year of the census (the year 6 a.d.), 
 and lived forty-nine years. He died in 55, and this opinion was 
 stoutly upheld by certain Christians of Jerusalem. Finally, 
 Eusebius mentions another false report ascribed to Pilate, 
 according to which Jesus was crucified in a.d. 21, which, remarks 
 Eusebius, is impossible, as we know from Josephus that Pilate 
 was not procurator at this period. Thus we see that even the 
 fact of the condemnation of Jesus under Pilate is not established, 
 though the earliest Christian credo (a.d. 100) rather suspiciously 
 insists upon it (I believe in God , . . and in Christ Jesus . . . 
 crucified under Pontius Pilate . . .). Why emphasise this if 
 there were no doubt about it ? That Pilate correctly appears 
 escorted by Annas and Caiaphas in Luke's Gospel proves only 
 one thing, namely, that Luke had read Josephus, or one of his 
 authorities. To sum up, we find that less than a century after 
 the Christian era, which tradition places four years after the 
 birth of Jesus, no one knew precisely when He was born, when 
 He taught, or when He died. 
 
 37. Did any one know with certainty how Jesus was 
 arrested, judged and put to death.? The accounts of the 
 Passion in the Gospels inspire confidence by their precision ; 
 but this impression is not proof against careful examination. 
 In the first place, these accounts show a bias; they try to 
 exonerate the Roman governor and to inculpate the Jews, which 
 is comprehensible enough at a period when the Church, turning 
 her back upon the Jews, was appealing to the Gentiles, but is 
 inconsistent with history. The weak Pilate of the Gospels, who 
 
18 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 allows himself to be swayed by the mob, gives it a choice 
 between Jesus and Barabbas, washes his hands of the blood he 
 is about to shed (a non-Roman custom), is a romantic figure 
 quite unlike the real, harsh Pilate described by Josephus and 
 Philo. In the second place, the date of Jesus' death on the 
 eve or day of the Passover is inadmissible ; the evident reason 
 for assigning it to this date was to connect it with the 
 sacrifice of the Pascal lamb. But we must also dwell on some 
 further difficulties involved in the Gospel narrative of the 
 Passion. 
 
 38. Judas of Kerioth, the traitor Apostle, is said to have 
 shown his master to the soldiers who came to arrest Him. But 
 as Jesus had just made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem and 
 was not in hiding, there was no necessity for a traitor to reveal 
 His presence. After the death of Jesus, remorseful Judas would 
 not keep the money he had received and hurled it into the 
 sanctuary ; the priests used it to purchase the potter's field, 
 henceforth called Aceldama, the field of blood. According to 
 the Acts, Judas bought that field himself and died there a 
 miserable death. Now, there are verses in the Psalms (xli. 9 i 
 Iv. 12) mentioning the ill-treatment of the Righteous One by 
 a "familiar friend"; there is a passage in Zechariah (xi. 12, 
 13) : " So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver, and 
 the Lord said to me : Cast it unto the potter . . . And I took 
 the thirty pieces of silver and cast them to the potter in the 
 house of the Lord." Whatever that may mean, it is the origin 
 of the legend, as proved by Acts i. 16 : " This scripture must 
 needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth 
 of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to 
 them that took Jesus." So the story of Judas is founded on 
 prophecy, not on fact. 
 
 39. The current belief that the Roman governor merely 
 ratified a sentence pronounced by a Jewish tribunal is manifestly 
 absurd. The Gospel narrative combines two traditions, one 
 attributing the sentence to the Romans, the other (probably 
 more recent) to the Jews. But if the Jews had condemned 
 Jesus, He would have been stoned, crucifixion being unknown 
 to Hebrew law. Now if Pilate caused a freeman to be scourged 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 19 
 
 and crucified, he must have had for that some more serious 
 reason than the alleged pretence of Jesus to Messiahship, a 
 thing that was of no concern to him. Was then Jesus con- 
 sidered a disturber of the peace, claiming some sort of temporal 
 power ? There is no trace whatever of this in the Gospels. 
 The more we admit that the teaching and conduct of Jesus 
 constituted a menace to Roman rule, the less do we understand 
 the silence of contemporary historians. The Crucifixion remains 
 a tragedy without a cause. 
 
 40. Nor can the episode of Barabbas be historic. We are 
 told that the Roman governor was in the habit of releasing a 
 prisoner on Easter Eve. He had a prisoner named Barabbas, 
 who had taken part in some insurrection and committed a 
 murder. (Neither the custom nor the revolt is mentioned 
 elsewhere.) The governor proposes to set Jesus free, but the 
 mob refuses Him and clamours for Barabbas, who is released. 
 But how could a Roman governor have been induced by a 
 Jewish mob to liberate a rebel and murderer who found 
 suspicious favour with that mob ? 
 
 The name of Barabbas has lent itself to ingenious hypo- 
 theses. We know from Philo that the populace of Alexandria, 
 wishing to deride the petty Jewish King Agrippa, treated as a 
 mock-king a fool called Karahas. That name being meaning- 
 less. Sir G. Frazer once proposed to read Barabbas, in Aramaic 
 "the son of the father." Moreover, we learn that about the 
 year 250 Origen read in a very old copy of St. Matthew's 
 Gospel that Barabbas was called Jesus Barabbas. So it might 
 be that Jesus was put to death, not instead of Barabbas, but hi 
 the character of a Barabbas, as an expiatory victim, the son 
 paying for the father. But this is very uncertain and, till new 
 evidence be forthcoming, must be merely noted. 
 
 41. Far greater importance attaches to texts concerning the 
 Babylonian and Persian feast of the Sacsea, and also the Roman 
 Saturnalia. At the Sacasa, there was a triumphal procession of 
 a condemned criminal dressed as a king, who, at the end of the 
 festival, was stripped of his finery, scourged, hanged or crucified. 
 About 300 A.D., at Durostolum on the Danube, the Roman 
 garrison, thirty days before the Saturnalia, elected by lot a 
 
20 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 mock-king identified with the king and god Saturnus, who 
 enjoyed royal honours and privileges, some of them of an 
 immoral character, during those thirty days; after which he 
 was compelled to kill himself on the altar of the king-god whom 
 he impersonated. A Christian soldier, Dasius, having been 
 elected, refused to comply with the indecent practices usual at 
 the feast and was put to death. Now, such a savage ritual 
 must have been very old ; compared with that of the Sacasa, 
 which is, of course, independent of it, it leads us to admit that 
 in certain popular cults, founded perhaps on totemism or 
 agrarian rites, a man was made to impersonate a king-god, 
 treated in derision as such and finally slain. Tlie story of the 
 mocking and scourging of Jesus (Matt, xxvii. 26-31) is indeed so 
 similar to the ritual of the Sacaea and Saturnalia that the 
 parallelism cannot be accidental. So we are at first sight 
 tempted to conclude that Pilate abandoned Jesus to the Roman 
 soldiers that they might treat Him as a mock-king, though the 
 season was not that of the Saturnalia. If that were the case, 
 the story given in the Gospels should be considered as demon- 
 strably true ; the writers, though unacquainted with the pagan 
 ritual, produced a narrative that conformed to it, simply by 
 stating the facts as they occurred. But serious arguments can 
 be brought against such a conclusion which, if verified, would 
 mean a triumph for the orthodox view. There is no trace of 
 revelry, an element not to be omitted in the honours rendered 
 by soldiers to a mock-king. The Roman governor, in a country 
 seething with rebellion, could not possibly have authorised his 
 guards to treat a rebel as a king ; such laxity, in the reign of 
 Tiberius, would have cost him dear. On the other hand, 
 supposing the first writer who related the death of Jesus had 
 lacked information on that subject, it is natural enough that he 
 should have taken as a model some very old Asiatic ritual 
 according to which a god-king was reverenced, derided, ill- 
 treated and finally put to death. The lack of evidence 
 concerning the ritual invites us to caution ; but J. J. Rousseau 
 was perhaps nearer the truth than he himself supposed when he 
 wrote : " If the death of Socrates is that of a sage, the death of 
 Jesus is that of a god." 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 21 
 
 42. What bearing on these questions have the Docetes,i the 
 most ancient Christian heretics, who contended that Jesus had 
 been but a phantom, that He had only assumed the semblance of 
 a body — and this, exclaims St. Jerome, when the blood of Jesus 
 was not yet dry in Judaea ? The great antiquity of the sect is 
 confirmed by two letters attributed to St. John, which are 
 partly directed against Docetism, and perhaps also by the 
 passage in the Fourth Gospel (xx. 24) concerning the incredulity 
 of St. Thomas. Works by Docetes have not come down to us 
 and we have no adequate knowledge of their tenets. One thing, 
 however, is certain : the so-called extreme Docetes denied the 
 Crucifixion. Irenasus (c. 180 a.d.) says that the heretic Basilides 
 (c. 125) related the Crucifixion as follows : Simon of Cyrene was 
 crucified by mistake "and Jesus himself took the form of 
 Simon, and stood by and laughed at the executioners." Foolish 
 as this may be, how could a fact be so ludicrously denied, if it 
 had been historically ascertained ? 
 
 43. A keen adversary of the Docetes, St. Ignatius, Bishop of 
 Antioch, writing about 110, says that the birth and death of 
 Jesus were unknown to Satan, the Prince of the world ; he also 
 speaks of certain persons who declared : " What we do not find 
 in the archives we cannot accept in the Gospel." Efforts have 
 been made to twist these texts, which are undoubtedly very odd, 
 but must be taken as they stand and interpreted honestly. 
 They seem to show that the Bishop of Antioch had to contend 
 with unbelievers inspired by the Devil, who stated that they 
 could find no evidences of the birth and death of Jesus in the 
 public archives (of Caesarea ?). Ignatius answered them only 
 with pious phrases ; after him, from the first half of the second 
 century, forgeries were concocted to refute them. 
 
 44. St. Paul preached " Christ crucified," not Gospel history. 
 He talked with men who had lived with Jesus, like Peter and 
 James ; but their recollections of the earthly life of the master 
 do not seem to have interested him. In his Epistles to distant 
 communities he hardly says anything about Jesus, but dwells 
 on Christ. We may nevertheless assert that the Epistles of 
 Paul are the best historical evidence we possess relating to 
 
 ^ From Greek dolccin, to appear. 
 
22 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Jesus, so far do all the rest fall short of the demands of criticism. 
 If these Epistles were not by St. Paul, or if the decisive passages 
 in them were spurious — of which we have, so far, no proof at 
 all — it would almost be a pardonable paradox to doubt the 
 historical existence of Jesus.^ All we can safely say is, that if 
 historical facts are imbedded in the Gospel narrative, they are 
 so overlaid with legend that it is impossible to extract from 
 them the elements of a scientific biography. 
 
 • * • • • 
 
 45. Many events in the life of Jesus are related in the 
 Gospels with the comment that they were fulfilments of 
 prophecy. The text quoted in the Gospels is the Greek version 
 of the Old Testament, the mistakes of which are accepted and 
 occasionally aggravated. Jesus was born of a " virgin," because 
 Isaiah was supposed to have said that " a virgin " would 
 conceive; in the Hebrew text, he says "a woman," the wife of 
 some Jewish king or prophet. Jesus is said to be " of Nazareth,"" 
 because a prophet foretold that the Messiah should be a 
 Nazarene (Matt. ii. 23) ; but Isaiah, who is invoked in this 
 connection, said nothing of the sort. A Nazarenos or Nazormos 
 was a man belonging to a holy community of Baptists, from the 
 Semitic root ns'r, meaning "to protect," which still survives in 
 the names of Syrian sects called Ncisoraje (Mandjeans) and 
 Nos'air'i. Jesus was called Nazarenus for some such reason 
 which the Gospel writers did not understand ; so they invented 
 the village of Nazareth, which appears in no text before the 
 Christian era. Jesus was born at Bethlehem because Micah (v. 2) 
 had foretold that the Messiah would come from that place. He 
 was taken by His parents into Egypt because Hosea wrote : 
 " Out of Egypt have I called my Son.''' All these coincidences 
 which seemed formerly not only to attest the veracity of the 
 Gospel narrative, but the superhuman character of the facts set 
 
 ^ Apart from the mysterious passage in Ignatius (§ 43), there is no trace 
 of this paradox till the eighteenth century, when it seems to have been current 
 in Bolingbroke's circle. Voltaire censured it, but not Volney and Dupu}'. 
 This explains why Napoleon, meeting Wieland in 1808, asked him if he 
 believed in the existence of Jesus. The same theory was iiropounded by the 
 Uerman critic Bruno Bauer (1842), who attributed the whole Gospel history 
 to one foi'ger, and, more recently, by manj^ writers, Robertson, Benj. Smith, 
 Drews, &c. But their wild hypotheses to account for the origin of the 
 "myth of Christ" have failed hitherto to convince competent scholars. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 23 
 
 forth in it, now furnish irrefragable proof of their uncertainty. 
 It sometimes seems as if a Greek writer, who knew nothino; of 
 Jesus, save that He was the Messiah, had taken the chief 
 elements of His biography from the Old Testament by torturing 
 the texts then considered as Messianic. But there is more than 
 this. In Isaiah (1. 6), the Righteous servant gives his back to 
 the smiters ; he hides not his face from shame and spitting ; 
 later on (liii. 3-12), he is a man of sorrows, bearing our griefs, 
 bruised for our iniquities, brought as a lamb to the slaughter, 
 numbered with the transgressors, cut off out of the land of the 
 living, "and he made his grave with the wicked and with the 
 rich in his death . . . ; yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him." 
 Here we have strange sayings which, like the famous passage in 
 Plato's Republic,^ may be derived from some myth of the 
 suffering Saviour and which were evidently seized upon to 
 compose the story of the Passion and Entombment. In 
 Psalm xxii. the Righteous complains that his enemies have cast 
 lots for his vesture, a detail which has found a place in the 
 account of the Passion, where it is introduced to "fulfil" the 
 prophecy. But the Righteous servant also says : " They pierced 
 my hands and my feet," i. c. they crucified me. Unless we use 
 two kinds of weights and measures, we must admit that this 
 verse of the Psalm (xxii. 16) may be the origin of the tradition 
 which declares that Jesus was crucified. If we do not admit it, 
 we come very near to believing in prophecy. What then, after 
 all we have said, remains unquestioned of the Gospel story, 
 from the stable at Bethlehem to the Cross of Golgotha ? 
 
 46. Christianity remains, which is not only a great institu- 
 tion, but the mightiest spiritual force which has ever transformed 
 sovils, a force which continues to evolve in them. Its influence is 
 due partly to the beauty, now idyllic, now tragic, of the legend, 
 but still more to what is called the morality of the Gospel, as 
 revealed in the parables and sayings attributed to Jesus. " The 
 spirit of the Gospel," as Abbe Loisy aptly says,^ " is the highest 
 
 1 Plato, RepuUic, II. p. 362 A. (H. Spens' transl., p. 42) : "The just man 
 will be scourged, tormented, fettered, have his eyes burn and lastly, haying 
 suffered all manners of evils, will be cruciiied." Unless it alluded to some- 
 thing of which we are ignorant this passage would be utterly absurd. 
 
 - Loisy, QueUiues Lettres, p. 71. 
 
24 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 manifestation of the human conscience seeking happiness in 
 justice." It is true that Christian moraHty is no more original 
 than is any other morality, religious or secular ; it is that of the 
 contemporary Jewish schoolmen, of a Hillel or a Gamaliel ; but 
 in the Gospels it appears divested of all scholasticism and 
 ritualistic pedantry, robust and simple as befits a doctrine 
 setting forth to conquer the world. It is the morality of the 
 school without the school, purified and distilled in ardent souls, 
 with all the charm and all the persuasive force of popular 
 conceptions. It is not social; it neglects the duties of man to 
 the city, because it invites to perfection, to individual purity, in 
 view of the Advent of the Lord and the Judgment, which were 
 considered imminent even by St. Paul ; but it prepares man to 
 carry out his social duties by condemning hatred and violence, 
 and enjoining fraternity. It is absurd to say that this morality 
 is against nature ; so is kindness. But Christian morality was 
 only the ideal rule of conduct of Christendom, a rule always 
 preached, but rarely obeyed, even by those who preached it. 
 Pity that St. Paul superimposed on these mild ethics the harsh 
 doctrine of original sin, redemption and grace, which gave birth 
 to eighteen centuries of arid disputation and still weighs like a 
 nightmare on humanity ! 
 
 • • • » • 
 
 47. The so-called apocryphal Gospels are of two kinds ; 
 the one class, described as dogmatic, relates the whole life of 
 Jesus, after the manner of the Synoptists ; the others, known 
 as legendary, deal only with episodes. The former, which the 
 Fathers of the Church in the third century frequently quote as 
 if they were of equal authority with the canonical writings, 
 were destroyed, no doubt deliberately, because they belonged to 
 schismatic sects. But in 1886 a portion of the Gospel of St. 
 Peter, comprising the Passion and Resurrection, was found in a 
 tomb in Egypt. This Gospel was probably identical with that 
 of the Egyptians, which the Fathers quoted, and of which they 
 have preserved extracts ; it was no doubt written in Egypt, 
 probably at Babylon (ancient Cairo). We have also some 
 fragments of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the loss of 
 which is especially to be regretted, because it was written for 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 25 
 
 the Judseo-Chri'stian communities of Palestine. The episode of 
 Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, which was inserted in 
 St. John's Gospel in the fourth century, Avas originally in this 
 (lospel. It should, no doubt, be distinguished from that of 
 the Ebionites {Ebionim, the poor), a Jewish sect anterior to 
 Christianity, which developed a gnostic doctrine. A con- 
 temporary of St. John, Cerinthus, of whom we know hardly 
 anything, was supposed to be the author of one Gospel ; at a 
 very early period the Gospel of St. John was attributed to him 
 and alleged to be a revised version of his Gospel. 
 
 48. The legendary Gospels which have come down to us are 
 expurgated gnostic writings ; all that has been left in them are 
 absurdities which are inoffensive to dogma, though singularly 
 repugnant to taste. In the Gospel of the Childhood, or of St. 
 Thomas, Jesus is a malicious and vindictive little demon ; the 
 miracles of the apocryphal Gospels are worthy of the Arabian 
 Nights. The result of the toleration shown by the Church for 
 these legends was that they were widely circulated and translated 
 into every language ; literature and art found inspiration in 
 them. Many popular incidents of Gospel history have no 
 authority but that of the apocryphal writers ; such are the 
 story of Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin, that of 
 her marriage, of the birth of Jesus in a cave, where he was 
 worshipped by an ox and an ass, of the descent of Jesus into 
 hell,i and of the death or trance of the Virgin. 
 
 49. In addition to these texts we have a considerable 
 collection of sayings (in Greek hgia) attributed to Jesus, some 
 reported by writers of the first century, others forming little 
 collections which have been discovered in Egypt in our own 
 days. The grains of gold in this Gospel dust are rare ; there is 
 indeed one very long sentence attributed to Jesus and recorded 
 by Papias, which is nothing but an absurdity from beginning 
 to end. Our Evangelists made a very happy choice among the 
 confused elements of tradition ; to appreciate their taste, we 
 have only to read the apocryphal Gospels. 
 
 50. The older parts of the Acts of the Apostles are by the 
 
 ^ The descent into hell, to which the First Epistle of Peter alludes 
 (iii. 18), has been generally accepted since the fourth century. 
 
26 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 same author as our Third Gospel ; they must have been written 
 about 80 A.D., probably in Rome. The compilation as we have 
 it contains some precious information concerning a portion of 
 St. Paul's journeys, taken apparently from an authentic journal 
 of Luke's ; these elements are distinguished from the rest by 
 the use of the word "we" in the narrative. The remainder, 
 grossly interpolated and altered, is very unequal in value, and 
 cannot be attributed to a disciple of Paul's, whose Epistles and 
 whose individual doctrine it completely ignores. The rivalry 
 of Peter and Paul is intentionally modified, in a spirit of 
 conciliation ; but this conciliation is a growth of theology, not 
 of history. The Paul of the Epistles is a very different man 
 from the Paul of the Acts. A Swiss theologian, in 1841, sup- 
 posed that the real object of the Acts was to show that there 
 was no cause of conflict between Christianity and the Roman 
 State, a theory that has been cleverly developed by Loisy 
 (1920) in an epoch-making work. 
 
 51. We have further a whole collection of apocryphal Acts 
 of various Apostles, Peter, Paul, Thomas, John, Andrew, and 
 Philip. They are romances full of marvels, amusing enough to 
 read, in which certain precise details attest a good knowledge 
 of history and geography. These texts, which have come down 
 to us in different languages, seem to have been derived from 
 expurgated editions of gnostic works. The Church permitted 
 them to be read on the same terms as the apocryphal Gospels, 
 but merely as a matter of curiosity. 
 
 The most attractive of these stories is that of Thekla. 
 This maiden, a member of a good family at Iconium, was 
 converted by the teaching of Paul, baptised herself, braved 
 all sorts of dangers, and ended by preaching Christianity at 
 Seleucia. Tertullian tells us (c. 200) that this story was 
 fabricated by an elder of Asia Minor, who, when convicted 
 of the fraud, confessed that he had perpetrated it "for love 
 of St. Paul." 1 There is, however, something suspicious in the 
 alleged confession, intended to discredit a very ancient narrative 
 which introduces a girl preaching and baptising, contrary to 
 the tenets of the Church. St. Paul's distrustful attitude 
 
 ^ Tertullian, De Bavtismo, 17. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 27 
 
 towards women may possibly be due to impatience with the 
 youthful presumption of his convert. 
 
 ■ • ■ • • 
 
 52. The Canon of the Church accepts fourteen Epistles of 
 St. Paul, one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the 
 Galatians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Colossians, two to 
 the Thessalonians and Timothy, one to Titus, one to Philemon, 
 one to the Hebrews. A school of criticism which sprang up in 
 Holland about 1885 denies the authenticity of all these writings. 
 Its principal argument is that in the communities Paul is 
 supposed to address a complexity and intensity of religious 
 life is implied which is inadmissible at the period. But what 
 do we know of the primitive history of these communities ? 
 All that can be conceded is that the whole of St. Paul's 
 Epistles have not come down to us as he wrote them. 
 
 53. The Epistle to the Hebrews is a theological dissertation 
 on the relations of the Law and the Gospels. Its attribution 
 to St. Paul is purely hypothetical. Tertullian ascribed it to 
 Barnabas, the companion of Paul, and Origen confessed that 
 the author was not known. But it is an ancient composition, 
 probably a little anterior to the year 70 a.d. 
 
 54. The Epistle to Titus and the two Epistles to Timothy 
 are generally known by the name of Pastoral Epistles, because 
 they are addressed to pastors of the Church. The attribution 
 of the Pastorals to St. Paul has been strenuously contested, yet 
 the spirit which animates them is certainly that of the Apostle ; 
 they are at least documents emanating from his school, if indeed 
 they are not modified versions of authentic letters. 
 
 55. The Epistle to Philemon is unimportant. The second 
 Epistle to the Thessalonians seems to have been recast. The 
 Epistle to the Colossians cannot be separated from the Epistle 
 to the Ephesians. At the time of Marcion (a.d. 150), the 
 latter was superscribed " to the Laodiceans," who were no doubt 
 the original recipients. There are reasons for contesting its 
 authenticity. The Epistle to the Philippians implies a state 
 of organisation in the Church which is not borne out by St. 
 Paul's other writings ; but good judges believe it to be genuine. 
 
 56. The four great Epistles, to the Romans, the Corinthians 
 
28 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 (1 and 2) and to the Galatians are the most important monu- 
 ments of that Pauline doctrine which the Apostle himself, 
 quoting the Greeks, called the " foolishness " of the Cross 
 (1 Cor. i. 18-23). They are difficult texts, so rugged in style 
 and capricious in composition, that they make us wonder how 
 the recipients can have understood them. At one point 
 Paul rises to great heights in an eloquent passage on charity 
 (1 Cor. xiii.) in the midst of an exhortation to purity of life; 
 here and there his atrabilious genius suggests to him observa- 
 tions of the profoundest psychology, verbal felicities worthy of 
 the greatest writers. But generally speaking his thought seems 
 to elude us just as we are about to grasp it ; this Jew, though 
 he wrote in Greek, had retained a purely Oriental method of 
 expression. If we read the Epistles without a commentary, 
 we are in peril of a good deal of lost labour and of ultimate 
 bewilderment. 
 
 57. A vast literature has grown up round these Epistles. 
 When minutely studied, they seem to reflect the evolution of 
 St. Paul's thought, as it gradually diverged from Judaism 
 under Greek-Asiatic influences, not literary, but popular and 
 mystical. St. Paul teaches that sin and death came into the 
 world by Adam (whom Jesus never mentioned), and that Christ 
 came to redeem mankind by His voluntary oblation of Himself. 
 Jesus was the visible image of the invisible God ; He was the 
 Son of God, although of human birth (Paul knew nothing of 
 the miraculous affiliation). The death of Jesus connoted that 
 of sin ; the new life, heralded by the resurrection of Jesus, was 
 to be the reign of holiness. In due time the faithful would be 
 caught up into heaven with the Lord ; then the dead would 
 arise and would be judged according to their deserts. Baptism 
 and faith in Jesus Christ are essential to salvation ; the works 
 prescribed by the Law of Moses are not enough, for Jesus has 
 redeemed us fi'om the curse of the Law. But faith is not 
 within reach of every man. God chooses his elect as seems 
 good to him. This is the doctrine of predestination by grace, 
 which, however, St. Paul has not very clearly formulated (see 
 Rom. ix. 11 and xi. 5). 
 
 68. Ever since St. Paul, the ruling idea of Christianity has 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 29 
 
 been that of the redemption of man, guilty of a prehistoric 
 fault, by the voluntary sacrifice of a superman. This doctrine 
 is founded upon that of expiation — a guilty person must suffer 
 to atone for his fault — and that of the substitution of victims — 
 the efficacious suffering of an innocent person for a guilty one. 
 Both are at once pagan and Jewish ideas ; they belong to the 
 old fundamental errors of humanity. Yet Plato knew that the 
 punishment inflicted on a guilty person is not, or should not be 
 a vengeance : it is a painful remedy imposed on him for his own 
 benefit and that of society. At about the same period, Athenian 
 law laid down the principle that punishment should be as 
 personal as the fault. Thus St. Paul founded Christian theology 
 on two archaic ideas which had already been condemned by 
 enlightened Athenians of the fourth century before our era, 
 ideas which no one would dream of upholding in these days, 
 though the structure built upon them still subsists. 
 
 59. In practice, Paul did not forget that he was addressing 
 Jewish communities which already included many baptised 
 pagans. The faithful are enjoined not to hold aloof from the 
 Gentiles, but only from their sacrifices and impurities ; they 
 may disregard the alimentary restrictions of the Law. " Give 
 none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the 
 Church of God" (1 Cor. x. 32). The virtue he enjoins is, 
 in the main, of no very exalted order ; there is a Pauline 
 opportunism. Such is his theory of marriage ; it is better 
 to remain celibate, but he who marries does well ; a widow is even 
 authorised to take a second husband, for a regular union is 
 always preferable to disorderly life (1 Cor. vii. 27-40). For the 
 rest, he reminds his flock that the end of the world is at hand ; 
 and they should behave as if it were imminent ; " the time is 
 short" (1 Cor. vii. 29). The theologians who quote and com- 
 mentate St. Paul, like those who expound the Gospels, often 
 forget that these documents were written by men to whom the 
 second coming of Christ and the final catastrophe were matters 
 of daily hope or fear. If the Church contrived to build a 
 lasting edifice upon such foundations, it was because, with 
 necessary lack of logic, she transformed them rapidly and 
 completely. 
 
30 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 60. The chronology of Paul's life is very obscure; the 
 following are probable dates : 
 
 A.I). 36. The Conversion of Paul. He goes to Arabia. 
 
 39. Paul at Jerusalem. He preaches in Syria and 
 
 Cilicia. 
 49. The Conference at Jerusalem. Paul in Galatia and 
 
 Troas. 
 51. Paul in Macedonia. 
 
 53. Paul at Corinth and in Achaia. 
 
 54. Paul at Jerusalem, Antioch and Ephesus. 
 
 57. Paul in Macedonia, Achaia, Philippi and Jerusalem. 
 
 58-60. Paul in prison at Csesarea. 
 
 61-63. Paul at Rome, where he is put in prison. 
 
 64 (?). Death of Paul at Rome. 
 
 61. The group of letters attributed to St. Peter, St. John, 
 St. Jude and St. James are called the Catholic Epistles, because 
 thev are addressed to the Church at large. Not one of them is 
 authentic. The First Epistle of Peter, dated from Babylon, is 
 thoroughly Pauline in spirit; it was perhaps fabricated with 
 a view to suggest that Peter had lived at Babylon (ancient 
 Cairo), and that this community was more ancient than that 
 of Alexandria, which claimed to have been founded by St. 
 Mark. The author has thus helped to accredit the legend 
 of the coming of St. Peter to Rome, which is called Babylon 
 in the Apocalypse. It need hardly be pointed out that this 
 satirical designation, comprehensible enough in an invective, 
 would be absurd in the heading of a letter. The Second Epistle 
 of Peter is also Grjrco-Egyptian, and very near in date to the 
 apocryphal Gospel of St. Peter (about 1 30). The three Epistles 
 ascribed to St. John are probably by the same John as the 
 Gospel, but not by the Apostle ; in the last two, the author 
 speaks of himself as the elder (presbyter). The Epistle of Jude 
 is a little homily against the heretics, written in Egypt after 
 the year 100, in the same tone as the Second Epistle of St. 
 Peter ; it could not possibly be by its reputed author, Judas, 
 the brother of Jesus. The Epistle of James upholds the 
 doctrine of salvation by works, in opposition to St. Paul's 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS SI 
 
 theory ; this is why Luther characterised it disdainfully as 
 the epistle of straw. St. Jerome knew that it was not by the 
 brother of Jesus. 
 
 62. One of these forgeries was subjected to an interpolation 
 of later date, probably by the Spaniard Priscillian (c. 380). In 
 chap. V. of the First Epistle of St. John are these words : 
 " There are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, and 
 the Word, and Holy Ghost : and these three are one."" If these 
 two verses were authentic, they would be an affirmation of the 
 doctrine of the Trinity dating from the first century, at a time 
 when the Gospels, the Acts and St. Paul ignore it. But it has 
 been demonstrated that these verses were an interpolation, for 
 they do not appear in the best manuscripts, notably all the 
 Greek manuscripts down to the fifteenth century. The Roman 
 Church refused to bow to evidence. "How," she argued, "if 
 these verses were an interpolation, could the Holy Spirit, who 
 guides and directs the Church, have allowed her to regard this 
 lofty affirmation of the Trinity as authentic, and permitted its 
 insertion in the official edition of the sacred books 'i " ^ The 
 Congregation of the Index, on January 13, 1897, with the 
 approbation of Leo XIII., forbade any question as to the 
 authenticity of the text relating to the "three heavenly 
 witnesses." It showed in this connection a wilful ignorance to 
 which Job's rebuke (xiii. 7) is specially applicable : " Will ye 
 talk deceitfully for God > " 
 
 63. The Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John was written, 
 according to tradition, in the Isle of Patmos, to which John had 
 been banished by Domitian. It is a glorification of the Lamb 
 (Jesus), and a prediction of the downfall of Rome, which is 
 called " Babylon the Great, the mother of abominations of the 
 earth, drunken with the blood of the saints and martyrs of 
 Jesus" (xvii. 5, 6). At the end of one thousand years, after 
 the triumph of the Church, the dead are to rise again. Satan 
 will be released from his prison, and God will send down fire 
 from heaven ; this was the origin of the so-called millenarian 
 beliefs, which have seduced a large number of visionaries. The 
 Apocalypse cannot be the work of the Apostle John ; it is 
 
 ^ See Houtin, La Question biblique au XIX^™' siecle, p. 220. 
 
32 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 scarcely possible that it can be by the same hand as the Fourth 
 Gospel and the three Johannine Epistles. The author, though 
 very personal in his style and composition, has made use of 
 more ancient documents of the same stamp. The basis is a 
 Jewish diatribe against Nero, who seems to be designated by 
 the "number of the Beast," 666, the sum of the letters of the 
 Emperor's name, according to their numeral value in Hebrew 
 (xiii. 18) ; but the Christian revision must certainly have been 
 carried out under Domitian — who was called the bald Nero — in 
 93, for there is a reference to the great crisis in the wine 
 industry owing to a glut (chap. vi. 6), which, according to 
 pagan texts, took place in a.d. 92. 
 
 64. Tlie author of Revelation calls himself John the Apostle, 
 and addresses the Seven Churches of Asia ; as he was not the 
 Apostle John, who died perhaps in Palestine about 44, he was a 
 forger. Many details, unintelligible at first sight, have been 
 recently shown to refer to astrology ; but among such 
 absurdities and hosts of others, there are certain sublime 
 passages which have become classic in all literatures. The 
 Church hesitated to admit this book into the Canon ; it was the 
 name of John which decided the matter. 
 
 65. Since the year 1892, we have been in possession ot 
 an Apocalypse attributed to St. Peter, discovered in Egypt, 
 together with the Gospel known as that of St. Peter. It is 
 a vision of the rewards and punishments of the other world, 
 dating from about the year 130, and interesting as the first 
 Christian essay in eschatology (the science of the Last Things). 
 It is derived from popular Jewish and Greek sources, and 
 shows striking analogies with the Orphic doctrines. The 
 author was an Egyptian Jew, of Hellenistic tendencies. This 
 Apocalypse was probably produced in the same literary factory 
 as the two letters of St. Peter and his Gospel, which are also 
 Graeco-Egyptian forgeries. 
 
 66. Certain writings not included in the Canon have 
 exercised so strong an influence that they demand a brief 
 mention here. 
 
 They are in the first place letters. (1) A letter attributed 
 to the Apostle Barnabas, the companion of St. Paul ; it is 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 83 
 
 posterior to the fall of Jerusalem, and very hostile to the Jews 
 in tone ; this again is a forgery, made in Egypt. (2) The 
 First Epistle of Clement, Bishop of Rome, to the Corinthians ; 
 this is perhaps the work of a Hellenistic Jew, a freeman of the 
 Consul Flavius Clemens, who was a Christian or a Jew. It is 
 interesting to note at this early period (c. 100 a.d.) the moral 
 influence exercised by the Church of Rome upon a Greek 
 Church. (3) The so-called Second Epistle of Clement is a 
 homily by another author, sometimes attributed to Clement of 
 Alexandria. (4) The epistle of the disciple of John the Elder, 
 Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was martyred in a.d. 155, 
 at the age of eighty-six. This letter is addressed to the 
 Philippians, and is probably authentic. (5) Seven very in- 
 structive letters attributed to Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, 
 who was martyred under Trajan. Ignatius is supposed to have 
 written them during his journey from Antioch to Rome, to 
 communities which had received him cordially ; he warns them 
 against schisms, Docetism and Judaism ; these communities 
 were governed by Bishops. The first mention of the Gospels, 
 in the sense of a history of Jesus, occurs in one of these letters 
 (that to the Smyrnaeans). The authenticity of these letters has 
 been denied, but not convincingly ; it is by no means impossible 
 that the episcopate may have been organised in Greek territory 
 as early as the year 100. 
 
 67. The Pastor of Hernias is a long and very tedious work 
 which Clement of Alexandria and Origen believed to be 
 "inspired." The Pastor is the guardian angel of the writer, 
 who has had visions, and reveals them to bring back the faithful 
 from error. Hermas, born in Greece, and sometime a slave in 
 Rome, had obtained his freedom, and was living in the city 
 with his family. The Pastor was probably written not much 
 later than the year 100 a.d. 
 
 68. It was believed in Rome, in the third century, that after 
 Pentecost the Apostles had drawn up a joint confession of faith 
 or Syvibol, which had to be recited by all adults before receiving 
 the rite of baptism. This is obviously impossible, but the most 
 ancient Symbol of this nature, known to Justin in 150, was a 
 product of the Church of Rome shortly before the year 100. 
 
34 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 69. We possess certain fragments of a work called the 
 Preaching or Doctrine of St. Peter, which purports to be 
 addressed to the heathen by the Apostle ; this is another 
 Graeco-Roman forgery dating from the end of the first century. 
 
 70. A fortunate discovery in a Gi'eek library (1883) revealed 
 to us the Doctrine of the Apostles or D'ldache, a manual of the 
 Christian life both individual and social, a document of the first 
 importance to the student of the primitive communities, their 
 organisations and rites. The Apostles, of course, had nothing 
 to do with it ; but the Didache, a compilation from ancient 
 catechisms, seems to have been drawn up in Syria before a.d. 150. 
 
 71. An important group of documents — called the pseudo- 
 Clementine writings, because they were falsely attributed to 
 Clement, Bishop of Rome — comprises twenty homilies and a 
 didactic tale entitled The Recognitions. The ground-work of 
 these compositions is almost identical. Clement, instituted 
 Bishop of Rome by St. Peter, describes his conversion, on 
 quitting the school of philosophy, to St. James, the head of the 
 Church at Jerusalem. Having learnt that the Son of God was 
 born in Judaea, he set out for that country, met Barnabas at 
 Alexandria, and Peter at Csesarea ; the latter caused him to 
 witness his dispute with Simon Magus and initiated him into 
 his doctrine. Simon, vanc^uished, was pursued by Peter and 
 Clement, who overtook him at Laodicea, and reopened the 
 debate with him. Finally, Peter departed to Antioch, and 
 there founded a community.^ The title of Recognitions is 
 based on an episode in the seventh book : Matidia, the mother 
 of Clement, had quitted Rome for Athens ; she is discovered 
 there with her sons by her husband, who had set out in search 
 of her. In all this farrago, Paul is not even mentioned ; it is 
 a frankly Judaeo-Christian document. The Homilies and the 
 Recognitions have a common source dating probably from about 
 A.D. 150-200 ; the compilation was made in the third century. 
 
 72. There is no more mysterious figui'e than that Simon, 
 the magician of Samaria, whom we find opposing St. Peter in 
 the Acts, and whom Justin, the Clementine writings and the 
 apocryphal Acts represent as a very important personage at 
 
 ^ See Renan, Origines, vol. vii. p. 77. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 35 
 
 Rome. There, under Claudius or Nero, he rivals Peter in 
 supernatural power, and ends by promising to fly through the 
 air before the Emperor ; but a prayer offered up by St. Peter 
 deprives him of his power ; he falls and breaks his neck. 
 Justin (a.d. 150) asserts that he saw his tomb on the island 
 in the Tiber, with this inscription : "To Simon, the holy god." 
 This shows the ignorance and carelessness of Justin ; the 
 inscription in question has been found, and bears a dedication 
 to Semo Sancus, an ancient Roman god whom a professor of 
 rhetoric like Justin should certainly have known. But who was 
 this Simon, the divine honours accorded to whom in Samaria are 
 attested .'' The question has never been answered. In the 
 nineteenth century, the school of Tubingen insisted a good deal 
 on the traditions relative to the rivalry of Peter and Simon ; it 
 suggested that Simon represented St. Paul, and hence drew the 
 somewhat exaggerated conclusion that the rivalry between the 
 two Apostles degenerated into personal hatred. Their theo- 
 logical hatred, evident in the epistles of Paul, went far enough. 
 Not only did the Judaising group at Jerusalem organise a kind 
 of mission against Paul, but false epistles were circulated under 
 his name (2 Thess. ii. 2). He accordingly denounces his 
 adversaries as dogs, liars, children of the devil and forgers. It 
 is necessary to call attention to these passages at the close of a 
 chapter in which, examining the early books of the Church, we 
 have found forgeries on every hand. 
 
 73. I might now consider many questions connected with 
 the above : the first Apologies addressed by Christians to the 
 pagan emperors, the Acts of the martyrs, very few of which are 
 authentic, the Apostolic Constitutions ; but this would be to 
 trench on the domain of literary history. I will conclude with 
 a few words concerning Antichrist {i.e. the adversary opposed to 
 Christ). This famous name first appears in the Epistles of St. 
 John, but the idea is much more ancient ; it is that of the 
 Babylonian Tiamat opposed to Marduk. The principle of evil 
 is substituted for the dragon of the primitive myth, and between 
 this and the principle of good a terrible conflict will be waged 
 before the coming of the kingdom of God. Traces of this 
 conception are to be found in Ezekiel, in Daniel, in Baruch, and 
 
86 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 in the Apocalypse. It is referred to in the Second Epistle to the 
 Thessalonians (ii. 3) : " That day shall not come, except there 
 come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the 
 son of perdition." Good being personified in Christ, evil was 
 personified in Antichrist : "For many shall come in my name," 
 said Jesus, " saying, I am Christ ; and shall deceive many. And 
 ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars ; see that ye be not 
 troubled ; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is 
 not yet. . . . All these are the beginning of sorrows. . . . And 
 many false prophets shall arise. . . . Then shall be great tribu- 
 lation, such as was not since the beginning of this world to this 
 time. . . . Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in 
 heaven ; and then shall all the earth mourn, and they shall see 
 the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and 
 great glory" (Matt. xxiv.). 
 
 74. These terrifying words have borne terrible fruit. From 
 Nero onwards, there has been no conspicuous adversary of the 
 Church who has not been assimilated to the Antichrist whose 
 appearance is to inaugurate an era of catastrophe. Luther 
 identified the Pope of Rome with Antichrist ; millions of 
 English people recognised him in Napoleon. We have already 
 seen how in the Apocalypse the beast was Nero. After the 
 death of this wretch there was a rumour that he had fled to the 
 Parthians, and that he would come back. There is perhaps an 
 allusion to this legend in the Apocalypse itself and in the First 
 Epistle of St. John (iv. 3) : " Every spirit that confesseth not 
 Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God ; and this is that 
 spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come ; 
 and even now already it is in the world." Here, Antichrist is 
 already assimilated to heresy. In the Sibylline oracles fabricated 
 by the Jews of Alexandria, the name of Antichrist does not 
 occur, but the Roman Empire, the object of a ferocious hatred, 
 takes its place. Popular Jewish literature gave the name of 
 Koimdus to this enemy of God, and described him as a hideous 
 giant, the offspring of a stone virgin. The Christians in general 
 reserved the name of Antichrist for heretics and schismatics ; 
 but in the fourth century the idea still prevailed that the coming 
 of Antichrist would be the awakening and return of Nero. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 37 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The most complete repertory is Hauck'.s Real-Encydop. filr protest anhschc 
 Throloqie (3rd ed., 24 vols.) ; the most convenient is Dia Rdigion m GeschicMe 
 xL-Ml GcqeuwaH, 5 vols., 1909-1913. Various other encyclopedias and diction- 
 aries (SchafF-Herzog, Hastings, Lichtenberger, Lncyd. Britann, CafJwh,: 
 Emvd., etc.) can be commended to students. There are special dictionaries of 
 Christian biography (down to Charlemagne) by Smith, of Christian archaeology 
 by Martignyf Smith, and Dom Cabrol (in progress), of Catholic theology by 
 Vacant (in progress), etc. Among periodicals I may mention the Expositor, 
 the Revue bibliquc and the Theologische Lileraturzdtung (bibliographical). 
 
 Renan, Orlqinc^ da Chnstianisme, 8 toIs., 1863-1883 (with a good index) ; 
 Duchesne Eistoire andenne dt UEqlise, vols. i. and ii., 1906-1908 ; Cuignebert, 
 Mamid d'Jndoire aadenne du Ckristianisme, 1906 ; Wendland Die hdknutisch- 
 romisdie Kvltur in ihrcn Bezidmngtn zit Judnithum uml Christcntimm, IJU/ ; 
 Conybeare, Christian Oriqiiis, 1909; The Historical Christ, 1914. There is a 
 carefully selected bibliography in Nicolardot, Les trois premiers Evangdislcs, 
 
 2.' Loisv, Mvsth-es vaicns et Myst. chrdien, 1919 (cf. RnK archiol, 1919, ii. 
 p. 384) ; W. Bousset, Geschichtc des Christiisglaubens, 1913 (cf. Lev. critique, 
 
 ^^^3 Loi^y Hist du canon du N. T., 1891 ; Th. Zahn, Gesch. des N. T. 
 Kanons, 2nd ed., 1904 ; J. Leipoldt, same title, 2 vols., 1907-1908. 
 
 5 Text of the Fragmentum Muraturianum (and of most of the other docu- 
 ments of the primitive church) in Rauschen, Florilegium patnsticum, fasc. lu., 
 
 11. M. Nicolas, Utiides critiques sur la Bible, vol. ii., 1864 (old, but still 
 
 ''^''l3"^E"preusschen, Antileqomcna, 2nd ed., 1905 (fragments of the lost 
 Gospels and quotations from the Fathers, with German trans ation). 
 
 14. Ad, Jtilicher, Einldtuvg in das N.T. 6th ed., 1915 (Lnglish transl) ; 
 E. Renan, Les ^vangiles, 1877 ; Loisy, Les Ecangiln synoptiques,2 vols., 1J07 ; 
 Wellhausen, Einleitung in die -^ erden Ev., 1905; Koltzmann Ilcmdeomwentar 
 zum N. T., 3rd ed., 1901 d seq ; H. Weinel, Theologie d,s AT 2nd ed 1913 , 
 A. RevilleV&H., 2nd ed., 1906; A. Loisy, Jaus, 1910; P. Wevnle Qiiellen 
 des LebenJesu, 1906 ; Schmiedel, art. (?o.y)cfe in Cheyne ; Schweitzer, Geschichfe 
 der Leben-Jesu-Forschimg, IdlS. ^ ., 
 
 17. Preusschen, op. cit. (13), in Greek and German ; Loisy, Evangiles 
 sy7ioptiqucs, \o\. i. {in French). , t i ik ioas 
 
 18. L. Venard, Les Ev. synoptiques (in Rev. du Clcrgi, July lo, 1908, 
 
 ^* 186." B. W. Bacon, Is Mark a Roman Gospdt \%\^. 
 
 \M. A. Harnack, Lukas der Arzt, 1906 ; Burkitt, The Gospel History, 1906 
 (connection between St. Luke and Josephus) ; Lagrange Ev. sdon Lur 
 1921 ; P. C. Sense (pseudonym of Lyons), Origin of the Third Gospel, 19U1 (the 
 
 Luke of Marcion). „ 
 
 18/. Loisy, Le quatrihne Emngile 1903 (1922); Wei hausen ^«' 4 ^^^Jr., 
 1908; works of B. Bacon (1910), C. Clemen (1912), M. W. Bauer (1912j, on 
 
 the same. , . , , „„, 
 
 21. Saintyves, Le Fierges mires et les naissances miraculeuses, 1901. 
 
 22. A. CauBse, UAvolution du messianisme, 1908. 
 
 26. Saintyves, Le miracle d la critique histurique, 1907. ^ ^ , „ 
 
 29. Interpolations in the MSS. of the Slav translations of Josephus : l>ev. 
 
 crit., 1906, ii. 447; J. Frei, Die Probleme des Lndeiisgc.chidde l^Q^.-l^. 
 
 Reinach, Joslphe sur Je's«s (in Rev. des Etudes juives, vol. xxxv. 1897) ; JNoraen, 
 
 Niue Jahrb., 1913, p. 637 ; Laqueur, Josephus, 1921. 
 
38 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 30. Photii Bihliotlicca, ed, Bekker, cod. 3.3. 
 
 32. H. Strack, Jcs2is nach jUdischen Angaben, 1910; W. Bauer, Lcben Jesu, 
 1909. 
 
 .35. Curiosity of Tiberius: S. R., CuUes, vol. iii. p. 16. 
 
 36. Chapman in Journ. of Theological Studies, July and October, 1907 ; cf. 
 S. R., Cultes, vol. iii. p. 21. 
 
 38. Art. Judas in Cheyne. 
 
 39. Goguel, Erv. hist, rclig. 1910, p. 165 ; Juster, Les Juifs dans V Empire, 
 1914, vol. ii. p. 135. 
 
 40. Frazer, Golden Bough, 2nd ed., iii. p. 191. 
 
 41. S. Reinach, Cultes, i. p. 232 ; Lagrange, Bern, svr VOrpheus, 1910. 
 
 42. Art. Docciism in Hastings, Encycl of Bel. , vol. iv. 
 
 43. S. Reinach, OuUcs, iv. p. 200. 
 
 44. Conybeare, The Historical Christ, 1914 ; Guignebert, Brohleme dc J6siis, 
 1921 ; Loisy, Bcv. crit. 1916, ii. p. 72. 
 
 45. Strauss, Lchen Jesu, gives all the reputed prophecies. — E. Carus Selvyn, 
 The Oracles in the N. T. , 1912 ; Rendel Harris, Origin of the Doctrine of Trinity, 
 1919 (a very early collection of prophecies from the 6. T., used by Christian 
 preachers before the Gospels). — On Psalm xxii. S. Reinach, Cultes, ii. p. 437 ; 
 iii. p. 20 ; iv. p. 188. 
 
 46. Christian morals : Loisy, Bev. hist. litt. relig., 1920, p. 157. 
 
 47. E. Hennecke, Handhuch zu, den N. T. Aimkryphen, 1904 ; M. Lepin, 
 iSoang. canoniqucs et iSvang. apocryphes, 1907 ; A. Robinson, The Gospel accord- 
 ing to Beter and the Brvelation ofBeter, 1892 {cf. S. R., Cultes, vol. iii. p. 284) ; 
 identity of the Gospels of Peter and of the Egyptians : Volter, in Zeitschrift 
 fur N. T. Wissenschaft, 1905, p. 368.— Attribution of the Fourth Gospel to 
 Cerinthus : P. C. Sense (Lyons), The Fourth Gospel, 1899. 
 
 48. Roberts, Apocryphal Gospels and Bevelatiuns, 1890 (English translation) ; 
 M. Nicolas, Etudes sur les Evangilcs a2wcryphes, 1866; P. Peeters, L'ivangile 
 de VEnfance, 1914. 
 
 49. Griffinhoofe, The unwritten Sayings of Christ, 1903. 
 
 50. A. Harnack, Die Ajtostelgeschichte, 2nd ed., 1911 ; E. Norden, Agnostos 
 Theos, 1913; Loisy, Les Actes des Ap., 1920; Goguel, same subject, 1922; 
 Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, The Acts, 1920. 
 
 51. Lipsius, Dit apokryphen Ajmstelgeschichten, 3 vols., 1883—1890. — Acts of 
 Andrew and of Matthias: S. R., Cultes, i. p. 395; Thekla, ibid., iv. p. 229; 
 L. Vouaux, Actes de Baul, 1913. 
 
 52. W. Ramsay, S. Baul, 1895 ; A. Sabatier, Vapdtrc Baul, 1896 ; Goguel, 
 Vapotre Baal, 1904 ; A. Deissmann, Licht von Osten, 1908 (style of the Epistles 
 compared with pagan documents of the same period) ; A. Schweitzer, 
 Geschichte der Baulus-Forschuvg, 1911. — Supposed influence of the Pagan 
 mysteries on Paul: Renan, Etudes, 1864, p. 58; Bevue du Clergi, April 1, 
 1913 ; Loisy, Les Mysteres paiens et le Myst. chriticn, 1919. — See also Loisy, 
 Bev. hist. litt. relig., 1921-2, and his ed. of Galatians, 1916. 
 
 58. Aug. Sabatier. La doctrine de Vexpiation et son Evolution (in Etudes de 
 thMo'iie, 1901, p. 1) ; Rashdall, The Idea of Atonement, 1919. — On the Greek 
 idea of responsibility, first collective and then individual : Glotz, La soUdarite 
 de lafamillc dans le droit criminel, 1904. 
 
 60. Art. Chronolociy in Cheyne (p. 812^ ; Bev. du Clergi, October 15, 1913. 
 
 61. T. Calmes, Epiltres caAholiques, 1905 ; Reuss, La Bible, vol. xv. On 
 the Epistles of Peter: S. R., Fuv. archiol., 1908, i. p. 150; E. Robson, 
 Second Epistle, 1915. 
 
 63. Art. Ajiocalypse, in Cheyne. — Astrology: F. Boll, Aus der Offenba.rung 
 JohannL, 1914; see Loisy, Bev. hist. litt. relig. 1922, p. 178. — On the date: 
 S. R., Cultes, vol. ii. p. 356. —On the death of John: Cheyne, art. John, 
 p. 2509. 
 
 65. S. R. , Cultes, vol. iii. p. 284, and the ed. of Robinson, Lods, etc. 
 
 66. Loisy, Bev. hist. litt. relig., 1921, p. 305. — On the primitive hierarchy: 
 J. R^ville, Orig. de I'dpiscopat, 1894 ; Batiffol, Etudes d'histoire, p. 223. 
 
 67. A. Lelong, Le Basteur d'Uermas, 1912. 
 
CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 89 
 
 68. F. Kattenbusch, Das apostol. Symbol, 2 vols., 1894-1900 ; Vacandard, 
 Le symbole des ap6lres (in Eludes dc critique, 1906, p. 1 et seq.). 
 
 70. Kruger, AUchristliche Literatur, 1895, pp. 38, 40 ; Massebieau, Venscignc- 
 ment des apotres, 1884; Loisy, Rev. hist. Hit. relig., 1921, p. 443. 
 
 71. H. Waitz, Die Pseudoklenientinen, 1904; art. Clementinen in Hauck. 
 
 72. Alfaric, Simon le magicien, 1922. 
 
 73. Apologies: Kruger, Altchristl. Litcralur, 189.5, p. 60 ct seq. ; A. Puech, 
 Les Jpologisies grecs, 1912.— Acts of the martyrs : Cabrol, art. Actes ; Hauck, 
 art. Acta m.artyntm ; Dufourcq, Les " Gesta viartyrum" romains, 3 vols., 
 1900-1907.— Antichrist : Renan, I' Antichrist, 1873; art. Antichrist, in Hauck 
 and the Jewish Enrycl. 
 
 74. H. Preuss, Die VorsteUuvgen vom Antichrist im svdteren Mittelalter, 
 1906. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CHRISTIANITY : FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 
 
 First Christian communities — The Preaching of St. Paul. — Particularism and 
 universalism— The Gnostics — Organisation of communities — The gift of 
 tongues or glossolaly — The function of the Jewish synagogues — Persecu- 
 tion of Christians at Rome — Pliny's letter to Trajan — ^Iotives for the 
 persecutions — The martyrs — Cliristian virtues— Heresies ; the influence of 
 heretics on the Church — The concentration of the spiritual power — 
 Montanism — Persecutions under Decius and Diocletian — Constantine and 
 the edict of toleration — Persecution of pagans by Christians— The Dona- 
 tist schism — Christian Monachism — Cradual changes in the Church — 
 Arius and Athanasius ; the dogma of the Trinity — The first murder for 
 error of opinion : Priscillian — Monophysite heresy — The Coptic Church — 
 St. Augustine and the doctrine of Purgatory — St. Jerome — St. Gregory 
 Nazianzen — St. Basil — St. John Chrysostom — St. Ambrose — The growth 
 of luxury in the Church. 
 
 1. The Jewish sect which proclaimed Jesus its master developed 
 
 mainly in two small groups, one in Galilee, the other in Judaea. 
 
 It was in Judaea, at Jerusalem, that the Apostles lived. While 
 
 waiting for the glorious return of the Messiah, they organised 
 
 their body with a view to the Kingdom of Heaven. It soon 
 
 appeared necessary not to allow the double burden of preaching 
 
 and distributing alms to rest upon the same men. For the 
 
 latter task, deacons were in.stituted, among them a hellenising 
 
 Jew named Stephen, who was accused of blasphemy by the 
 
 orthodox Jews and stoned. He is called the Proto-mariyr by the 
 
 Church. This execution, which was followed by a persecution, 
 
 accentuated the opposition between the synagogue and the 
 
 dissenters ; it was favourable to the propaganda of the latter, 
 
 inasmuch as it caused their dispersal. This propaganda, chiefly 
 
 among the Jewish Hellenic communities, though also among 
 
 the heathen, was not initiated by St. Paul, who reaped the 
 
 fruit and fame of an obscure activity prior to his own. One of 
 
 the most successful missionaries in Samaria was the deacon Philip, 
 
 who is said to have converted the treasurer of an Ethiopian 
 
 princess, thus opening up Abyssinia to the new influences. 
 
 40 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 41 
 
 2. Saul, a native of Tarsus, said to have been a pupil of the 
 learned Pharisee Gamaliel, had shown great zeal in the persecu- 
 tion. He set out for Damascus, to stir up the synagogue in 
 that city. On the way he had a vision which converted him to 
 the new sect. After preaching at Damascus, Saul retired for 
 three years to Hauran. On returning to Jerusalem, he was 
 favourably received by the Apostles, and went to Antioch with 
 their delegate Barnabas. It was the Jews of Antioch, converted 
 by Barnabas and Saul, who first took the name of Christians. 
 This Greek town played a more important part than Jerusalem 
 in the primitive history of Christianity. 
 
 3. From Antioch, Saul and Barnabas went to Cyprus, the 
 birthplace of Barnabas. They were sympathetically received 
 by the Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus, and to mark his 
 gratitude, as some think, Saul changed his name to Paul. After 
 Cyprus they visited Asia Minor. Paul preached at Antioch in 
 Pisidia, and at Lystra. 
 
 4. The question now arose as to whether, in order to enter 
 the new communion, it was necessary to pass into it through 
 the synagogue, undergo circumcision, and conform to all the 
 Jewish rites. These obligations were very irksome to the 
 pagans. In spite of the opposition of Peter and the other 
 Apostles of Jerusalem, Paul abolished them, preached salvation 
 for all, Jews and Greeks alike, and thus rendered the rapid 
 extension of Christianity among the Gentiles possible. Hence 
 the name "Apostle of the Gentiles" (Gentiles = heathen) 
 applied to St. Paul, not without some injustice to those who 
 had shown him the way. 
 
 5. This evolution of infant Christianity was laborious. The 
 struggle between Jewish particularism and Christian universalism 
 was a struggle between Peter and Paul, between Jerusalem and 
 Antioch. A first conference, held at Jerusalem, brought about 
 a compromise which was almost immediately violated by both 
 parties. Paul pursued his universalist apostolate in Asia Minor, 
 then at Philippi in Macedonia, at Thessalonica, at Athens, and 
 at Corinth, whence he returned by way of Ephesus to Antioch. 
 The evangelisation of Ephesus had been already begun by an 
 Alexandrian Jew called Apollos ; it soon made such progress 
 
42 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 that the vendors of little objects of piety for the worship of the 
 Ephesian Artemis were alarmed, and stirred up an insmrection, 
 the prototype of many others which the Christians, and after- 
 wards the reformers of Christianity, had to face. 
 
 6. Paul returned to Jerusalem in 57. A second conference, 
 the echo of persistent dissensions, took place in the house of 
 James, the reputed brother of Jesus. A Jewish riot then gave 
 occasion for the intervention of the Roman Governor, who sent 
 Paul to Caesarea. Paul, who was a Roman citizen, demanded 
 to be tried in Rome ; he v/as sent there at the end of the year 
 59. He was already in touch with the little Christian com- 
 munity founded in the capital by Jewish merchants from Syria, 
 having addressed an epistle to them from Corinth. We have 
 no details of his trial at Rome, and his legendary journey to 
 Spain or Great Britain is improbable. He is supposed to have 
 been put to death in Rome in 64. 
 
 7. Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, had accompanied Paul to 
 Italy ; after the arrest of Paul, it is alleged that he became the 
 secretary of Peter. Luke, a Greek physician at Antioch, was 
 also converted by Paul, and laboured to propagate his doctrine. 
 As to Peter, his travels belong to the domain of legend ; it is 
 probable that he died by violence in Palestine, and not in 
 Rome, where tradition declares him to have been executed at 
 the same time as Paul. It is true that before the end of the 
 first century it was believed that Peter had been at Rome with 
 Mark ; but this belief was based on an apocryphal letter 
 attributed to Peter, which was circulated about the year 90 
 {cf. above, I, § 61 ). 
 
 8. Nothing definite is known of the history of the other 
 Apostles, and the stories told of them are mere fables. James, 
 a pious Jew who was hostile to Paul, continued as the head of 
 the Church at Jerusalem, and was killed in a disturbance. 
 Matthew is supposed to have gone to Arabia, Andrew to the 
 Crimea, Thomas to India, Philip to Syria. John was believed 
 to have settled at Ephesus and to have lived there to an 
 advanced age, surrounded by disciples, one of whom, the 
 Presbyter John, may have been the author of the Fourth Gospel, 
 of the Apocalypse, and of the letters attributed to the Apostle. 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 43 
 
 The story of the sojourn and death of the Virgin Mary at 
 Ephesus is an invention ; the discovery of her reputed house at 
 Ephesus is a legend born of pious creduhty. 
 
 9. We have seen that an Alexandrian Jew, Apollos, first 
 preached Christianity at Ephesus. The numerous writings of 
 Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, and the Fourth Gospel may all 
 be referred to Alexandrian Judaism, impregnated with Platonic 
 speculations. The Hellenistic Jews introduced into Christianity 
 the conception of the Logos or Word, the intermediary between 
 God and man, incorporated in Jesus. But before they connected 
 it with Jesus, they had already incorporated the Word in a 
 legion of angels, of immaterial beings or Eo?is, of allegories ; 
 they had combined their traditional monotheism with the 
 popular animistic and polydemonistic beliefs of Syria and of 
 Babylonia. When Christianity took the place of Judaism in 
 these combinations, Christian Gnosticism (from Gnosis, a know- 
 ledge of hidden things) came into being. Outside Palestine, 
 Christianity itself was a Gnostic sect, and this is why at a very 
 early period the Fourth Gospel was attributed to the Gnostic 
 Cerinthus, a contemporary of St. John at Ephesus. But 
 Christianity was destined to triumph over the other Gnostic 
 sects, because it was more reasonable, simpler, purer, and less 
 inclined to lose itself in divagations. Intent on well-doing and 
 essentially hostile to the depressing forms of asceticism, it found 
 its adherents mainly among men of good sense and good will, 
 whereas Gnosticism appealed to visionaries and persons of ill- 
 balanced minds. The final victory of the Church over the 
 Gnostics was that of disciplined mysticism over intemperate 
 
 mysticism. 
 
 . « • • 
 
 10. The Church about the year a.d. 80 was a very simple 
 organisation. In addition to the deacons, there were deaconesses, 
 generally widows, who busied themselves with works of charity 
 and propaganda among women. Its assemblies, presided over 
 by an elder {p-esbyter, whence the word priest) or superintendent 
 (in Greek episkopos, whence bishop), were held in private houses, 
 first on Saturdays, and later on Sundays, the day of Christ's 
 resurrection. The Old Testament, the Epistles, and the sayings 
 
44 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 attributed to Jesus were read at these assemblies. Baptism was 
 chieHy administered to adults, in the form of total immersion. 
 Sick and dying persons were rubbed with holy oil, in order to 
 scare away evil spirits, which baptism was also supposed to 
 drown. Agapw (love-feasts) gathered together the faithful, 
 who celebrated the Holy Communion in common in the dual 
 form of bread and Avine. It was called an "act of thanks- 
 giving" in memory of the sacrifice of Jesus; this is the 
 Eucharist (from the Greek Eucharistia, thanksgiving). 
 
 11. Among the faithful of the primitive churches there 
 were, of course, a certain number of visionaries, and of idle and 
 degraded persons. Many believed themselves to be gifted with 
 prophetic powers and disturbed the meetings by fits of glossolalt/, 
 that is to say, an outburst of inarticulate sounds. It was this 
 gift of "speaking with tongues" which the Apostles were 
 supposed to have received at Pentecost by the grace of the 
 Holy Ghost; later, the double meaning of the word "tongue" 
 was played upon, and it was maintained that the Apostles had 
 been endowed with the power of speaking the idioms of all the 
 people to whom they were to preach the gospel. The mani- 
 festations of glossolaly were checked at an eai-ly stage ; St. Paul 
 forbids it for women, together with teaching. Although celibacy 
 was not imposed on any one, Christianity demanded purity of 
 life, and had much difl^culty in enforcing it. On the other 
 hand, visionaries preached asceticism and vegetarianism, and 
 inclined more or less openly to Gnostic mysticism ; the firmness 
 and good sense of the Elders did not always succeed in 
 neutralising these dangerous tendencies. 
 
 12. The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (a.d. 70) 
 and the final dispersal of the Jews throughout the Empire 
 weakened the hopes cherished by the Christians of the speedy 
 return of Jesus in glory ; for these they substituted the expecta- 
 tion of his spiritual reign. The dispersed Jews founded houses 
 of prayer, or synagogues, on every hand, with butchers' shops 
 which did not sell the " meat offered to idols," food forbidden 
 to Jews and Christians alike ; these synagogues became so many 
 new centres for Christian propaganda, which, although hostile 
 to Judaism, could only recruit its first adherents round the 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 45 
 
 synagogues, where the words of Moses and the prophets found 
 an echo. 
 
 13. The Christian propaganda soon alarmed the interests of 
 those who hved upon the official pagan cult, and of those 
 innumerable charlatans who exploited alien forms of worship ; 
 it also alarmed the lloman Government, which distrusted secret 
 societies, with good reason, and saw in the Christians a party of 
 Jews more active and troublesome than the rest. When Nero 
 was suspected of setting fire to Rome he turned the accusation 
 upon the horde of Orientals who were always talking about the 
 Last Judgment and the destruction of the world by fire. The 
 Roman police forthwith inaugurated a series of wholesale arrests 
 and executions ; Jews and Christians perished together ; this 
 was what is known as the First Persecution (a.d. 65). It did 
 not put a stop to the Christian propaganda, which was already 
 carried on in some of the patrician households by slaves or 
 female servants, natives of Syria. Under Domitian, the Consul 
 Flavins Clemens and his wife Domitilla were condemned for 
 "atheism"; they had no doubt become Christians, and their 
 "atheism" consisted in denying the Roman gods. "Many 
 others," says the historian Dion Cassius, "were punished for 
 atheism and for Jeivish customs,'" and afterwards he mentions 
 Acilius Glabrio, a former consul, among the victims of Domitian. 
 The fact that Christianity had penetrated into the upper classes 
 of Rome before the year 100 was of vast importance to its 
 ultimate development. 
 
 14. Pliny the younger, legate to Bithynia in a.d. 112, 
 wrote to the Emperor Trajan asking how he was to treat the 
 Christians. On this occasion he was primarily the spokesman 
 of the cattle-dealers, who lamented that victims for sacrifice were 
 no longer bought. " You must not seek out the Christians," 
 replied Trajan, " but if they are denounced and convicted, they 
 must be punished. If, however, any accused person should 
 deny being a Christian, and should prove his innocence by 
 invoking our gods, he may be pardoned." These few lines are 
 of immense historical value ; they formed the rule of the Roman 
 government until the persecution which began under Decius. 
 The picture Pliny paints of the Christians is so greatly to their 
 
46 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 credit that the authenticity of his letter has been (quite ground- 
 lessly) suspected ; unfortunately the unique manuscript from 
 which it was transcribed at the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century has disappeared, no one knows how, and doubts as to 
 the accuracy of the published version are possible. 
 
 15. The attitude of the Roman officials depended, in the 
 first instance, on that of the communities they governed, who 
 denounced the Christians or not, as best suited their own 
 interests ; in the second place, on the attitude of the Christians 
 and the degree of hostility they showed to official paganism ; 
 finally, on the easily roused ferocity of popular superstition, 
 which attributed all natural calamities to the enemies of its 
 gods. The lying rumours that were spread abroad concerning 
 the Christians, on account of the mystery with which they 
 surrounded certain acts of their worship, such as the Eucharist, 
 and more particularly the accusation, by which the populace 
 was always readily infiamed, that they offered human sacrifices, 
 determined certain local persecutions. The most notorious was 
 that at Lyons in a.d. 177. Here there was a little community 
 of Greek origin, persons of some means, against whom the 
 most odious calumnies were circulated. Young girls and old 
 men w ere cruelly tortured. " It is you who are the man-eaters ! *" 
 cried one of the victims to the judges. To combat these re- 
 current accusations, a literature grew up, first in Greek, then in 
 Latin, several specimens of which have come down to us. The 
 most interesting, the Apolog^y, written in Africa by Tertullian 
 about A.D. 200, was shortly afterwards translated into Greek. 
 
 16. There was also a literature hostile to Christianity, but 
 it has perished almost entirely. It has, however, been possible 
 to reconstitute the Tnie Discourse of the philosopher Celsus (c. 
 170) from the long refutation of it composed by Origen, and a 
 portion of the Emperor Julian's treatise against the Christians, 
 thanks to the diatribe of St. Cyril (d. 444) which it inspired. 
 
 17. The ten persecutions enumerated by historians of 
 Christianity are a fiction,^ and Dodwell (1684) already made 
 short work of the legends which exaggerated the number of 
 
 * The persecutions to the time of Decius were local and intermittent ; 
 there were many more than ten. 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 47 
 
 martyrs. This name, which means witness in Greek, was given 
 to those who proclaimed their faith in the face of suffering and 
 died for it ; those who suffered but survived were called confessors. 
 The choice of the term martyr seems singular, for testimony- 
 does not, to us, imply the infliction of a penalty. But this was 
 not the case among the Greeks and Romans, where the evidence 
 of a slave was not admissible unless it had been obtained by 
 torture. In the language of the slave then, " to bear witness " 
 and "to suffer"" were synonymous terms, and thus the use of 
 the word martyr implies that the intermittent persecution was 
 directed chiefly against persons of servile or very humble con- 
 dition, among whom the early Christians were mainly recruited, 
 
 18. This also explains certain fine characteristics of Christi- 
 anity before Constantine. It was the religion of poor people, 
 who worked and suffered and helped one another. A Christian 
 woman binried in the catacombs of Rome is called in her epitaph 
 " a friend of the poor and a workwoman." This is a kind of 
 affirmation of the dignity of work which was a much greater 
 novelty in the antique world than charity. Triumphant 
 Christianity forgot this truth, but recalled it at a later period, 
 when it undertook the reform of its monastic orders in the 
 
 sixth century. 
 
 . . • • • 
 
 19. The Church of the second and the third centuries 
 suffered less from persecution than from heresies. I have 
 already spoken of Gnosticism, which, as a fact, was more ancient 
 than Christianity. Exaggerating the anti-Jewish tendencies of 
 Paul, in opposition to the Judaising Christians known as 
 Ebionites, certain Gnostic doctors renounced the Old Testament 
 and represented the God of Israel as a demon, the creator but 
 the enemy of mankind. This tendency is related to the 
 Mazdaean (Persian) dualism which had such a strong influence 
 upon Gnosticism. Had the Church wandered into this road, 
 her ruin would have been assured, for she would have lost the 
 support of the Old Testament and of the pretended prophecies 
 which all then agreed to accept. She resisted the Gnostics 
 energetically, though not without making certain concessions to 
 them, and profiting by their literary activity. Even the great 
 
48 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Alexandrian Doctors of a.d. 180 to 250, Clement and Origen, 
 who created Christian exegesis and theology, drew inspiration, 
 not without peril to the orthodoxy of their doctrine, from the 
 Gnostics who had preceded them in these sciences. It was to 
 Marcion (c. 150), that the Church owed the first idea of a 
 Canon, an authorised collection of the writings relating to the 
 New Law. It was in opposition to the Gnostics that she was 
 led to formulate her dogmas, her profession of faith (called 
 the Symbol of the Apostles), and no doubt also to publish the 
 definitive version of the Four Gospels whose divine inspiration 
 she affirmed. Modern Christianity, the proselytising force of 
 which is by no means spent, was evolved during the long 
 trial to which the Church was subjected by Gnostic assaults. 
 The works of the Gnostics are mainly known to us through the 
 refutations of which they were the object. In these polemical 
 writings theological animus plays an important part, and the 
 Gnostics are accused of crimes which were no doubt imaginary ; 
 but their extreme doctrines were dangerous both to society and 
 the individual, and the Church did well to discard them. 
 
 20. It was also in the course of this struggle that the 
 Church became a governing body and that spiritual power was 
 concentrated in her. The bishop was the head of his com- 
 munity, and Rome being the capital of the Empire, the Roman 
 Church naturally tended to become the Empress of the Churches. 
 This supremacy was not achieved without opposition. The 
 widely spread conception of the original primacy of the Roman 
 see, of the Papacy founded by St. Peter and exercised by the 
 Roman bishops who succeeded him, is not confirmed by the texts, 
 which rather reveal the usual phenomenon of a slow evolution. 
 
 21. Among the sects of the second century, Montanism, a 
 sort of revival, which was quite distinct from Gnosticism, was 
 one of the most interesting. Its founder, the Phrygian Mon- 
 tanus, a converted priest of Cybele, began to prophesy, in the 
 company of two women, and recruited many adherents in spite 
 of his condemnation by the bishops of the country (172). The 
 serious points in his doctrine, to which Tertullian subscribed 
 towards the end of his career, and which persisted to the sixth 
 century, were, that the era of divine revelation was not at an 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 49 
 
 end, that the faith of the Church accepted the possibihty of 
 further fruition, that women might receive and communicate 
 inspiration (in opposition to the theory of St. Paul, who 
 ordered them to keep silence). The Montanist discipline was 
 rigorous ; it ordained two additional weeks of abstinence, for- 
 bade second marriage, and denied the remission of certain sins 
 after baptism. The polemics to which Montanism gave rise 
 inspired the Church with a wholesome aversion from pronounced 
 asceticism, in practice too often associated with moral laxity. 
 "Think soberly," said St. Paul, 
 
 22. Christianity, encouraged l)y the imperial favourite Marcia 
 under Commodus, and protected under the Syrian dynasty by 
 the piety of the Empresses and the eclecticism of the Emperors, 
 had presently to reckon with the brutality of the military 
 Emperors, who were exasperated by the distaste of its adherents 
 for a martial career and their persistent refusal to render 
 divine honours to the head of the State. The Emperor Decius 
 (a.d. 250) organised a serious persecution, which made many 
 martyrs and even more apostates, known as Libt'llatici, persons 
 who had received a lihelhis or certificate for having given in 
 their adhesion to paganism. Bishops of Rome, Jerusalem and 
 Antioch were put to death. Origen,the great Christian scholar 
 of Alexandria, narrowly escaped the executioner (a.d. 249). 
 Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, fell a victim to the persecution, 
 which broke out afresh under Valerian (a.d. 258). The position 
 of the Christians improved somewhat under Gallienus, who 
 restored their churches to them, but this lull in the storm was 
 of short duration. Diocletian began by following the example 
 of Decius with a veritable frenzy (a.d. 303) ; but he soon 
 recognised the futility of his efforts, and abdicated. His 
 successors were weaker, if not more tolerant. 
 
 23. Christianity had now become such a power in the Empire 
 that the ambitious Constantine sought its support. After 
 vanquishing Maxentius at the bridge of Milvius, where he had 
 displayed a standard in the form of a cross (the laharum)^ he 
 promulgated an edict of toleration in 313, which practically 
 gave Christianity a privileged position. Constantius removed 
 the statue of Victory from the Senate-chamber (356), and began 
 
 £ 
 
50 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the overthrow of the images of the gods in the East. After his 
 death in a.d. 361, a pagan reaction took place under Julian, 
 but a reaction of a peaceful nature, for Julian, the mildest of 
 men, was content merely to take the direction of education out 
 of the hands of the Christians. He did justice to Christianity, 
 nevertheless, and exhorted the pagans to imitate its charitable 
 institutions. His premature death in 363 was the signal for 
 the downfall of polytheism ; it retained adherents only in the 
 aristocracy, the great schools, and the conservative population 
 of country districts.^ 
 
 24. Theodosius prohibited heathen sacrifices, and in spite of 
 the eloquent protestations of Libanius, ordered the temples to 
 be closed (a.d. 391). The zeal of the monks manifested itself 
 against these buildings, notably in Egypt. In 408, Honorius 
 forbade pagans to hold public office ; under Theodosius 11., the 
 fanatic Cyril, whom the Church has canonised, relentlessly 
 pursued the learned Hypatia, the daughter of the mathematician 
 Theon ; she was stoned and torn in pieces by the populace in 
 the streets of Alexandria (a.d. 415). Victorious Christianity 
 waged war upon science ; Justinian took but one step in 
 advance when he closed the school of Athens (a.d. 529). The 
 world was ripe for the Middle Ages. 
 
 25. The end of the persecutions gave rise in Africa to an 
 
 original schism, that of the Donatists, one of the first to attack, 
 
 not the doctrine, but the discipline of the Church. It was a 
 
 schism before being a heresy. Could the bishops who, during 
 
 the persecution, had given up the Scriptures to be burnt, and 
 
 those who had received ordination from them, be considered as 
 
 lawfully invested with their powers ? Was it not necessary to 
 
 baptise afresh those whom they had baptised ? In other words, 
 
 does the efficacy of the sacerdotal ministry depend on the personal 
 
 character of the minister.? If the Church had replied in the 
 
 affirmative, her ruin would have been assured, for every bishop 
 
 would have had to justify himself against accusations directed 
 
 not only against his own conduct, but against that of the bishop 
 
 who had ordained him, and the whole array of his spiritual 
 
 1 
 1917 
 
 Pagani, hence pagans and the French palen. See J. Zeiller, Paganus, 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 51 
 
 ancestors. The good sense of the Church, in conformity with 
 its interests, preserved it from this pitfall ; but this did not 
 satisfy the Africans, who were naturally turbulent and often 
 hostile to their bishops. A bishop of Carthage, Donatus, 
 placed himself at the head of the movement (a.d, 313), which 
 soon attracted not only the adversaries of the clergy, but the 
 ruined farmers, the oppressed peasantry, and the vagabonds 
 known as CircumceUiojies. Donatism assumed the character of 
 a Jacquerie. The Emperors first attempted to stem the torrent 
 by pacific means; then they had recourse to the extremes of 
 violence. Donatus died in exile and his followers were massacred. 
 The agitation broke out afresh under Julian, and in thirty years 
 had spread throughout the greater part of Roman Africa. In 
 393, St. Augustine embarked on a long literary campaign 
 against the Donatists, which was interrupted in 403 by a new 
 insurrection of the Circumcelliones. The authority of the 
 illustrious Bishop of Hippo, seconded by very severe imperial 
 edicts, finally overcame the schism (418). But it reappeared 
 under the Vandals, and a few groups of Donatists still existed 
 at the time of the Musulman conquest. 
 
 26. During the Decian persecution, many Egyptian Christians 
 had withdrawn to the desert, where they lived as hermits (from 
 eremos, desert). Others followed, who formed themselves into 
 communities (cenobites, from kobios bios, life in common). Thus 
 arose Christian monachism, which, indeed, had precedents both 
 among Jews and Greeks. The Essenes of the time of Jesus 
 and the Pythagoreans of Southern Italy about 600 b.c. had 
 lived as veritable cenobites. About a.d. 340 St. Pachomius, 
 or Pachonius, founded convents for women, who were called 
 nuns {non nupkv, not married), on the same lines as the 
 monasteries for men. Monasticism reached the West about 
 the end of the fourth century. Here, conforming to the 
 temperament of the people, it assumed a less contemplative 
 and more practical character. St. Benedict of Nursia (480-543) 
 has the credit of having imposed poverty and manual labour 
 upon the cenobites, together with a severe discipline ; the 
 monastery founded by him on Monte Cassino became the 
 model of Benedictine monasteries, where, according to a famous 
 
52 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 formula, "he who works, prays." Civilisation owes to the 
 Western monks the cultivation of a part of Europe, and the 
 preservation of Latin literature, the texts of which were copied 
 in the monasteries. If idle and luxurious habits tended to 
 appear in the monasteries, in spite of perpetual efforts for their 
 i-eform, this was an effect of human weakness for which the 
 institution must not be held responsible. In the course of 
 centuries it did much harm,but also, especially at the beginning, 
 a great deal of good. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 27. The example of the monks, added to the influence of 
 Manichaean, Gnostic, and Montanist doctrines, tended to exalt 
 the old popular idea of the superiority of a celibate life. As 
 early as 305, the Spanish Council of Elvira enjoined the celibacy 
 of the priesthood. This doctrine did not gain a complete 
 victoi-y until the twelfth century, and even now ecclesiastical 
 celibacy is a matter of discipline, not of dogma, in the Roman 
 Church. Other Oriental influences, more important still, 
 modified the organisation of the Church during the fourth 
 century. Following the example of the Empire, she adopted 
 a rigorous hierarchy ; the bishops of the large towns became 
 prefects, presiding over the councils or assemblies of the pro- 
 vincial clergy. Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, but especially 
 the first named, became as it were Christian capitals ; by the 
 end of the second century, a bishop of Rome was threatening 
 to put the churches of Asia Minor " outside the catholic union "" 
 (that is to say, the universal union) because they differed from 
 him as to the fixation of the date of Easter. Christian rites 
 were complicated by hardly disguised borrowings from paganism : 
 baptism implied the exoi'cism of devils ; the worship of mai'tyrs, 
 the origin of the worship of saints, took the place of the 
 worship of the Greek heroes, and sometimes adopted even 
 their names and their legends. The festival of Christmas or 
 of the birth of Jesus, the date of which is not indicated by the 
 Evangelists, was fixed on December 25, the reputed date of the 
 birth of Mithra, who was identified with the Sun. Finally, the 
 Church forgot her Jewish origin more and more, and changed 
 the character of the festivals she was obliged to retain. Pasch 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 53 
 
 (Pesach), the Easter festival, became the anniversary of Christ's 
 Resurrection, and the date was fixed to avoid coincidence with 
 the Jewish Passover ; Pentecost, which among the Jews com- 
 memorated the giving of the Law to Moses upon Sinai, was 
 henceforth to recall the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon 
 the Apostles. The Church, though even more hostile to 
 Hellenism than to Judaism, became hellenised by force of cir- 
 cumstances, because, ever since its origin under St. Paul, it had 
 appeared as a Greek sect of Judaism. The transference of the 
 seat of the Empire to Constantinople, a Greek centre over-in- 
 clined to theological subtleties, where the disputes of the sophists 
 still re-echoed, contributed a good deal to this development. 
 
 28. As soon as Christianity felt itself master of the Empire, 
 it began to persecute not only the pagans, but dissident 
 Christians. The disputes of the third and fourth centuries 
 related more especially to the connection of Christ with God ; 
 were they of the same substance .'' Was Jesus equal to the 
 Father ? What place was to be assigned to the Holy Spirit in 
 this system ? A Bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, a protege 
 of the learned Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who definitely sub- 
 ordinated Jesus to God, was condemned by a council and 
 deposed (a.d. 270). Arius, a priest of Alexandria (a.d. 280- 
 336), engaged in a long conflict with Athanasius, the bishop 
 of that city (a.d. 328), because he maintained the essential 
 superiority of God to Jesus. This doctrine, known as the Arian 
 heresy, was condennied in 325 by the Council of Nicaea, which 
 declared Jesus to be : " the Son of God, of the substance of the 
 Father, consubstantial with him, begotten, not born, eternal 
 like the Father, and immutable by nature." In spite of this 
 luminous definition, to which Constantine lent the support of 
 the secular arm — Arius was exiled and his books were burnt — 
 Arianism spread not only in the Empire, but beyond it ; nearly 
 all the barbarian peoples who invaded the frontiers in the fifth 
 century became Arians, no doubt because they were evangelised 
 by the Arians at a time when Arianism was dominant in the 
 Empire. Several of the Roman Emperors of the fourth century 
 were themselves favourable to Arianism, which was combated 
 by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. The Church of Rome had 
 
64 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 pronounced against Arianisni at an early date ; at the Council 
 of Constantinople (a.d. 381), which completed the work of the 
 Council of Nicaea by declaring the Holy Spirit the third person 
 of the Trinity, equal to the Father and the Son, it gained a 
 decisive victory. Thus a third God was created as it were, by 
 the evolution of Plato's Logos, through Philo, the Fourth 
 Gospel, and the sophistical theology of Alexandria. 
 
 29. The doctrine of the Trinity was formulated by the 
 Symbol or creed, erroneously ascribed to Athanasius, and per- 
 haps the work of the African bishop Vigilius (c. 490) : " We 
 worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither 
 confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance. . . . And 
 yet they are not three Eternals but one Eternal, not three 
 Almighties but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son 
 God, and the Holy Ghost God, and yet they are not three Gods 
 but one God. . . . For like as we are compelled by the Christian 
 verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and 
 Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say : 
 There be three Gods or three Lords. The Father is made of 
 none : neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father 
 alone : not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost 
 is of the Father and of the Son : neither made, nor created, nor 
 begotten, but proceeding. . . . And in this Trinity none is 
 afore or after other : none is greater or less than another ; but 
 the whole three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal." 
 Such is the belief it is necessary to hold if we would be 
 Catholics and not Arians. In these days there are no professed 
 Arians, perhaps because all Christians are Arians at heart. 
 This is more especially true of the Protestants, among whom 
 the idea of God is still vital; for the Catholics habitually 
 invoke Jesus, Mary and Joseph (JMJ, "the Jesuit Trinity"), 
 and only name the Eternal Father mechanically. The Holy 
 Ghost has always remained an abstraction. Thus the ancient 
 Trinity subsists merely as a theological formula. 
 
 30. Meanwhile, the long series of judicial murders for errors 
 of opinion had been inaugurated. From 380 to 395 Theodosius 
 published edicts threatening the heresiarchs with death ; but 
 it was reserved for his co-regent, Maximus, a Spaniard like 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 55 
 
 himself, to apply them for the first time. The victim was 
 Priscillian, a Spanish bishop, who was accused of Manichaeism 
 and denounced by two Spanish bishops to the Emperor 
 Maximus, then at Treves. Priscillian, condemned by a council 
 at Bordeaux, was summoned to Treves with six of his principal 
 partisans; they were there judged and put to death (385). 
 The excellent St. Martin of Tours was indignant, as was also 
 St. Ambrose ; but a few years later, St. Jerome, exasperated by 
 Vigilantius, who attacked the worship of relics, declared that 
 temporal chastisements are useful to save the guilty from 
 eternal perdition. The Church of Africa and St. Augustine 
 appealed to the secular arm against the Donatists ; ^ finally, in 
 447, Pope Leo I. not only justified the crime of Maximus, but 
 declared that if the upholders of a damnable heresy were allowed 
 to live there would be an end of all laws, human and divine. 
 The Church, adopting this monstrous doctrine, caused torrents 
 of blood to be shed by the secular power down to the day 
 when in its tardy enlightenment the latter refused to lend 
 itself any longer to the fury of theological hate. 
 
 3L The Arian quarrel had not exhausted the diflficulties 
 suggested by the incarnation of Jesus ? Was Mary the Mother 
 of God ? No, said Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople ; 
 she was only the Mother of Christ, In 431, at the Council of 
 Ephesus, Cyril procured the deposition of Nestorius, who died 
 in Egypt ; his adherents founded in Persia the Nestorian Church, 
 which still exists. Another question which arose was this : 
 were there two natures in Jesus, one divine and one human, or 
 only one ? The second thesis, called Monophysism, upheld by 
 the Egyptian monks, was submitted to the Council of Ephesus 
 (a.d. 449) ; this time the Emperor Theodosius II. sent troops 
 and the adversaries of Monophysism were treated with the 
 utmost violence. The Patriarch of Constantinople died of his 
 wounds. This Council is known in history as the Brigandage 
 of Ephesus. Another Council in a.d. 451 pronounced against 
 Monophysism, but declared at the same time that the humanity 
 of Jesus was not absorbed by his divinity. The struggle 
 
 ^ St. Augustine did uot admit that heretics should be put to death ; but 
 he insisted on their punishment. See Batiflol, Btvue biblique, 1915, p. 318. 
 
56 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 began afresh under Justinian, who had a taste for theology, 
 and became a Monophysite only less fervid than his consort, 
 Theodora. He bore down the resistance of Pope Vigilius, and 
 caused his own opinions to be confirmed by a whole series 
 of councils. After his death, the Monophysites were again 
 defeated ; but their doctrine has survived, notably in the 
 Christian Church of Egypt, the Coptic connnunity, which 
 preserved its religious independence as a result of this schism. 
 
 • « • • • 
 
 32. We have already seen St. Augustine in conflict with 
 African Donatism, and with Manichaeism, which he had some 
 time professed himself. A quarrel no less serious arose over 
 the doctrine of the British monk Pelagius, which attacked the 
 theory of original sin. How could the whole human race have 
 been condemned for the sin of Adam ? How could the results 
 of his fault still weigh upon innocent creatures ? Augustine, 
 now an old man, combated these reasonable objections by an 
 exaggeration of St. Paul's cruel paradox. Man can do nothing 
 of his own will ; he is utterly powerless ; the grace of God alone 
 can save him, and those who are not chosen by God are lost. 
 The logical consequence is not fatalism, but the imperative 
 necessity of faitli, prayer, and appeals to intercessory saints. 
 The Council of Ephesus condemned Pelagius (431), who had 
 already been condemned at Carthage in 412. Nevertheless, 
 his doctrine, somewhat modified, survived in semi-Pelagianism, 
 notably in Gaul, and Rome ended by adopting in practice a 
 conciliatory attitude founded upon subtle distinctions concerning 
 the efficacy of grace, and the equal necessity for faith and 
 works in the individual working out of salvation. 
 
 33. St. Augustine had held that there was an intermediate 
 state of probation between future felicity and damnation, that 
 of the purification ot souls by fire. This is the Orphic and 
 Virgilian doctrine of Purgatory : there is not a word about 
 it in the Gospels. But as the Last Judgment, with the final 
 separation of the good and bad into the saved and the lost, was 
 pvit off' to a very remote period, it became necessary to invent 
 something to define the condition of souls immediately after 
 death. In imitation of the pagans, who represented them as 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 57 
 
 appearing for judgment before Minos and his assessors, a pro- 
 visional judgment was suggested, followed by the classification 
 of the dead in two divisions, the good, who have to undergo the 
 probation of Purgatory, and the wicked, who go straight to 
 Hell. The Church had formed the habit of praying for the 
 dead, and involving the intercession of the saints in their favour. 
 The implication was that the dead required the good offices of 
 the living, and that their fate was not irrevocably sealed. The 
 doctrine of Purgatory, the logic of which is undeniable, was 
 formulated in the sixth century, and proclaimed a dogma of 
 the Church by the Council of Florence (1439); the Christians 
 who reject it (Protestants and members of the Greek Church) 
 have evidently little curiosity about the hereafter. 
 
 34. St. Jerome, who was born in Dalmatia, revised the Latin 
 translations of the Scriptures by order of Pope Daniasus, and 
 made use of his personal influence, which was as considerable as 
 his talent, to win over the ladies of the Roman aristocracy to 
 a conventual life. "Thou hast become the mother-in-law of 
 God," he wrote to one of them, whose daughter had entered a 
 nunnery, and was therefore the bride of God. Establishing 
 himself at Bethlehem with his penitents (a.d. 385), he made it 
 a centre of monasticism, and worked unceasingly till the age of 
 ninety at commentaries on the sacred books. His relations with 
 St. Augustine were courteous, but not without an undercurrent 
 of bitterness, especially towards the end. 
 
 35. One of the adversaries of St. Jerome was a Pyrenean 
 shepherd, Vigilantius, who returned from a journey in Italy 
 and the Holy Land disgusted with official Christianity. He 
 protested vehemently against the idolatrous worship of images, 
 the legacy of paganism to the Church, a practice directly 
 opposed to that Mosaic law which Jesus came not to destroy, 
 but to fulfil. It was idle to reply that these images were the 
 Scriptures of the illiterate, that they were not the object of, but 
 the stimulus to, worship. Experience showed that the majority 
 of the faithful confounded (as indeed they still do) the sign 
 with the thing signified. Vigilantius was no less hostile to the 
 worship of relics, which had become at once a disgrace to the 
 Church and a source of revenue to the clergy. Asceticism, 
 
58 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 prayers for the dead, the cehbacy of the clergy, which was 
 exacted with increasing rigour, all seemed to him contrary to 
 true religion. Violently attacked by St. Jerome, who invoked 
 the severity of the civil authority against him, Vigilantius died 
 in obscurity in 420 ; but his courageous words bore fruit in due 
 season. 
 
 36. Two Greeks, St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Basil, shed 
 lustre upon the Eastern Church in the fourth century. They 
 were scholars, gentle and amiable in disposition, whose some- 
 what effeminate eloquence still has a certain charm. Basil, 
 the Bishop of Caesarsea, set an admirable example of charity, 
 founding many hospitals and refuges. Gregory was the son 
 of a bishop of Nazianzus in Cappadocia, who had three other 
 children after his ordination. Gregory became Patriarch of 
 Constantinople, but, disgusted with the intrigues surrounding 
 him, he returned to end his days in his bishopric of Nazianzus. 
 When he was begged to leave his retreat and assist at a new 
 council, he replied : " I never knew of a Synod that did any 
 good or prevented any evil." 
 
 37. St. John Chrysostom (" the golden-mouthed ") was a 
 fluent orator, but, like St. Augustine, above all things a man of 
 action. Born at Antioch in 347, a pupil of the pagan Libanius, 
 he preached for twelve years in his native town. The Emperor 
 Arcadius appointed him Patriai'ch of Byzantium, where he 
 engaged in a memorable campaign against the Empress Eudoxia, 
 whose extravagance and profligacy he publicly denounced. 
 Eudoxia caused Chrysostom to be condemned by a council, but 
 a popular insurrection reinstated him. He renewed his attacks 
 on the Empress, whom he compared to Herodias. Hereupon 
 there was another council, and another insurrection, followed 
 by a great fire ; Chrysostom was exiled to Cucusus in the 
 Taurus, and afterwards to Pontus, where he died miserably at 
 Comana. 
 
 38. At about the same period, St. Ambrose, Bishop of 
 Milan, the friend of St. Augustine, combated Arianism in the 
 person of the Empress Justina, the wife of Maximus (386), 
 refused the communion to Theodosius and compelled the 
 Emperor to do penance for having ordered a massacre at 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 59 
 
 Thessalonica. The spiritual sword was drawn against the 
 temporal sword, heralding that struggle between the priesthood 
 and the Empire which was to fill the Middle Ages. How 
 beneficent might the influence of the Church have been if, 
 following the lead of St. Ambrose, she had used her power to 
 restrain the violence of princes, instead of perpetually exciting 
 it to serve her own ends ! 
 
 39. Vigilantius and Chrysostom agreed in protesting against 
 the advance of luxury in the life and habits of the Church. 
 This was, indeed, one of the inevitable results of her triumph. 
 Extolling humility in theory, she began to love splendour and 
 adorned herself with the gorgeous trappings of paganism. 
 Magnificent basilicas arose on every side, which were all eclipsed 
 by the crowning glory of St. Sophia at Constantinople. The 
 bishops and the majority of the monks lived in opulence, en- 
 riched by gifts from the State and the devout. Divine service 
 lost its first simplicity ; even in broad daylight the churches 
 were resplendent with the radiance of innumerable candles ; 
 incense and holy water were borrowed from pagan forms of 
 worship ; the sacerdotal vestments became magnificent, festivals 
 were multiplied. But these changes, by which art profited, 
 did not impede the expansive force of Christianity ; following 
 upon the Empire, the barbarian world became its pupil, and 
 Clovis, a Catholic in the midst of Arian nations, made the 
 cause of the Roman Church triumph in Western Europe by 
 subjugating them (496-Sll). 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 In addition to the great church histories (Neander, Rohrbacher), now 
 somewhat antiquated, and the three volumes of the Hidoire ancicnne dc I'^glif-e 
 by Duchesne (190G-1910), consult Hauck's Enc^doptedia, and Smith and 
 Wace"s Diet, of Christian Biography. The following are useful manuals : 
 F. Naef, Hidoire dc nSglisfi chrStienne, 1892 ; X. Funk, Lehrbach der Kirchen- 
 gescMchte, 5th ed. , 1907; Kurtz, Ahriss der Kirchengeschicht^, 16th ed., 1906; 
 W. Walker, A Hid. of the Christian Church, 1920 (very good bibliography). 
 
 Wellhausen (and others), Die chrislliche Religion mit EinsMuss der jiidischen, 
 1906; A. Harnack, Lchrhuch drr Dogrncngrschichte, 3rd ed., 1S94 (there is an 
 abridgment by the author, 4th ed., 1906) ; L. Duchesne, Originea du ru/te 
 chrilien, 2nd ed. , 1898; 0. Bardenhewer, Gesch. der altchristl. Literahtr, 1903; 
 A. Harnack, Die Ucberliefni-ung und der Best and der altchristl. Litcratur his 
 Eusebius, 1899; Die Chronologic der altchristl. Literatur, 2 vols., 1897-1904; 
 A. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum et definitionum, 9th ed., 1900 (in Latin) ; 
 Labauche, Lemons de thiologie dogmatiqiu, 1908. 
 
60 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 1. Ch. Guignebert, Le christianisme antique, 1920. — Pre-pauline propaganda : 
 Loisy, Hev. hist. lift. rcL, 1921, p. 431. 
 
 2. Renan, S. Paul, 1869. 
 
 7. Supposed death of Peter in Palestine : art. Fctrus, in Hauck, p. 201, 
 43. — Guignebert, La primautd de Pierre, 1909. 
 
 8. Harnack, Mission und Aushreitxmg dcs Christentums, 2nd ed., 2 vols., 
 1906 {cf. Monceaux, /. dcs Sav., 1904, p. 404). 
 
 9. Brehier, Philon, 1908 ; E. de Faye, Introd. A V&ude du gnosticisme, 
 1903 ; Bousset, Gnosis, in Pauly-Wissowa's Encycl. ; Bonaiuto, Lo gnosticismo, 
 1907. 
 
 10. E. von Dobschiitz, Die urchristlichcn Gemeindcn, 1902; A. Rdville, 
 L'Uucharistie, 1908 (same subject by M. Goguel, 1910) ; Eatiffol, L'agajje (in 
 Jlisf. et Ihdologie, p. 227) ; art. Agape in Cabrol's Dictionnaire. 
 
 11. Glossolaly and the supposed gifts of prophecj^ : art. Sinrit^ial Gifts 
 in Cheyne. 
 
 12. Harnack, op. cit. under 8. — The synagogues as nurseries of Christi- 
 anity : S. R., Cultes, vol. iii. , p. 449. 
 
 13. Allard, Hist, des pers^-ntions pendant les frois premiers sikles, 5 vols., 
 1894-1903; Julien I'Apostat, 3 vols., 1900-1903; Le christianisme et I'empire 
 de Ndron d TModose, 5th ed., 1903; Dix leg ms sur le martyre, 1906; B. Aub6, 
 Hist, dcs pcrsdcutions, 4 vols., 1875-1885; G. Boissier, La fin du paganisme, 
 2 vols., 1891 ; Uincejidie de Rome et la premiere persecution (in Journ. des Sav., 
 1902, p. 158) ; E. Chenon, Les rapports de V^glisc et de V^tat du /"■ au XX' 
 siecle. 1905 (good summary); A. Harnack, Per Vorvurf des Atheismus, 1905; 
 Le Blant, Les pers^cuteurs et les martyrs, 1893; Leclercq, Zcs Martyrs, 1902 
 ct seq. ; Ramsay, The Church in the Roman E7npirc, 6th ed., 1900. 
 
 14. Art. Trajaniis in the Diet, of Christian Biography. — Glut in the cattle- 
 market of Bithynia : S. R., Cultes, vol. i., p. 395 (after Ramsay). 
 
 15-16. Th. Mommsen, Der Rcligionsjrevcl orach rom. Recht (in Hist. Zcit- 
 schriff, 1890, p. 389); Bouch^-Leclercq, L' intolerance et la 2}olitiqur, 1911; 
 art. Accusations in Cabrol's Dictionnaire. — P. de LabrioUe, Hist, de la lift, 
 latine chritieyme, 1919. — The Jewish community and the martyrs of Lyons: 
 S. R., Cultes, vol. iii., p. 449. — Celsus and his Logos Alethes (True Discourse) : 
 Aub(^, Hist, des Persic, vol. ii., p. 118; A. Dide, La fin des religions, p. 162. — 
 For the lost book of Julian see Allard's work quoted above, § 13. 
 
 18. Allard. Les esclaves chreticns, 1876. 
 
 19. Art. Marcion and Apostolischcs Symbolum in Hauck. — Harnack, Das 
 Evangelium . . . Marcion, 1921. — E. de Faye, CUment d^Alexandrie, 1898. — 
 J. Denis, Philosophic d'Origbie, 1884 [cf. Journ. dcs Sav., 1884, p. 177). 
 
 20. Art. Verfassung (urchristliche) in Hauck. 
 
 21. G. de Labriolle, La crise montaniste, 1913. 
 
 22. Renegades and Libellatici : Aubt\ USglise ct V^lat, 1885, p. 199 ; 
 Foucart, J. des Sav., April 1908. — Art. Decius and Dioclctianus in Diet, of 
 Christian Biograjjhy. 
 
 23. Boissier, La fin du paganisme, 2 vols., 1893 (Constantine, Jiilian, etc.). 
 
 24. Chastel, Hist, de la destruction du paganisme, 1850; V. Schultze, Gesch. 
 d<s Untergangs des Heidentums, 2 vols., 1887-1892, — Art. Cyrillus and Hypatia 
 in Diet, of Christian Biography. 
 
 25. Monceaux, Histoire litf4raire du V Afriquc chritienve,4: vols., 1901-1912; 
 H. Leclercq, UAfriqu,t chriticnne, 2 vols., 1904. — Art. Afrique in Cabrol, and 
 Douatism.us in Hauck. 
 
 26. A. Harnack, Das Monchtum, 1901 ; W. H. Mackean, Ohristian Monasti- 
 cism in Egypt, 1920; C. Butler, Benedictine monachism, 1919; E. Lesne, ITist. 
 de la propiritti cccUs. en France, vol. i. , 1910. 
 
 27. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 3rd ed., vol. i., 1907. — Saintyves, 
 Jj'S saints successeiirs dcs dieux, 1908; H. Delehaye, Origine du ndte des Martyrs, 
 1912; E. Lucius, Anfaenge des Heiligen Kultcs, 1905. — Th. Reinach, La fete de 
 Pdques, 1900; A. Meyer, TVeihnachisfe.st, 1911. 
 
 28. A. Dupin, Le dogme de la Triniti, 1907; A. R^ville, La ehristologie de 
 Paid de Samosate (in Etudes de critique, 1896, p. 189); Atl<anase et Arius 
 
FROM ST. PAUL TO JUSTINIAN 61 
 
 (Brussels, 1904). — Art. Arianismus, Nicaenisches Konzil, and Trlnitaet in 
 Hauck. — J. Zeiller, Origines chretiennes dansles prov. danuhienna, 1918. 
 
 29. Art. Athanashan, in Hauck. 
 
 30. Art. PrisdlUamcs in Hauck. — Ch. Babut, PriiciUien, 1909. 
 
 .31. Art. Ncstoriufi in Hauck, and R. Duval, V^glise ncstorienne (in Jonrn. 
 des Sav., 1904, p. 109). — Art. 3fonophysiten, in Hauck. — Diehl, Justinien, 
 1901. — Art. Koptische Kirche in Hauck (vol. xii., p. 801). — Duchesne, Mttaiujrs 
 de Rome, 1915, p. 57 (Theodosius). 
 
 32. E. Vacandard, S. Bernard, new ed., 1904. — Art. Pelagius and Sewi- 
 pelagianismus in Hauck. 
 
 33. Art. Fegfeucr (purgatory) in Hauok. — Prayers for the Dead : S. R., 
 CuUes, vol. i., p. 313. 
 
 34. Am. Thierry, S. Jerome, 1867. 
 
 35-36. Art. Vigilantius in Diet, of Christ. Biogr. ; Art. Oregorius and 
 Basilius, ibid. — A. Reville, Vigilance, 1902. 
 
 37. Am. Thierry, S. Jean Chrysostome et VimiJiratrice Eadoxie, 1872; 
 Puech, S. J. Chnisostomc, 1891. 
 
 38. R. Thamin, S. Ambroise, 1895. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CHRISTIANin' : FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHAKLES V 
 
 The services rendered by the Church to medieval society — The conversion of 
 heathen nations — Charlemagne inaugurates the era of violent proselytism 
 — Pilgrimages : the Crusades — The constitution of the temporal power of 
 the Popes — False Decretals — Exactions of the Holy See — Excommunica- 
 tion — Simony — Quarrels of the Popes and Emperors: Gregory VII., the 
 Emperor at Canossa— The Popes and England — Innocent' III.— The 
 Emperor Frederick II.— The CJreat Schism of the West— The decadence 
 of the Papacy in the fifteenth century. 
 
 The monastic orders — Franciscans and Dominicans — Knights Hos- 
 pitallers and Knights Templars. 
 
 The worship of the Virgin — The Immaculate Conception — The worship 
 of saints, and the Golden Legend — Mass — The Eucharist— The feast of 
 the Holy Sacrament — Confession, and the sale of indulgences — Jubilees — 
 The celibacy of the priesthood. 
 
 The Church and heresies — The image-breakers or Iconoclasts — The 
 Catharists or Albigenses — The devastation of the south of France— The 
 Vaudois or Waldenses. 
 
 Anselm of Canterbury and Ab(51ard : Scholasticism — Roger Bacon and 
 St. Thomas Aquinas — The Imitation of Christ — Humanism : Reuchlin 
 and Erasmus — Wycliff and John Huss — Girolamo Savonarola. 
 
 The organisation of the Inquisition — The crimes of the Inquisition — 
 Tortures and the stake — The persecution of so-called witches. 
 
 The Christian Churches which seceded from Rome : the so-called 
 Orthodox Church. 
 
 1. Medieval society owed a great deal to the Church. To 
 deny this is to make a miracle of her duration. 
 
 2. In the first place, the Church propagated the Gospel. 
 Not that she practised it, or commended the study of it. But 
 its principles were on her lips, a germ of humanity, a check 
 upon barbarism. She also acted upon the inspiration of the 
 Gospel in her charitable works, which Julian had held up 
 to the admiration of the heathen. True, her charity was not 
 always judicious. She gave freely and indiscriminately, and 
 so encouraged mendicity. But both in the East and the West 
 she multiplied hospitals, orphanages and asylums. AVhen we 
 remember that the Emperor Claudius had to make a law 
 forbidding people to abandon their sick slaves and cast them 
 
 62 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 63 
 
 out to starve by the roadside, we realise that the Church, 
 though intent, not on a social duty, but on spiritual salvation, 
 was more humane than lettered paganism. 
 
 3. The Church further gave or imposed upon Europe the 
 external forms of Christianity. It is, relatively, a simple creed, 
 not overcharged with festivals, nor encumbered by alimentary 
 prohibitions ; it does not demand too much of its adherents ; 
 it suits laborious races. Activity was, indeed, generally en- 
 joined as a duty by the Church, even to its monks ; Christianity 
 is not, or has only occasionally been, a religion of parasites and 
 sluggards. 
 
 4. Although the Church of Christ perpetually had recourse 
 to violence and shed more blood than all secular ambitions, 
 because she shared them, she at least affirmed the superiority of 
 the spirit to mere brute force, at a period when might was by 
 no means at the service of right. The bishops were the pro- 
 tectors, somewhat capricious no doubt, but effectual, of the 
 weak and oppressed. The Church taught kings mercy. As 
 early as the tenth century she established truces (the Peace of 
 God), intervals in private warfare ; she was not, it is true, the 
 first or the only power who did so ; but we must give her the 
 ci'edit due for having revived this ancient custom, at a time of 
 universal massacre and pillage. 
 
 5. Without any deliberate intention of preserving the 
 literary masterpieces of antiquity, she had a great many of 
 them copied in her monasteries, just as she saved many master- 
 pieces of art in the treasuries of her churches. Her worship 
 demanded magnificence ; artists worked for her glory and our 
 delight. 
 
 6. Finally, at a time when society was divided into castes, 
 when there were nobles, villeins and serfs, she upheld the 
 principle of the equality of all men before God, and urged the 
 essential dignity of the most wretched, since Christ had shed 
 his blood for their salvation. The Church was the refuge of 
 talent. She placed at her head, supreme over kings, the son 
 of a workman, or even the son of a beggar. It was not necessary 
 to be of noble birth to become a bishop, a cardinal, or a pope. 
 Monarchical at its summit, the Church was democratic at its 
 
64 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 base ; it was never aristocratic. This fact was clearly recognised 
 by Voltaire : " The Roman Church has always enjoyed the 
 advantage of being free to give to merit what was elsewhere 
 reserved for birth ; and it is even noteworthy that the haughtiest 
 among the Popes (Gregory VII. and Adrian IV.) were those of 
 the humblest origin. In Germany, there are still convents 
 which admit only persons of noble birth. The spirit of Rome 
 is marked by more grandeur and less vanity." 
 
 • • • • ■ 
 
 7. The prodigiously rapid establishment of the Arab Empire 
 was the first blow struck at the power of the Church ; Christi- 
 anity retreated, for the first time, in Syria, Asia Minor, North 
 Africa and Spain (710). In Spain alone, centres of resistance 
 were soon formed, which became triumphant in the fifteenth 
 century. But the Christian princes never invoked the aid of a 
 Crusade ; this is remarkable as showing that even in Spain the 
 behaviour of the Soldiers of the Cross was a matter of common 
 knowledge. 
 
 8. Powerless against Islam, the Church was successful every- 
 where else in her great work of proselytism among the Gentiles. 
 Her best missionaries were the monks of Ireland, which had 
 been evangelised by St. Patrick (450), and was called the Isle 
 of Saints ; they were the first militia of the Church in Western 
 Europe. After converting the Franks, who were baptised by 
 St. Remigius (496), she christianised the Anglo-Saxons by 
 means of the Roman monk Augustine (596), and the Germans 
 by means of the Anglo-Saxon Winfrid, called St. Boniface, who 
 was finally assassinated in Frisia (689-755). Many brilliant 
 conversions were due to princesses such as Clotilde, the queen 
 of Clovis ; Voltaire justly remarked that half Europe owes its 
 Christianity to women. The conversion of Wladimir (988) was 
 preceded by that of his grandmother, the Russian Duchess Olga, 
 who came to Constantinople (957). As early as 868, the 
 Patriarch of Constantinople had obtained permission to found a 
 church at Kieff, The Russian mercenaries of the Imperial 
 Guard, who became Christians at Constantinople, laboured to 
 evangelise Russia after their return to their homes. 
 
 9. The Byzantine monks Cyril and Methodius baptised a 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 65 
 
 Bulgarian chief in 863 ; Cyril translated the Bible into the Slav 
 tongue, making use of an alphabet derived from the Greek, 
 which he had composed for the purpose. After Bulgaria, 
 Methodius evangelised Bohemia, whence Christianity spread to 
 Poland and Hungary (c. lOOO). In the ninth century, the 
 Church converted the Normans and the Danes of England, and 
 then those of Denmark and Sweden. The influence of Christi- 
 anity extended far towards the East ; the Persian Nestorians 
 sent missionaries of the Gospel into Central Asia and even into 
 China (c. 600). In the thirteenth century, Rome took up the 
 propaganda of the Nestorians ; a church was founded at Pekin, 
 but was soon destroyed, and the Mongolians, at first favourable 
 to Christianity, were partially converted to Islamism. The 
 Nestorian Churches perished in this reaction. 
 
 10. Down to the end of the eighth century, the spiritual 
 victories of the Church had entailed no bloodshed. The era of 
 violent proselytism was inaugurated by Charlemagne, who gave 
 the Saxons a choice between baptism and death (772-782) and 
 massacred over four thousand of them at once. The bishops he 
 instituted were called upon to take cognisance of acts of 
 idolatry and to punish them as crimes ; they were the ancestors 
 of the Inquisitors. After the year 1000, conversion by force 
 became general. The Wends of Pomerania were compelled by 
 the Dukes of Poland to accept baptism ; Pope Honorius decreed 
 a crusade to conquer the Prussians, against whom the Teutonic 
 Knights waged a war of extermination (1236-1283). The 
 Brethren of the Sword treated Livonia and Courland in the 
 same manner. But the conversion of the Lithuanians was not 
 completed till the end of the fourteenth century. 
 
 • • • • ■ 
 
 11. The custom of pilgrimages to the scenes of the Scrip- 
 tures was anterior even to the triumph of Christianity ; thus 
 Helena, the mother of Constantine, went to Jerusalem, where 
 later writers (but not the contemporary Eusebius) report that 
 she discovered the " ti-ue Cross." The conquest of Syria by the 
 Musulmans made these pilgrimages more perilous ; pilgrims 
 returned to tell moving tales of the sad state of Palestine, and 
 the evils endured by the Christians. "Amidst the extreme 
 
 F 
 
66 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 sufferings of the Middle Ages," says Michelet, " men still had 
 tears for the misery of Jerusalem.'' The Papacy, in conjunction 
 with the feudal nobles, whose very existence was due to war, 
 accordingly organised those great military pilgrimages to the 
 Holy Land known as the Crusades (1096-1291). Although 
 these cost millions of lives, exhausted the resources of Christian 
 Europe, aggravated fanaticism, exaggerated the worship of saints 
 and relics to the point of mania, and encouraged the abuse of 
 and traffic in indulgences, they must be credited with having 
 kept back the rising flood of Islamism, re-established regular 
 intercourse with the East, and introduced into Western chivalry 
 ideas somewhat more liberal than those of Frankish barbarism. 
 Even the disasters of the Crusades were not in vain, for they 
 awoke doubts among the masses as to the efficacy of divine 
 protection and the infallibility of the councils of Rome. 
 Finally, " liberty, natural to man, was born again from the 
 want of money among the princes."" ^ 
 
 12. The Crusaders in general, " in spite of their sacred cause, 
 behaved like highway robbers."^ The first host which set out 
 in 1095, and was annihilated by the Turks at Nicaea, killed, 
 burned and pillaged all they encountered. The army com- 
 manded by Godfrey de Bouillon massacred the entire population 
 of Jerusalem (1098). The astuteness of Venice turned aside the 
 fourth Crusade upon Constantinople, and the sack of this city 
 is a dark blot on the history of Western Christendom (1204). 
 It was abominably ravaged, and the very church of St. Sophia 
 was the scene of bloody and sacrilegious orgies. " This was the 
 first time that the city of Constantinople had been taken and 
 sacked by strangers : it was done by Christians who had vowed 
 to fight only against the infidel."" ^ 
 
 The one consolatory element in the story is to be found in 
 the unhappy crusades St. Louis directed upon Egypt and Tunis, 
 in which the king, though a very indifferent general, showed 
 himself at least worthy of the name of Christian. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 13. The instigators of the Crusades were always the Popes, 
 seconded by monks. As early as 1074, Gregory VII. had 
 
 1 Voltaire. » Ibid. » Ibid. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 67 
 
 dreamt of reconquering Anatolia, which had fallen into the 
 hands of the Seljuk Turks. Pope Urban II. appeared at the 
 Council of Clermont in 1094, accompanied by a monk of 
 Picardy, Peter the Hermit, promising the indulgences of the 
 Church to all who would go and fight the infidel. The second 
 Crusade was preached by Eugenius III. and Bernard, Abbot of 
 Clairvaux; the fourth by Innocent HI. and Foulques of Neuilly. 
 Even the frantic Children's Crusade (1212) was encouraged by 
 the enthusiasm of Innocent HI. It was naturally to the 
 interest of the papacy to appear thus as the supreme power 
 which set all the military forces of Europe in movement. As 
 soon as a noble had taken the Cross, he belonged to the Church. 
 The Crusader's vow was indissoluble save by the Pope's consent ; 
 from the beginning of the thirteenth century he began to grant 
 remission for ready money. In the crusading armies the papal 
 legates became delegates of a theocracy which consolidated 
 rapidly and threatened to absorb civil society altogether. On 
 the other hand, the Church fattened on the general misery ; to 
 obtain the money necessary for their enterprises, nobles and 
 vassals were obliged to sell their lands, which the Church 
 bought at prices far below their value. Thus Godfrey de 
 Bouillon, Duke of Brabant, sold his estate of Bouillon to the 
 Chapter of Liege, and Stenay to the Bishop of Verdun. ^ 
 
 In the twelfth century the Popes paid tithes on the church 
 revenues to the princes; but after the Lateran Council in 1215 
 they laid claim, as directors of the Crusades, to all this money, 
 thus creating a tax which was levied in their interest throughout 
 Christendom. 
 
 14. The last Christian town in Syria, St. John of Acre, was 
 retaken by the Musulmans in 1291. Rhodes held out till the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century. It was the zeal of the 
 Hungarians and Slavs, newly converted to Christianity, and 
 not the hopelessly divided forces of Europe, which arrested the 
 Turks on the road to Central Europe and Vienna. Broadly 
 speaking, the Crusades were a failure ; the political object of 
 the papacy was not realised. The condition of Christians and 
 pilgrims in the Holy Land was slightly bettered by various 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
68 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 treaties; but the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted only 
 eighty-eight years, and the Latin Empire of Constantinople was 
 no less ephemeral. When the Paleologi overthrew it in 1261, 
 they had to reckon not only with Musulman ambition, but with 
 the religious hatred of the West. The loss of the Greek 
 Empire to Christianity (1453), a disaster to all European 
 civilisation, was the final defeat, we might almost say the 
 logical conclusion, of the Crusades. 
 
 15. The ruin of the Western Empire had plunged Rome 
 into poverty. Her bishop (the Pope) and her parish priests 
 (the Cardinals) staggered under the crushing burdens imposed 
 upon them by their dignity and the calls upon their charity. 
 The Roman Church received large gifts of land even outside 
 Italy to meet these requirements. In the seventh century she 
 was deprived of nearly all her possessions by the disasters of 
 the times. Her lands in the neighbourhood of Rome consti- 
 tuted the patrimony of St. Peter, called in later days the Roman 
 Province and Roman Duchy. Finally, as the price of its 
 alliance with Pepin le Bref against the Lombards, the papacy 
 obtained a guarantee of its property, to which something was 
 added by Charlemagne. It is a mistake, however, to credit 
 Pepin with the foundation of the temporal power of the Popes. 
 They were at first his lieutenants and administrators. It was 
 not until the ninth century that the papal suzerainty asserted 
 itself, thanks partly to the decay of the Prankish kingdom, 
 partly to the disorder which reigned in Italy, and, above all, to 
 a false document, the pretended donation of Italy to Pope 
 Sylvester by the Emperor Constantine, imposed by Pope Adrian 
 upon Charlemagne. It was not until the days of the Re- 
 naissance that the forgery was recognised by the learned 
 Nicholas of Cues, long after it had produced all the effects 
 which might have been expected from it. 
 
 16. The papal decisions, entitled canons or decretals, were 
 collected about the year 630 ; this collection was attributed to 
 Bishop Isidore of Seville. A second one was added about 850, 
 also in the name of Isidore. It is a series of impudent forgeries, 
 supporting the pretensions of the Pope and the bishops, in 
 opposition to the councils, the synods, and the civil power. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 69 
 
 " The boldest and most magnificent forgery which has deceived 
 the world for centuries," Voltaire calls it. The forger, who was 
 probably a bishop, seems to have been living in the diocese of 
 Tours. Strong in the possession of this weapon, the Popes no 
 longer had any competition to fear in the spiritual kingdom, 
 and were hereby encouraged to encroach upon the temporal. 
 From 852 onwards the False Decretals were cited as authorities, 
 and many among them still figure in the authorised collections 
 of Canon Law. Definitive proof of their falsity was only 
 brought forward in 1628 by the French pastor Blondel, whose 
 work was put on the Index. Never yet has the Papacy ac- 
 knowledged that for a thousand years it made use of forged 
 documents to its own profit. 
 
 17. Down to the time of Julius II. the papal territories, 
 continually encroached upon by feudal princes, produced 
 scarcely anything. The papal revenues consisted of gifts from 
 the Universal Church, of the tithes occasionally conceded by 
 the clergy, and the income from dispensations and taxes. A 
 continual want of funds was one cause of the gravest abuses 
 of the Holy See— extortions, sale of indulgences, contribu- 
 tions exacted from those appointed to vacant benefices. John 
 XXII. instituted a tariff for sin. By an unhappy imitation 
 of the German penal code, which allowed criminals to make a 
 monev compensation, he valued theft, murder, and worse, at a 
 price, " and the men who were wicked enough to commit these 
 sins were fools enough to pay for them." ^ " Lists of these con- 
 tributions have been printed several times since the fifteenth 
 century, and have brought to light infamies at once more 
 ridiculous and more odious than anything we are told about 
 the impudent deceptions of the priests of antiquity."^ 
 
 IS. An Anglo-Saxon king founded an ecclesiastical college at 
 Rome, and to maintain it imposed on his subjects a tax known 
 as " Peter's Pence" (725). The first certainly authentic document 
 on the subject is a letter of Leo III. Gregory VH. relied upon 
 this practice to justify the inclusion of England among the vassals 
 of the Holy See. After England, other northern countries were 
 subjected to the same tax, and paid it with more or less regularity 
 1 Voltaire. * Ihkh 
 
70 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 down to the Reformation. France and Spain i-esisted. The 
 Denier de St. Pierre^ re-established in I860, had nothing but 
 the name in common with the ancient tribute. It used to bring 
 in more than .^^80,000 a year to Leo XIII., but was much more 
 prohfic in the days of Pius IX. 
 
 19. The most formidable weapon in the hands of the Church 
 was excommunication, which deprived its victims of the sacra- 
 ments and of all legal authority. The major excommunication 
 had the force of an interdict. No one could speak to or serve 
 the person excommunicated without contamination, and be- 
 coming anathema himself. When a prince was excommunicated, 
 all religious rites were suspended in his State. It was a strike 
 declared by God. Then the credulous population became terror- 
 stricken, and drove their political chiefs into submission. Thanks 
 to this weapon of excommunication, the Popes of the Middle 
 Ages were able to "give" to their favoured candidates the 
 crowns of the Empire, of Portugal, Hungary, Denmark, 
 England, Aragon, Sicily, and finally of France, which Boniface 
 VIII., after having excommunicated Philippe le Bel, gave to 
 Albert of Austria by a Bull : " We give you, in the plenitude of 
 our power, the Kingdom of France, which belongs of right to the 
 Emperors of the West." We know how Philip replied (1303). 
 
 20. The Popes established the universal use of Latin in 
 divine service, and aimed at making the supremacy of Rome 
 manifest by forcing the Roman liturgy upon all. From the 
 year 400 onwards, the Latin service appears to have superseded 
 the more ancient Greek in the churches of Rome. The Kyrie 
 elelson {Lord, have mercy) of the Latin service is a notable 
 Greek survival. 
 
 ■ • • • • 
 
 21. In the ninth and tenth centuries the Papacy passed 
 through a period of shameful disorder. The Rome of John X. 
 was a cloaca in which the Popes set the example of the worst 
 misconduct. The priestly functions were openly sold, a pro- 
 ceeding to which the name of simony was given, from the story 
 of Simon in the Acts of the Apostles (viii. 18). This sore in 
 the Church remained open till the thirteenth century, in spite of 
 the honest efforts of Gregory VII. to close it. The Emperor 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 71 
 
 Henry III. intervened, deposed three Popes, who hurled mutual 
 anathemas at each other, and set in their place the worthy 
 Clement, Bishop of Bamberg. Clement was the first pontiff' 
 nominated by the Emperor ; but the German rulers must soon 
 have regretted their interference, for Rome, in its turn, wished 
 to give laws to the Germans in order to avoid having to take 
 laws from them. 
 
 22. The fundamental fact in the whole history of the 
 Middle Ages is the papal claim to the suzerainty of all States, 
 in virtue of the pretension that the Pope, alone, was the successor 
 of Jesus Christ ; while the German Emperors, on the other hand, 
 pretended to believe that the kingdoms of Europe were nothing 
 but dismembered fragments of the empire they had inherited 
 from the Roman Caesars.^ The doctrine of the universal 
 suzerainty of the Popes was never affirmed with more insistence 
 than by Hildebi-and, called Gregory VII., whom legend makes 
 the son of a carpenter. He was a restless, enterprising spirit, 
 who sometimes mingled cunning with his zeal for the claims 
 of the Church. Not only did he wish to withdraw the Papacy 
 from the guardianship of the Empire and concentrate in himself 
 the power to nominate and invest bishops : he even dared to 
 excommunicate the Emperor Henry IV., who resisted, and had 
 caused him to be deposed by the Council of Worms (1076). 
 " All the world trembled," says a chronicler of the time, " when 
 the people learned the excommunication of their King." The 
 Emperor had no choice but to humble himself before the Pope 
 at Canossa, after having been kept waiting, as the story goes, 
 barefooted in the snow (1077). " Believing himself then, not 
 unnaturally, master of the crowns of the earth, Gregory wrote, 
 in more than one letter, that he considered it his duty to 
 humble the might of kings." ^ The quarrel broke out again as 
 hotly as ever after this lame reconciliation ; Gregory VII. seems 
 indeed to have been duped by the German, and his harshness 
 has no doubt been exaggerated. The Emperor laid siege to 
 Rome, which was saved by the Norman, Robert Guiscard. 
 But the Pope had to fly, and died miserably at Salerno (1085). 
 He had been the friend and director of Matilda, Countess of 
 1 Voltaire. « Ibid. 
 
72 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Tuscany, who left her great estates to the Papacy after Gregory's 
 death. 
 
 23. An understanding between the Empire and the Holy 
 See — between Ghibellines and Guelfs — took long to establish 
 and cost much bloodshed. The conflict ended at last in a con- 
 cordat (1122). " The real cause of quarrel was that neither the 
 Popes nor the Roman people wanted emperors in Rome ; the 
 pretext, which was put forward as holy, was that the Popes, 
 depositories of the Church's rights, could not allow secular 
 princes to invest her bishops with pastoral staff and ring. It 
 was clear enough that bishops, Avho were the subjects of princes 
 and enriched by them, owed homage for their lands. Kings and 
 emperors did not pretend to endow them with the Holy Ghost, 
 but they demanded homage for the temporalities they had given. 
 The ring and the pastoral staff were but accessories to the main 
 question. But, as almost invariably happens, the heart of the 
 matter was neglected and battle joined over an irrelevant 
 detail." 1 
 
 24. The Papacy showed itself no less aggressive towards 
 Henry II. of England. For having instigated the assassination 
 of Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who conspired 
 against him, he was excommunicated by the Pope, and driven 
 to purchase absolution by enormous concessions. Barefooted, 
 the king had to do penance at the tomb of the murdered bishop. 
 To this same Henry, Pope Adrian IV., himself an Englishman, 
 wrote : " It is not doubted, and you know it, that Ireland and 
 all those islands which have received the faith belong to the 
 Church of Rome ; if you wish to enter that island, to drive vice 
 out of it, to cause law to be obeyed and St. Peter's Pence to be 
 paid by every house, it will please us to assign it to you." 
 
 25. At the Thirteenth Council of Lyons the English ambas- 
 sadors said to Innocent IV. : " Through an Italian, you draw 
 more than 60,000 marks from the kingdom of England ; you 
 have lately sent us a legate who has given every benefice to 
 Italians. He extorts excessive contributions from all the faith- 
 ful, and he excommunicates every one who complains of these 
 exactions." The Pope made no reply, but proceeded to excom- 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 73 
 
 municdte Frederick II. In 1255 Alexander IV. ordered a 
 crusade to be preached in England against Manfred of Naples, 
 and sent a legate to collect tithes. "Matthew Paris reports 
 that the Nuncio collected 50,000 pounds sterling in England. 
 Seeing the English of to-day, it is hard to believe that their 
 ancestors could have been so imbecile ! " ^ 
 
 26. Gregory VII. found a worthy successor in the great 
 Pope Innocent III. The son of a gentleman of Anagni, " he 
 finally erected that edifice of the temporal power for which his 
 predecessors had been amassing materials for some four hundred 
 years. . . . The Roman pontiffs began to be kings in fact ; and 
 religion, aided by circumstances, made them the masters of 
 kings." 2 Innocent III. undertook, in the first place, to with- 
 draw Italy from the influence of Germany ; and, secondly, to 
 subject all the rest of Europe to his own jurisdiction. In 1199 
 he excommunicated Philip Augustus for repudiating Ingeborg ; 
 in 1210 he excommunicated Otho IV. ; in 1213 he excommuni- 
 cated John Lackland, King of England. At one moment he 
 stood out, the uncontested master of Christendom. He preached 
 the fourth Crusade, which threw the Greek Empire into Catholic 
 hands (1204) ; he let loose all the furies of the crusade against 
 the Albigenses (1207); from the fourth Lateran Council he 
 obtained the terrible laws against heretics and Jews (1215). 
 His successor, Honorius III., secured the help of a formidable 
 army of monks, the Dominicans, for the Papacy. 
 
 27. The death of Innocent III. (1216) marks a turning- 
 point in the history of the Popes. From this date onward the 
 temporal power shows a tendency to dwindle before the resist- 
 ance of the secular authorities. Frederick II.'s Chancellor, 
 Petrus de Vinea, wrote in support of the rights of the State. 
 The Emperor himself replied to an excommunication by be- 
 sieging Rome. Frederick II., who made atrocious laws against 
 heresy, was himself a free-thinker. " We have proofs," wrote 
 Gregory IX. in 1239, "that he declares publicly that the world 
 has been deceived by three impostors, Moses, Jesus Christ, and 
 Mahomet. Jesus Christ he places below the other two, because, 
 he says, they were glorious in their lives, while he was nothing 
 1 Voltaire. « lUd. 
 
74 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 but a man sprung from the dregs of the people, who preached 
 to others of the same condition." Sixty years later, Philip the 
 Fair, intent on the posthumous condemnation of Boniface VIII., 
 brought fourteen witnesses to declare that the Pope had been 
 heard to say : " How profitable this fable of Christ has been to 
 us ! ■" Calumny or not, it showed a considerable advance 
 towards intellectual emancipation when such blasphemies 
 could be ascribed to an emperor by a Pope, and to a Pope by 
 a king. 
 
 28. After the fall of the Hohenstaufens, the Hapsburgs 
 were but little disposed to put up with the tutelage of the 
 Popes. England was at first more docile. The interdicted 
 John Lackland had to submit to Rome when Innocent III. 
 threatened to award his kingdom to Philip Augustus. But, in 
 France, St. Louis was the true founder of that doctrine of royal 
 and national independence, suggested by the legists of the 
 South, which has since then been called Gallicanism (the 
 Pragmatic ascribed to him is, however, a forgery ^). Philip the 
 Fair, having quarrelled with Boniface VIII., who declared that 
 every living creature owed obedience to the Bishop of Rome, 
 laughed at both interdict and excommunication, and caused 
 the Pope to be insulted and arrested in his palace at Anagni 
 (1303). 
 
 29. The great Western schism originated in 1378, as a 
 result of the contest for the Papacy between two rival com- 
 petitors. Urban VI. established himself in Rome and Clement 
 VII. at Avignon, where a French Pope, Clement V., an accom- 
 plice in the judicial murder of the Templars, had already lived 
 under the haughty protection of Philip the Fair since 1305. 
 For sixty years the Church had two Popes, and sometimes three. 
 To put an end to the scandal, the cardinals summoned the two 
 Councils of Pisa and Constance. The former (1409) set up a 
 third Pope against the other two, but had no practical results. 
 The latter (1414) ended in the deposition of both Popes, and 
 the election of Martin V. (1417). "The Council declared itself 
 
 * A forgery due to some jurisconsult of the fifteenth century, put forward as 
 a royal decree^of 1268. Pragmatic is a word derived from the Greek, and 
 means an ordinance regulating (religious) affairs. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 75 
 
 above the Pope, which was incontestable, as it had arraigned 
 him ; but a council passes, whereas the Papacy and its authority 
 endures."! Unity was only re-established in 1429, by the 
 renunciation of Clement VIII. Finally, the Council of Basle 
 (1431), which elected an Anti-Pope to Eugenius IV. (1440) 
 and was dissolved by him, tried in vain to bring about im- 
 portant reforms in the Church. The Papacy, supported on this 
 occasion by the Empire, held to its pretensions, and, strengthened 
 by the end of the great schism, would only consent to insufficient 
 changes for the better. 
 
 30. At the end of the fifteenth century the papal dignity 
 sank very low in the person of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI., 
 a man of taste and a friend to the arts, but a debauchee who 
 scandalised even his contemporaries. His successor, Julius II., 
 was an old man of great energy, given to laying about him 
 with his stick, and more occupied with war and politics than 
 with the Church. Finally, the great Renaissance Pope, Leo X., 
 always surrounded by artists and men of letters, gave himself 
 up to the joy of life. "Monks' quarrels!" he cried upon 
 hearing of Luther's early outbursts. Rome in his time was so 
 pagan, so in love with antiquity and with plastic beauty of 
 every kind, that, without the rude shock of the Reformation, 
 she might well have led the cultured world into the conditions 
 it reached in the eighteenth century. Cardinal Peter Bembo, 
 the Pope's intimate friend, refused to read the Epistles of St. 
 Paul, lest, he declared, they should contaminate his Ciceronian 
 Latin. The Church's awakening was terrible. We may judge 
 from what happened during the second half of the sixteenth 
 century, of the enormous force which lay concealed within her, 
 in spite of her apparent senility and corruption. 
 
 • • • 
 
 31. The privileges and relative independence of the monastic 
 life attracted the best Christians. The order of Cluny was 
 founded in France in the tenth century, that of the Camalduli 
 in Italy in the eleventh. These orders soon became possessed 
 of great properties, given or bequeathed by the faithful. The 
 consequence of this wealth was the corruption of the monks. 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
76 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 To bring about a reaction, orders were founded with very severe 
 " rules " : the Carthusians by St. Bruno, the Poor of Christ at 
 the end of the eleventh century, and the Cistercians (monks of 
 Citeaux) adorned by the illustrious St. Bernard (1091-1153). 
 Other orders, such as the Premonstrants (1120) and the Car- 
 melites (1105), continued to absorb the best elements of the 
 population, thus condemning them to sterility. Some among 
 them rendered great and signal services; the Mathurins, for 
 instance, whose mission it was to redeem Christian prisoners 
 from Turkish slavery. This order was founded by Jean de 
 Matha, a doctor of Paris University, and encouraged by Pope 
 Innocent III. But the literature of the Middle Ages sufficiently 
 proves that both monks and nuns were unpopular, and that the 
 morality of convents was subject to the gravest suspicions. The 
 assertions of lay writers are confirmed by ecclesiastical writers, 
 who never ceased to demand the reform of the monasteries, and 
 gave excellent reasons for their clamour. 
 
 32. The fame of the mendicant orders — Franciscans or Cor- 
 deliers, and Dominicans— finally eclipsed that of all the others. 
 The mendicant orders formed a striking innovation on the 
 old monastic conception, Monasticism was essentially the 
 egotistic effort of the individual to ensure his own salvation 
 while repudiating the duties and responsibilities of life. It is 
 true that, at a certain period, monks had done good service to 
 humanity by leaving their retreats and carrying Christian 
 civilisation into regions still barbarous. St. Columba, St. Gall, 
 St. Willibrod and their companions were such pioneers. But 
 that period had long passed away, and monasticism had de- 
 clined for centuries into a state even worse than its primitive 
 egotism. The mendicant orders were a revelation to Christendom. 
 Men, it appeared, existed who were ready to abandon all that 
 made life sweet, and imitate the Apostles, doing for nothing 
 what the Church failed to do with all its wealth and its privi- 
 leges ! Wandering on foot from one end of Europe to the 
 other, under burning suns and icy winds, refusing alms in 
 money, but accepting the coarsest food with gratitude, taking 
 no thought for the morrow, but incessantly occupied in snatching 
 souls from Hell, such was the aspect under which the early 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 77 
 
 Dominicans and Franciscans presented themselves to men who 
 had been accustomed to look upon a monk as a greedy, sensual 
 wordling.i 
 
 33. The Franciscan order, created by Francis of Assisi 
 (1182-1226) in spite of some resistance from the Papacy, owed 
 its early prestige to the virtues of its founder. This gentle 
 mystic, who refused to be ordained a priest,^ forbade his disciples 
 to hold, not only private, but even collective property. He 
 died opportunely and was hastily canonised two years later. 
 The Inquisition was not long in falling out with the spiritual 
 Franciscans or fraticelli, as they were called in Italy ; these 
 followed the example of their master with a fidelity which was 
 a standing reproach to the cupidity of Rome, and not a few 
 were burnt by the Church in the fifteenth century (1426- 
 1449). 
 
 34, The short life of St. Francis left a deep impression on the 
 spirit of the Middle Ages. One may say that to him Christianity 
 owed a new lease of life, because in him the faithful found among 
 themselves, and not in the mists of history, a man whom they 
 could admire and even worship. " Never," says Voltaire, " have 
 the eccentricities of the human intellect been pushed further 
 than in the Book of the Conformities of Christ and St. Francis, 
 written in his own time and afterwards supplemented. In this 
 book Christ is looked upon as the precursor of Francis. Here we 
 find the tale of the snow woman made by the saint with his own 
 hands : that of the rabid wolf, which he tamed miraculously, 
 making it promise to eat no more sheep ; of the doctor whose 
 death he brought about by prayer, that he might have the 
 pleasure of resuscitating him by further prayers. A px'odigious 
 number of miracles were credited to St. Francis. And, in truth, 
 it was a great miracle to establish his order and so to multiply 
 it that he found himself surrounded by five thousand of his 
 monks at a General Chapter held near Assisi during his own 
 
 ' Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. i. 
 
 * "How astonished you will be to hear that Francis, Francis, that admirable 
 man, who led a life more angelic than human, refused the holy priesthood ! 
 . . . He trembled and shuddered at the very name of a priest, and, in spite 
 of the most legitimate vocation, dared not consider, otherwise than at a 
 distance, so redoubtable a dignity !" (Bossuet, Pawgyric of St. Francis; ed. 
 Gaume, vol. iv., p. 438). This may not have been due solely to modesty. 
 
78 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 lifetime." Our age understands St. Francis better than did 
 Voltaire. We see in him not so much the worker of miracles as 
 the friend of the lowly, the mystic spouse of Poverty, the heart 
 beating in sympathy with that of universal nature ; perhaps we 
 are even apt to modernise him too much, and bring him nearer 
 to us than we oueht. 
 
 35. The idea occurred to St. Francis of affiliating the laity 
 to his order. This led to the powerful institution of the " third 
 order" which was imitated by the Jesuits of the sixteenth 
 century. St. Clara of Assisi, the friend of St. Francis, founded 
 the order for women known as the Poor Clares (1224), whose 
 rule was fixed by the saint herself Thus the Franciscan army 
 drew its recruits from Christian society as a whole, male and 
 female, religious and secular. 
 
 36. The great revolution brought about by Franciscanism 
 in the spirit, literature and art of Christianity cannot be ex- 
 plained without a foreign influence. Christianity of the early 
 Middle Ages was " high and dry " ; to St. Francis she owed new 
 and priceless elements of emotion, sympathy and kindness, 
 together with a feeling for the beauties of nature somewhat 
 akin to pantheism. Now, while Francis was growing up in 
 Assisi, the Oriental heretics called Cathaii (the "pure"), who 
 originated in Central Asia and professed tenets akin to Buddhism, 
 were very powerful in Northern and Central Italy. They reigned 
 almost supreme in Assisi about 1203, and Pope Innocent III. 
 had to proceed against them. Francis' parents, whom he after- 
 wards forsook and forgot, seem to have belonged to the sect. A 
 Christian novel, Barlaam and Joasaph, M'hich is a free paraphrase 
 of the Buddha's life, circulated among them and found innumer- 
 able readers in Europe from the eleventh century onwards ; 
 traces of it can be detected in the legend of the saint himself. 
 But he was no heretic ; always faithful to the Church and 
 hierarchy, he was content with teaching and introducing into 
 the very heart of his age the more innocent and humane elements 
 of Catharic doctrine. Not without reason, and with more 
 reason than he could himself believe, a learned Japanese of our 
 day, Anesaki, dedicated a study of Buddhistic art " to the sweet 
 memory of St. Francis." Indirectly and unknowingly, he was 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 79 
 
 the first to rejuvenate and sweeten Christianity with an aroma 
 of distant Buddhism. 
 
 37. The Dominicans, more practical than the Franciscans, 
 though equally vowed to poverty, were founded in 1216 by the 
 Spaniard, Domingo di Guzman (1170-1221). They were called 
 punningly the Dogs of God, Domini canes. They formed a kind 
 of militia of preachers and inquisitors, with affiliated laymen, 
 who devoted an unbending fanaticism and an unlimited obedience 
 to the service of the Papacy. They were also known as the 
 Preaching Friars, and in France as the Jacobins. Quarrels soon 
 arose between Franciscans and Dominicans, and introduced a 
 new element of disorder into times already troublous enough. 
 
 38. Another blossom sprang from the mystic spirit of 
 Tuscany in the fourteenth century, in Catherine of Siena, a 
 member of the lay order of St. Dominic (1347-1380). She 
 flogged herself three times a day, once for her own sins, once for 
 those of others still alive, and once for those of the dead. 
 Betrothed in ecstasy to Jesus, she believed he had given her the 
 nuptial ring ; she also believed she had been nourished on milk 
 from the bosom of Mary. She played a considerable part in 
 politics, and, in her charity for the suffering and desire to bring 
 about the reign of peace among men, she showed more common 
 sense than is usually expected from mystics. Sent to Pope 
 Gregory XL, a native of the Limousin, to persuade him to cjuit 
 Avignon and return to Rome (which he then intended to do), 
 she achieved her mission with the aid of a Swedish visionary, 
 St. Bridget, to whom an angel dictated several letters for 
 delivery to the Pope (1376). Raimondo da Capua, Catherine's 
 confessor, witnessed most of her miracles. " I saw her," he 
 declares, " transformed into a man, with a little beard on her 
 chin. The face into which hers was suddenly changed was that 
 of Jesus Christ himself." A credible witness, indeed ! But under 
 all the puerility of this legend, as under that of St. Francis 
 receiving the stigmata (that is, the nail-marks of the crucifixion 
 on his hands and feet), we may recognise the general idea of the 
 supernatural identification of the faithful with their God, which 
 is to be traced in the most ancient forms of human religion. 
 Catherine was one of the most popular saints of the Italian 
 
80 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Renaissance. She was canonised in 1461. Her miracles and 
 her ecstasies are celebrated in a hundred masterpieces of art. 
 
 39. The eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the birth of 
 various orders which were at once religious and military. Con- 
 secrated in the first place to the service of the wounded in war, 
 they vowed themselves, after 1118, to actual warfare against the 
 infidel. Such were the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of 
 Jerusalem, the Templars, the Teutonic Knights, the Knights of 
 the Sword, of Santiago of Calatrava and of Alcantara in Spain. 
 Their common object was to fight with and incidentally to con- 
 vert infidels and heretics. They were, so to speak, in a condition 
 of perpetual crusade, and their activity well represents that 
 spirit of proselytism by violence which, after the year 1000, 
 superseded proselytism by persuasion. Moreover, Templars and 
 Hospitallers were always fighting with each other : in a certain 
 combat between these military monks no Templar was left 
 alive. 
 
 The Templars were bankers as well as warriors and became 
 rich, although never so rich as the Hospitallers. Princes and 
 Popes were tempted by their pi'operty. They were accused of 
 secret rites of idolatry, and of various infamous practices. In 
 1307, Philip the Fair, assisted after a short resistance by Pope 
 Clement V., arrested all the Templars in France. He caused 
 them to be examined by his agents, who used torture to extort 
 confessions, and afterwards handed them over to the Inquisition, 
 his docile instrument. The knights confessed a thousand crimes. 
 Outside France, however, where torture was not applied, they 
 protested their innocence, while even in France itself the 
 following singular fact was observed : Two Templars belonging 
 to different commanderies, when tortured and questioned by the 
 same judge, confessed the same crimes, while two Templars of 
 the same commandery, tortured by different judges, confessed 
 different crimes. The fraud is obvious. The confessions were 
 extorted and dictated. There is not a shadow of proof that the 
 Templars borrowed idolatrous rites and immoral practices from 
 the Orientals with whom they had come in contact. Besides, at 
 the last moment, those who could do so retracted their avowals, 
 whereupon they were burnt alive for having relapsed (1310). 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 81 
 
 The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under 
 
 the threat of torture, retracted his confession four years later 
 
 and perished at the stake (1314). The persecution spread to 
 
 the other nations of Europe. Even in England, where the 
 
 employment of torture has always been repugnant to the free 
 
 instincts of the people, it was brought into play at the express 
 
 demand of the Pope. When the order was suppressed (1312), 
 
 the princes confiscated its property, giving a part to other orders 
 
 and not a little to the Papacy. This was one of the most 
 
 detestable affairs of a period in history which ignorance and 
 
 fanaticism are still apt to admire. But if the Pope's responsibility 
 
 was great, that of Philip the Fair was still heavier : for the 
 
 pontiff, weak and domesticated, was the accomplice, not the 
 
 instigator of the king. Philip acted with no less cruelty and 
 
 cynicism when he turned his attention to getting rid of Jews 
 
 and lepers. 
 
 . • • • • 
 
 40. The dogma of the Incarnation was a stumbling-block 
 for human reason. As early as the fourth century some 
 endeavoured to meet the difficulty by the theory of adoption. 
 God had adopted Jesus Christ at the time of His baptism in 
 the Jordan. This theory, not far removed from Arianism, was 
 upheld chiefly in Spain, in the time of Charlemagne, condenmed 
 by the Council of Ratisbon (792), and refuted by Alcuin (799). 
 Traces of it are to be found, however, in the teaching of Abelard. 
 
 41. Vain attempts have been made to impute the worship of 
 the Virgin Mary to the Christians of the fourth century. It was 
 not until the fifth and sixth centuries that Mariolatry declared 
 itself in the East. Men were taught that Mary was carried up 
 to Heaven by angels, and the Emperor Maurice instituted the 
 Feast of the Assumption in her honour (582). This feast was 
 adopted in the West about the year 750. From the twelfth 
 century Mai-y has been adored, especially in France, as the 
 Mother of God, almost as a goddess. It was to this epoch that 
 a singular miracle was ascribed in documents concocted some 
 three centuries later. It was said that the house {Casd) of the 
 Virgin in Nazareth had been transported by angels, first into 
 Dalmatia (1291) and thence to Loretto, where it became the 
 
82 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 object of a lucrative pilgrimage, attracting, in our days, more than 
 a hundred thousand faithful annually. In order that nothing 
 might be wanting to these pagan rites, many pilgrims got a 
 figure of the Madonna of Loretto tattooed in blue on their arms. 
 Hundreds of other still existing sanctuaries owe their foundation 
 and prosperity to Mariolatry. Two facts contributed very 
 powerfully to the formation of this cult : the honour in which 
 celibacy was held, and the necessity for a feminine ideal in the 
 Christian pantheon. Monasticism found satisfaction here for 
 starved affections, as did chivalry for its romantic gallantry. 
 Mary became the mediator between suffering humanity and the 
 glorified Christ, who yielded up His role of intercessor to her 
 more and more, being in His turn moved to pardon by her 
 prayers. 
 
 42. But did Mary, at her birth, receive the infection of 
 original sin ? If so, why did she not transmit it to Jesus ? This 
 difficulty was met, in the twelfth century, by the doctrine of the 
 Immaculate Conception, which means, not what the less in- 
 structed public supposes, but that at the moment when the 
 body of Mary received its soul, a particular act of grace 
 preserved it from the contagion of sin. This doctrine was 
 upheld by Duns Scotus against St. Thomas, by the Franciscans 
 against the Dominicans, by the Jesuits against the Jansenists. 
 In 1854 it became an article of faith in the Roman Church. 
 The Greek Church, Mariolatrous as it is, does not admit it. As 
 for the Reformed Churches, they all, with the exception of the 
 English Ritualists, hold the adoration of Mary in horror. 
 
 43. In order to combat the new opinion, the Dominicans of 
 Berne, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, chose a young 
 man of weak intellect, a tailor s apprentice, and caused Mary 
 herself to appear before his eyes to protest against the doctrine 
 of the Immaculate Conception. The fraud was discovered, and 
 four Dominicans were burnt at the stake (1509). Long before 
 this, however, the Dominicans had made use of St. Catherine of 
 Siena, to whom the Virgin revealed that she had been born in 
 sin ; unfortunately, the Franciscans had a contemporary saint 
 of their own, St. Bridget, to whom Mary declared, with equal 
 confidence, that she had been born free from sin (1375). 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 83 
 
 44. It became necessary to put limits to the cult of saints, 
 and the Church reserved to herself the right of choosing them 
 (tenth century). Ever since the twelfth century, the Papacy 
 alone has had the power to beatify or canonise individuals, after 
 a regular process of trial in which the deviFs advocate has to be 
 heard. This advocate did not prevent the canonisation of blood- 
 thirsty Inquisitors, like the Italian Peter Martyr of Verona 
 (t 1365), and the Spaniard, Pedro Arbues (t 1485), the latter 
 enrolled among the saints by Pius IX., in defiance of all modern 
 and humane ideas. The Roman Church, moreover, honours a 
 number of saints — such as Rene, Philomena, Reine, Corona — 
 whose only fault is that they never existed. 
 
 45. In order to feed the piety of the populace, which delighted 
 in tales of miracles, a monk called Jacobus de Voragine published, 
 in 1298, iheGolden Legend, which still exercises a certain influence 
 on literature and art. It is a regular Christian mythology, taken 
 from the most doubtful sources, charming to the sceptical dilet- 
 tante, exasperating to a reverent believer. If the first result is 
 the more usual one in these days, it is easy to guess the reason. 
 
 46. In Catholic countries a man is still said to fulfil his 
 religious duties when he "goes to Mass." The word Mass 
 comes, perhaps, from the concluding formula of the service in 
 the course of which the bread and the wine are consecrated and 
 absorbed by the officiating priest : ite missa est. Doubts, how- 
 ever, attach to this derivation. It is possible that missa was a 
 popular Latin word meaning function, or ceremony. As early 
 as the end of the first century traces of a religious ceremony 
 connected with the offering of bread and wine are to be found 
 in Rome : this was the origin of the modern Mass. 
 
 47. If we examine the texts relating to the Eucharist in 
 their chronological order, it appears that at first this repast 
 was merely the commemoration of the Last Supper of Christ 
 by the consumption of bread and wine in common by the 
 faithful. As time passed the supper in common disappeared, 
 the consumption of bread and wine took on a magic character, 
 until finally it was believed that the actual body and blood of 
 Jesus were present in the host and the chalice. That is the 
 case as put by the Protestants. But to those who know how 
 
84 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 great a part theophagy played in the more or less secret rites of 
 many non-Christian religions it is difficult to deny that as 
 early as the time of St. Paul, and in his thoughts, the Holy 
 Supper tended to put on a similar character, hidden, at first, 
 from the non-believer by a discreet and even compulsory silence 
 (as were the arcana of the mystic rites of paganism). The 
 dogma of the Heal Presence was distinctly formulated by the 
 monk Paschasius Radbertus of Corbie (844), but it had existed, 
 as a belief, long before his time. Berengarius of Tours, by 
 whom this materialistic conception was attacked, had to retract 
 in 1059, and twenty years later the dogma of transubstantiation 
 was adopted by a Council at Rome. 
 
 48. About the year 1150 a discussion arose in Paris as to 
 whether the bread was changed into the body of Christ as soon 
 as the words " This is my body " were pronounced, or whether 
 it awaited the transformation of the wine. It was in order to 
 assert the former opinion that, about 1200, the priests of Paris 
 were instructed to elevate the host in full view of the congrega- 
 tion, immediately after having pronounced the formula. By the 
 thirteenth century this custom had become general. 
 
 49. It was at this period that the privilege of sharing the 
 wine was withdrawn from the laity, who thenceforth had the 
 right only to the host, the priest drinking the wine on behalf of 
 all. The change was brought about by accidents which had 
 become so frequent as to be a scandal, especially the spilling of 
 the sacred wine. Those who persisted in claiming participation 
 in the chalice were called Calixt'mes ; in Bohemia, where they 
 were connected with the heresy of John Huss, they were treated 
 with great rigour. 
 
 50. The Eucharist gave occasion for a new festival. " No 
 ceremony of the Church, perhaps, is nobler, more magnificent, 
 more capable of filling beholders with piety, than the feast of 
 the Holy Sacrament. Antiquity itself had no ceremony more 
 august. And yet who was the real cause of its establishment ? 
 A nun of the convent of Moncornillon near Liege, who fancied 
 every night she saw a hole in the moon. This was duly followed 
 by a revelation from which she learnt that the moon meant the 
 Church and the hole a festival which was yet wanting. A 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 85 
 
 monk called John collaborated with her in composing the office 
 of the Holy Sacrament. The festival was first established at 
 Liege; Urban IV. adopted it for the Church at large (1264.)."! 
 This festival was long a source of trouble. In Paris, in the 
 sixteenth century, the Catholics forced the Protestants to 
 decorate their houses and kneel in the streets as the Communion 
 procession went by. One of the crimes which brought the 
 Chevalier de la Barre to the scaffold, in 1766, was that of having 
 kept on his hat one rainy day as he passed a procession of the 
 Sacrament. 
 
 51. The Church's tendency after the year 1000 was towards 
 domination both in spiritual and temporal matters. The clergy 
 had to think and act for every one. The laity was forbidden 
 to read the Scriptures (1^229). " It was an insult to humanity to 
 say : we wish you to cherish a certain belief, but we do not wish 
 you to read the book on which that belief is founded." ^ Prayer 
 became little more than a mechanical exercise, aided, after the 
 twelfth century (perhaps from Mahommedan example), by the 
 use of chaplet and rosary. Hundreds, thousands of Ave Marias 
 had to be recited as penance for the slightest fault. Excluded 
 thus from religious life, which was the only life for the simple 
 thought of the age, the crowd attached all the more importance 
 to those rites in which they were allowed, and even compelled, 
 to participate. The Church adjudicated on these points also. 
 Following Peter Lombard, she decided in the twelfth century 
 that there were seven sacraments, neither more nor less : Baptism, 
 the Eucharist, Marriage, Confirmation, Ordination, Penance, 
 and Extreme Unction. Needless to say, no foundation for such 
 a doctrine could be discovered in the Gospels. 
 
 52. " Confess your faults one to another," says the writer of 
 the epistle ascribed to St. James. The primitive Church had 
 practised confession in public, which had its obvious drawbacks. 
 The victorious Church saw in confession a powerful means of 
 influencing souls, and substituted private confession to a priest 
 for confession in public. Confession implied penance, which 
 was usually some good work, such as a gift to the Church. But 
 the Church, the custodian of the infinite merits of Christ and the 
 1 Voltaire. « Ibid. 
 
86 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Saints, could draw upon this inexhaustible treasure to exempt 
 the penitent, either wholly or in part, from the consequences his 
 acts would otherwise have brought upon him in the other life. 
 Thus the practice of confession led inevitably to that traffic in 
 the chastisements of Purgatory and in ecclesiastical indulgences 
 which was one of the determining causes of the Reformation. 
 
 53. In 1215, under Innocent III., auricular confession at 
 least once a year was made obligatory. A priest alone could 
 hear confession. An abbess, even of the most important convent 
 of women, had no such right — a curious indignity put by the 
 Church on the sex to which the Mother of God belonged. 
 
 54. " A custom which began to be introduced in the eleventh 
 century must not be forgotten, that of buying off the dead and 
 delivering their souls from Purgatory by the alms and prayers 
 of the living. A solemn festival consecrated to this form of 
 piety was established. The Cardinal Pierre Damien relates that 
 a pilgrim, on his way back from Jerusalem, was cast upon an 
 island, w^here he found a pious hermit, from whom he learnt 
 that the island was inhabited by devils, that the country in his 
 neighbourhood was covered with flames, into which the devils 
 threw the souls of the newly dead, that these same devils never 
 ceased to cry out and howl against Odilon, Abbot of Cluny, 
 whom they called their mortal enemy. ' The prayers of Odilon,' 
 they declared, ' and his monks, were always robbing them of 
 some soul.* This being reported to Odilon, he established the 
 Fete des Morts (Festival of the Dead) at his Abbey of Cluny. 
 The Church soon followed his example. If matters had stopped 
 there it would have been but a form of devotion the more ; but 
 abuses were not long in creeping in. The mendicant friars, 
 especially, required payment for delivering souls from Purgatory. 
 They talked of apparitions of the dead, of piteous souls who 
 came to beg for rescue, and of the sudden deaths and eternal 
 tortures of those who refused their help. Pure brigandage 
 succeeded to pious credulity, and was one of the causes which 
 lost half Europe to the Roman Church." ^ 
 
 55. The traffic in indulgences became more shameless than 
 ever after the institution of the jubilees by Boniface VIII. 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 87 
 
 (1300). It was not long before jubilees at intervals of twenty- 
 five years were established, in order that every one might have 
 a chance of participating in the indulgence promised by the 
 Church to all who made the pilgrimage to Rome. At the same 
 time monks travelled about selling indulgences, both plenary 
 and partial. One Franciscan declared that the Pope, if he 
 chose, could empty Purgatory at a single stroke. Why, then, 
 did he hesitate to do so ? That Franciscan was troublesome, 
 but his statement was logical ; the Sorbonne condemned him on 
 both counts. 
 
 56. The marriage of priests had already been prohibited in 
 the West during the fourth century ; it seemed intolerable to 
 Gregory VII., who sought to have it forbidden by the secular 
 power. In spite of the Church's efforts, the principle of 
 ecclesiastical celibacy did not triumph, however, until the 
 thirteenth century ; and even then certain compromises with the 
 full rigour of the law were admitted — in South America, for 
 instance. Celibacy did not make the priests any better, but it 
 exposed them to taunts which were often justified, and thus 
 diminished their influence with the people; it provided the 
 Reformers with one of their arguments. However, from the 
 point of view of efficiency, sacerdotal celibacy has added 
 immensely to the power of the Roman Church. An unmarried 
 priest or monk is free from worldly cares ; his superiors can send 
 him to any place, or eventually dismiss him, without fearing to 
 endanger or starve a family. The individual may suffer morally 
 or otherwise ; but it means a permanent benefit to the govern- 
 ment of souls. 
 
 . • • • • 
 
 57. When we examine the attitude of the Church toward 
 heresies we are at first struck with admiration. She has always 
 known how to preserve the just mean between mysticism and 
 rationalism. Obliged by her very origin to impose upon the 
 world a certain number of beliefs the truth of which she cannot 
 demonstrate, she allows nothing to be either subtracted from or 
 added to them. Dogma is a province administered by herself, 
 in which intruders are treated as enemies. This good sens* of 
 the Church was in full accordance with her temporal interests. 
 
88 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Mystics and infidels alike claim to do without her, without her 
 images, her relics, her magic. They are " bad taxpayers." But 
 the Church is a vast and very expensive organisation. She 
 requires a great deal of money. Now, I defy any one to name 
 a single opinion persecuted by the Church in the Middle Ages, 
 the adoption of which would not have brought about a 
 diminution in her revenues. Voltaire is absolutely in the wrong 
 when he writes : " In all the disputes which have excited 
 Christians against each other, Rome has invariably decided in 
 favour of that opinion which tended most towards the sup- 
 pression of the human intellect and the annihilation of the 
 reasoning powers." The Church did not take arms against 
 reason whenever her tenets allowed her to be reasonable ; 
 moreover, she was not tyrannical for the mere pleasure of being 
 so ; she had to think of her finances. 
 
 58. When her authority and material interests were not 
 involved the Church was tolerant enough. People might amuse 
 themselves, even at the expense of the decencies of worship, so 
 long as they made no pretence of doing without it. " The most 
 august features of religion were disfigured in the West by the 
 most ridiculous customs. The Feast of Fools, and that of the 
 Ass, were established festivals in the majority of churches. On 
 certain solemn days a Bishop of Fools was elected ; an ass was 
 introduced into the nave dressed up in cope and biretta. The 
 ass was honoured in memory of the animal which carried Jesus 
 Christ. At the end of the Mass the priest set himself to bray 
 three times with all his might, and the people echoed him. 
 Dancing in the churches and indecent fooleries formed part of 
 the ceremonies at these commemorations, a practice which lasted 
 for some seven centuries in many a diocese. Rome could not 
 put an end to these barbarous usages, any more than to the duel 
 and the trial by ordeal. In the rites of the Roman Church, how- 
 ever, there was always more decency and gravity than elsewhere ; 
 we feel that, on the whole, when she was free and well governed, 
 she existed to set a good example to other communions." ^ 
 
 59. The Iconoclasts, or image-breakers, were those Eastern 
 Christians who attempted, in the eighth century, to strip the 
 
 1 Voltaire. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 89 
 
 churches of statues, which had come to be venerated hke idols. 
 Many causes have been named for this movement — memories of 
 the Mosaic legislation, so hostile to idolatry ; fear of Musulman 
 satire. The true reason seems to have been hostility to the 
 monks, whom the manufacture of images enriched. Leo the 
 Isaurian was a violent Iconoclast ; his son, Constantine Copro- 
 nymus, obtained the condennmtion of images by the Council of 
 754. But the Empress Irene, wife of Leo IV., Constantine's 
 successor, was won over by the monks when she became regent, 
 and caused the condemnation to be reversed by a later Council 
 (786). To worship images was not permitted, but to kiss them, 
 to prostrate oneself before theni, to burn candles and incense 
 at their feet, was legitimate. Charlemagne, or rather Alcuin, 
 director of the Palace School, who had iconoclastic tendencies, 
 protested against the adoration at least, if not against the 
 existence, of the images themselves, in the West. His protest 
 was upheld by two Frankish Councils ; but the pagan current in 
 the Church was too strong, and too many material interests were 
 involved. Down to the time of the Reformation the advocates 
 of images triumphed all over Europe. Happily for art, they 
 have never been silenced, though the Tridentine Council made 
 some concessions to them. 
 
 60. "A heretic," says Bossuet, "is a man with an opinion." 
 {hairesis^ in Greek, " choice."") In the darker centuries of the 
 Middle Ages few men had intellect enough to think for them- 
 selves. Gottschalk, a monk of Fulda, exaggerated Augustinism 
 and the doctrine of predestination. He was condemned by two 
 synods and thrown into prison (849). The other heresies of the 
 time need not be recorded here. It is only after the year 1000 
 that they become interesting. 
 
 6L The great heresies of the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 turies may be divided into two classes. The first were the revolts 
 of honest people, who dreamt of the purity of apostolic times 
 and wished profoundly to reform the hierarchy, or even to 
 suppress it. These were the anti- sacerdotal heretics, whom the 
 Church persecuted with most severity because they threatened 
 both her organisation and her property. The other class were 
 the dogmatic heretics, affiliated to Oriental Manichaeism, which 
 
90 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ended in the ascetic doctrine. The Church, a government 
 wishing to hve and to let live, could not tolerate them either. 
 
 62. Arnold of Brescia, a pupil of Abelard, took the field in 
 Italy, Switzerland, and France against the wealth and corrup- 
 tion of the clergy. By his eloquence he gained over the citizens 
 of Rome, who established the simulacrum of a republic. The 
 Pope summoned the Emperor Frederick I. to his assistance. 
 Frederick besieged Rome, and took it through the treachery 
 of the nobles. Arnold was strangled and his body burnt 
 (1155). 
 
 63. A sect of Eastern Manichees, or Manichaeans, the Pauli- 
 cians (referring not to Paul the Apostle, but to Paul of Samo- 
 sata), had spread over Bulgaria, and thence up the valley of the 
 Danube towards Italy and France. Its members called them- 
 selves Cathari ; that is, The p7i7-e. The name was corrupted into 
 Patarins, and in Germany into Keizer, which became the German 
 term for heretics in general. Indian Buddhism and Persian 
 Mazdeism both contributed elements to their creed. They 
 taught that the God of the Old Testament was the Devil, that 
 Jesus was the good God, and that the Devil in the form of 
 sensuality was to be fought against. An inner ring, the 
 Perfect^ vowed themselves to celibacy, and all renounced the 
 eating of flesh, except that of fishes. They had no baptism ; 
 only a laying on of hands, which they called Consolation, which 
 seems indeed to have been a custom of the primitive Christian 
 Church. It was equivalent to initiation. The members con- 
 fessed to each other. The Cathar'i were strictly moral, although 
 they were calumniated by hostile rumours. In the comparatively 
 advanced civilisation of the south of France they gathered 
 numerous recruits, and had bishops both at Toulouse and at 
 Albi. It was from the latter city that they took their name 
 of Albigenses. 
 
 64. The Church waged a relentless war against these in- 
 offensive sectaries. As St. Bernard failed to convince them of 
 their errors, Innocent III., in 1208, preached a crusade against 
 them. Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, was obliged to take 
 the field against his own subjects. He saw his lands invaded 
 by 300,000 adventurers, who for some twenty years murdered. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 91 
 
 burnt, and pillaged under the orders of the Pope's legate (1209- 
 1229).^ Flourishing cities, like Beziers and Carcassonne, were 
 treated as the Crusaders treated Byzantium. At the siege of 
 Lavaur, the Seigneur and eighty knights were taken prisoners 
 and condemned to be hanged. But the gallows being broken, 
 they were handed over to the Crusaders, who massacred them 
 all. Three hundred of the inhabitants, who refused to recant 
 their opinions, were burnt round a well down which the sister 
 of the Sergneiir had been previously thrown (1211). And 
 besides the thousands of wretched people who died by the 
 sword and at the stake, how many rotted to death in obscure 
 dungeons ! The Inquisition, established in 1232 in order to 
 stamp out the remains of this particular heresy, set the faggots 
 blazing all over the country and completed its ruin. Provencal 
 civilisation received such a blow that it took three centuries 
 to recover. We are still waiting, both at Beziers and at 
 Carcassonne, for expiatory memorials to the Albigensian 
 martyrs. 
 
 65. As early as the ninth century, when Claude, Bishop of 
 Turin, combated the worship of images and other pagan prac- 
 tices, Piedmont formed a school of honest clerics who turned 
 their attention to the reform of the Church. Towards 1100 we 
 find Pierre de Brueys, burnt in 1124, insisting that the Bible 
 afforded the only rule of faith and worship. After him Henry, a 
 Lombard, preached at Lausanne, in Burgundy, and at Le Mans ; 
 he was condemned in 1148. Finally a rich citizen of Lyons, 
 Pierre Waldo, having read the Bible and admired it, caused it 
 to be translated into the vernacular, divided his property among 
 the people, and founded a church for the poor, the Pauvres de 
 Lyon, or Humilies. Of course these "Poor Men"" were perse- 
 cuted. The remains of their community withdrew into the 
 valleys of the Alps, and there founded the Church of the 
 Waldenses, the principles of which are very similar to those 
 of the Reformation. Like the Reformers, the Waldenses 
 endeavoured to spread the knowledge of those sacred writings 
 which Pope Innocent III. had forbidden the faithful to read. 
 
 66. The persecution of the Waldenses was revived under 
 
 * Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. i. 
 
92 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Clement XII., an Avignon Pope. Hundreds were burnt by the 
 Inquisition at Grenoble and in Dauphind. Towards the end of 
 the fifteenth century a papal legate undertook their extermina- 
 tion, and conducted a ferocious crusade against them. Whole 
 bands were smoked to death by him in caves in which they had 
 taken refuge. Those of the Piedmontese valleys only escaped 
 similar treatment through the protection of one of the Dukes of 
 Savoy. In 1663, and again in 1686, these hateful persecutions 
 were revived at the instigation of Louis XIV., and entire valleys 
 were depopulated. The executioners were Irish mercenaries, 
 retained for the purpose by the then Duke of Savoy. The 
 survivors found asylum in Switzerland and Germany. Acting 
 from that base, a few hundred brave men, led by their pastor, 
 Henri Arnaud, undertook to reconquer their country. They 
 were on the point of failure, when the Duke of Savoy, who was 
 by that time at war with France, made peace with them and 
 put the defence of their valleys into their own hands. An edict 
 of toleration, obtained in 1694, allowed them to live in peace 
 thenceforward. 
 
 67. Other less extensive heresies were suppressed with equal 
 vigour by the Church. Nicholas of Basle, founder of the Friends 
 of God {Gottesfreimde), was burnt by the Inquisition in 1383. 
 The Flagellants, who were at first encouraged in their silly forms 
 of penance, had to undergo the lot of all those mystics who fell 
 short of entire submission to the Church. We have seen that 
 the Inquisition raged against the spiritual Franciscans ; it also 
 persecuted the Begiiins and Beguines of Flanders, whose semi- 
 secular associations had a tendency to disregard the hierarchy. 
 
 68. With the exception of the Waldenses, the sects 
 persecuted by the Church lacked moderation and good sense. 
 Even the Albigenses, with their extravagant asceticism, would 
 eventually have become a danger to civil society. It does not 
 appear, however, that in its struggle against the sectaries the 
 Church was moved by any such wise consideration as this. 
 Those historians who uphold the opposite view are not arguing 
 in good faith. The Church fought for her own authority, for 
 her privileges and wealth ; and she did so with an unexampled 
 ferocity, which was all the more culpable in that she pretended 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 93 
 
 to be inspired by the Gospel, by a religion of kindness and 
 
 humility. 
 
 • . . • • 
 
 69. During the second half of the twelfth century Paris was 
 the centre of theological studies. Pope Innocent III. and John 
 of Salisbury, the one Italian, the other English, came there for 
 instruction. Speculative thinking had been revived in the 
 schools, about the end of the eleventh century, by the influence 
 of Aristotle, whose works had been translated first into Arabic, 
 and afterwards into Latin. Thence arose what was called 
 the Scholastic Philosophy, a sort of Aristotelian Christianity. 
 Among its teachers, who sought to found Christianity upon logic 
 and metaphysics, were some men of great ability, such as Anselm, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109). Not only did he con- 
 ceive what is called the ontological proof of God's existence (" I 
 conceive God as perfect ; being perfect He must exist, because 
 reality is an attribute of perfection " — the sophistry of this was 
 only fully demonstrated by Kant) ; he also formulated, with the 
 full approbation of the Church, the ingenious theory of Atone- 
 ment. Man has sinned against God, he has accumulated an 
 infinity of misdeeds ; to counterbalance such a mass of in- 
 debtedness all good works are insufficient ; hence the necessity 
 for the sacrifice of God made man, for the Incarnation and 
 the Redemption. It was by the example of Ansehn that people 
 were taught to find arguments for the faith in reason, and not 
 only in the opinions of the Fathers of the Church. So far we 
 may say he opened the door to rationalism. Progress in this 
 direction was helped by the long quarrel of the Nominalists, 
 who denied the real existence of general ideas ; of the Realists, 
 who (like Anselm) affirmed it ; and of the Conceptualists (like 
 Abelard), who declared that conceptions were the only realities. 
 This discussion, which has seemed so idle since the days of Kant, 
 helped to withdraw educated men from the tyranny of ready- 
 made opinions, to induce them to seek truth outside tradition 
 and to reason freely. "You may discuss," said St. Bernard, 
 " provided that your faith is impregnable." In his eyes philo- 
 sophy was the servant of faith. It was a servant, however, which 
 from the very beginning sometimes assumed the attitude of a 
 
94 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 mistress. This the Church perceived, aud Scholastic Philosophy 
 soon created no little trouble for her. 
 
 70. The learned and subtle Abelard (1079-1143), surrounded 
 by hundreds of disciples, both in Paris and Champagne, trans- 
 formed the sacraments into symbols and denied the power of 
 indulgences. Condemned by a Council of 1121, and combated 
 by St. Bernard, he ended his days in the cloisters of Cluny, 
 almost as a captive. Albertus Magnus, or Albert the Great, 
 the Dominican, was chiefly occupied with science, and, while 
 gaining for himself the reputation of a sorcerer, contrived to 
 turn minds towards the study of nature (1193-1280). But 
 the greatest and most original of medieval savants was the 
 monk Roger Bacon (1214-1294), who passed fourteen years 
 in prison under a charge of magic. His " magic " consisted 
 in searching for and surprising the secrets of created things. 
 At the same epoch the Catholicism of the Middle Ages found 
 its most complete expression in the great Summa Thcologiie of 
 St. Thomas Aquinas. This Italian Dominican, who died in 
 1274, aged only forty-nine, was a man of genius in his way. 
 In spite of its crabbed and essentially scholastic character, his 
 Summa reveals an intellect that was almost liberal. The 
 Papacy of our day recommends the study of his works as the 
 foundation of all sound theology. 
 
 71. To St. Thomas Aquinas the Franciscans opposed a 
 member of their own order in Duns Scotus (t 1308), who would 
 now be completely forgotten but for the long rivalry of the 
 Scotists and the Thomists. No less neglected are the mystics 
 Bonaventura, Eckart, and Tauler, on whom, moreover, the 
 Church looks askance. But the chief mystical work of these 
 dreary times is still read with emotion. This is the Imitation 
 of Christ, sometimes attributed to Jean Gerson, a Paris doctor, 
 but in reality the work of the canon Thomas k Kempis, of 
 Deventer (t 1471). Disgusted with the world, and even with 
 the Church, the soul of the writer turns wholly towards God, 
 and finds peace in solitary meditation. 
 
 • « • • • 
 
 72. The dawn of the Renaissance at once brought new 
 tendencies into the world of thought. The exodus of Greek 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 95 
 
 scholars from Byzantium introduced the works of Plato to 
 Western Europe, and initiated a change which was greatly 
 hastened by the invention of printing. In Italy the HtDnayiists 
 were inclined towards a sort of pagan pantheism ; in Germany 
 they became passionately absorbed in the study of texts, both 
 Greek and Hebrew, and inaugurated historical criticism. Hans 
 Reuchlin, of Basle (1455-1522), a Hebraist of great merit, saved 
 the Jewish books of the Middle Ages, which the Cologne 
 Inquisition wished to burn. Erasmus of Rotterdam, prince of 
 the scholars of his age, established himself in 1521 at Basle, 
 which he made a focus of light. In his elegant Latin he laughs 
 at the superstitions, abuses, and ignorance of the monks with an 
 irony worthy of Voltaire. He published the Greek text of the 
 New Testament for the first time, with a really exact translation 
 into Latin, and I'ecommended study of the Scriptures as the 
 pious work par excellence. The philological science of the 
 sacred texts, which was destined to destroy the pretensions of 
 the Church, recognises Erasmus and Reuchlin as its founders. 
 
 73. Even more than these keen-minded savants, two men 
 of action, John Wyclif and John Huss, deserved to be called 
 reformers before the Reformation. Wyclif, a native of England 
 (b. 1320), led a strong party against the tyranny and greed of 
 the monastic orders, against the encroachments of the Roman 
 Curia and the idolatrous beliefs it propagated. "What the 
 Waldenses taught in secret he preached in public ; and, with 
 but slight modifications, his doctrine was that of the Protestants 
 who appeared more than a century after his death." ^ In 1380 he 
 translated the Bible into English, which gave him great prestige 
 with the people. But his advanced opinions disquieted the 
 ruling classes, who obliged him to resign his chair at Oxford 
 and retire into a country parish, where he died in 1384. His 
 disciples, who were called Lollards, or "mutterers," were 
 persecuted after his death. 
 
 74. John Huss was born in Bohemia in 1373. He was Rector 
 of the University of Prague, and in conjunction with his friend 
 Jerome of Prague, who had read Wyclif s books, undertook a 
 war against the Papacy in the name of the Bible. Driven out 
 
 * Voltaire. 
 
96 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of the university, and a wanderer, but always commanding an 
 audience, he was summoned by the Emperor Sigismund before 
 the Council of Constance. Arming himself with a safe-conduct, 
 he obeyed the summons ; but his safe-conduct was outrageously 
 set at naught by the Dominicans. In spite of the protests of the 
 Bohemian deputies, he was kept in prison for six months, and 
 afterwards brought before the Council, by which he was ordered 
 to retract his opinions. On his refusal they burnt him. He met 
 his death like a hero. Shortly afterwards they burnt his friend 
 Jerome also. Sigismund had behaved like a coward, and the 
 Withers of the Council like rascals. There was an explosion of 
 fury in Bohemia, where the sect of the Calixt'mes, who demanded 
 the Eucharist in both sorts (chalice and host), had already 
 found many adherents. Calixtines and Hussites united to claim 
 for the reform of the clergy and the suppression of abuses. 
 The mountain of Tabor became their fortress, whence they 
 defied the armies of Sigismund, and replied to the massacres 
 of Hussites by massacres of friars. In the end the Council of 
 Basle re-established peace ; but Hussite communities survived 
 in both Moravia and Bohemia. The so-called Moravian 
 Brothers, who have distinguished themselves as missionaries, 
 were recruited from what was left of the Hussites (1457). 
 Reconstituted after long persecutions in 1722, the Moravians 
 settled at Herrnhut, in Lusatia. They are the Qualcers of 
 Germany. These Herrnhutians exercised a strong influence 
 over the English Methodists in the eighteenth century. They 
 enlisted many recruits even in America, and still number 
 more than a hundred thousand souls. 
 
 75. Even in Italy, at the very gates of Rome, the militant 
 spirit of reform was blowing up for tempest. The eloquence of 
 the Dominican monk Savonarola, directed in the main against 
 immorality and luxury, aroused extraordinary enthusiasm at 
 Florence. Bonfires were made of pictures, books, women's 
 ornaments. It was not long, however, before this wild sect 
 {Arrabiati) had to count with the ill-will of the Medici and of 
 all those who depended on luxury and depravity for their living. 
 Florence was by no means ripe for a Calvin ; and yet she bore 
 with the Dominican for eight years. The flight of the Medici 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 97 
 
 and the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. seemed at first to 
 confirm his forecasts. But as soon as the French king left the 
 country Rome excommunicated Savonarola, and Alexander VI. 
 (Borgia) determined to make short work of him. As Alexander 
 was a voluptuary himself, the Dominican attacked him openly, 
 and was foolish enough to offer to prove his own innocence by 
 undergoing the ordeal of fire. At the last moment he shrank 
 from the test, and the Fi'anciscans, his sworn enemies, took the 
 offensive against him. Condemned as a heretic by the Inquisition, 
 he expiated his reforming ardour at the stake (1498). 
 
 Voltaire thus concludes his account of these events : " You 
 follow these scenes of absurdity and horror with pity ; you find 
 nothing like them among the Romans, the Greeks, or the old 
 barbarians. They were the fruit of the most infamous supersti- 
 tion which has ever degraded man. , . . But you know that 
 we have not long emerged from such darkness, and that not 
 even yet is the light complete." 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 76. The repression of unacceptable opinions, considered to 
 be offences against God, was at first left to the bishops and the 
 secular priests. But the progress of the Albigensian heresy 
 convinced the Holy See that a special organisation, entirely 
 dependent on Rome, was required to make head against such 
 formidable dangers. The bishops were too much occupied, too 
 indulgent, too accessible to local considerations. From 1215 to 
 1229, between the fourth Lateran Council and the Synod 
 of Toulouse, the nascent Inquisition felt its way. In 1232 
 Gregory IX. created the tribunals of the Inquisition to deal 
 with heretical perversity {hccretica pravitas), and put the 
 Dominicans in charge of them. The term "Inquisition" was 
 borrowed from the juridical language of ancient Rome. In- 
 quisition is an inquiry, set afoot by denunciations or merely on 
 suspicion, having for its object to compel those suspected to prove 
 the orthodoxy of their beliefs. The tribunals of the Inquisition 
 were empowered to condemn their victims to be imprisoned, to 
 be flogged, to go on distant pilgrimages, to wear disgraceful 
 badges which prevented them from earning their bread ; but 
 they could not inflict the punishment of death : this would have 
 II 
 
98 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 violated the axiom " The Church has a horror of blood," a prin- 
 ciple which forbade, for instance, a priest to practise surgery. 
 It was in obedience to this principle that a bishop of Beauvais, 
 in the time of Philip Augustus, used a mace in battle instead of 
 a lance, saying it would be irregular for him to shed human 
 blood.^ The Inquisition, however, concocted a device which 
 allowed it to be sanguinary without "irregularity."" When it 
 considered one of its prisoners to be worthy of death, it an- 
 nounced that the Church could do nothing more for him, that 
 he was cut off' from her and abandoned to the secular arm— that 
 is, to the civil magistrates. These latter were directed to burn 
 him alive. If they hesitated, the Church threatened them with 
 excommunication. Thus she combined hypocrisy with cruelty. 
 All this did not prevent sophists like Joseph de Maistre from 
 affirming, in the nineteenth century, that blood has never been 
 shed by the Church ; she had contented herself with forcing 
 the civil power to shed it for her ! Not only was the Papacy 
 responsible for the Inquisition; it actively encouraged and 
 excited its ferocity. The horrible punishment of death by fire 
 was formally prescribed by Rome (1231), and indulgences were 
 promised to those who provided faggots for the purpose. As 
 a well-meaning old woman at Constance deposited a faggot 
 at the feet of John Huss, " Oh 1 sacred simplicity," said the 
 martyr, with a smile. 
 
 77. Frightful as were the punishments inflicted by the 
 Inquisition — and imprisonment for life in pestilential gaols was 
 perhaps worse than death at the stake — its methods of procedure 
 were still more abominable. The accused, who was generally 
 some poor wretch without education, had to do without counsel, 
 for an advocate would have been accused of impeding the 
 Inquisition, and prosecuted in his turn. He did not know of 
 what he was accused ; he knew neither the names of the witnesses 
 against him nor the nature of their depositions. Captious 
 questions were put to him ; traps were laid for him ; he was 
 induced to accuse himself. If he proved obdurate he was 
 tortured. To torture more than once was forbidden, but the 
 torture was " continued,'"' even after a long interval, if at first 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 99 
 
 it had not produced the desired effect. Now, St. Augustine 
 had insisted on the absurdity of torture ; Pope Nicholas I. had 
 forbidden the use of it (866); Gratian condemned it (1150). 
 So when Innocent IV. enjoined it to extort confessions from 
 Italian heretics (1252), he could not even plead ignorance as 
 an excuse. 
 
 Manuals for the guidance of inquisitors are still extant, with 
 their schemes of interrogatories. They are monuments of 
 astute trickery. The chief object of "the question" — as 
 torture was called — was to oblige the accused to denounce his 
 accomplices, or those who shai'ed his opinions. One can 
 imagine how many innocent victims must have been dragged 
 before such tribunals, which, as a consummation of their 
 infamy, took possession of the property they confiscated and 
 handed it over to the Holy See. They had the power to put 
 a man who had been dead for forty years on his trial for 
 heresy, and, if he were convicted, to dig up and burn his body, 
 strip his heirs of their property, and reduce his family to 
 misery and despair. Such was the regime established by the 
 Dominican Inquisition in the south of France, and extended 
 so far as possible to the other nations of Christendom. 
 
 78. We are speaking here of the Inquisition of the Middle 
 Ages, called the Papal or Holy Inquisition^ and the Holy Ojfice, 
 because it depended on the Holy See. Further on we shall 
 discuss the Royal Inquisition of Spain, the only one of which 
 the general public has some knowledge. The former was the 
 more atrocious and pitiless of the two. It burnt Albigenses, 
 Waldenses, Hussites and witches by the thousand. It meanly 
 placed itself at the service of the political authorities, satisfying 
 their cupidity and their revenge, as when it burnt the innocent 
 Knights of the Temple and the innocent Joan of Arc. It 
 covered the world with desolation and terror, until kings and 
 rulers, disgusted by its arbitrary proceedings, had gradually 
 proscribed its entrance into their States. It is difficult to 
 understand how such horrors could have been submitted to by 
 one part of Europe for century after century. Such toleration 
 is only to be explained by the idea the Church had implanted in 
 the hearts of the people, who thought heresy, the crime against 
 
100 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 God, to be the worst of crimes, one which exposed a city, a pro- 
 vince, or a nation to the divine anger, and to such punishments as 
 floods, pestilence, and famine, if it were not promptly and sternly 
 suppressed. The heretic had to be treated like one stricken by 
 the plague, or rather like his garments, which are thrown into 
 the fire without hesitation. Again, the sight of these solemn 
 executions, to which people flocked as if to a fete^ hardened 
 hearts, awakened hereditary instincts of ferocity, and made the 
 populace indifferent to the sufferings of others. Indeed, the 
 long duration of the Inquisition is not so surprising as the fact 
 that means were found to put an end to it. 
 
 79. Except in Spain, where its flourishing period was just 
 setting in, the Inquisition was greatly discredited at the opening 
 of the sixteenth century. This was one cause of the comparative 
 success of the Reformation. If they had found themselves in 
 presence of the formidable Inquisitors of the thirteenth century, 
 the Reformers would have met the same fate as the Albigenses, 
 
 80. Satan was all-pervading in the Middle Ages, both as god 
 of evil and as dispenser of worldly wealth. This belief was not 
 created by the Church, any more than the idea that certain 
 women, having made a bargain with the devil, betook themselves 
 to the " Sabbath " on grotesque steeds, and there acquired 
 redoubtable powers for evil. These tenacious superstitions had 
 an ancient pagan and Germanic foundation. But the better 
 instructed Church ought not to have shared them. Not only 
 did she do so, but her theologians, pointing to the verse of 
 Exodus, " Thou shalt not suff'er a witch to live," organised witch 
 hunts with the help of the Inquisition, and stirred up the civil 
 power to do likewise. Denounced by gossips and subjected to 
 frightful tortures, the unhappy women avowed that they had 
 joined in a " Sabbath," and gave details of imaginary orgies. 
 They were burnt in crowds, and their punishments both inflamed 
 imaginations and loosened tongues. Every inquisitor who 
 received a mandate to suppress witchcraft became an active 
 missionary in spreading it. People's minds grew familiar with 
 the idea that they were surrounded by sorceries, and that the 
 least misfortune was the result of some witch's malignity. 
 Wherever an inquisitor came, he found himself overwhelmed 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 101 
 
 with denunciations, accusing every one who might be sup- 
 posed guilty, from young people to very old women. The 
 epidemic was greatly increased by the publication of the Bull 
 Summis desiderantes, launched by Innocent VIII. on December 5, 
 1484. In it the Pope affirms with sorrow that all the Germanic 
 territories are filled with men and women who put the maleficent 
 power of sorcery in action against the faithful. He describes 
 the results with a terrifying wealth of detail. ... To contest 
 the reality of witchcraft was, therefore, to throw doubt on the 
 authority of Christ's vicar on earth. ^ 
 
 Under the sceptical Pope Leo X., the friend of Bembo and 
 Raphael, hundreds of witches were burnt in the Lombard and 
 Venetian valleys. It was in Germany, however, that the fury of 
 the Dominican inquisitors piled up the greatest heaps of victims. 
 Two of these inquisitors published an absurd book, " The Hammer 
 of Witches," in which they pointed out the signs by which such 
 women might be recognised and the means by which avowals 
 might be extorted from them. The witch hunts lasted through- 
 out the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It has been calcu- 
 lated that 100,000 were burnt in Germany alone. It may be 
 undeniable that in this business the civil tribunals showed them- 
 selves even more savage and credulous than those of the Church ; 
 that— even in America, in the eighteenth century— the Protes- 
 tant communities were no less so ; it is none the less true that 
 the Roman Church, in giving its official sanction to prosecutions 
 for witchcraft and in appointing inquisitors for its suppression, 
 must bear the chief responsibility for a murderous frenzy which 
 confounds and mortifies human reason. ^ 
 
 . . • • ■ 
 
 8L Before the Reformation, the only great schism which 
 succeeded was that of the Eastern Empire. 
 
 ^ 
 
 ' Lea, History of the Inquisition, toI. iii. 
 
 * The most celebrated case of sorcery in the seventeenth century was that 
 of Urbain Grandier, a parish priest. He was accused of having bewitched the 
 Ursulines of Loudun by throwing a branch of laurel into their convent. Pro- 
 secuted with atrocious virulence by the Counsellor Laubardemont, a creature 
 of Richelieu, he was convicted of black magic and burnt alive (1634). The 
 most extraordinary part of the business is that Cardinal Richelieu, by whom 
 the prosecution was inspired, seems to have believed in all good faith that a 
 priest could bewitch nuns. Writing but fifty years later, Bossuet never alludes 
 to witchcraft, though he was too prudent to deny its existence. 
 
102 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Since the time of Theodosius, Byzantium had become the 
 New Rome " ; so it was but natural that she should claim 
 supremacy over the other Oriental Churches, especially that of 
 Alexandria, About the year 500, the Bishop of Constantinople 
 received from the Emperor the title of Ecumenical Patriarch, 
 that is to say, Patriarch of the Empire (not of the Universe, as 
 they pretended to interpret it in Rome). The Western Church 
 rendered good jservice to the Eastern in the quarrel over images, 
 when the seventh and last council before the schism, that of 
 Nicaea, put an end to the Iconoclastic feud (787). But the 
 pretensions of Rome to the government of all Christendom soon 
 became intolerable in the city of Constantine. As early as the 
 ninth century the Patriarch Photios protested against the 
 innovations of Rome. The dispute was envenomed by the dis- 
 agreement over the so-called " procession " of the Holy Ghost. 
 Did the Holy Ghost proceed from both the Father and the 
 Son ? No, said the Eastern Church, from the Father alone. 
 This was the substance of the FUioque quarrel. The two 
 churches failed to come to an agreement. The causes, however, 
 of their antagonism were in reality more profound, and were of 
 a political nature. The divorce, which still endures, was com- 
 pleted about the middle of the eleventh century by the mutual 
 anathemas of the Pope and the Patriarch. The Maronites of 
 the Lebanon and, to a small extent, the Armenians, alone 
 remained faithful to their Roman allegiance. 
 
 82. Attempts at reunion were not lacking. It was thought 
 that success had crowned these efforts at the Council of Florence 
 in 1439, when the Byzantines, in fear of the Turks, made all the 
 concessions demanded. But the people, who had not forgotten 
 the horrors worked by the Latins in 1204, refused to confirm 
 the agreement. Constantinople fell to the infidels, sent by God 
 to punish heretics. The latest attempt was due to Leo XHI. 
 (July 1894), who addressed a most conciliatory letter to the 
 Patriarch of Constantinople. The latter replied with some 
 violence (August 1895), recalling all the innovations of the 
 Roman Church : the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Son, 
 Purgatory, the Innnaculate Conception, Papal Infallibility ; and 
 there the matter rests. Other differences between the two 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 103 
 
 Churches have to do with the baptismal rite — the Greeks prac- 
 tising total immersion, like the Primitive Church — and the 
 Eucharist, in which they give leavened bread, dipped in wine, to 
 the communicant, instead of a dry, unleavened wafer. 
 
 83. The Eastern Church, which calls itself the Orthodox or 
 Greek Church, numbers 150 millions of adherents. It is sub- 
 divided into fifteen Churches, each with its own head and its own 
 hierarchy. The Patriarch of Constantinople, great personage 
 though he be, has no real authority. He has for a long time 
 been on bad terms with the Churches of Bulgaria and Rou- 
 mania. The Russian Church was not governed by the Czar, but 
 by the Holy Synod, whose procurator, however, was nominated 
 by the Czar. The priests of the Greek Church marry, but do 
 not remarry. Bishops are chosen from among the unmarried 
 monks. Nuns are not much esteemed and live apart from the com- 
 munity. In the pomp of its ceremonial and its borrowings from 
 paganism, notably its use of incense and wax candles and its 
 adoration of images, the Orthodox Church stands closer to 
 Romanism than to the Reformed Churches, These dallied with 
 her, nevertheless, at the end of the sixteenth century, and the 
 Anglican Church has not abandoned the game even now. The 
 Russian moujiky or peasant, has remained more pagan than 
 Christian. His real religion belongs to the domain of folk-lore. 
 The Hellene is profoundly sceptical, but clings to his Church as 
 the safeguard of his nationality. It has been said that the Greek 
 awaited the restoration of his independence for four centuries, 
 in the shadow of his Church. This is true. Enslaved Greece 
 was nourished by her Church as an infant in swaddling-clothes is 
 nourished by milk. But this is no reason why the adolescent 
 should continue to live on milk. If the Greeks of to-day, like 
 the Byzantine Greeks of the Middle Ages, are inferior to their 
 glorious ancestors, their inferiority seems to be in some degree 
 imputable to their Church. It familiarises them, from their 
 earliest youth, with horrible colour-daubs which it calls Icons, 
 with drawling and nasal voices, with stories of the saints which 
 are an outrage on reason. The modern Greeks, though very 
 intelligent, are no artists, they cannot sing in tune, and they 
 have not yet given a man of genius to the world. 
 
104 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 84. Their long struggles with the Mongols, the Musulmans, 
 and the Latins have kept the Eastern Churches conservative and 
 nationalist. For the people, forms of worship are more important 
 than creeds. Divine service is performed in the national 
 languages, but archaic forms no longer understood by the com- 
 monalty are employed. The sacred books play a great part in 
 worship, but they are not generally used in the vernacular. In 
 March 1903, the publication of a translation of the Gospels 
 caused a popular outbi'eak in Athens. Festivals do not coincide 
 with those of the Roman Church, because the Greek Church is 
 faithful to the Julian Calendar, which is now thirteen days 
 behind ours. There is no regular process for the canonisation 
 of saints, who consequently swarm, and work miracles through 
 their images. Pilgrimages, especially to Jerusalem, are held in 
 great honoui', and the adoration of relics is no less flourishing 
 than in the Roman Church, The clergy and the monks are 
 held in slight consideration. " You are good for nothing," says 
 a Greek song, " become a pope [jjappas] ! " 
 
 The lack of real Christianity in the Russian Empire explains 
 the lack of popular resistance to atheistic Bolshevism (1917). 
 The protests of the higher clergy remained unheeded ; convents 
 and churches were sacked, priests and nuns killed or grossly 
 insulted. A reaction, partly due to the intense misery of the 
 people, especially in the towns, has made itself felt since 1919; 
 large audiences flocked again into the churches ; associations 
 were formed to feed the clergy. But the tendency seems to be 
 rather towards mysticism and illuminism thaii in favour of the 
 anti(juated formalist religion which discredited itself, in auto- 
 cratic Russia, by a too close alliance with the police. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The most abundant source of information is the Rcal-Eivydojiddic of Hauck. 
 Reference may also be made to the Biographie Univcrsdle of Michaud, to 
 the Orande EncydopMie and tlie Eiicyd. Britannica, and to the Dictionary of 
 National Biography (Stephen and Lee). 
 
 1. P. VioUet, Histoire des Institutions politiques dt la France, 3 vols., 1890 
 (on the beneficent part played by the Church, vol. i, p. 380). 
 
 2. Art. Armenfiege (Charity) in Hauck. 
 
 4. The Truce of God is found among the Germans, Arabs, and other nations. 
 See art. Oottesfriede in Hauck. — JSemichon, La Paix de Dieu, 2nd ed., 18(39. 
 
 5. Em. Male, L'art religieux du XIII* siecle, 1902. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 105 
 
 8. Art. Jugustinus, Bonifatius {Winfrid), Gregorius, Keltische Kirche, Russ- 
 lancl in Hauck ; Dom Cabrol, L'Angletcrre chriticnne arant Us Normands, 1908 ; 
 H. Howorth, Early English CJmrch, 3 vole., 1917 ; S. Czarnowski, Samt Patrick, 
 1919 ; J. Zeiller, Les orig. chrit. dans les prov. danuhienncs, 1918. 
 
 9. Art. Cyrillus und Methodius, Tschechcn (Bohemians), Anghkamsche 
 Kirche, Mmigohn, Nestorianer, in Hauck.— J. Labourt, Le Christiantsme dans 
 r Empire Perse, 1904. 
 
 10. Art. Sachscn, Wendcn, Albert von Riga (Livonia) in Hauck. 
 
 11. Art. Kreuzauffindung, in Hauck.— A. Luchaire, Le Culte des rehques 
 (in Rcvut de Paris, July 1900). 
 
 13. Art. Lrgaten in Hauck. 
 
 15. Lea, Rise of the Temporal Power (\n Studies, 1883, p. 1 et srq.); Ducliesne, 
 Les Premiers Temps de I'J^tat Pontifical, 1904.— Th. Hodgkin, Italy and her 
 Invaders, vol. vii., p. 135 (1899) ; M. Moresco, II patrimonio di S. Pietro, 1916 ; 
 A. Gauilenzi, II ronstituto di Constantino, 1920. 
 
 16. Lea, Studies, 18S3, p. 46 (forged decretals) ; art. Kanonenund Decreten- 
 Sammlungen and Pseudoisidor in Hauck ; P. Fournier, Etude sur les fanssrs 
 d&rdales, 1907 (decided in favour of Touraine rather than the neighbourhood 
 of Reims or of Metz) ; Lot, Rev. Inst., 1907, xciv., p. 290. 
 
 17. Lea, Auricular Confession and Indulgences, 3 vols., 1896. 
 
 18. Art. Peterspjennig (Peter's Pence) in Hauck. 
 
 19. Lea, Studies, 1883, p. 235 (excommunication). 
 
 20. Duchesne, OrigiJies du Culte chrititn, 1899 ; art. Liturgie in Hauck. 
 
 21. Art. Simonie in Hauck. 
 
 22. The sources are given in F. X. Funk, Lehrhuch cW Kirchcngeschichte, 
 5th ed., p. 281 ; Villemain, Grt'goire VII., 1873 ; A. Fliche, S. Gr&joireVIL, 
 1920. See also art. Gregorius VII. in Hauck, with a copious bibliography. 
 
 24. Art. Becket in Hauck. 
 
 26. A. Luchaire, Innocent III., 4 vols., 1904-1908; E. W. Meyer, 
 Slaatstheorien Innvz. III., 1920. 
 
 27 Frederick II., the heretics and free thought: Lea, History oj tfie 
 Inquisition, vol. i. ; Ch. V. Langlois, Philippe le Bel et Boniface VIII. (in 
 Lavisse, Hisfoire de France, iii. 2, 1901) ; H. Koehler, Die Kctzerpolitikder d 
 Kaiser, 1913 ; the legend of the three impostors is of Islamic origin and 
 appears as early as 909 (Rev. hist. Utt. rel.. May 1920). 
 
 29. N. Valois, Histoire du grand schisme d' Occident, 4: vols., 189b-190.:; ; 
 Le pape et le Concile, 1909 ; Journal des Savants, 1905, p. 345 (on the Council 
 of Basle). 
 
 30. Burckhardt, CtJ^ur dcr iJen/T^s.OTMc^, 5th ed., 1906. n^ ,t ^ 
 
 31. 0. Zoeckler, Askese und Monchtum (Western), 2nd ed., 1897; Mont- 
 alembert. Les Moines d'Occident, 2 vols., 1860; Vacandard, Saint Bernard, 
 2 vols., 1895 (abridged in 1904). See also under the names of the dififerent 
 religious orders in Hauck. 
 
 33. P. Sabatier, Vie de St. Francois, 1894 (numerous editions and transla- 
 tions ); Lea, History of the Inquisition, vols, ii, iii (persecution of the fraticclli) ; 
 F. van der Borne, Die Franziskusforschung, 1917 ; Ubald d'Alengon, Lerons 
 d'hist. franciscaint, 1918. . , t, i i, • n 
 
 36. S. Reinach, Rev. Ais<., 1920, cxxxiii., p. 193 (St. Francis and Buddhism). 
 
 2,1. 'Dommicd.ns: lies., Hist, of the Inquisition, vo\.'\. 
 
 38. Gebhart, Sainte Catherine de Sienne (in Revue des Deux Mondes, 1890, 
 vol. xcv , reprinted in Ultalie Mystique). — Art. Stigmatisation in Hauck. 
 
 39. Templars : Lea, Hist, of the Inquisition, vol. iii. ; H. Finke, Papstwn 
 und Templerorden, 1907 ('•/. Langlois, Journal des Savants, 1908, p. 417) ; S. R., 
 Cultf's, vol. iv., p. 252 ; P. VioUet, Uinterrogatoirc de J. de Molai, 1909. 
 
 40. Art. Adoptianismus in Hauck ; Conybeare, Key of Truth, 1898, p. 87. 
 41 G. Herzog, La Sainte Vierge dar^ I'histoire, 1908.— Holy House of 
 
 Loretto : U. Chevalier, N. D. de LoretM, 1906 (c/. Uelaborde, Journal des 
 Savants, 1907, p. 367 ; Rev. arch., 1906, ii. p. 460). 
 
 42. Art. Maria in Hauck ; Vacandard, Rev. du Clergi, April 1, 1910.— 
 Lea, Hiit. of the Inquisition, vol. iii. 
 
106 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 44. H. Delehaye, Les Legindes hagiograpUques, 1905 ; P. Saintyves, Les 
 Saints successexirs des dieux, 1907; Boudinhon, Froch de Ratification et canoni- 
 sation, 1905. — Pedro Arbues : Lea, Inquisition oj Sjiain, vol. i. ; Peter Martyr : 
 Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, vol. ii. 
 
 45. T. de Wyzewa, La Ligende Doric (a readable translation), 1902. 
 
 46. Art. 3Iesse in Hauck. 
 
 47. Art. Transubstantiation in Hauck ; A. Boudinhon, Les Origines de 
 I'Sh'mtion (in the Rev. du clergi, June-July 1908, pp. 535, \o%).—Arcani disci- 
 plma: Ba.tifi'o\, Etudes d'Histoire, p. I et seq. ; &tL A rcanidiscipli7iain Hastings, 
 £n cyclop., vol. i. 
 
 49. Lea, Hist, of the Inquisition, vol. ii. 
 
 50. Art. Fronhichnamsfest (Feast of Corpus Christi) in Hauck. 
 
 51. Prohibition to read or translate the Bible : Lea, Hist, of the Inquisition, 
 vols, i., iii. — Art. Gehct, Rosenkranz (rosary), and Sahrament in Hauck. 
 
 52. Lea, Auricular Confession and Indulqences^, 3 vols. , 1896. — A. Boudinhon, 
 Histoire de la^FSnitence, 1879 (criticism on Lea) ; Batilfol, Les Origines de la 
 Finitence (in Etudes d' Histoire, p. 43). 
 
 53. Upon the question of Woman and Christianity, .see a learned note by 
 Lejay, Rev. crit., 1908, i. p. 79. 
 
 54. Allerseelentag (Commcmoratio fidelium defunctoriiin) in Hauck ; Saint- 
 yves, Les Saints, &c., p. 83. 
 
 55. Art. Imlulgenzen in Hauck. 
 
 56. Lea, Hist, of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 3rd ed., 2 vols., 1907. 
 
 57. J. Havet, L'hirisic et le bras stculier jusqiCau XIU' siecle (reprinted in 
 his CEuvrcs, vol. ii., 1896) ; H. Ch. Lea, Hist, of the Inquisition in the Middle 
 Ages, 1888 ; E. Jordan, La resjionsab. de I'JSglisc dans la repression, 1915. 
 
 58. Art. Narrenfcsf (Feast of Fools) in Hauck. 
 
 59. L. Brehier, La Querellc dcs Images, 1904. 
 
 60. et seq. —All the details will be found in Lea's work (§ 56), which has an 
 excellent index. 
 
 63. Paulicians inspired by Paul of Samosata : Conybeare, Key of Truth, 
 1898, pp. cv. tt seq. — Albigenses : A. Luchaire, Innocent III. et la Croisade des 
 Albigcois, 1905 (cf. Journal des Savants, 1905, p. 528 ; 1908, p. 17) ; J. Guiraud, 
 Quest. d'Archiologie et d' Histoire, 1906 ; E. Broekx, Le catharisme, 1916. 
 
 64. The Inquisition glorified : Rev. arch., 1907, ii. p. 184; Rev. crit., 1907. 
 i. p. 211. f » . . 
 
 65. Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. i. 
 
 66. Art. Waldenscr (Vaudois, or Waldenses) in Hauck ; J. Marx, L'inquis. 
 en Banpldni, 1914. 
 
 67. Flagellants: Lea, Hist, of the Inquisition, vols. i. and ii. 
 
 68. See Fredericq's preface to the French translation of Lea's Hist, of the 
 Inquisition, 
 
 69. B. Haur^au, Histoire de la Fhilosophie scolastique, 1872 ; Prantl, Gcsch. 
 der Logik im Abendlande, 4 vols., 1855-1870; F. Picavet, Histoire gdniralc des 
 Philoso2?hies m&Hdvales, 1906 ; M. Grabniann, Oesch. der scolast. Mcthode, 2 vols., 
 1909 ; Ch. de Remusat, S. Anselme, 2nd ed., 1868 ; Vacandard, Abdard et S. 
 Bernard, 1881 ; V. Cousin, Introd. aux oiuvrcs d'AbSlard, 1836. 
 
 Hauck adds a long bibliography to his article Scholastik. 
 
 70. R.Bacon: Journal drs Savants, 1905, p. 362. — Vaughan, S. Thomas of 
 Jquin, 2 vols., 1871 ; and the art. Thomas von Aquin, in Hauck. 
 
 71. Preger, Gesch. der deutschcn Mystik im MitteJalter, 3 vols., 1879-1893. 
 On the Imitatio, see art. Thomas cl Kempis in Hauck (vol. xix. p. 719), and 
 Vacandard, Rev. du clergi, December 1908, p. 633 ; F. Pelster, Krit. Stud, zu 
 Albert dem Grossen, 1920. 
 
 72. J. Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance, 5th ed., 2 vols., 1896 ; art. 
 Erasmus and Reuchlin in Hauck. 
 
 73. Wyclif, Huss, Lollards : Lea, Hist, of the Inquisition, vol. ii. 
 
 74. Moravians and Herrnhutians : art. Brudcr (bohmische) and Zinzendorf 
 (re-founder of the Herrnhutians) in Hauck. 
 
 75. Savonarola : Lea, Hut. of tht Inquisition, vol. iii. 
 
FROM JUSTINIAN TO CHARLES V 107 
 
 76 Art. Inqumtion in Hauck. On the scruple touching the shedding of 
 blood, see Lea, Hist, of the Inquisition vol. i. 
 
 77 Torture : Lea, Superstition and Farce, 1892, pp. 429, 484. 
 
 So.' A German translation of the Malleus Jnaleficar^m^ appeared m 1906 
 in 3 vols (On the sources of that book, see the Rev. crt«- 19^^ ^i I' 
 T Hansen Z«X.-a/5n, /«yu/./<fo;^ wnrf Hexevprozesse 1900 ; Hoensbroech. 
 L A" i.1^^'-^-«--. ^-«u.«An. I901.-See alao the art. ^.x.n in Hauck, 
 
 n5:^if S- •{S^i^f'SS; In^-Cck ; ra^oi:;. L'^^^^^y^^^ ^ 
 5^7 A 5^7, 1905 ; C. Callinicos, The Greek Orthodox Church 1918 , Pisani, A 
 travers VOrient 1897 ; Giraud, Rev. du Clcrge, Feb. 15, 1910. 
 
 82 Ar ^/rmm-i'^r..., in Hauck. On the Encyclical of Leo. XIH. and 
 thP Pntriarch's slichting reply, see the Rev. Anglo- Romaine, 189o, pp. 108 et 
 '1; -Orthe flotation of the Anglicans with the Greek Church : Rev. du Clergi, 
 
 March 1908, p. 550. 
 
 84. S. R., in .Rerifg cr?^!!Z««, 1922, p. 167. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CHRISTIANITY : FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 
 
 Causes of the Reformation— Martin Luther— Diet of Worms — The Ana- 
 baptists and the Peasants' War— Zwingli— Calvin at Geneva— Michael 
 Servetus— Henry VIII. and the Anglican Church— Mary Tudor— Elizabeth 
 — The Reformation in France — Massacre of the Waldenses. 
 
 The Counter- Reformation— New Policy of the Church— The Council of 
 Trent— Progress of Catholicism— The Jesuits —Protestant Sects— Philip 
 II. and William the Silent. 
 
 Charles I. and the English Rebellion— James II. and William of Orange 
 —The Persecutions in Ireland— The Pilgrim Fathers— The Quakers— The 
 Thirty Years' War — German Pietism- Socinus. 
 
 France under the last Valois— Massacre of St. Bartholomew— Edict of 
 Nantes— Revocation of the Edict of Nantes— The Dragonades— The 
 Camisards — Responsibility of the Roman Church— The Earliest Ideas of 
 Toleration — New Religious Orders— The Liberties of the Galilean 
 Church— The Four Articles of 1682— Jansenism and Port Royal— The 
 Bull Unigenitus — Quietism : F6nelon and Bossuet. 
 
 The Inquisition in Spain : Torquemada — Expulsion of the Jews and 
 Moors — Conquest and Christianisation of America. 
 
 Condemnation of Giordano Bruno — Retractation imposed on Galileo by 
 the Inquisition. 
 
 1. If the Reformation had been the effect of a single cause, 
 it would not have succeeded, even partially. Its comparative 
 success was due to the variety of its origins — religious, political, 
 and social. 
 
 2, The religious cause was the corruption of Catholicism, 
 which appeared to Luther on his visit to Rome in 1511 to be a 
 caricature of Christianity. Paganised by her rites and by the 
 traffic in indulgences, the Church had also lost her salutary 
 contact with Scripture. The Reformation wished to lead her 
 back to the Bible, and succeeded with its own adherents at least. 
 
 3. One political cause was impatience of the spiritual domi- 
 nation of Rome, and of her interference in temporal affairs ; 
 another was the necessity of resistance to the Emperors, who 
 called themselves Roman Emperors and were making long 
 strides towards despotic power.^ The definitive successes of 
 
 * Voltaire. 
 108 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 109 
 
 the Reformation were won in those countries into which the 
 influence of Rome, from the first to the fourth centuries, 
 had not penetrated very deeply. In this connection, the 
 Reformation was only a continuation of the movement which 
 had withdrawn the ancient provinces of the Eastern Empire from 
 obedience to Rome ; it was, in short, a reaction of Germanism 
 against Romanism. 
 
 4. The social and economical causes were numerous. Both 
 prince and peasant coveted the riches of the Church. The 
 Knights with nothing — Conti di Allemagna poveri, as the legate 
 wrote to the Pope — were jealous of the wealthy abbots. The 
 people resented being squeezed by monks and priests. The 
 secular clergy rebelled against the exactions of the Roman Curia 
 and the competition of the monastic orders. These abuses were 
 not new, but the invention of printing (1447), by spreading the 
 taste for reading, had stimulated thought and enabled one man 
 to speak for many. 
 
 5. The transition from despotism to liberty must be slow. 
 Wherever it was successful, the Reformation adopted the autho- 
 ritative principles of the Roman Church. Instead of individual 
 freedom of faith and thought, it produced a kind of attenuated 
 Catholicism. The seeds of religious liberty were there, but it 
 was only after two centuries that they blossomed and bore fruit, 
 thanks to the breach made by Luther in the ancient edifice of 
 Rome. The Reformation miscarried in those quarters where 
 habit was stronger than the desire for an even partial emanci- 
 pation. Face to face with the uncompromising theologians of 
 Wittenberg and Geneva, many confessed that "all they had 
 was a choice of fetters, and that it would be better to keep 
 those to which they had been bora.'' ^ Again, rulers such as 
 Charles V. and Francis I. were alarmed at the effect so profound 
 a revolution threatened to have upon the principle of authority. 
 Monarchists by trade — as Joseph IL was to say at a later date — 
 they fought against a movement which menaced all authority 
 and pointed to the triumph of the democratic idea as its 
 natural conclusion. Even Luther himself, during the Peasant's 
 Revolt, took fright and recoiled before the social consequences 
 
 1 Voltaire. 
 
no A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of his own doctrines. After ten centuries of Catholicism, 
 Europe was unripe for hberty, all the more unripe because no 
 scientific criticism of the Scriptures yet existed. Luther's work 
 had to be completed by that of a pious French Catholic, 
 Richard Simon. 
 
 • • • • » 
 
 6. The final exciting cause of the Reformation was an 
 extravagant sale of indulgences conceded to the German 
 Dominicans, under pretext of a war against the Turks, but in 
 reality to provide funds for the construction of St. Peter's at 
 Rome. In the sixteenth century it was asserted, but not 
 proved, that the Augustinians envied the Dominicans this 
 privilege. An Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, a native 
 of Eisleben, where he was born in 1483, on the approach of 
 Tetzel, the indulgence broker, affixed to the Cathedral door at 
 Wittenberg ninety-five arguments against the abuses of such 
 a commerce (October 31, 1517). These flew over Germany like 
 a train of gunpowder. Luther had penned what thousands of 
 the faithful had been thinking in silence. A war of words 
 began between Dominican and Augustinian. Others struck in 
 and embittered it. Leo. X., impatient of this " monks* 
 quarrel," began by trying to make terms, but ended by 
 launching his anathema. Luther treated him very roughly in 
 his Captivity of Babylon, in which he fulminated against private 
 Masses and against transubstantiation, " a word not to be found 
 in the Scriptures." The gravest difference of opinion had to 
 do with the Communion. " Luther retained one-half of the 
 mystery and rejected the other. He confesses that the body of 
 Jesus Christ is in the consecrated elements, but it is, he says, as 
 fire is in red-hot iron : the fire and the iron subsist together. 
 This is what they called impanation, invination, consiibstantiation. 
 Thus, while those they called Papists ate God without bread, 
 the Lutherans ate God and bread ; soon afterwards came the 
 Calvinists, who ate bread and did not eat God." ^ 
 
 7. In order to make the schism complete, Luther burnt 
 Leo's Bull of excommunication on the public place of Witten- 
 berg (December 1520), and hurled insults at the Holy Father : 
 
 * Voltaire. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 111 
 
 " Little Pope/' he wrote, " little Popelet, you are an ass, a 
 little ass." German grossness found such an address amusing. 
 " Luther, rough and uncouth, triumphed in his own country 
 over all the urbanity of Rome." ^ 
 
 8. " He demanded the abolition of monastic vows, because 
 they were not of primitive institution ; permission for priests to 
 marry, because several of the apostles were married men ; the 
 Communion in both kinds, because Jesus said Drink ye of it ; 
 the cessation of image worship, because Jesus had no image ; in 
 short, he was in harmony with the Roman Church in nothing 
 but the doctrines of the Trinity, Baptism, the Incarnation and 
 the Resurrection." ^ 
 
 Under the influence of St. Augustine, the patron of his 
 order, Luther also rejected free-will, which was afterwards 
 admitted by his followers ; and, to the great scandal of the 
 Faculty of Paris, he denied that the study of Aristotle was any 
 help to the comprehension of the Scriptures. Reacting against 
 the Roman doctrine of salvation by works, the origin of the 
 abuse of indulgences, he proclaimed that faith alone was effi- 
 cacious, and that faith was the fruit of grace. This was to 
 reject as superfluous all those ideas on which the Church lived, 
 all those things by which her wealth and power were secured. 
 
 9. Charles V., who had been Emperor since February 1519, 
 summoned the reformer to appear before the Diet at Worms 
 (January 1521). He obeyed the summons with a safe-conduct 
 which was respected, supported by popular sympathy, and pro- 
 tected by Frederick the Wise and the German Knights. Before 
 the Diet, he pleaded his conscience and refused to retract. 
 Charles placed him under the ban of the Empire, but the 
 sentence could not be put in force. Frederick the Wise, 
 Elector of Saxony, a convert to the new ideas, carried him oft" 
 in the night and hid him in the Saxon fortress of the Wartburg, 
 where he lived under the name of " Junker Georg." It was in 
 this Patmos, as he called it, that he began his translation of the 
 Bible, an admirable version, which became the Reformer's most 
 efficient weapon in German lands. 
 
 10. "The aged Frederick hoped for the extirpation of the 
 
 » Voltaire. 2 /j^-^. 
 
112 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Roman Church. Luther thought it was time to abohsh private 
 Mass. He pretended the devil had appeared to him and 
 reproached him for saying Mass and consecrating the elements. 
 The devil had proved to him, he said, that it was idolatry. 
 Luther declared that the devil was right and must be believed. 
 The Mass was abolished in Wittenberg, and soon afterwards 
 throughout Saxony. The images were thrown down, monks 
 and nuns left their cloisters, and, a few years later, Luther 
 married a nun called Catherine von Bora {I525y ^ This is why 
 when a priest quits the Roman Church in order to marry, he is 
 said " to go out through Luther's door." 
 
 11. After having taken the devil's advice as to the abolition 
 of the Mass, Luther restricted or abolished the use of exorcisms 
 intended to keep the fiend at a distance. " It was afterwards 
 noticed that wherever exorcism was abandoned, the number of 
 those possessed or bewitched greatly diminished.''"' ^ 
 
 12. Luther's activity was seconded by that of a gentle and 
 amiable scholar, Melancthon. It was embarrassed rather than 
 helped by the fanatical Carlstadt, who declared the marriage ot 
 priests not only permissible, but obligatory, and, in his hatred 
 of Catholicism, handled the monks roughly and destroyed works 
 of art. In 1 522, Luther quitted his retreat in order to combat 
 the violent adherents of Carlstadt at Wittenberg itself. These 
 were known as the Sacramentarians, because they refused to 
 recognise more than one sacrament, that of Baptism. liUther 
 denounced them as " supporters of Satan," and drove them out 
 of the town. 
 
 13. Denmark and Sweden, where the archbishops of Upsala 
 had wielded despotic power, also rallied to the Reformation. 
 " Luther found himself the apostle of the north, and enjoyed 
 his glory in peace. As early as 1525 the States of Saxony, 
 Brunswick and Hesse, and the cities of Strasburg and Frankfort 
 embraced his doctrine. . . . This Anti-Pope imitated the Pope 
 by authorising Philip Landgrave of Hesse to marry a second 
 wife while his first was still alive. This permission was accorded 
 at a little Synod gathered at Wittenberg. It is true that 
 Gregory II., in a decretal of 726, had allowed that in certain 
 
 1 Voltaire. * Ibid. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 113 
 
 cases a man might marry a second wife. But neither times nor 
 circumstances were the same, . . . What no pontiff' since 
 Gregory had ventured to do, Luther, who attacked the excessive 
 power of the Popes, did without any power at all. His dis- 
 pensation was secret, but time reveals all secrets of this 
 nature." ^ 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 1 4. A new burst of fanaticism came to trouble these " pacific 
 scandals." A pair of Saxon enthusiasts, pretending to be in- 
 spired, demanded that children should be rebaptised, on the 
 ground that Jesus was baptised after he was grown up. They 
 founded the violent sect of the Anabaptists, who preached a 
 sort of holy war against both Romans and Lutherans. This 
 sect attracted the peasantry, which then suffered from the most 
 outrageous oppression that ever existed, and stirred up a 
 Jacquerie. " They made the most of the dangerous truth that 
 all men are born equal, and that if the Popes had treated 
 princes as their subjects, peasants had been treated like cattle 
 by their lords. . . . They claimed the rights of humanity ; but 
 they sustained their claim like wild beasts." ^ 
 
 15. The peasants rose from Saxony to Lorraine (1525), and, 
 after committing horrible excesses, were exterminated by the 
 regular troops. The number of victims has been put at 
 150,000. They got no sympathy from Luther. Alarmed at 
 this menace to social order, the doctrinaire turned his back 
 on the fanatics created by his own teaching. 
 
 When the second Diet of Spires (1529) attempted a Catholic 
 reaction, fourteen cities and several princes protested, from 
 which action the enemies of Rome took their name of Pro- 
 testants. At Augsburg, the Lutherans presented a confession 
 of faith, to which a third of Germany subscribed. The princes 
 of this party combined against the Emperor, Charles V., as well 
 as against Rome (1530). 
 
 16. The Anabaptists, however, seized Munster and drove 
 out the bishop (1536). At first they wanted to re-establish the 
 
 ^ Voltaire. See also, for the decretal of Gregory II., Bossuet, CEuives, 
 ed. Gaume, vol. vii. p. 540. 
 ■■^ Voltaire. 
 I 
 
114 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Jewish theocracy, and be governed by God alone. But a tailor, 
 named John of Lej^den, declared that God had appeared to him 
 and appointed him king. His assertion was believed. John, 
 monarch and prophet, polygamous in the fashion of the Kings 
 of Israel, was crowned with pomp and sent his apostles into 
 Germany. He was afterwards taken with arms in his hands, 
 and tortured, by the Bishop of Munster's orders, with red-hot 
 pincers. All the Anabaptists caught in Westphalia and the 
 Low Countries were drowned, strangled, or burnt. The sect 
 survived, however, but in a quiescent state, and amalgamated 
 with the Unitarians, that is with those " who recognise only 
 one God, and, while venerating Christ, live without much 
 dogma and with no disputations. . . . The Anabaptists began 
 with barbarism, but have ended with mildness and good sense." ^ 
 
 17. The embarrassments of Charles V,, who was seriously 
 threatened by the Turks, had prevented him from acting with 
 energy against the Reformation. After the Diet of Augsburg 
 (1530) the Lutherans came to an understanding with each other 
 at Smalkalde (1532), and Charles concluded an agreement with 
 them which held good for twelve years (1534). 
 
 18. Luther died in 1546. The Emperor, at peace with 
 France and Turkey, then summoned the Protestants to dissolve 
 their league, and, on their refusal, crushed them at the battle 
 of Miihlberg (1547). But this victory did not end the war. 
 At last, in 1552, religious liberty was conceded to the Pro- 
 testants by the treaty of Passau. Not long afterwards Charles, 
 discouraged as Diocletian had been before him, abdicated and 
 retired to the monastery of Yuste, leaving the Empire to his 
 brother Ferdinand and Spain to his son Philip II. 
 
 . . • • 
 
 19. Switzerland had taken fire at the same time as Germany. 
 " Zwingli, parish priest of Zurich, had gone even further than 
 Luther : he refused to admit that the Deity entered into the 
 bread and wine." ^ The senate of Zurich agreed with him, 
 Berne followed Zurich (1528), and soon afterwards fficolampa- 
 dius brought about the triumph of the Reformation at Basle. 
 But Lucerne and four other cantons remained faithful to Rome. 
 
 1 Voltaire. ^ n>l<l. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 115 
 
 They declared war, and Zwingli was defeated and killed at 
 Keppel (1531). The Catholics quartered his body and burnt it. 
 " Zwingli's religion was called Calvinism. Calvin gave it his 
 name, just as Amerigo Vespucci gave his to the continent 
 discovered by Columbus," ^ 
 
 20. The magistrates of Geneva, following the example set 
 by Zurich and Berne, undertook a patient examination of the 
 conflicting doctrines. They ended by proscribing popery, and 
 the bishop had to fly. The Genevese, in their alliance with 
 Friburg and Berne against the Duke of Savoy, called themselves 
 Eidgenossen (allied by oath), whence, probably, the word 
 Huguenots. Their reformation was characterised by a moral 
 severity amounting to austerity. It found a sort of Pope in 
 Calvin (born at Noyon in 1509), a man of irreproachable 
 morals and as hard as Luther was violent. He was, moreover, 
 a good writer, as his Institution chrtiienne proves, and a man of 
 power in the bitterness of his convictions. Games and shows 
 were forbidden. For more than a hundred years no musical 
 instrument was allowed in Geneva. The practice of public 
 confession was restored to favour. Calvin established synods, 
 consistories, and deacons ; he even instituted a consistorial 
 jurisdiction with the right of excommunication. The Re- 
 formation had good reason, no doubt, for shutting up the 
 convents ; but Calvin tended to re-establish them in a lay 
 form, and even to transform a whole canton into a convent ! 
 
 21. A Spanish doctor, Miguel Servetus, who had a premoni- 
 tion of the circulation of the blood even before Harvey, and had 
 distinguished himself by his courage during an epidemic at 
 Vienne (Dauphine), addressed a letter to Calvin on the Trinity. 
 They held different opinions on the question. Beginning with 
 discussion, they ended by invective. A theological work which 
 Servetus had printed secretly appeared anonymously, but was 
 denounced to the Inquisition at Lyons by a friend of Calvin's. 
 To reinforce his denunciation, this man followed it up by a 
 number of letters written by Servetus, which Calvin gave him 
 for this base purpose, " What a part for an apostle to play ! 
 Servetus, who well knew that in France they sent all innovators 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
116 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 to the stake, took flight while his cause was pending. Unhappily 
 he passed through Geneva, where Calvin denounced him." ^ 
 And yet Calvin was not the monster of intolerance he has been 
 called. Shortly before the prosecution of Servetus, he wrote : 
 " In a case where a man is simply heterodox, we do not consider 
 that a sufficient reason for rejecting him ; we must tolerate 
 him and not drive him from the Church or expose him to 
 censure as a heretic." Servetus was tried by the Council of 
 Geneva, an elected body, quite independent of Calvin, and, 
 indeed, hostile to his ideas : the indictment was drawn up by a 
 member of the Anti-Calvinist party. On August 26, 1553, 
 Calvin wrote to his friend Farel, who had endeavoured to get 
 Servetus to retract : " I hope he will be condemned, but I 
 desire that he should be spared the atrocities of the penalty." 
 And on October 26 : " To-morrow he will be executed : we did 
 our best to change the manner of his death, but in vain."" The 
 Council had, in fact, decided the day before that he should be 
 burnt alive at Champel. He bore his punishment like a stoic. 
 On November 1, 1903, the Calvinists of Geneva inaugurated a 
 monument to his memory. The crime of his burning must be 
 judged like those of the Terror. It was a fruit of the education 
 in intolerance given to Europe by the Roman Church. 
 
 22. Voltaire remarks that certain letters of Luther breathe 
 a spirit no more pacific than those of Calvin, to which the 
 Protestants answer " that they believe it their duty to follow 
 the doctrines of the primitive Church, not to canonise the 
 passions of either Luther or Calvin." To which Voltaire : 
 " A wise reason ! The spirit of philosophy has at last blunted 
 the sword. But was it necessary to pass through two centuries 
 of lunacy to arrive at these peaceful years ? " When Voltaire 
 wrote, the days of a new frenzy were not very far off. 
 
 . . . • • 
 
 23. The elements of the Reformation had existed in England 
 since the days of Wyclif ; it only wanted the caprice of a prince 
 to bring them to maturity. 
 
 24. " It is well known that England severed her connection 
 with the Pope because Henry VIII. fell in love. What neither 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 117 
 
 Peter's Pence, nor the sale of indulgences, nor five hundred 
 years of extortions, always resisted by parliament and people, 
 could effect, was effected, or, at least, determined, by a passing 
 love affair." ^ Henry VHL wished to exchange Catherine of 
 Aragon for Anne Boleyn, and Clement VH. refused to annul 
 his marriage with Charles V.'s aunt. Henry accordingly had 
 it annulled by Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. The Pope 
 excommunicated him, so he proclaimed himself supreme head of 
 the Church and his parliament abolished the papal authorit3\ 
 Being in want of money, the king confiscated the property of 
 the religious bodies, and displayed the most impudent cynicism 
 in stripping the rich abbeys of their wealth. A Pope himself, 
 in his own way and to his own advantage, he took good care 
 not to declare himself a Lutheran. " The invocation of saints 
 was only restricted, not abolished. He caused the Bible to be 
 read in English, but wished to go no further. It was a capital 
 offence to believe in the Pope; and also to be a Protestant." 
 The Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, and Fisher, Bishop of 
 Rochester, were condemned to death by Parliament for refusing 
 to acknowledge the king as head of the Church. Henry, after 
 the fashion of the sixteenth century, was completely unaffected 
 by moral scruples, but he was a king. After his death England 
 had Lutherans, Zwinglians, and even Anabaptists, " the fathers 
 of those peace-loving Quakers whose religion was so often 
 laughed at while their morals enforced respect. . . . Believing 
 themselves to be Christians and in nowise priding themselves on 
 their philosophy, they were in reality deists, for in Christ they 
 only recognised a man to whom God had given purer lights 
 than to his contemporaries. The people called them Anabaptists, 
 because they did not acknowledge the validity of baptism for 
 infants, requiring adults to be baptised even when they had 
 already undergone the rite."^ 
 
 25. Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VHL and wife of 
 Philip H., was passionately Catholic. While she was on the 
 throne, over two hundred Protestants were burnt, including 
 Archbishop Cranmer; her successor, Elizabeth (1558-1603), was 
 a Protestant. " Parliament was Protestant ; the whole nation 
 ^ Voltaire. * Ibid. 
 
118 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 became Protestant and is so still. Its religion was now fixed 
 and its liturgy established. The Roman form of hierarchy, 
 with a greatly diminished ceremonial, although with more than 
 the Lutherans allowed ; confession, permitted but not ordained ; 
 the belief that God is in the Eucharist without transubstantia- 
 tion : broadly speaking, these are the elements of the Anglican 
 religion."! During the short reign of Edward VI., the son of 
 Henry VIII. (1547-1553), a Confession of Faith in forty-two 
 articles and an official prayer-book had been promulgated. 
 Elizabeth retained thirty-nine of the forty-two articles in her 
 Art of Unlformitf/, which also imposed the Creed (1562). 
 The Edwardian jirayer-book, proscribed under Mary, was re- 
 established, with a few alterations, and became the foundation 
 of Anglican worship. 
 
 26. Elizabeth, though very hostile to Popery, was no more 
 of a fanatic than her father. She hanged two Jesuits and 
 beheaded Mary of Scotland (1587), but these cruelties were 
 inspired by political considerations, and the proceedings were 
 always legal. By excommunicating Elizabeth during Maiy's 
 captivity. Pope Pius V. only made her more implacable. Scot- 
 land was agitated by the wars between Catholics and Protestants. 
 A preacher, John Knox, who had at one time been a refugee with 
 Calvin (1554), propagated Calvinism in Scotland. He led it 
 to victory after the flight of Mary, for whose head he clamoured 
 as early as 1570. Ireland remained faithful to Rome in spite 
 of Elizabeth, who showed her despotic temper by forcing an 
 Anglican priesthood on the Irish parishes. That unhappy 
 island was still more harshly treated in the sequel, but remained 
 faithful to her Churcli ; she would not, and will not even now, 
 accept that of her conquerors. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 27. In 1516, Francis I. and Leo X. had concluded a Concordat 
 which gave the king the nominations to benefices and the Pope 
 their first year's revenue. To the University and the Parlia- 
 ment of Paris these terms seemed too favourable to Rome, 
 The king's sister. Marguerite d'Alen^-on, afterwards Queen of 
 Navarre, favoured the propaganda of Jacques Lefevre of Etaples 
 
 * Voltaire. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 119 
 
 (born in 1435), in support of the Augustinian doctrines, which 
 resembled those of Luther. Among the disciples of Lefevre was 
 Guillaume Farel, afterwards a friend of Calvin, who preached 
 the Reformation at Neuchatel and invited Calvin to Geneva. 
 Calvin himself could not stay in France ; his Instihition chre- 
 tienne was first published at Basle. In spite of Marguerite's 
 influence, the reformers were horribly persecuted in France. 
 Jean le Clerc was torn to pieces with pincers for having spoken 
 against images and relics : twenty reformers were burnt at 
 the stake. To prevent them from addressing the people, the 
 Parliament of Paris ordered their tongues to be cut out before 
 the execution. At the same time Francis I. was allying himself 
 with the German Protestants and even with the Turks against 
 Charles V. Profoundly indifferent in religious matters, he let 
 his parliaments and his monks do as they liked. The close of 
 his reign was disgraced by an infamous crime. The Parliament 
 of Provence condemned to the stake nineteen Waldenses of 
 Merindol, who had adopted the reformed doctrines. Francis 
 offered to pardon them on condition that they recanted. On 
 their refusal the First President of the Parliament, one d'Oppede, 
 called in troops, who burnt and massacred them all. " A com- 
 pany of sixty men and thirty women had taken refuge in the 
 walled village of Cabrieres. They surrendered on a promise of 
 their lives ; no sooner was the surrender complete than they were 
 massacred. A few women escaped to a neighbouring church ; 
 they were dragged out by d'Oppede's orders, shut up in a barn, 
 and there burnt. Twenty-two small townships were burnt to 
 the ground. Francis I. was horrified. The warrant he had 
 signed was for the execution of nineteen heretics only. D'Oppede 
 and Guerin, the Avocat General., had caused the massacre of 
 thousands." i On his death-bed the king requested his son to 
 punish this barbarity. The Parliament of Paris condemned 
 Guerin to death, but acquitted d'Oppede, the more criminal of 
 the pair. 
 
 28. " The progress of Calvinism was not stemmed by these 
 executions. On one side the faggots were ablaze, on the other 
 the psalms of Clement Marot were sung laughingly, true to that 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
120 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 genius of the French nation which is always Hght and some- 
 times very cruel. Marguerite's whole Court was thoroughly 
 Calvinist ; that of her brother, the king, more than half so. 
 What the people had begun, the nobles were carrying on. 
 More than one member of the Parliament of Paris itself was 
 attached to the Reformation." ^ Henry II. arrested five coun- 
 sellors, among them Anne du Bourg, who was hanged and 
 burnt under Francis II. 
 
 The success of the Reformation among the French nobles 
 was not solely due to the Renaissance aiid the intellectual 
 illumination which followed it ; they saw the German knights 
 growing rich on the spoils of the abbeys, and hoped for similar 
 irood fortune. In all the religious wars which stained the second 
 half of the sixteenth century, both sides were eager for rapine 
 and pillage. At that sinister epoch honest and kindly men like 
 the Chancellor de THopital and Admiral de Coligny were rare 
 and admirable exceptions. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 29. The so-called Counter-Reformation was the movement 
 towards reform within the Roman Church brought about by the 
 threat of a Protestant revolution. It was, in a sense, a Pro- 
 testant infiltration into Romanism, not, of course, in rites and 
 dogmas, but in the discipline of the clergy. Not only did the 
 Popes become, for the most part, respectable men, whose only 
 weakness was the appointment to lucrative posts of their own 
 nephews {nipoti, whence the term nepotism) ; but priests and 
 monks were better controlled and their duties more clearly 
 defined. The sale of indulgences came to an end ; and, in 
 confession, the use of a little box known as a confessional 
 was made obligatory, which minimised certain dangerous 
 opportunities. 
 
 30. Profiting by its trials, the Church, without ceasing to 
 urge violence upon the " civil arm," now sought to gain, or 
 regain, souls by softer methods. In this task she was admirably 
 seconded by the Jesuits, who gradually acquired the control of 
 education, and, through the confessional, of the consciences of 
 the ruling classes. Lav societies, more or less affiliated to the 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 121 
 
 Jesuits, were formed in many centres to work " for the greater 
 glory of God." Recent publications have made us well acquainted 
 with one of these, which wielded a great and mysterious influ- 
 ence in France between 1627 and 1666. This was the Brother- 
 hood of the Holy Sacrament {Confrdrie du Saint Sacrement), 
 which was known as the Cabale des Dcvots} The secrecy with 
 which this Brotherhood carried on its works of charity is to be 
 explained by the fundamental object of its activity : an elaborate 
 system of espionage, directed against the reputation and property 
 of all heretics and unbelievers. To deprive them of their 
 functions or their customers, and reduce them to poverty, became 
 the ambition of opponents who were no longer permitted to 
 burn them. 
 
 31. While Protestantism, inspired by Saint Paul and Saint 
 Augustine, narrowed the way of salvation and frightened the 
 sinner from his sin, Jesuitical Catholicism adopted a more 
 skilful policy : it made religion gentle and almost indulgent to 
 human frailty. The Jesuits were not indeed the inventors of 
 casuistry, which was familiar to classic Greece, and of which 
 many examples are to be found in Cicero's De Officns ; but 
 they developed the useful science which takes note of the shades 
 and degrees of acts no less than of thoughts, and judges them 
 chiefly by their motives. The Jesuits never taught the crude 
 doctrine that the end justifies the means, but their main pre- 
 occupation was, very rightly, with intentions. Those Jesuits 
 whom the Jansenists were never w^eary of vilifying, writers on 
 moral theology like Sanchez and Suarez, were, in their way, 
 profound psychologists, liberal and liberating moralists, to 
 whom humanity would have owed a deep debt of gratitude 
 had they not used liberty itself in a domineering spirit, and 
 lightened the chains of the human race in order to subdue it 
 the better. 
 
 32. The new course of the Church was fixed by the Council 
 of Trent, which lasted for seventeen years (1546-1563), with 
 considerable intervals. In its early days, the Primate of 
 
 1 It was perhaps in opposition to this cabal, fallen into discredit with the 
 powers, that Molitre wrote Tartafe, which was represented at Versailles in 
 1664, by command of Louis XIV. 
 
122 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Portugal facetiously announced that "these most illustrious 
 cardinals will have to be most illustriously reformed." The 
 necessity of a firm discipline was universally acknowledged, but 
 it was by no means the only necessity. The Council of Trent 
 dealt a good deal in scholastic theology ; it codified Catholicism ; 
 it defined original sin ; it decreed the perpetuity of the marriage 
 tie ; it pronounced anathema against those who rejected the 
 invocation of saints or the adoration of relics, who denied the 
 existence of Purgatory or the validity of indulgences. "The 
 theologians, who had no votes, explained the dogmas; the 
 prelates voted under the directions of the papal legates, who 
 quieted the grumblers, softened the acrimonious, parried every- 
 thing that might offend the Court of Rome, and were from 
 first to last the masters." ^ 
 
 33. Thanks to the Counter-Reformation and to the Jesuits, 
 the Church regained part of the ground she had lost in Europe, 
 Southern Germany, France, some of the Swiss Cantons, Savoy, 
 and Poland. In Italy, Protestantism was almost completely 
 crushed by the Inquisition established in 1542. It was the 
 same in Spain. The propaganda of the Polish Jesuits spread 
 into Western Russia and into Lithuania. Catholicism conquered 
 America, several of the cities of India, and won a footino; in 
 Japan and China. This development in the Far East was 
 chiefly the work of the zealous Jesuit Francois Xavier (1542- 
 1552). But while the Jesuits kept their place in Pekin, thanks 
 chiefly to concessions to the native faith which brought suspicion 
 upon their own, they were driven out of Japan and their religion 
 proscribed (1637) as soon as the intelligent population of its 
 islands awoke to the fact that their liberty was at stake, 
 
 34. In the war against the Reformation the Jesuits played 
 a part no less considerable than that of the Dominicans in 
 the less dangerous struggle with the Albigenses. Taking their 
 share in every political and religious conflict, they have, down 
 to our own days, excited violent hatred and equally fervent 
 admiration. History, moreover, has to show some reserve in 
 discussing them, for no one outside the Order knows exactly 
 
 * Voltaire, 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 123 
 
 where its archives are kept, and no independent layman has 
 ever been allowed to explore them. 
 
 35. The founder of this illustrious company was Ignatius 
 Loyola, a noble from Guipuscoa (1491-1556). Wounded at 
 the siege of Pampeluna, he was attracted to mysticism by a 
 perusal of the Lives of the Saints. After a pilgrimage to 
 Jerusalem, he came, at the age of thirty-three, to study at 
 Salamanca and at Paris, In Paris, on Montmartre, he founded 
 an association which at first devoted itself to teaching. In 
 1540, Paul III. promulgated the Bull by which the Order of 
 Jesuits was instituted. The fourth vow it imposed was that 
 of absolute obedience to the Pope. Loyola finished in 1548 
 The Book of the Spiritual Exercises, a series of pious medita- 
 tions and rules of conduct, "one of the world-moving books." 
 It puts forth a programme for the society, in which God is 
 represented as a general and the Jesuits as his officers. As 
 an old soldier, he understood how to bring his order under that 
 quasi-military discipline which has counted for so much in its 
 success. In this respect, perhaps, it was in some measure 
 inspired by those brotherhoods of Islam, at once religious and 
 military, which had already been imitated in the Middle Ages 
 by the Templars and the Hospitallers. 
 
 36. Loyola found very efficient lieutenants in Lainez and 
 Salmeron, and since his time the Society has never lacked men 
 of talent. " It has controlled several European Courts and won 
 a great name for itself by the education of youth [Voltaire was 
 one of its pupils] ; it reformed science in China, christianised 
 Japan— for a time ! — and gave laws to the people of Paraguay. 
 At the date of its expulsion from Portugal, it numbered about 
 18,000 individuals, all subject to a permanent and absolute 
 ruler in their General, and bound to each other by this obedience 
 sworn to a single person. . . . The Order had great difficulty 
 in establishing itself in France. It was born and reared under 
 the House of Austria, France's sometime enemy, and was pro- 
 tected by her. In the days of the League, the Jesuits were the 
 pensioners of Philip II. The other religious bodies, who all 
 belonged to this faction except the Benedictines and the 
 Carthusians, fanned the flame only in France ; the Jesuits 
 
124 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 did so from Rome, Madrid and Brussels, setting fire to 
 Paris."! 
 
 37. Whereas the forces of the Roman Church stood centralised 
 for the struggle, the reformed Churches Avere divided. Closely 
 allied to the civil power, they were national and not universal. 
 If Rome tended to dominate the secular authorities, her rivals 
 too often and too willingly became their instruments. Another 
 characteristic these latter have in common is the large share in 
 ecclesiastical matters given to the laity, which is not differen- 
 tiated from the clergy by marriage. In England and in the 
 Scandinavian countries a hierarchy analogous to that of Rome 
 was preserved. Those countries are episcopalian. The Calvinists 
 of Switzerland, France, Holland and Scotland preferred the 
 Synodal or Presbyterian system, so called because the synods 
 or councils of elders {Pi-eshyteroi in Greek) had the direction 
 of spiritual affairs, as in the primitive Church. The Lutherans, 
 in default of bishops, had superintendents. Finally, the sects 
 called Independents and CongregationaUsts had no hierarchy 
 at all, but governed themselves. These flourished chiefly in 
 England. As for their methods of worship, the Reformed 
 Churches agreed in banishing images, relics, and the invocation 
 of saints ; but in detail they varied, according to the severity of 
 their principles. The Anglican Church remained very close to 
 Roman Catholicism, and, in the nineteenth century, part of it, 
 known as the High Church, approached it more closely still. 
 The Lutheran Church gave an important place to music and 
 singing ; the Calvinist Churches no more tolerated instrumental 
 music than images, and permitted nothing but psalms and 
 hymns. The national languages everywhere ousted Latin in 
 the liturgies, and preaching encroached upon ritual. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 38. The spirit of the Inquisition was incarnate in Philip II. 
 He swore before a crucifix to exterminate the scanty Protestants 
 of Spain and had them burnt under his palace windows. Hear- 
 ing that heretics existed in a certain valley of Piedmont, he 
 wrote to the Governor of Milan : Send them all to the gallows ! 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 125 
 
 They told him of reformers in Calabria : he directed that they 
 should be put to the sword, reserving thirty for the gallows and 
 thirty for the stake. It is not to be wondered that such a 
 fanatic should have employed a hangman like Alva in the 
 subjection of the Protestant Netherlands, where he had 
 established the Inquisition in 1565. 
 
 39. " William the Silent had neither the men nor the money 
 to resist such a monarch as Philip II. The persecutions gave 
 him both. The new tribunal set up in Brussels threw the 
 people into despair. Counts Egmont and Horn, with eighteen 
 others of gentle birth, were beheaded and their blood was 
 the first cement for the Republic of the United Netherlands." ^ 
 When the Duke of Alva was at last recalled, he boasted of 
 having put eighteen thousand people to death. A vain boast ; 
 for the Union of Utrecht brought about the birth of the political 
 liberties of Holland in the seven united provinces (1579). But 
 religious liberty only comes after a long education, and the 
 Dutch Reformation was far from being always liberal. In its 
 turn, it was guilty of murdering men for their opinions. 
 
 4)0. Calvin had uncompromisingly upheld the Augustinian 
 theory of predestination, which makes God either the benefactor 
 or the capricious foe of individuals. This doctrine, a logical 
 deduction from premises which are an outrage upon reason, 
 was contested by Harmensen, called Arminius, a pastor of 
 Leyden (1603), against Gomar, a fanatical Calvinist. As 
 the Arminians were Liberals in politics, they were opposed 
 by the Stadtholder, Maurice of Nassau. At the Synod of 
 Dort (1618), they were insulted, maltreated, and condemned. 
 One of their number, the old patriot Barnevelt, was beheaded. 
 Arminian pastors and professors were stripped of their offices. 
 Many took refuge in Schleswig, whence they returned in 1625, 
 the death of Maurice having caused a certain reaction in favour 
 of toleration. We must add, for the credit of Holland, that 
 the Dutch neither proscribed nor persecuted the Roman Catholic 
 worship. 
 
 41. The Catholics did not abandon the idea of regaining 
 England, even after the dispersal of Philip's " Invincible 
 
 ^ Voltaire. 
 
126 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Armada." Elizabeth's successor, James I., the son of Mary 
 Stuart, inclined towards Catholicism, but demanded toleration; 
 he considered persecution " as one of the infallible notes of a 
 false Church." But, after 1604, he was driven by the Protestant 
 party in that direction. For this a further pretext was found 
 in the Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to blow up the Houses of 
 Parliament, the inception of which was ascribed to the Jesuits 
 (November 5th, 1605). Their complicity has never been 
 established. The Jesuit Garnet, executed for a share in the 
 plot, or for having had some knowledge of it, was probably 
 innocent. Charles I., son of James I., married Henrietta Maria, 
 the Catholic daughter of Henri Quatre. He was reproached 
 with favouring ritualism, those ceremonies of the Anglican 
 Church which brought it nearest to Rome. This tendency was 
 fostered by Laud, Bishop of London, and afterwards Archbishop 
 of Canterbury. Charles was imprudent enough to attempt the 
 imposition of the Anglican liturgy on Presbyterian Scotland, 
 which revolted. Passing through various stages of a struggle 
 with his Parliament, he was finally arrested, tried, and beheaded 
 (1649). Parliament was dominated by the spirit of the Scottish 
 Puritans, an austere and sectarian form of Protestantism. 
 Sensible men as they were, they were drunk with the wine of 
 the Bible, and believed themselves prophets of Israel because 
 they could quote their sayings. One of the most energetic 
 members of Parliament, who soon became its leader, Oliver 
 Cromwell, conqueror of Charles I. at Marston Moor (1644) and 
 Naseby (1645), had passed from the Presbyterians to the Inde- 
 pendents, that is, to a democratic form of religion, in which full 
 autonomy was left to local communities (1640). But when he 
 became Lord Protector (1653), he gave a Presbyterian form to 
 the English Church, modified by a large toleration, which was 
 not, however, extended to the Catholics. 
 
 Charles II., restored by General Monk after the death of 
 Cromwell, reverted to the Anglican forms and tried to impose 
 them in his turn. The main point was to compel every ecclesi- 
 astic to receive ordination from a bishop. Thousands preferred 
 destitution to such an appearance of concession to Catholicism. 
 The truth was that Charles, a dissolute prince and pensioner of 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 127 
 
 France, sought to re-establish the ancient faith. His brother 
 and successor, James II., threw oft' the mask, and imprisoned 
 seven Anglican bishops who refused to lend themselves to an 
 understanding with Rome. The bishops were tried and ac- 
 quitted. The king's unpopularity went on increasing until at 
 last his son-in-law, William of Orange, Stadtholder of the 
 Netherlands, deprived him of his crown, with the help and 
 consent of Parliament (1689). Thenceforward English policy 
 took N^o Popery ! for its motto : a principle which became all 
 the dearer to the English people through the attempts made by 
 Louis XIV. to restore James II. 
 
 42. Ireland had revolted in 1641. The Catholics massacred 
 thousands of Protestants, but were punished with equal cruelty 
 by Cromwell (1G50). A second rising took place in favour of 
 James II. (1690) ; after the rebels had been defeated, the oppres- 
 sion of Catholic Ireland became atrocious. And yet it must be 
 confessed that England never behaved towards her Catholic 
 subjects as Louis XIV. did towards the French Protestants. 
 Their lives were made insupportable, but their priests were not 
 condemned to death, nor were those who wished to emigrate 
 sent to the galleys. 
 
 A Swiss follower of Zwingli, Thomas Lieber, called Erastus 
 (+ 1583), claimed that the Church should be subordinate to 
 the State. His doctrine, by no means a new one, is known in 
 Great Britain as Ernstianism ; it has been that of Henry II., 
 Edward III., Heiuy VIII., Elizabeth and later statesmen, but 
 was opposed, ever since 1560, by the Church of Scotland. 
 
 43. At the time w4ien, under James I., Presbyterians and 
 Independents refused to accept the Anglican liturgy, a certain 
 number of these austere Puritans, known as the Pilgrim Fathers, 
 embarked for North America on a ship called the Mayflower 
 (September 1620). They landed in IMassachusetts and there 
 founded the colonies which also afforded asylum to the persecuted 
 French Protestants. It is now a kind of title to noblesse in the 
 United States to count one of the Pilgrim Fathers among one's 
 ancestors. 
 
 44. Reformed England has never lacked reformers. One of 
 these — George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends — was 
 
128 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 imprisoned under Charles II. He taught that the divine spirit 
 acted directly upon individuals, occasionally inspiring them 
 with a sort of convulsive shaking. People took advantage of 
 this doctrine to call the Friends Quakers', although their worship 
 is remarkably free from fuss or affectation. The Quakers are 
 honest folk, who know neither sacraments nor rites, whose lives 
 are simple to austerity, who neither swear nor play, nor carry 
 arms, nor dance, nor drink strong liquors. Their religious ex- 
 altation, inoffensive enough, declares itself at their " meetings,'"" 
 when, amid a profound silence, one of the congregation may 
 begin to hold forth in the name of the Holy Spirit. The most 
 intelligent of the Quakers, William Penn, the son of an admiral, 
 was a creditor of Charles II.'s Government, which paid its debt 
 with a gift of land in America. Penn betook himself thither 
 with a body of Friends in 1681. The flourishing State of 
 Pennsylvania preserves his name, and its capital, Philadelphia, 
 reveres his memory. The Friends have always exercised a 
 certain influence in England and in the United States, where 
 they co-operated with effect in the movement for negro emanci- 
 pation. Quite recently, they have had the honour of being the 
 first to rebuild houses in the devastated regions of France 
 (1915), and they have played a merciful part in combating the 
 famine in Russia (1922). 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 45. One of the first results of the Catholic reaction was the 
 Thirty Years' War. It ruined Germany for two hundred years, 
 but with the help of Catholic France under Richelieu, Protestant 
 Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus, and the Low Countries, the 
 Reformed Princes of Germany were upheld against the House 
 of Austria. In the end this frightful havoc and bloodshed left 
 things much as it found them. Catholics and Protestants 
 retained their position. France alone profited by the long con- 
 flict in the weakening of the Empire. The Treaty of Westphalia 
 (1648) made her the first Power in Europe. Dreadful cruelties 
 were enacted on both sides, but the Catholic leaders showed 
 themselves even more savage than their opponents. Few more 
 disgusting acts of barbarity have ever been committed than the 
 sack and burning of Magdeburg by Tilly. Not only was the 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 129 
 
 torch of war lighted by the Jesuit councillors of Ferdinand H., 
 but after all its ravages the Pope refused to recognise the 
 peace of 1648. In 1631 Urban VIII. had congratulated 
 Ferdinand on the destruction of Magdeburg, and had expressed 
 the hope that other rebel cities would soon meet with the 
 same fate ! 
 
 46. The Lutherans of Germany had a reformer of their own 
 in the Alsatian, Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705). Distressed 
 by the external and formalistic character of the religion he saw 
 about him, he formed what he called the Collegia p'letatis, from 
 which his followers were called Pietists. It was in Berlin that 
 he wielded most influence, the upper middle classes receiving an 
 impression from his teaching which they preserved down to the 
 middle of the nineteenth century. A Pietist is not a theologian. 
 His preoccupations are with the practical side of the Christian 
 life. Here he approaches the rationalist and the simple deist. 
 From these, however, he is separated by a certain air of superi- 
 ority and by a slight pretension to asceticism. A religious 
 movement in its origin, Pietism became an attitude, and a pro- 
 voking one. However, the tendency breathed by the writings 
 and preachings of Spener evolved very differently in various parts 
 of Germany, so that we cannot speaic of Pietism in general, but 
 only of Pietists in particular times and places. 
 
 47. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Poland seemed 
 almost lost to the Roman Church. The nobility were either 
 Lutherans or Calvinists ; there were more than 2000 reformed 
 communities in the country. Then a singular event took place. 
 Two natives of Siena, Laelius Socinus (Lelio Sozzini) and his 
 nephew Faustus, or P'austo, taught in Switzerland the doctrine 
 known as Unitarianism, a kind of deism hostile to the doffma of 
 the Trinity and still more to that of salvation by faith. Faustus 
 came to Poland and founded a Socinian Church there, which 
 Jesuits and Reformers united to attack. The Socinians had to 
 take refuge in Transylvania, and the Polish reformers, weakened 
 by the struggle and their loss in numbers, were soon reduced to 
 impotence. The Roman Church profited by these events to 
 regain all the ground she had lost. 
 
 K 
 
130 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 48. In spite of all the violence that darkened the reign 
 of Henri II., violence in which the populace, excited by the 
 monks, began to participate, the French Protestants were a 
 fairly powerful body when Francois II. mounted the throne. 
 He was a child in poor health, dominated by the faction of 
 the Guises. The struggle then took on a political complexion, 
 the Huguenots recognising Prince Louis de Conde for their 
 chief, the Catholics the Due de Guise. Desiring to withdraw 
 the young king from the influence of Francois de Guise and 
 his brother, the Cardinal de Lorraine, certain Protestants 
 organised what is known as the Conspiracy of Amboise. This 
 failed and was followed by numerous executions. At the begin- 
 ning of Charles IX. 's reign, Catherine de' Medici being regent, 
 the States-General demanded liberty of worship (1561). As a 
 result of this a congress of theologians was held at Poissy, in 
 which the Reformation was defended by Theodore de Bcze, a 
 pupil of Calvin and afterwards his successor at Geneva. Like 
 all religious conferences it was quite useless. 
 
 In January, 1562, an important concession was made to the 
 Protestants by an edict which gave them permission to have 
 conventicles in cities. But almost immediately afterwards 
 Fran(jois de Guise attacked a group of Huguenots Avho were at 
 worship near Vassy, and basely massacred women and children. 
 A civil war followed which lasted with a few intervals for some 
 eight years. It terminated through the influence of Admiral 
 de Coligny, by a treaty favourable to liberty of worship, signed 
 at St. Germain. 
 
 Henri de Bourbon, Protestant King of Navarre, was be- 
 trothed to the sister of Charles IX. As it appeared unlikely 
 that either Charles or his brother Henri would have children, 
 the crown of France threatened to pass to a Prince of the 
 Reformation ; an alarming prospect for Rome, for having lost 
 England, she was all the more tenacious of her footing in 
 France. As early as March 28, 1569, Pius V. wrote to 
 Charles IX : " Pursue and crush all enemies who remain. 
 Unless you pull up the last roots of the evil, they will shoot 
 again as they have already done so often." This was preaching 
 the policy of extermination, which had already been put in 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 131 
 
 force against the Albigenses. It led directly to the Massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew. 
 
 49. Catherine de' Medici and Charles prepared the trap. 
 They chose a moment when all the Huguenot chiefs were in 
 Paris for the marriage of the King of Navarre. On the night 
 of August 24, 1572, the Eve of St. Bartholomew, the mob, 
 warned by the tocsin, flung themselves upon the Huguenots and 
 began a massacre which lasted for several days. Admiral de 
 Coligny, who " only breathed for the good of the State,*" ^ was 
 the first victim. Ten thousand men were slaughtered in Paris, 
 and in spite of the resistance of a few governors and military 
 commandants, who were willing to be soldiers but not to be 
 executioners, the same horrors were enacted in the provinces. 
 Henry of Navarre abjured his faith to save his life, and for some 
 four years gave himself up to shameful pleasures. He even did 
 his best to harry his former co-religionists. One day, however, 
 he disappeared from Paris, and again joined the Reformers. 
 
 " The throats of thirty thousand of their comrades had been 
 cut at a time of peace ; about two millions were left to make 
 war." 2 After the death of Charles IX., which followed the 
 massacre at no long interval, his brother and successor, Henri 
 III., fearing the ambition of the Due de Guise, began by making 
 overtures to the Protestants and disavowing the Massacre of 
 St. Bartholomew. Henri de Guise, encouraged by the Pope 
 and helped by Philip II., created the Holy League, the object of 
 which was to exterminate the Reformers and to prevent the crown 
 of France from passing to a Huguenot king. They avowedly 
 preferred the daughter of Philip II. to the King of Navarre, 
 secretly hoping to substitute the House of Lorraine for that ot 
 Valois. The League was recruited among the ignorant rabble, 
 directed and paid by the monks, who took care to feed their 
 fanaticism. It was an army of crime and disorder in the service 
 of the Church. Henri HI., a feeble and abject creature, was 
 driven by fear to declare himself head of the League. Under 
 the impulse of the same passion, he ended by allying himself 
 with the King of Navarre, and besieging Paris in his company 
 
 * Montesquieu. 
 
 ^ Voltaire. Two millions seems an over-statement of their number. 
 
132 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 (1589). He was assassinated by Jacques Clement, a Dominican 
 friar. Henri de Bourbon then became legitimate King of 
 France. He knew well enough, however, that in spite of his 
 repeated successes he was not accepted by the Catholic majority 
 in the country. So once more he abjured, made the dangerous 
 leap [satit perilleiicc\ in the conviction that " Paris was well 
 worth a Mass," and obtained the submission of the League 
 (1593) chiefly by gifts of money and pensions to the leaders. 
 
 50. Pius V.'s successor, Gregory XIII., struck a medal in 
 memory of the St. Bartholomew with the legend Ugonotoiiim 
 strages (the carnage of the Huguenots), and commissioned 
 Vasari to paint those frescoes representing the massacre which 
 still dishonour the walls of a saloon in the Vatican. Vain 
 attempts have been made to absolve the Pope and his Legate of 
 all responsibility for this inexpiable crime. The Church found 
 it quite a natural proceeding to get rid of the Huguenots, as it 
 had of the sectaries of the Middle Ages, by collective murder. 
 We have already quoted the message of Pius V. to Charles IX. 
 On the fatal 24th of August, while the massacre was going on, 
 the Nuncio Salviati wrote to Gregory XIII. : " With your 
 Holiness I rejoice from my heart that the King and the Queen 
 Mother have been able to exterminate these infected people 
 with so much prudence and at a moment so opportune, when 
 the rebels were all locked up in their cage." Gregory XIII. 
 celebrated " the most happy tidings of the destruction of the 
 Huguenot sect" with a religious ceremony. He sent to the 
 French Court the Legate Orsini, who, on his way through 
 Lyons, publicly distributed indulgences to those who had taken 
 part in the massacres. Finally he presented the golden rose, 
 instituted to reward ardent zeal for the Church, to Charles IX., 
 the crowned assassin of his own subjects. 
 
 51. The Edict of Nantes (1598), a decree confirmatory of 
 previous treaties, though with certain restrictions, gave religious 
 peace to France for a time. This " perpetual and irrevocable " 
 edict authorised the reformed worship and the teaching of 
 Protestant theology ; also, by the institution of mixed tribunals 
 [chambres mi-parties)^ secured equality for the Huguenots in 
 the administration of justice. Several cities, called Cities of 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 183 
 
 Refuge {Villes de stiretS), were awarded to the Protestants. 
 One of these, La Rochellc, became a sort of French Geneva. 
 This was repeating the mistake already committed in the Edict 
 of St. Germain, and setting up a state within the State for the 
 benefit of the Reformers. 
 
 • 
 
 52. After the assassination (1610) of Henri Quatre by 
 Ravaillac, the " blind instrument of the spirit of the age," ^ the 
 condition of the Huguenots remained a favourable one during 
 the early years of Louis XHL's minority. But Richelieu, 
 although allied with the Protestant princes against the House 
 of Austria, was too eager for the grandeur and unity of France 
 to tolerate such an institution as the Ville.s de surete. After an 
 heroic defence by her mayor, Guiton, La Rochelle had to yield 
 to famine (1628). The Edict of Nantes was confirmed by that 
 of Nimes (1629), but the Huguenots were deprived of their 
 strongholds. 
 
 53. From this time onward it was no longer policy but 
 fanaticism and cupidity which controlled events. Taking advan- 
 tage of every rivalry in interests or commerce, the Church never 
 ceased to demand from the Crown the withdrawal of all conces- 
 sions granted to the Protestants. Her chief supporters in this 
 campaign were the Chancellor Le Tellier and his son Louvois. 
 The Edict of Nantes was never accepted by the Catholic clergy, 
 and its history is that of its revocation. ^ 
 
 The learned Oratorian, Richard Simon, wrote : " If Cardinal 
 Richelieu had not died so early, we should long ago have 
 had no Huguenots in the kingdom." The Crown needed the 
 gratuities it received from the clergy. These were always 
 accompanied by demands for measures against the Protestants. 
 " Where are the laws," said an orator before the child Louis XIV., 
 at an assembly of the clergy in 1651 — " where are the laws 
 which banish heretics from intercourse with their fellow-men ? " 
 "We hope, at least," said another speaker, "that if your 
 authority cannot put a summary end to this evil, it may cause 
 it to languish and die through the gradual retrenchment and 
 
 1 Voltaire. 
 
 2 Puaux, Les pr^curseurg frangaise de la tolerance, Paris, 1881, p. 2. 
 
134 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 diminution of its forces." This programme was faithfully 
 carried out. Protestant advocates were excluded from the 
 tribunals (1664), Protestant notaries were forbidden to prac- 
 tise (1682). Protestants were shut out from all sorts of trades. 
 They could not be apothecaries, or surgeons, or midwives ; 
 they could be employed in no public office. Their places of 
 worship were next attacked and demolished, their pastors were 
 driven out, their schoolmasters restricted to teaching their 
 pupils to read, while children were allowed to become Catholics 
 at the age of seven, whether their parents sanctioned their 
 conversion or not (1684). The condition of the Protestants 
 became intolerable. Many of the rich and noble apostatised 
 in order to obtain posts at Court. Thousands of the poor were 
 bought by the gold of Pellisson, himself a converted (^alvinist, 
 who had the administration of the secret largesses of the Church. 
 Many more of the poor and of the learned classes emigrated, 
 and formed, especially in Holland, those communities of refugees 
 from whom the world learnt the truth about Louis XIV.'s 
 government, and among which, under the lash of persecution, 
 the notion of religious toleration and political liberty first took 
 definite shape. 
 
 54. Louis XIV. seems to have been led to believe that 
 most of the Protestants had been converted or had quitted 
 France. So he revoked the presumably useless Edict of 
 Nantes, " in order to efface the memory of the past troubles " 
 (October 18, 1685). Protestant places of worship were to be 
 demolished, Protestant worship itself suppressed, schools closed, 
 pastors banished on pain of death. But the Protestant laity 
 were forbidden to leave France on pain of the galleys. They 
 were compelled to remain, but had to abstain from any form of 
 worship. Their children, being inscribed on no parish registers, 
 were all accounted illegitimate. Family ties suffered no less 
 than individual consciences. 
 
 55. Those Protestants who succeeded in evading or corrupt- 
 ing the King's police passed the frontier (fifty thousand families 
 in three years), taking their energies and what was left of their 
 property to Holland, Prussia, England, and Switzerland. In 
 order to crush those who stayed behind, the authorities imposed 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 135 
 
 garrisons of dragoons upon them (1685). These soldiers be- 
 haved like drunken savages, hanging, smoking out, and flogging 
 men and women, dragging them half dead to the churches, 
 " where their mere enforced presence," writes Pastor Claude in 
 1686, " was reckoned as a recantation." Houses were destroyed, 
 trees cut down, women and children thrown into convents. 
 Even the dead were not spared. As in the days of the In- 
 quisition in Languedoc, the corpses of those who had died 
 without confession were tried and dragged off on hurdles to be 
 thrown into the common sewer. " At Caen, as in many other 
 towns, unhappy parents might be seen following the hurdles 
 on which the bodies of their children were being drawn, to be 
 hacked in pieces by the pupils of the Jesuits." ^ The Hugue- 
 nots made the country ring with their lamentations, but they 
 did not rebel. "Must they make all these efforts," asked 
 Jurieu, " to tear out those French hearts which God and our 
 birth have given us 't " "^ 
 
 56. At last, after seventeen years of atrocious persecution, 
 an insurrection did break out (1702). Deprived of their pastors, 
 the Protestants of the Cevennes used to celebrate their worship 
 in the solitude of the mountains. Every meeting surprised 
 by the authorities was treated with frightful severity, chiefly on 
 the instigation of the Intendant Lamoignon de Baville, a vrotege 
 of Madame de Maintenon. The unhappy people, who were 
 called Camisards, exasperated and fired by mystic delirium, 
 revolted, and for three years kept at bay three Marshals of 
 France, of whom Villars was one. Their leaders were Roland 
 and Jean Cavalier.^ It was a horrible war, in which the 
 vanquished were put to death or sent to the galleys, and in 
 which neither age nor sex was a protection from the violence of 
 the soldiers. The memory of all this still lingers in the 
 Ce'vennes. It should be kept alive everywhere. But during the 
 whole of the nineteenth century public education, severely 
 
 ^ F. Puaux, Prdcurseurs de la toUrance, p. 23 (after Legendre, Vie de Du 
 Bosc, p. 150). 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 31. 
 
 ' Cavalier afterwards escaped to England, where he was well received l)j' 
 Queen Anne, and ended his days as Governor of Jersey. Voltaire met him in 
 England, and formed a high opinion of him. 
 
186 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 controlled by the Roman Church, threw a veil over these crimes 
 as it did over so many others. French historical manuals gave 
 them at most a few lines, while one generation after another has 
 learnt from these same books to pity the victims of the Terror. 
 57. Everywhere and always, in this long catalogue of out- 
 rages on human right, when kings and ministers proscribe and 
 soldiers strike, it is the implacable Roman Church which 
 directs sword or pen. This has to be shown, in answer to 
 the falsehoods of those apologists who pretend, for example, 
 that the Pope disapproved of the Revocation. After the 
 disaster of Ramillies, Louis XIV. cried: "Has God then for- 
 gotten all I have done for Him?" As God did not address 
 himself directly to the Roi Sokil, Louis here implies that he 
 had followed the advice of his clergy, of those Jesuit directors 
 who were for him the sole interpreters of the Divine Will. In 
 January 1685, the French Ambassador to the Vatican trans- 
 mitted the following words of Pope Innocent XI. to Versailles : 
 " Truly, we give all praise to the king (Louis XIV.), who has 
 destroyed so great a number of heretics, and wishes to exter- 
 minate that unhappy sect entirely in his kingdom." On 
 May 8, 1685, d'Estrees wrote to the king: "The Pope praised 
 not only the continual care and application of your Majesty 
 for the extirpation of heresy, but also the methods of which 
 your Majesty has made use, winning some by kindness, driving 
 others from their charges and employments, striking terror into 
 those who could not be otherwise reduced." After the Revoca- 
 tion, the Pope declared to the ambassador " that nothing could 
 be finer, and that no other instance of such an action could be 
 found." He also decided " that he would bear public witness 
 to his joy and satisfaction with all possible splendour." On 
 April 28, 1686, he celebrated the Revocation by giving plenary 
 indulgence to all those who visited the French Church of St. 
 Louis in Rome. St. Peter's and the Vatican were illuminated. 
 Father Coronelli published an account of these celebrations 
 under the significant title, " Rome triumphant on the occasion 
 of the extirpation of heresy, by an edict given at Fontainebleau 
 in October 1685." The Jesuit Semery gave a discourse from 
 which we learn that Pope Innocent XI. had requested the 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPiEDIA 137 
 
 Cardinal d'Estrees to use all his influence with Louis XIV. to 
 get him " to destroy the plague and contagion of Calvinism." 
 Finally, it must not be forgotten that on November 13, 1685, 
 Innocent addressed a brief to Louis, in which he declared the 
 Revocation to be " the finest thing his Majesty had ever done, 
 the best fitted to immortalise his memory and to draw upon 
 him the rarest blessings of Heaven." 
 
 58. If God forgot what Louis XIV. had done for Him, there 
 were also a few Catholics who preached a somewhat tardy tolera- 
 tion after the military and economical disasters by which the 
 Revocation was followed. Thus Fenelon advised the English 
 Young Pretender, James Stuart : " Never compel your subjects 
 to change their religion ; no human power can force the im- 
 pregnable retrenchment of the heart. Force can never persuade 
 men : it only makes hypocrites. Grant civil toleration to all, 
 not as approving everything indifferently, but as suffering with 
 patience all that God suffers ; and seek to recall men to their 
 duty by gentle persuasion."^ In these beautiful lines we 
 recognise the remorse of a conscience illuminated by recent 
 misfortune. But Fenelon himself was then undergoing persecu- 
 tion. As for his great rival, Bossuet, he argued against the 
 Protestant ministers, calling attention in his own magnificent 
 periods to the variations of their creeds, but, so far as we know, 
 he had no word of pity for their sufferings. Indeed, he glorified 
 the Revocation. "You have," he said to Louis XIV., 
 " strengthened the faith ; you have exterminated the heretics ; 
 that is an exploit worthy of your reign." What is true of 
 Bossuet is true of most of his contemporaries. When the 
 Church's glory is at stake, even noble hearts are hardened. 
 "Our one preoccupation is the destruction of heresy," cried 
 Daniel de Cosnac, Bishop of Valence, on July 2, 1685. 
 
 , • • • • 
 
 69. Louis XIV., who came near to extirpating Protestantism 
 in France, deserves credit for introducing order and decency {la 
 regie et la decence is Voltaire's phrase) into French Catholicism. 
 Great disorders had existed under Louis XIII. "Nearly all 
 
 » F6nelon, CEuvres (Gaume ed. vol. vii. p. 102). The authenticity of this 
 passage has been questioned. 
 
140 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 But two others existed which, in spite of being condemned by 
 the Church, did good service in repressing what was then called 
 Libertinage. These were the Protestant Reformation, which was 
 a revival of the religious spirit ; and Jansenism, which a Jesuit 
 described as a bungled Calvinism (Cahmiisme barbouille). 
 
 63. The famous quarrel between Jesuits and Jansenists in 
 France corresponds to the fight between Arminians and Gomar- 
 ists in Holland. Cornelius Jansen (Jansenius), Bishop of Ypres, 
 had written three great folio volumes upon St. Augustine which 
 appeared after his death and found a certain number of readers 
 in France. In this book Jansen adopted St. Augustine's opinions 
 on Grace, whittling away, like Calvin, the part played by the 
 human will in the work of salvation. The Jesuits, with their 
 practical good sense, could not admit such a doctrine ; not that 
 it was logically false, but because it tended, like Calvinism, 
 towards the neglect of those good works which benefited the 
 Church and, it must be added, society at large. In France, 
 certain theologians grouped about the Abbey of Port Royal — 
 Duvergier, Abbot of St. Cyran, the Arnaulds, Nicole and Pascal 
 — adopted Jansenism in their antagonism to the Jesuits, to whom 
 some of the Port Royalists, the Arnaulds, for instance, were 
 opposed for personal motives. They made a difference of opinion 
 on an insoluble question a pretext for discrediting their enemies. 
 These latter, supported by Rome and with the strength given by 
 the confessional and by their wealth, ended by getting the upper 
 hand. But a whole century was disturbed by the dispute. The 
 details of the long controversy are so futile that it would be 
 folly to load one's memory with them. Their chief interest lies 
 in the fact that they contributed indirectly to prepare the 
 religious emancipation of the eighteenth century. But the men 
 who set themselves against the easy religion of the Jesuits, and 
 the saintly women, such as Angelique Arnauld, Abbess of Port 
 Royal, who were associated with them, still retain their influence 
 on men's minds by the intensity of their moral life, the gravity 
 of their mode of thought, and their tranquil courage. " Ces 
 Messieurs de Port Royal " are imposing doctrinaires, great 
 figures towering above the baseness and corruption of their 
 times. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 141 
 
 64. In 1641, the Jesuits obtained the condemnation of 
 Jansen's book by Rome. The Paris Faculty of Theology 
 denounced five of its propositions. The sense of these proposi- 
 tions was taken from the book, but not their text. Hence 
 an interminable quarrel. Were the five propositions in Jansen 
 or were they not.? Innocent X., in his turn, condemned the 
 five propositions, but again without quoting the pages from 
 which they professed to be taken. Antoine Arnauld, a prolific 
 and lucid writer, took up the struggle ; the propositions, he said, 
 were in St. Augustine, so it was that great Father of the Church 
 they were condemning ! Here Arnauld was quite right. " The 
 Jansenists affirmed that their system, the doctrine of St. Augus- 
 tine, was the veritable tradition of the Church. In this they 
 were not altogether wrong, but their mistake lay in wishing to 
 impose St. Augustine on a Church which had to some extent 
 outgrown him." ^ In 1654 the Sorbonne expelled Arnauld, but 
 it could not silence him. Under persecution he had more friends 
 than ever. The French bishops wished to compel the nuns of 
 Port Royal to endorse the condemnation of the five propositions. 
 They refused. Rigorous measures were about to be taken, when 
 Pascal's niece, a pens'ionna'ire of Port Royal, was cured of a 
 lachrymal fistula by kissing a thorn from the Crown of Jesus. 
 The Jesuits denied the miracle. Racine and Pascal believed in 
 it, the latter to the extent of accepting it as proof that the five 
 propositions were true ! Fanned by a passion of credulity, the 
 campaign against the Jesuits grew more furious than ever. 
 " Every means of making them odious was tried. Pascal went 
 further : he made them ridiculous. His Provincial Letters, which 
 appeared at this time, were models of eloquence and judicious 
 mockery. The best comedies of Moliere are not richer in humour 
 than the earlier Letters: Bossuet has left us nothing more 
 sublime than the later." ^ No doubt. But if we look a little 
 closer, we see that what Pascal denounces in the Jesuits is 
 modernism in the moral laAv, preference of the spirit to the 
 letter, and progress.' 
 
 * Loisy, Qudques Lettres, p. 175. * Voltaire. 
 
 ' We must, of course, except certain intolerable theories advanced by a 
 few Jesuit writers, which Pascal very justly condemns. 
 
142 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 65. The subtle Italian, Clement X., re-established a sem- 
 blance of peace. Jansenism, under the protection of the Duchesse 
 de Longueville, sister of the great Conde, took advantage of this 
 to extend its influence. The king and the Jesuits resumed the 
 struggle. Arnauld had to fly, and died at Brussels in 1694, 
 at a great age. A new Bull from Clement XL (1705) was 
 presented for signature to the nuns of Port Royal. On their 
 refusal they were again driven out of their convent. Worse still, 
 this was demolished in 1709 by order of the lieutenant of police. 
 In 1711 the bodies interred in the churchyard were dug up. 
 Boileau himself shuddered at this. His fine epitaph on the 
 " Great Arnauld," whose corpse in its Belgian grave was beyond 
 the reach of Jesuit vengeance, concludes with the following 
 quatrain : 
 
 Et meme par sa mort leur fureiir mal 6teinte 
 N'aurait jamais ]aiss6 ses cendres en repos, 
 Si Dieu lui-meme, ici, de son ouaille sainte 
 A ces loops devorants n'avait cach6 les os.^ 
 
 66. An Oratorian, Pere Quesnel, a friend and companion of 
 Ai-nauld, had written a pious book which at first won the 
 approval of Clement XI. It was dedicated to Cardinal de 
 Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, an honest prelate who was hated 
 by the Jesuits. These latter, who had become all-powerful 
 when Pere de la Chaise had been chosen to direct the conscience 
 of Louis XIV., denounced Quesnel, who retired to Amsterdam, 
 where he died. The condenuiation of his book was demanded 
 from Rome, and obtained from the same Pope who had 
 previously blessed it. After the death of La Chaise, the king's 
 Jesuit confessor was Le Tellier, a thoroughly bad man, bent on 
 the 'ruin of Cardinal de Noailles. He reached his end through 
 the weakness of Louis, who obtained the famous Bull Unigenitus 
 from the Pope. This Bull condemned a hundred and one more 
 or less Jansenist propositions put forward by Quesnel. Most of 
 these were entirely inoffensive. The cardinal refused to accept 
 the Bull, and complained to the Pope. The king forbade the 
 cardinal to appear at Court. Le Tellier was all-powerful, and 
 the prisons were filled with Jansenists. The king's death alone 
 
 ^ Sainte-Beuve, Port Royal, vol. v. p. 476. Boileau wrote this epigram 
 but never published it. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 143 
 
 prevented the deposition of the cardinal. As the latter was 
 very popular, the Regent made him president of the Conseil de 
 Conscience, and banished Le Tellier. But the affair of the Bull 
 was by no means at an end, " The Church in France remained 
 divided into two camps, the Acceptans and the Refusans. The 
 acceptors were the hundred bishops who had given in their 
 adhesion under Louis XIV., together with the Jesuits and the 
 Capuchins. The refusers were fifteen bishops and the nation 
 at large." ^ 
 
 67. Thanks to the amiable scepticism of the Regent, who 
 
 wanted peace, and the tact of Archbishop, afterwards Cardinal, 
 
 Dubois, the Bull was at last registered, and Cardinal de Noailles 
 
 retracted (1720). But the Jansenists did not disarm. A deacon 
 
 called Paris, who had died in the odour of sanctity, had been 
 
 buried in the cemetery of St. Medard. The Jansenists announced 
 
 that miracles were being worked at his tomb ; that tremblings 
 
 and upheavals were felt there, which cured the deaf, the blind, 
 
 and the lame. " These prodigies were attested in due form of 
 
 law by a crowd of witnesses, who had almost seen them, because 
 
 they had come in hopes of seeing them." As the cemetery was 
 
 invaded day and night by a crowd of sick and idle people, it 
 
 was shut up and a guard set at the gate, on which some wit wrote 
 
 the famous distich : 
 
 De par le roi, defense h Dieu 
 De faire miracle en ce lieu ! 
 
 68. The Jansenists survived in France throughout the 
 eighteenth century, especially in the parliaments. When 
 Christophe de Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris, attempted, in 
 1752, to refuse absolution to those who had not subscribed to 
 the Bull Unigenitus, the parliaments rose against the foolish 
 pretension, and it required the intervention of the Pope to 
 prevent the quarrel between the parliament and the archbishop 
 from becoming one between the parliament and the monarchy. 
 
 69. There are Jansenists still in Paris and in Holland. 
 They ai-e quiet people, of excellent morals, who no longer work 
 miracles. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 * Voltaire. 
 
144 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 70. The Quietist movement was of no less import, for it set 
 Bossuet and Fenelon in opposition to each other. This extra- 
 vagance Avas of Spanish origin. Thanks to the protection of 
 Philip XL, St. Theresa had escaped the rigours of the Inquisi- 
 tion, which did not readily tolerate mystics. But the Spaniard, 
 Miguel Molinos, who taught in Rome the doctrine of the 
 perfect contemplation, of direct communication with God, with- 
 out the intervention of a priest, was condemned by the Inquisi- 
 tion (1685) and died in prison (1696). A young and fascinating 
 widow, Madame Guyon, aspired to be the St. Theresa of France. 
 Under the direction of a Barnabite called La Combe, she 
 succeeded in gathering recruits in Paris, among others Madame 
 de Maintenon and the Duchesses de Chevreuse and de Beau- 
 villiers. Fenelon, at that time tutor to the royal children, set 
 himself to love God in company with Madame Guyon. " It is 
 strange that he should have been seduced by a woman given 
 over to prophecies, revelations, and jargon, who was choked by 
 internal grace, and had to have her stays loosened to give it 
 room, pouring out the overflow of her own grace on the elect 
 who sat beside her." ^ When Madame Guyon propagated her 
 illusions at Saint-Cyr, Madame de Maintenon, warned by the 
 bishops, withdrew her countenance and forbade the lady to enter 
 the house. Fenelon advised Madame Guyon to submit her 
 writings to Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. Bossuet condemned 
 them, and she promised to dogmatise no more. Meanwhile 
 Fenelon had become Bishop of Cambrai (1695). In spite of her 
 promise, Madame Guyon failed to keep silence, so the king shut 
 her up in Vincennes. Bossuet required Fenelon to associate 
 himself with the condemnation of Madame Guyon. Fenelon 
 refused, and published his Maximes des Saints, which is tainted 
 with Quietism. Bossuet hated the Quietists and no longer loved 
 Fenelon. He wrote in opposition to his quondam friend, and 
 both submitted their works to Innocent XII. After much 
 hesitation, the Pope, hard pressed by Louis XIV., condemned 
 Fenelon (1699). He submitted nobly, and disavowed his own 
 book from his pulpit at Cambrai. He spent the rest of his life 
 in " honourable and philosophical " retreat, as Voltaire called it, 
 
 * Voltaire. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 145 
 
 at Cambrai, and gave up his time to good works. His Telemaque^ 
 which is still read, suffices to class him among the Utopians ; 
 those who see in him an intellectual ancestor of Rousseau are 
 not altogether wrong. 
 
 71. Madame Guyon died in obscurity, in 1717, after fifteen 
 
 years of retirement in the neighbourhood of Blois, Age and 
 
 solitude calmed the nerves of this honest but hysterical woman, 
 
 " who had espoused Jesus Christ in one of her ecstasies and, 
 
 from that time onward, had prayed no more to the saints, 
 
 explaining that the " mistress of a house does not petition her 
 
 servants." ^ 
 
 » « • • • 
 
 72. In Spain, political supremacy had been reconquered by 
 the Christians after long years of war (1492). The population 
 was divided into three groups, the Christians, the Musulmans or 
 Moors, and the Jews. The first were chiefly warriors, the second 
 agriculturists, and the third scholars and traders. All these 
 people asked for nothing but to live in peace and keep up 
 friendly relations. It was the Church which worked hard, as 
 early as the eleventh century, to set them at each other's throats. 
 She succeeded only too well. The Inquisition, legally subject 
 to the royal power, which, however, it threatened to usurp, was 
 instituted in 1480. It set about harrying and burning Musul- 
 mans and Jews. Many of these had been forcibly converted in 
 the fourteenth century, but were suspected of the crime of 
 relapse and of secretly practising their ancient rites. Infidels, 
 as such, escaped the Inquisition, but if a man had been baptised, 
 even by force or fraud, it claimed power over his body and con- 
 science. As the smallest offence in the direction of relapse 
 (such, for example, as abstaining from pork) was punishable 
 by the confiscation of the offender's property and its division 
 between the Crown and the Inquisition, the cupidity of her 
 princes and the fanaticism of her monks soon turned Spain into 
 a hell lighted only by the flames of the stake. 
 
 73. The first Grand Inquisitor, Confessor of both King and 
 Queen, the Dominican friar Torquemada, was eulogised by Pope 
 Sixtus IV. He had caused six thousand victims to be burnt. 
 
 1 Voltaire. 
 
146 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 These infamous ceremonies were called acts of faith, autos dafe. 
 The king was present at them, bareheaded, and on a seat lower 
 than that of the Grand Inquisitor. Thus began a long drama 
 of misery and oppression. All scientific activities were sup- 
 pressed, and the Middle Ages were prolonged in Spain down to 
 our own days. " Thence it is that silence has become one of 
 the characteristics of the Spanish people, though they are born 
 with all the vivacity given by a warm and fertile climate." ^ 
 
 But the most outrageous prosecutions were not enough. 
 The authorities believed, or pretended to believe, that national 
 unity could only be secured by the expulsion of the Jews (1492) 
 and Moors (1609) en masse. Hundreds of thousands of these 
 unhappy people had to go into exile ; tens of thousands died on 
 the way. Spain was stripped of its best workers, of its ablest 
 traders, of its most skilful doctors. The Papacy found all these 
 severities natural enough. If, sometimes, it seems to have 
 sought a quarrel with the all-powerful Spanish Inquisition, this 
 was not because the latter roasted or slaughtered too many 
 unbelievers, but because it failed to show sufficient respect for 
 the rights or financial interests of the Church. 
 
 74. The eighteenth century saw the Inquisition discredited 
 in the Spanish peninsula, but it was still formidable for 
 mischief in the colonies, both Spanish and Portuguese. It was 
 suppressed by Napoleon when he entered Madrid (December 
 1808). It was re-established at the Restoration and still tried 
 to bite ; but, even in Spain, the days of the auto da fe were 
 over by then. The Inquisition was finally abolished by Queen 
 Christina in 1834. It had put to death at least 100,000 
 persons in Spain alone; it had expelled 1,500,000, and had 
 ruined the civilisation of that noble country. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 75. At the very moment when the capture of Granada had 
 assured the triumph of Christendom in Spain, a native of Genoa 
 discovered a new world and opened it to Christianity. The 
 Spanish and Portuguese conquerors of America behaved like 
 bandits. Peaceable and confiding populations were ex- 
 terminated, root and branch. Those who were forcibly 
 
 * Voltaire. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 147 
 
 " converted," vegetated in a condition often more cruel than 
 slavery. The Inquisition was installed and brought about a 
 reign of terror. In the East Indies, especially at Goa, it was 
 no less murderous. In Rome, warned by a popular outbreak at 
 the death of Paul IV., it showed itself more prudent. Never- 
 theless, on February 17, 1600, it sent to the stake the philo- 
 sopher Giordano Bruno, the opponent of Aristotle and partisan 
 of Copernicus, who had been handed over to the Holy Office by 
 the Inquisitors of Venice. 
 
 76. The Roman Inquisition made itself both odious and 
 ridiculous by its two prosecutions of Galileo. As early as 
 1616 the opinion of Copernicus on the movement of the earth, 
 revived and demonstrated by Galileo, was denounced by the 
 Dominicans as inconsistent with the story of Joshua, who, 
 according to the Bible, caused the sun to stand still. The 
 Inquisition declared Galileo's assertion to be " not only heretical 
 in faith, but absurd as philosophy."" Galileo bowled to this 
 decision, but went on with his researches. His great work, 
 the D'lalogo di Galileo Gal'deiy appeared in 1632, under licence 
 from the Inquisition of Florence. Extremely prudent in form, 
 it was substantially a new demonstration of the system of 
 Copernicus. The upholder of the opposite system was made 
 to talk learnedly enough, but like an imbecile : a trick which 
 had escaped detection by the good Florentine inquisitor. 
 Urban VIII. referred the Dialogo to a commission, and Galileo, 
 nearly seventy years old and weak in health, had to travel from 
 Florence to Rome to appear before the Inquisition. At a sitting 
 of the Congregation of the Holy Office (June 16, 1633), the 
 Pope decided that he should be interrogated " even under threat 
 of torture." Galileo was a scholar of genius, but no hero. 
 When thrown into prison he retracted humbly, on his knees. 
 The famous saying, "E pur si muove" (And yet it does move!) 
 was invented for him by a wit, 130 years later (in 1761). The 
 system of Galileo was universally admitted in the eighteenth 
 century; but it was not until September 11, 1822, that the 
 Congregation of the Inquisition gave a licence to print books 
 teaching the true movement of the earth, a decision approved 
 a fortnight later by Pope Pius VH, " It is wrong to nurse 
 
148 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 an eternal suspicion of the well-known prudence of the Roman 
 congregations on account of a single blunder. But those men 
 of little faith mentioned by the Evangelist are very numerous, 
 and they still instinctively believe that what has happened 
 once can happen again. And this dread, this proneness to 
 voluntary or involuntary distrust, is a lingering consequence 
 of the condemnation of Galileo." ^ So writes an honest 
 apologist, and he is right : but are the men of little faith 
 wrong ? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 L. Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitaltcr der Eeformation, 6 vols., 1867- 
 1868 ; L. Pastor, Geschichte der Pdpste, 4 vols., 1899-1907 (Kngl. trans.) ; Ward, 
 Prothero and others, Cambridge Modern History, vol. iii., 1905 ; Imbart de la 
 Tour, Les Origines de la Riforme (1476-1520), 1905 ; Lavisse and others, 
 Histoirc de France, vols, v., vi., 1904-1905 (the Reformation in France); 
 E. Rodocanachi, La 116 forme en ItaJie, 1920. 
 
 6. Art. Luther and Siaupitz in Hauck ; H. Grisar, Liithcr, 1911 (hostile). 
 
 11. Art. Exo7-cis7n us in }ia,uck. 
 
 12. Art. Karlstadt and Melancthon in Haiick. 
 
 13. J. Martin, Oustave Vasa et la il^forme en Suede, 1906. 
 
 14—16. Art. Anahaptisten, Augshurger Bekentniss and Bauernkricg in Hauck. 
 
 18. Art. Augshurger Religions friede in Hauck. 
 
 19-21. Arts. Zwingli and Calvin in Hauck ; A. Bossert, Calvin, 1906 ; P. 
 Paulsen, Calvin, 1909. 
 
 24-25. G. G. Perry, A History of the English Church, 3 vols., 1861-1864; 
 Gasquet, Edward Vi. and the Book of Common Prayer, 1890 ; H. N. Birt, 
 The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 1908 ; J. Hungerford Pollen, The English 
 Catholics in the Reign of Elizabeth, 1920; E. Jayklem, Inlol. in the Reign of 
 Elizabeth, 1917; G. O'Brien, Economic History of Ireland, 1919. 
 
 26. Skelton, Mury Stuart, 1893 ; art. Knox in Hauck ; Hassenkamp, 
 Geschichte Irlands, 1886. 
 
 27. Aguesse, Histoire de V J^tablissement du protcstantisme en France, 2 vols. , 
 1891 ; F. Buisson, Sebastien CasteUion, 2 vols., 1893; J. Thomas, Le Concordat 
 de 1516, 1910 ; J. Vi(5not, Le Paris des Martyrs, 1914. 
 
 29. M. Philippson, La Contre-R4rolution religinise au XVP"" sikle, 1884; 
 L. Ranke, Die romischcn Pdpste im 16ten und 17ten Jahrhundert, 9th ed. , 1889 
 (English translations) ; Ugo Balzani, Rome under Sixtus V. (in Cambridge 
 Modern History), vol. iii., 1905.— On the Confessional : Lea, Inqimilion of Spain, 
 vol. iv. , p. 96. 
 
 30. R. Allier, La Cabale des Divots (1627-1666), 1902 {cf. R^belliau, Rev. 
 des deux Mundes, 1903). — Catholic revival, chiefly due to S. Vincent de Paul: 
 Rev. hist., cxxxviii., p. 263. 
 
 31. See the prefaces by H. Michel, Bruneti^re, &c., to the classic editions 
 of the Provinciales. — Art. Kasuislik in Hauck ; Lejay, Le r6le thdologiquc de 
 Saint-Cesaire d' Aries, 1906. 
 
 32. Art. Trienter Konzil in Hauck. 
 
 33. The reconquest of Poland : art. Hosius and Polen in Hauck. — The 
 Inquisition in Spanish America : Lea, The Inquisition in the Spanish 
 Dependencies, 1908. — Missions to India, Japan and China: Funck, Kirch&n- 
 geschichte, p. 500. 
 
 ^ Vacandard, Etudes de Critique, 1906, p, 386. 
 
FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 149 
 
 34. Art. Jemiienorden iu Hauck ; A. Michel, Les Jdsuites, 1879 ; Peyrat, 
 La Compagnie de Jims (in Histoire et Religion, p. 86 et seq) ; Boehmer, Les 
 jisuiles, transl. by Q. Monod, 1910 ; J. Brucker, La Compagnie de J6sus, 1919 ; 
 J. B. Herman, La pidagogic des jisuites, 1920. 
 
 36. Pfotenhauer, Die Missioncn der Jesuiien in Paraguay, 3 vols., 1891- 
 
 1893. 
 
 38-39. Forneron, Histoire de Pfnlippe 11., 4 vols., 1880-1882; Namfeche, 
 rhiliiipe IL et les Pays-Bas, 4 vols., 1886 ; P. J. Blok, Willem de Eerste, 1920. 
 
 40. Art. Arminins and Reviojislranten in Hauck. 
 
 41-42. In addition to the great histories of England (Hume, Gardiner, 
 Green), consult Th. Firth, Oliver Cromwell, 1900; R. Gardiner, T/ie Gun- 
 j)oi.cder Plot, 1897 ; Peyrat, La rivolution et la rcstauration anglaisc (in Histoire 
 ct Religion, p. 207); Ethelr. Taunton, History of the Jesuits in England, 1901. 
 
 43. Walker, A History of the Congregational Chirches in the United States, 
 1894;' R. G. Usher, The Pilgrims, 'l9\S; art. Kongregationalisten in Hauck 
 
 (p. 684). 
 
 44. Cunningham, The Quakers, 1868; Rufus H. Jones, The Story of G. 
 
 Fox 1919. 
 
 45. Art. Urban VIII. in Hauck. The Pope's brief to Ferdinand II. was 
 first published in 1884. 
 
 46. Pietismus and Spencr in Hauck; A. Ritschl, Ocschichie des Piclismus, 
 3 vols., 1880-1886. 
 
 47. Art, Hosius, Polcn, and Socin in Hauck. 
 
 48. Lavisse and others, Histoire de Fra^u-e, vols. v. and ri. ; art. Coligny 
 in La France Protestante ; H. Hauser, Etudes sur la R6furme fraw^aise, 1909 ; 
 J. Mariejol, Cath. de MMicis, 1920 ; L. Romier, Les protestants d la veille des 
 guerres civiles, in Rev. hist., cxxiv. p. 1 ; A. Maury, La Saint- BartMlemy (in 
 Journ. des Savants, 1880, p. 154) ; Vacandard, Les Rapes et la Saint-Barthi- 
 lemy (in £tudes, 1906, p. 217). Recent studies on that subject: Rev. hist., 
 cxxxvii., p. 87; Rev. du XVI' sikle, 1913, p. 525. 
 
 50. The medal, of which there is an example in the Bibhothfeque Nationale, 
 was engraved in tlie Numismata romanorum pontificum by Bonanni (vol. i., 
 p. 323). On the face is a portrait of Gregory XIII. ; on the reverse, the 
 destroying angel smiting the Huguenots, and the inscription Ugonotor^im 
 strages, 1572. Vasari's paintings are described in Lafenestre and Richten- 
 berger, Le Vatican, p. 136. (Royal Room. Admiral Coligny, wounded by 
 an arquebuse, is carried into his house ; murder of the Admiral, of his son-in- 
 law, Teligny, and his servants ; King Charles IX, manifests his joy at the 
 deed.) "Thus," wrote Stendhal, "there is still one place in Europe where 
 murder is publicly honoured." Visitors of the Vatican have no access to 
 
 that room. 
 
 51. Peyrat, Henri IV. (in Histoirt et Rdigion, p. 374), a learned and 
 oiiginal memoir; art. Nimes in Hauck. 
 
 53-58. F. Puaux, Les pricurseurs fran<;ais de la tol^rarwc, 1884; P. Gachon, 
 Priliminaires de la Rirocation en Languedoc, 1899; Les di'fenseurs de la souve- 
 raineU du peuple sous Louis XIV., 1917; the same. Rev. hist., cxxix., 1; 
 cxxxvi., 1 ; cxxxvii, 1 (Camisards) ; J. Vii^not, d propos de F&nelon, 1910 (his 
 former intolerance) ; Rebelliau, Bossuet, historicn du protestantisme, 1891 ; 
 Crousle, Bossuet et le protestantisme, 2 vols., 1894-1895 ; Peyrat, Bossuet (in 
 Histoire et Religion, p. 1-44) ; Gazier, Bossuet et Louis XIV., 1914. 
 
 55. Orders issued by the minister Louvois : " Let there be as much disorder 
 as possible , . . allow the soldiers to live as licentiously as they choose " 
 (1685). "Make very few prisoners, but shoot down a great many people; 
 and do not spare the women any more than the men " (1687). 
 
 59. Voltaire, Siech de Louis XIV., excellent edition with notes by E. 
 Bourgeois, 1898, 
 
 60-61. Lang6nieux and Baudrillart, La France chritienne dans V Histoire, 
 1896; G^rin, Lo^ds XIV. et le Saint-Sikje, 2 vols,, 1894.— The practical 
 character of religious Orders in the seventeenth century : R. Allier, La 
 Cabale des Divots, 1902, p. 17.— On Ranc6 : Sainte-Beuve, Verniers Portraits, 
 
150 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 p. 414; on St. Vincent de Paul : E. de Broglie, Saint Vincent de Paul, 5th ed. 
 1899; also Re^\ hist., cxxxvii., p. 93; cxxxviii., p. 260. 
 
 62. Sainte-Beuve, Port Royal, 6vola., 1840-1862; Fuzet, Les Jaiisdnistes an 
 XVIP"" sikle, 1876; A. Gazier, Une Suite d I'histoire de Port Royal, 1908; 
 A. Hallays, Le PHerinagede Port Royal, 1909; Strowski, Le Sentiment religieux 
 en France au XVII""' siede (St.Fran9ois de Sales, Pascal, &c. ), 3 vols., 1906-8 ; 
 H. Br^mond, Histoire dii setitiment religieux en France, 1917 and foil. ; Sech^, 
 Les derniem Jans6nistes, 2 vols., 1891. — On the French free-thinkers of the 
 seventeenth century : F. T. Perrens, Les Lihertins, 1887 ; Brunetifere, La 
 Philosophie de Moliere (in ^tudet critiques, 4th series) ; F. Lach^vre, Le 
 libertinage au XVII' sikle, 1920. 
 
 63-69. A. Le Roy, Le gallicanisme et labulle Unigenitus, 1892. — J. Turmel, 
 Histoire de la (hMogie positive du Concile de Trente ate Concile du Vatican, 
 1906 (learned and lucid). — A. de Meyer, Premieres controverses jansinistes, 
 1917. 
 
 68. Napoleon, hearing that there were Jansenists in the Lyonnais in 1803, 
 ordered them to be evicted and even imprisoned ; he had no liking, he wrote, 
 " for lunatics allied to the sect of convulsionaries " {Revue d^ Histoire de Lyon, 
 1905, p. 431). 
 
 70. E. de Broglie, F6nelon d Camlrai, 1884. 
 
 71. C. T, Upham, Madame Ouyon, 1905 ; M. Masson, Fdnelon et Madame 
 Guyon, 1907 {cf. Edinburgh Reviev), April 1908); E. Seilliere, Finelon ct 
 M"" Guyon, 1920.— On Fenelon: Sainte-Beuve, Lundis, vol. ii., p. 5, and vol. x. , 
 p. 16 ; A. Delplanque, F6nelon et la doctrine de V amour jntr, 1907. 
 
 72-74. Lea, History of the Inquisiticm, in Spain, 4 vols., 190(3—1907; see 
 also S. Reinach, Cultes, vol. iii., p. 472.— The Inquif3ition and the Jews: 
 S. Reinach, Cultes, vol. ii., p. 401; E. Adler, Auto de fi and Jew, 1908; art. 
 hi qiiisition in the Jewish Encyclopa:d.ia ; E. Vacandard, L^ Inquisition, 1907; 
 Lea, The Moriscos in Spain, 1901 {cf. Morel-Fatio, Rev. Hist. Relig., 1902, 
 vol. xlv. , p. 113, an apology for the Inquisition). 
 
 75. Lea, The Inquisition in the Sjmnish Depemlermes, 1908. — Bartholom^s, 
 O. Bruno, 2 vols., 1847; Plumptree, Life and Works of Giordano Bruno, 
 2 vols., 1884; W. Boulting, G. Bruno, 1917. 
 
 76. Vacandard, GaliUe (in Etudes, 1906, p. 292). 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CHRISTIANITY : FROM THE ENCYCLOPEDIA TO THE 
 CONDEMNATION OF MODERNISM 
 
 From the sixteenth to the twentieth century : Emancipation of thought and 
 reaction— Persistence of religious feeling in France in the eighteenth 
 century— The Encyclopfedia- The Philosophers— Voltaire s hostility to 
 Christianity— "jS?cr«so7is Vwfdme "— Galas.- Expulsion of the Jesuits from 
 France and Portugal : Suppression of the Order— Secularisation of Church 
 property by the National Assembly-The Civil Constitution of the 
 clergy— Public worship impeded by the Convention— The Goddess of 
 Reason — The Theophilanthropists. , -n x- <. 
 
 Revivals in Protestant countries : Sects— Sects in Scotland— Jiaptists— 
 Methodists— Darby ites and Irvingites- Christian Scientists— 1 he iiritish 
 Israelites— Tractarianism, Puseyism, Ritualism— The Unitarians. 
 Liberty of worship in the United States— The Mormons. 
 Joseph II. and the Catholic reaction in Austria— Protestantism in 
 Austria— Sects in Russia: persecution of the Poles and the Uniates 
 — Mine, de Kriidener. , , ., ,, 
 
 Catholic revival under the Directory— The Concordat and its results- 
 Reaction begun by Pius VII. continued by Pius IX -The Syllabus and the 
 Vatican Council-End of the temporal power-The reaction in French 
 literature : Chateaubriand, Ronald, J. de Maistre and their successors- 
 Liberal Catholicism : Lamennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert— The political 
 reaction in France : the White Terror, the Congregation, the Law o 
 Sacrilege— Religious indifference— Freedom of teaching and the loi 
 FaS-B,e\igioxxs affairs under Napoleon IIL-The clerical reactions 
 afterTsTl-Boulangism-Anti-Semitism-The Dreyfus affair-Separation 
 
 of Church and State-French Protestantism-Switzerland : War of the 
 Sonderbund-The Jesuits since 1814; their influence m France and the 
 Catholic world generally-The German "Old Calholics"-H. Loyson- 
 ?lcy of Leo X'lll.-Pius X.-The Sacr^ CcBur, La Salette, Lourdes- 
 The Church and mysticism-Mediums-Condemnation of spintualism- 
 The Neo-Buddhists— The Freemasons— The Church and Socialism. 
 "^^ Religious philosophy: Schleiermacher, Vmet-Evohitionary Catho^ 
 licisra- Americanism-Modernism-Foreign Missions-The Chuich and 
 Slavery— The Church and the upper classes. 
 
 1. The sixteenth century saw the development of the critical 
 spirit and the breaking down of Roman despotism in Europe. 
 The seventeenth century was almost universally a period of 
 reaction towards the principle of authority. The eighteenth 
 century took up the work of the sixteenth, and freed the human 
 intellect from its shackles. Kings philosophised and philosophers 
 reigned. The Order of Jesus was abolished by the Papacy 
 
 151 
 
152 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 itself. The Inquisition became ridiculous, and hid itself to die. 
 Under the stimulus of progressive science, liberty of thought 
 made definitive conquests among the enlightened classes. Un- 
 happily it was not realised that these classes were not very 
 numerous. In default of a sufficient provision for lay teaching, 
 the great majority of men remained ignorant and superstitious. 
 The French Revolution put influence and power in the hands of 
 a class unprepared for their use. The result, both in France 
 and elsewhere, was the reaction of the nineteenth century, a 
 reaction which Avas Catholic in one place, Calvinist or Pietist in 
 another, Greek Orthodox in a third. To twentieth-century 
 France belongs the honour of renewing the march towards 
 complete liberty, in her attempts to laicise society by the 
 separation of Church and State. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 2. Eighteenth-century France must not be looked for only 
 in the salons of Paris and Versailles, in the courts of Frederick 
 the Great and Voltaire. The country as a whole remained 
 profoundly Catholic, with a tendency towards Jansenism in the 
 upper classes, especially among the magistrates, the so-called 
 noblesse de la robe. Atheistic cardinals were to be found at 
 Versailles, frivolous and sceptical abbes abounded. But the 
 clergy, the magistracy, and the tiers etat included even then a 
 mass of austere Catholics intent upon working out their salva- 
 tion, and a still much greater mass of the intellectually deficient, 
 in whom the religion of the Middle Ages survived. The latter 
 formed, so to speak, the reserves of the nation. When these 
 were called to political and social action, medieval ideas re- 
 appeared on the surface, and brought about a reaction which 
 still endures. 
 
 3. The Encyclopaedia began to appear in 1751. Voltaire 
 was its soul, from his secure retreat, Les Delices, and afterwards 
 at Ferney. But Diderot, the most universal of all men of 
 letters, was its mainspring for twenty years, in spite of all the 
 thunders of the clergy and the severities of the Parliament. 
 The manifesto of the Encyclopaedia was d'Alembert's excellent 
 preface on the classification of our knowledge. The articles on 
 theology, from the pens of liberal priests, are irreproachable in 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPAEDIA TO MODERNISM 153 
 
 tone, although hostile enough to the pretensions of the Papacy. 
 But the irreligious tendency of the compilation as a whole is 
 clearly shown by the articles on philosophy. These are chiefly 
 from the pen of Diderot himself, a materialist and atheist. 
 
 4. Not all the philosophers of the eighteenth century were 
 above reproach. D'Alembert was the best and most trust- 
 worthy. Voltaire, for all his genius, was a buffoon, not over- 
 delicate in money matters, sycophantic to the great, and 
 contemptuous of the masses. Montesquieu had some of the 
 pettinesses of a provincial judge and shov/s an over-weening 
 conceit in his writings ; Diderot was a kindly Bohemian, rather 
 destitute of manners and morals ; Rousseau was set against the 
 philosophers by jealousy and against reason by vanity. But all 
 these men had one admirable quality — their love of humanity. 
 They wished to shine, but still more to serve. Their intellectual 
 activity had a practical object, to destroy prejudices and better 
 man's lot ; so we must forgive them much. 
 
 5. To understand the spirit in which the Encyclopaedists 
 really worked, we should read Voltaire's correspondence with 
 d'Alembert. The latter had to be prudent. He lived by his 
 pen, in Paris, where he had been a member of the Academic des 
 Sciences ever since he was twenty-three. " Fear of the stake," 
 he wrote to Voltaire, "is cooling to the blood" (July 31, 1762). 
 But Voltaire was rich ; he was a member of the King's house- 
 hold {gentilhomme de la Chamh-e) ; he reigned both at Ferney 
 and to some extent in every capital in Europe ; he never ceased 
 to spur into the fight those who were to feel the blows he 
 himself had earned. His letters breathe an anti-Christian rage 
 which d'Alembert did nothing to combat in his replies, because 
 as a fact he shared it. Voltaire writes : " It is a good tree, say 
 the devout rascals, which has produced bad fruit. But as it has 
 produced so much, doesn't it deserve to be thrown into the 
 fire ? Light one then, you and your friends, and make your- 
 selves as hot as you can " (November 28, 1762). Clearly, here 
 he is concerned with Christianity, not with fanaticism. " Yet a 
 little time and I daresay all these books will not be wanted ; 
 the human race may have sense enough to understand of itself 
 that three do not make one, and that a piece of bread is not 
 
154 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 God. Even now the enemies of reason cut a silly figure enough " 
 (March 31, 1762). "I can see from here the Jansenists dying 
 a natural death twelve months hence, after killing the Jesuits 
 this year; I can see toleration established, the Protestants 
 recalled, priests married, the confession abolished, and fanaticism 
 crushed as a matter of course" (May 4, 1762). "Many a 
 fanatical group may kick against it, but reason will triumph, at 
 least among the better sort ; as for the rabble, reason is not for 
 them " (February 4, 1757). " Our business is not to prevent our 
 lackeys from going to Mass or preachings ; it is to snatch fathers 
 of families from the tyranny of impostors'' (December 6, 1757). 
 
 6. Such quotations might be multiplied almost indefinitely ; 
 they show how much we restrict the role of Voltaire in making 
 him an apostle of toleration, a term which implies a certain 
 complaisance of truth towards error. Voltaire demanded legal 
 toleration because that represented progress at a time when 
 Calas and the Chevalier de la Barre died, the victims of religious 
 bigotry. But his ambition went much further. He dreamt of 
 the abolition, even by violence, of positive religions as impos- 
 tures, at least in those well-to-do and enlightened classes which 
 alone excited his interest. In his hatred of fanaticism he 
 became intolerant himself. 
 
 7. Many of Voltaire's letters end with '•'■ £,cr. Tmf.'" 
 {Ecrasons Tinfame: Crush the infamous thing !). A comparison 
 of texts leaves no doubt that by Tmfame Voltaire meant not 
 only fanaticism and superstition, but Christianity. He was, 
 or called himself, a deist. But the God of Voltaire was a prop 
 of the social system. He was a Dieu-gendarme — a policeman- 
 God ! — like that of the right-thinking middle classes of the 
 nineteenth century, a God to be imposed on the lower orders, 
 without any thought of loving or pleasing Him oneself. There 
 is more honesty and frankness in the atheism, otherwise dull 
 enough, of Diderot or even of the Baron d'Holbach. As for 
 the God of Rousseau, he was in the main a mere text for 
 declamation. But Rousseau's God, who identifies himself alter- 
 nately with the beneficence of Nature and the rigour of the 
 moral laws, is thoroughly impregnated with the spii'it of the 
 Bible. If no longer Christian, he might become so again, 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 155 
 
 Rousseau's eloquent and sentimental deism leads to the eloquent 
 and sentimental Catholicism of Chateaubriand. The Calvinistic 
 Jean-Jacques thus prepared the way for the Catholic reaction 
 of the nineteenth century, after corrupting the Revolution with 
 his sophistry. For it was in his name that the Revolution was 
 made, and rather ill made. Voltaire, who was little read 
 between 1789 and 1815, would have inspired it better. 
 
 8. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was never repealed 
 under the ancien regime. As late as 1762 a pastor was con- 
 demned to death for having preached. It was only in 1787, 
 two years before the Revolution, that Protestants were admitted 
 to civil rights {etat civil) and that their children ceased to be 
 considered illegitimate. Philosophy had something to do with 
 this change. It had undertaken, through the mouth of Voltaire, 
 the posthumous defence of Calas, the Protestant who had been 
 broken on the wheel at Toulouse, 1762, for having, it was 
 asserted, killed a son who wished to abjure Calvinism. In 
 reality the young man had committed suicide. Voltaire de- 
 manded the rehabilitation of the innocent victim, and was 
 seconded in his honourable task by the " intellectuals " of his 
 time, as well as by the upper classes of society. In 1765, three 
 years after Calas had suffered, his efforts were crowned with 
 success. A century later, it took ten years to bring about the 
 rehabilitation of Alfred Dreyfus. 
 
 9. Although the Jesuits had shown themselves tyrannical, 
 seditious, and greedy ever since the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, it cannot be denied that the suppression of the Order 
 in the eighteenth century was brought about by the basest 
 intrigues and calumny. Having taken to trade, like the 
 Templars of old, they had become very rich. The trade with 
 South America and with India was partly in their hands. 
 Their wealth awoke the cupidity of Sebastian Pombal, Prime 
 Minister and more or less Viceroy of Portugal. He accused 
 them of conspiring against the State (1757), confiscated their 
 property, and burnt one of them alive. This was the old 
 visionary, Malagrida, whose trial was conducted by the docile 
 Inquisition. 
 
156 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 10. In France a great many families were ruined by the 
 failure of a commercial house intimately connected with the 
 Jesuits. In this the Parliament saw an opportunity for in- 
 dulging its Jansenist rancour. Strong in the support of Choiseul 
 and of Madame de Pompadour, whom one of the king's Jesuit 
 confessors had offended, it instituted an inquiry into the affairs 
 of the Order and obtained its suppression. This, however, 
 Pope Clement XIII. was not inclined to ratify. The example 
 of France was soon followed by Spain, where the Order had 
 fallen under suspicion with the king and the Inquisition. A 
 new Pope, Clement XIV., accepted the inevitable and declared 
 that the Order no longer met the needs of the time. He 
 suppressed it in 1773. 
 
 11. Some of the fugitive Jesuits Avere welcomed at Ferney. 
 Educated by the Jesuits, Voltaire had kindly feelings towards 
 his masters, and displayed them in his own fashion. But he 
 disgraced his pen by scandalous jests at the hapless Malagrida, 
 the innocent victim of Pombal's tyranny. 
 
 12. During the second half of the eighteenth century the 
 philosophers frequently demanded the secularisation, in other 
 words, the confiscation, of Church property, which was valued 
 at several milliards. i This the National Assembly decreed 
 (November 2, 1789), but at the same time it voted an annual 
 contribution in return for what the nation received. Such was 
 the origin of the Budget des Cultes (Public Worship Budget). 
 On July 12, 1790, the Assembly went still further, imposing 
 on the clergy the ConstHution Civile, inspired by the most 
 radical ideas of Gallicanism. The Church was, in their opinion, 
 a part of the State, subject to reform like all other institutions. 
 But in acting on these lines the deputies ignored the Pope's 
 authority, taking from him the right to institute bishops, and 
 making the functions of the clergy elective. This was the end 
 of the Concordat of 1516. The Assembly required that all 
 ecclesiastics should pledge themselves by oath to accept the 
 Civil Constitution. The Pope, Pius VI., sternly objected, 
 though many bishops agreed (March- April 1791), and from that 
 
 1 A milliard of francs equals forty million pounds sterling. 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 157 
 
 time the clergy were divided into assermentes or jureurs (jurors) 
 on the one hand, and insermentes or refractalres (non-jurors) on 
 the other. The latter were soon compelled to celebrate Mass 
 in secret, in buildings of their own, often in stables or barns. 
 Although less cruelly molested than the Protestants after the 
 Revocation, they were persecuted in the same spirit ; so true is 
 it that toleration is not to be learnt in a school of persecution. 
 
 13. The Convention took a great stride in advance. Though 
 it did not actually suppress Catholic worship and did proclaim 
 religious freedom, it gave no pecuniary aid to the Church, and 
 failed to protect the priests in the discharge of their duties. 
 Many were put to death ; churches were looted and art treasures 
 wantonly destroyed. For the space of about two years, 
 Catholicism was almost abolished in a great part of the country. 
 The Abbe Gregoire, one of the bishops who had taken the oath, 
 and had distinguished himself by his noble efforts for the 
 emancipation of the Jews and the abolition of negro slavery in 
 the colonies, protested in the name of Christian tradition and 
 liberty, but in vain. The Bishop of Paris, who had also taken 
 the oath, came to the bar of the Convention to lay down his 
 insignia. A new calendar, with purely civic festivals and a day 
 of rest every ten days, was inforced (1793-1805). Inverted 
 fanatics, who could not live without some form of worship, 
 founded in Paris that of the Goddess of Reason (November 10, 
 1793). The new goddess was impersonated by an actress from 
 the Opera. She was received with great pomp at the Convention, 
 the members joining the people in escorting her to the Temple 
 of Reason (Notre-Dame), and in singing the hymn to Liberty. 
 These buffooneries were imitated in other sections of the capital, 
 where Temples of Reason rapidly multiplied. Robespierre, 
 bitten by Rousseau's deism and intolerance, caused the Conven- 
 tion to decree the existence of a Supreme Being and the 
 immortality of the soul. The terms of this decree were affixed 
 to the Temple of Reason (May 1794). 
 
 14. The sect of TheopMlanthropists was not long in making 
 its appearance. "Friends of God and Man," they pretended to 
 supersede all religions by a belief founded upon morality alone. 
 Protected by a member of the Directory, Larevelliere-Lepeaux, 
 
158 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 who thought himself a pontiff, and acted as such, they had 
 eighteen churches in Paris at their disposal (1797). Their 
 services were carried on by the members in turn : they consisted 
 of moral sermons and French chants and hymns. The sect made 
 a certain headway in Paris, but as it came under suspicion of 
 Jacobinism, the Consuls deprived it of the churches in October 
 1801, and the Theophilanthropists disappeared after a some- 
 what ludicrous existence of about five years. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 15. The strides made by free-thought, materialism, and 
 atheism in the eighteenth century excited, in Protestant 
 countries, those reactions which are called revivals. They are 
 generally characterised by mysticism, and by fantastic inter- 
 pretations of the Holy Scriptures. These movements have 
 taken place chiefly in England and the United States, where 
 they continued during the nineteenth century. But Germany, 
 Switzerland, and Holland have had them too, especially after 
 the political reaction of 1815. In England and America, 
 revivals have led to the creation of new sects, for which party 
 struggles and encroachments of the temporal domain on the 
 spiritual have also furnished occasions. 
 
 16. Although the Presbyterian system implies the election 
 of clergy by the congregations, a right of patronage, or nomina- 
 tion of parochial clergy by the Crown or over-lord, existed in 
 Scotland as an abuse, and was confirmed by an Act of the 
 British Parliament in 1712. This brought about a first dis- 
 ruption in 1733, when a minister at Stirling, one Ebenezer 
 Erskine, founded a body known as the Reformed PrcshyteHans. 
 In 1843 a second disruption gave rise to the Free Church of 
 Scotland. The greater Disi'uption took place in 1847. The 
 reformed communities, which had greatly increased, assumed 
 the name of the United Presbyterian Church, to distinguish 
 them from the Established Church of Scotland. In 1874 
 Parliament finally abolished patronage, and, in 1900, the Free 
 Church and the United Presbyterians amalgamated to form the 
 United Free Church. A small minority of the Free Church 
 ministers were hostile to this fusion, and contested its legality. 
 They established their claims to the whole property of their 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 159 
 
 Church, bringing about new difficulties which were, however, 
 happily arranged. The Scottish Churches do not differ in 
 doctrine. They have a creed in common, known as the 
 Westminster Confesshn (1647), the Calvinistic rigours of which 
 have been softened by the Declaratory Acts of 1879 and 1892, 
 17. Baptist sects, which have been erroneously supposed to 
 have their roots in the Christianity of Roman Britain, appeared 
 in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Like 
 the Afenno?iites, disciples of the Dutchman Simonis Menno 
 (t 1559), who were scarcely distinguishable from the Anabaptists, 
 the early Baptists condemned the baptism of infants, the taking 
 of oaths, and military service. Their distinctive rite is baptism 
 by total immersion, which is received by adults only. The 
 poet Milton has been claimed by this sect, to which John 
 Bunyan, author of the Pll^im's Progress, who spent ten years 
 in prison under Charles II., certainly belonged.i The Baptists 
 have enjoyed toleration ever since 1689, and have greatly 
 increased in numbers in Germany, the United States, and 
 elsewhere. They number 350,000 in England, four millions in 
 the United States. They keep up important foreign missions, 
 especially in Africa and Asia. The Baptists have no bishops. 
 Their officers are elders elected by the communities, doctors 
 entrusted with preaching, and servitors or deacons. The 
 Baptists are perhaps the only Christian sect in which a Christian 
 of the year 100 would not find himself out of place. 
 
 18. More than thirty millions of Protestants call themselves 
 Methodists to-day. This great sect was founded in England 
 about the year 1740 by an eloquent and energetic Puritan, John 
 Wesley (11791), with the help of his brother Charles and his 
 friend Whitefield (tl770), who preached more than 18,000 
 sermons. At first their one aim was to bring about a revival in 
 the Anglican Church by the reading of the Bible, by regularity 
 of religious observance, and by the purification of the moral life. 
 The name MetJwdists, which occurs as early as 1639, desig- 
 nated a school of preachers who taught a metliod of reaching 
 
 m^nVSLlTT''' f" '.'irregular and defective Baptist." Like Bunyan and 
 ™n of Nnn^^'T '^":''' °J ^'^ ^^"'« '^^ belonged rather to that independent 
 R Hoflif,nl °?"'^' ""^^ '^"'" "^i'h^^ Presbyterians nor Anglicans. See 
 K. Hofmann s article, Baptisten, in Hauck, p. 387. 
 
160 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 happiness through virtue. While directing most of its attention 
 to preaching, practised by laymen as well as ministers, the 
 Methodists fostered the creation of religious societies, which 
 became the centres of propaganda. Methodism offers certain 
 analogies with German Pietism, but, unlike the latter, it 
 addresses itself to the masses, which it desires to educate 
 religiously and morally. The great meetings of the sect have 
 been occasionally discredited by a touch of convulsionary charla- 
 tanism, but, on the whole, they have been powerful instruments 
 of evangelisation and conversion. The Methodist missions, 
 which have now spread themselves all over the globe, dispose of 
 a huge annual revenue. 
 
 19. Since 1797 the Methodists have been divided into 
 various sects — the Wesleyans, the B'lhle Christians, &c. — which 
 are separated by but slight shades of difference in opinions. 
 The rupture with the Anglican Church, which John Wesley 
 did his best to avoid, Avas gradually brought about towards 
 the end of the eighteenth century. The Methodists of to-day 
 form a dissenting Church, which governs itself through its 
 Conference, and possesses a hierarchy composed of both clerics 
 and laymen. 
 
 20. Introduced into New York in 1768, Methodism was 
 rapidly extended by the missionary vigour of Whitefield. It 
 attracted most of the negroes, who constituted independent 
 communities. It is to the honour of the American Methodists 
 that they protested against negro slavery as early as 1784. 
 The sect multiplied even more rapidly in America than in 
 England, but its principles everywhere remained the same : 
 it was above all a revivalist and missionary Church. The 
 Methodist Missions of the United States spend ^280,000 a 
 year, and own a fixed capital estimated at more than a million 
 sterling. 
 
 21. The dry formalism into which the Anglican Church had 
 sunk in the early years of the nineteenth century provoked the 
 formation of yet another sect, the Plymouth Brethren. These 
 were joined in 1831 by the Anglican priest, John Darby, from 
 whom the Plymouthists are generally known as Darhystes, or 
 Darbyites, on the Continent. The sect was really an association 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 161 
 
 of brothers, because the Holy Spirit, they said, was " essentially 
 the Spirit of Unity." This opened the way to prophesying at 
 large, and to all the evils of individualism in religion. The 
 Plymouth Brethren, in their various subdivisions, have spread 
 all over Western Europe and Noi'th America. 
 
 22. Darby, about the year 1826, encountered some of the 
 disciples of Edward Irving (tl834), a Scottish minister who 
 prophesied the end of the world, and the Second Coming of 
 Christ in glory. In 1832, after all kinds of absurdities, Irving 
 founded a Church, and in order to preserve the prophetic 
 enthusiasm of his followers, instituted a hierarchy inspired by 
 St. Paul, which alone had authority to talk the official nonsense. 
 The most extraordinary thing about this particular mystification 
 is that its effects have been permanent. There are from seven to 
 eight thousand members of the Catholic Apostolic Church (as 
 the Irvingites call their community) in the British Empire, 
 twenty-five thousand in Prussia and Bavaria, with many more in 
 Holland and even in Java. They have tacitly abandoned some 
 of the follies which attended their foundation, but they still 
 cultivate prophecy and await in joyous confidence the Second 
 Coming of their Lord. 
 
 23. England and the United States of America contain 
 more than 100,000 members of a sect founded in Boston about 
 1880, which calls itself the Church of Christ Scientist. Its 
 founder was a certain Mary Baker Eddy, and its chief propa- 
 gandists have been enthusiastic women. It pretends to cure all 
 sorts of illness with no remedies but suggestion and meditation. 
 The suggestion is not hypnotic. It is simply the assertion, 
 repeated until conviction is produced, that all disease is 
 imaginary. Christian Scientists are found also in France and 
 Germany, where, as well as in England, they have been prose- 
 cuted for illegally acting as doctors. Christian Scientists deny 
 that they are occultists or even mystics. But the fact that they 
 ascribe a practical efficiency to their curative formulae oblio-es 
 us to give them a place, which they by no means solicit, in the 
 modern history of magic. 
 
 24. The idea that America was colonised by Jewish refugees, 
 in very ancient times, is an illusion older than Mormonism. 
 
 M 
 
162 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 A large number of people still exist, both in England and the 
 United States, who believe the Anglo-Saxons to be identical 
 with the lost tribes of Israel, the ten tribes who never returned 
 to Judcsa after their Babylonian captivity. An itinerary has 
 even been traced for them ! According to this they moved 
 along the valley of the Danube to Demnailt (countries of the 
 tribe of Dan). God promised Israel that she should reign 
 over the nations. God cannot lie. The Anglo-Saxons are the 
 strongest race in the world : therefore the Anglo-Saxons are the 
 descendants of Israel ! I myself heard this doctrine preached at 
 Brighton in the open air, by a man of venerable appearance 
 who seemed to believe what he said. 
 
 • • • • ■ 
 
 25. The established Anglican Church, with the king for its 
 head, is Calvinist in spirit, Romanist in form. Putting Rome 
 aside in matters dogmatic, she has preserved, or at least imitated, 
 the Roman hierarchy. Her declaration of faith is contained in 
 the Thirty-nine Articles promulgated by Elizabeth. At the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century she had all the faults of a 
 rich and powerful institution. She was governed by formalism, 
 and all warmth of piety was smothered under external correct- 
 ness. The other Protestant sects — Presbyterians, Methodists, 
 Baptists — made up the great body of Nonconformists or Dis- 
 senters. With them the Calvinistic traditions were undiluted 
 by borrowings from the Catholic hierarchy. 
 
 26. In 1661 and again in 1673, fear of Catholicism and 
 hatred of the Dissenters led to the imposition of a test on all 
 public functionaries. They were called upon to reject on oath 
 the doctrine of Transiihstantiation on the one hand, and, on the 
 other, all connection with the Solemn League and Covenant, 
 the Scottish pact concluded in 1588 and renewed in 1637, for the 
 defence of the National Presbyterianism against Anglicanism 
 and Popery. The Corporation and Test Acts remained in force 
 until 1828, when they were abolished, and public functions 
 opened to both Catholics and Nonconformists. 
 
 27. The Dissenters, who included a large part of the middle 
 and lower classes, were no less hostile to Popery than to the 
 Established Church. The latter, deprived of the protection of 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPiEDIA TO MODERNISM 163 
 
 the Test Acts, not unreasonably felt itself threatened. One of 
 its intellectual centres was the University of Oxford, whose 
 Christianity, it used to be said, was somewhat " high and dry."" 
 There a movement towards reform took place, which has been 
 called the Oxford or Tractar'ian Movement. This second title 
 commemorates the publication of a series of ninety tracts, which 
 issued from Oxford between 1833 and 1841 to spread all over 
 England. 
 
 28. Among the writers of these tracts the two most notable 
 were Newman (1801-1890) and Pusey (1800-1882). They pro- 
 posed to breathe new life into the Anglican Church by removing 
 its Calvinistic elements, and bringing it nearer to pre-Reforma- 
 tion Christianity while purifying the latter. Here the influence 
 of Schleiermacher, whom Pusey had known, came in and also 
 that of the Romantic movement, with its uncritical admira- 
 tion for the Middle Ages. This admiration had been raised in 
 England almost to the point of intoxication by the popularity 
 of Sir Walter Scotfs novels. 
 
 29. It soon became apparent that, in his search for a via 
 media between Anglicanism and Romanism, Newman was taking 
 on a strong bias towards the latter. The Bishop of Oxford 
 condemned Tract No. 90, and forbade the continuation of the 
 series (1841). Newman obeyed, but four years later was received 
 into the Roman Church (1845). For a time he was Rector 
 of the Catholic University in Dublin (1851-1858), was made a 
 Cardinal by Leo XIII. in 1879, and died in 1890, in a religious 
 house founded by himself (the Birmingham Oratory). Pusey, 
 who wished to stop short of Rome, became the head of a new 
 group in the Church, which, while professing fidelity, dreamt of 
 reconciliation with the Papacy down to the time of the Vatican 
 Council (1869-1870). Personally, he was always against the 
 adoption of medieval ceremonies in Anglican worship. His 
 disciples, however, were not so wise. They were carried away 
 by the spirit which produced the great assthetic movements of 
 the time, and Puseyism degenerated into Ritualism (about 1850). 
 This High Chu7xli sect, forming the extreme Right of Anglican- 
 ism, borrows the crucifix, candles, incense and sacerdotal orna- 
 ments of Rome, to whom it also makes important concessions in 
 
164 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 matters of dogma, admitting the Real Presence, auricular con- 
 fession, and the cult of the Virgin. Gregory XVI. said of the 
 Tractarians : "They are Papists without a Pope, Catholics 
 without unity, and Protestants without liberty." His dictum 
 was truer still of the Ritualists. 
 
 30. Orthodox Anglicans and Dissenters united against the 
 new tendencies. The London mob sacked a Ritualist church 
 (1860). The national sentiments were wounded by what was 
 called the Papal Aggression, when in 1850 Pius IX. nominated 
 a Roman hierarchy for Great Britain, appointing the Vicar 
 Apostolic, Wiseman, a Cardinal and Archbishop of Westminster. 
 The cry of No Popery ! was raised as in the days of Anne. In 
 reply to the creation of the English Church Union (I860) by 
 the Ritualists, the Chwch Association was formed (1865) to 
 combat the romanising of English worship. Parliament and 
 the Courts of Justice interposed more than once in favour of 
 Anglicanism. But they failed to arrest the growth of Ritualism, 
 which denies the right of the State to meddle with religious 
 matters, and clamours, like the Nonconformists, for disestablish- 
 ment. Any union with Rome is prevented — in spite of the 
 renewal, by Leo XIII. (1896), of attempts at an understanding 
 — by the opposition, even of the Ritualists, to the primacy and 
 infallibility claimed by the " Bishop of Rome." The internal 
 conflict has died down in the twentieth century, not because 
 the Ritualists have modified their practices, but because the 
 differences between them and orthodox High Churchmen are 
 gradually vanishing. 
 
 31. The Ritualists not only have schools, hospitals, and 
 missions : they have imitated Rome in founding congregations, 
 like those of the Holy Cjvss (1853) and the Holy Sacrament 
 (1862). They have even formed a congregation of Sisters of 
 Mercy, the first idea of which came from Pusey. These Sisters 
 are now established in most of the great London Hospitals. 
 
 32. The good sense of the English soon taught them that 
 Ritualism was disguised Catholicism. Many Tractarians and 
 Ritualists — Newman, for instance, and Manning, who both 
 became cardinals — went over to Rome. Romanism is integral 
 Ritualism. At first Ritualism gained most of its recruits among 
 
FROIil ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 165 
 
 the upper classes, to whom religious dilettantism and love of 
 art made the severity of Calvinistic worship repulsive. But 
 thanks to its organisation of work among the poor, which 
 every one can appreciate, it has now conquered a great following 
 among the labouring and necessitous classes. 
 
 33. The accession to Catholicism of a scholar like Newman, 
 trained in Anglican Oxford, had grave results for the religion 
 he embraced. One of his works, an Essay on the Development 
 of Christian Doctrine (1845), introduced the idea of religious 
 progress and the evolution of dogmas among educated Catholics 
 and made its author, much against his will, one of the parents of 
 Modernism. Down to 1854 the Catholic doctrine was reputed 
 to be unchangeable. St. Vincent de Lerins had given as its 
 formula : " What all men have believed, everywhere and always." 
 Bossuet had contrasted the stable and definite character of the 
 Roman Church with the variations of the Reformed Churches. 
 But in 1854, Pius IX. promulgated the dogma of the Immacu- 
 late Conception, without summoning a council, converting what 
 had previously been a free opinion into a dogma of the Church. 
 This was to break with tradition, to affirm, according to New- 
 man's ideas, the dogmatic evolution of Catholicism. Where 
 was this to stop ? The dogma of Papal Infallibility, promul- 
 gated in 1870, was the answer: it would stop where the Pope 
 chose ! This solution, which satisfied Newman, was only valid 
 in dogmatic questions. Historical matters remained where they 
 were. The idea of evolution in dogmas, and the resulting 
 necessity for the study of their genesis and development, opened 
 the door to free exegesis, which had previously been out of the 
 reach of Catholics. The Abbe Loisy and others passed through 
 the door thus flung wide. 
 
 34. The nineteenth century saw the development, in England 
 and the United States, of the rationalistic Christian sect of the 
 Unitarians. As early as the sixteenth century people had been 
 burnt in England for professing the principles of Arianism and 
 denying the Trinity, The adherents of this doctrine coalesced 
 with the Socinians in the seventeenth century, and with the 
 Deists in the eighteenth. Theophilus Lindsay (t 1808) and 
 Joseph Priestley, the great chemist (t 1804), were the prophets 
 
166 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of British Unitarianism. The latter was obhged to leave 
 England (1794) on account of his sympathies with the French 
 Revolution. He introduced Unitarianism into Pennsylvania. 
 Christianity thus purified found a favourable soil in Boston, the 
 .American Athens. Channing, who was to become so famous 
 for his opposition to slavery (1835) and for his championship 
 of the rights of justice and reason, became a Unitarian in 1819, 
 although he was opposed to the foundation of a new Church. 
 " An Established Church,'' he declared, " is the tomb of intelli- 
 gence." After Channing, the poet and moralist, lialph Waldo 
 Emerson, advocated Unitarianism, the religion of intellectual 
 people, a Christianity without dogma, and with no temple but 
 men's hearts. In England, its chief representative was James 
 Martineau (t 1900), the author of works on Unitarianism which 
 have now become classics. In their pantheistic tendency they 
 have much in common with Spinoza, and no dogmatic difficulties 
 stand in the way of their acceptance by the liberal Judaism of 
 our own day. 
 
 35. The United States was the first great country to separate 
 Church and State completely, leaving the field entirely open to 
 the free rivalry of religions. The result has been to give a 
 certain advantage to Catholicism, which has the centralisation 
 of power for one of its principles, over Protestantism, which 
 splits naturally into sects. Among the numerous Protestant 
 sects, selection will do its work and will develop, as elsewhere, a 
 form of religion without any exacting theology, but preoccupied 
 rather with social and moral questions. At the present moment 
 the fifteen millions of Catholics form a larger group than any 
 one of the Protestant sects of America. 
 
 36. Spiritualism, which is really a religion, had its origin 
 in the United States. There, too, arose one of the strangest 
 phenomena of the nineteenth century, Mormomsm. Mormonism 
 is one of those religious epidemics, or revivals, to which the 
 Anglo-Saxon peoples seem more prone than others, on account 
 of their free reading, often practised in common, of the sacred 
 writings. In 1 830, Joseph Smith, a visionary pedlar, announced 
 to credulous people that he had had a revelation referring the 
 American people to the family of the patriarch Joseph, and 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 167 
 
 foretelling the early appearance of a Messiah. An angel had 
 brought him this revelation, engraved on gold plates in Egyptian 
 characters. The imposture succeeded in spite of its grossness. 
 After several migrations, the ne^v sect established itself in the 
 State of Illinois, where it built a great temple (1841). It called 
 itself The Church of Latter Day Saints. They were also called 
 Mormons, because one of the pretended descendants of Joseph, 
 who had emigrated to America some six hundred years b.c, 
 bore the name of Mormon, and had compiled the holy book of 
 the sect, a translation of the pretended golden tablets. This 
 holy book is a clumsy plagiarism from the Bible and from a 
 romance published in 1812. It is devoid of both talent and 
 originality ; but religious enthusiasm does not reason. Formed 
 into an agricultural and industrial republic, rapidly increased 
 by immigrants from various other countries, the Mormons gave 
 themselves up with docility to the guidance of their " prophet." 
 Smith, wishing to restore patriarchal manners, authorised poly- 
 gamy (1843). This scandalised the population of Illinois, who 
 first imprisoned the prophet and then put him to death (1844). 
 Upon that the Mormons, led by Smith's favourite disciple, 
 Brigham Young, a carpenter, went on trek once more. They 
 settled in Utah, near the Great Salt Lake, and there built a 
 new capital in Salt Lake City (1847). When Brigham Young 
 died in his turn (1877), he left seventeen wives, fifty-six children, 
 and a fortune of two million dollars. The head of the Mormons 
 in 1901 was Joseph F. Smith, a nephew of the prophet. The 
 number of his followers was estimated at 300,000, exclusive of 
 some 15,000 dispersed about Europe. Their religion requires 
 the baptism of adults only by total immersion. They also 
 baptise " for the dead," after the example of certain primitive 
 Christians. Franklin and Lincoln were thus rescued from the 
 fires of hell, 
 
 37. In 1884 the United States Congress forbade polygamy 
 in any part of the Union, and instituted prosecutions against 
 those who practised it ; so the Mormons renounced part of their 
 inheritance from the patriarchs of Israel, The 2000 missionaries 
 they support have been better received in consequence. The 
 still incomplete history of the Latter Day Saints is that of an 
 
168 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 initial fraud from which certain energetic organisers, helped by 
 many willing dupes, have won great results in the interests of a 
 Avhole community. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 38. Frederick the Great and Catherine II. were philosophic 
 sovereigns, so far as laughing at sacred things in company with 
 Voltaire, Diderot, and others went ; but they had no idea of 
 weakening in their States that Christianity which, personally, 
 they despised. The German Emperor, Joseph II., was the true 
 crowned philosopher of his time, in spite of his mediocre 
 abilities and his tactlessness. He wished to realise in law the 
 secular ideas with which his mind was imbued. In 1781 he 
 established toleration in his Empire, closed nearly all the con- 
 vents and sequestrated their property, forbade the publication 
 of papal briefs without his own authority, and stopped those 
 appeals to Rome which fostered defective discipline in his 
 clergy. He was compared to Julian the Apostate and became 
 most unpopular, in spite of the useful reforms by which his 
 reign was distinguished. The French Revolution frightened 
 him. By the time he died, in 1790, he could foresee that 
 philosophy would soon attack the occupants of thrones them- 
 selves. Nevertheless, it was not until 1855 that Austria dis- 
 avowed Joseph II. In that year a Concordat (repealed in 
 1870) was concluded with Pius IX., restoring the prerogatives 
 to the clergy and rescinding all the laws by which the Church 
 was deprived of its power over education. The Roman Church 
 again took up its control of schools, of marriage, and of 
 literature. This treaty was one of the last triumphs of 
 theocracy in Europe. 
 
 89. In the eighteenth century Protestantism was no more 
 tolerated in Austria than in France. The province of Salzburg, 
 which had been governed by a prince-bishop ever since 1278, 
 drove the Protestants out in 1731, after inflicting outrages upon 
 them which drew protests from the Prussian king. The exiles 
 went to Holland and North America, where refugees are always 
 welcome. The nineteenth century recognised toleration, at 
 least in principle. During its last twenty years Protestantism 
 even gained some ground in Austria. A movement with the 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 169 
 
 motto Los von Rom (Away from Rome !) detached a few 
 thousand families from Catholicism, but was soon checked, it 
 is said, by sheer bribery, 
 
 40. The revision of the Russian liturgical books by the 
 patriarch Nikon (1605-1681) provoked the secession of the 
 Rnskolmks from the State Church. These fanatical conserva- 
 tives are known as " Old Believers," and still number several 
 millions in Russia. Among Russian heretics there are certain 
 wild mystics, called Skoptsy, who aim, not at the ameliora- 
 tion, but at the extinction, of the human race. There is also 
 the rationalistic sect of the Dukhohortsy, who reject all cere- 
 monial and veneration of images. As Orthodox Christianity 
 was the State religion, all these sectaries were held in suspicion 
 and persecuted under the autocratic regime. 
 
 41. The Polish Catholics and those Ruthenians who remain 
 in communion with the Roman Church, although their rites are 
 Oriental, have suffered even more. If the Polish martyrs were 
 immolated for political rather than fanatical reasons, the 
 Uniates were persecuted solely because they refused to enter the 
 State Church. " They have undergone trials and punishments 
 of every kind, exile from their homes, Siberia. They numbered 
 eight millions in the seventeenth century ; had shrunk to 
 800,000 at the beginning of the nineteenth; to-day (1897) 
 not more than 100,000 Ruthenians are left to groan. . . . 
 The others have disappeared : exile, prison, death, and apostasy 
 have accounted for what was once an important Church." ^ 
 
 42. A curious episode in the reaction of 1815 was the 
 influence wielded over the Czar Alexander I. by the Baroness 
 von Krlidener, who, after a most dissipated youth, became a 
 m3'stic at the age of forty. Still beautiful, and believing herself 
 inspired, she gained such ascendancy over the Pietist Emperor 
 that he accepted from her (and from the mesmerist Bergasse) 
 the curious idea of the Holy AlUance, concluded on September 26, 
 1815, in the name of the Holy Trinity, between Russia, Prussia, 
 and Austria. Alexander ended by finding that she lacked 
 discretion, and broke with her. But she continued to rush 
 about the world, preaching, giving alms, dragging people as 
 
 ^ Pisani, A travers VOrient, p. 177. 
 
170 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 crazy as herself into her own track. The missions undertaken 
 by her and her friends were a sort of foretaste of the Salvation 
 Army. Madame de Krudener's adventurous existence came to 
 an end in the Crimea, in 1824. In one of her last letters she 
 wrote : " Very often have I taken for the voice of God what 
 was nothing but the fruit of my own pride and imagination." 
 She might have recognised this a little sooner. 
 
 • • • ■ • 
 
 43. The period of the Directory in France witnessed a 
 revival of Catholicism, under the new regime of Disestablish- 
 ment, though the Government was quite irreligious. In 1796 
 public worship had been resumed in more than 30,000 French 
 parishes. Parisian society again found its way to church, 
 ecclesiastics again donned their vestments. Five hundred 
 priests were ordained in a single year. Madame de Stael, 
 Lafayette, and other moderate spirits wished this state of 
 things to continue, as favourable to the free play of opinions. 
 But the First Consul, Bonaparte, had need of the Pope ; he 
 thought he could secure the support of the Roman Church 
 by intimidation, that he could turn bishops and priests into 
 gendarmes without again subjecting France to the demands 
 of the Holy See. He made up his mind to conclude a new 
 Concordat with Pius VII., to replace that of 1516, which had 
 been torn up by the National Assembly. 
 
 44. The essential aim of every Concordat between a Pope 
 and a temporal sovereign is to secure the latter in his right of 
 nominating bishops, and to preserve for the former the right of 
 canonical institution, permitting him to reject unworthy candi- 
 dates or those whom Rome has reason to mistrust. The 
 Parliament of Paris, looking with favour on the old Galilean 
 custom by which bishops were elected by the cathedral chapters, 
 long resisted the Concordat between Leo X. and Francis I. 
 (1516). The French monarchs, who owed their spiritual 
 investiture to the Papacy, never ceased to busy themselves 
 with whittling away the rights of Rome over the Church of 
 France, not because they wished to make that Church in- 
 dependent, but because, from fiscal motives among others, 
 they wished to keep it well in hand. In that, as in many 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPAEDIA TO MODERNISM 171 
 
 other things, Bonaparte simply took up the traditions of the 
 monarchy. 
 
 45. After rapid though difficult negotiations, in which 
 Bonaparte recoiled neither at threats of violence nor attempts 
 at fraud, the Concordat was signed in 1801 and promulgated in 
 1802. Catholicism was recognised not as the State religion, 
 but as the religion "of the .great majority of French citizens."" 
 The clergy were to receive salaries from the State, the bishops 
 were to be nominated by the State, with the reserve that 
 their investiture lay with the Pope. Resorting to trickery, 
 Bonaparte promulgated, at the same time as the Concordat 
 (April 8, 1802), certain so-called 0?'ganic Articles^ forming a 
 sort of religious police code. Among other things these articles 
 had to do with the regulation of Protestant worship (Jewish 
 worship was not recognised and regulated until 1808). But the 
 essential articles were aimed at Home, paralysing all direct 
 interference by the Pope in the affairs of the French Church. 
 Pius VII., who had had no warning, protested (1803). "The 
 Organic Articles,"" said Montalembert in 1844, "were in our 
 opinion a violation of the Concordat. They were never recog- 
 nised by the Church."" The contrary has been asserted. The 
 whole question is one of shades of meaning. It is certain that 
 Pius VII., although he was obliged to crown Bonaparte at 
 Notre-Dame, believed that he had been duped, and never 
 ceased to show his resentment. He refused investiture to the 
 new bishops, and replied to the brutalities of Napoleon by 
 excommunication (1809). Deprived of his dominions, he be- 
 came the Emperor''s prisoner, first at Savona and then at 
 Fontainebleau, where in 1813 he was driven almost by force 
 to sign a new Concordat, which was never recognised. By it 
 the Pope agreed thenceforward to live at Avignon ! Very soon 
 afterwards this treaty was disavowed by Pius VII., who regained 
 the States of the Church after the successes of the Allies in 
 1814. If Pius VII. had died at this juncture he would have 
 left the reputation of a saint and hero behind him, for he had 
 faced the insults and injustice of Napoleon with a steadfastness 
 which was truly admirable. Unhappily for his memory, he 
 lived long enough to unchain the reaction. 
 
172 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 46. The definitive restoration of temporal power to the 
 Popes (1815) marked the beginning of a long period of bad 
 government. In their own States, where the oppression of the 
 papal agents brought about poverty, and poverty brigandage, 
 the Popes had to reckon with ever-increasing opposition ; out- 
 side, in Italy, aspirations towards unity threatened the very 
 foundations of their power ; in Europe generally those liberal 
 ideas which had survived the collapse of the Encyclopaedia were 
 enemies against which it was difficult to make head, now that 
 the scourge, the dungeon and the stake were no longer at the 
 service of the Church. 
 
 47. Pius VII. re-established the Society of Jesus (August 
 1814), which, indeed, had managed to survive in Prussia and 
 Poland, in spite of its condemnation by Clement XIV. Their 
 wealth, intelligence and influence over women and young people 
 made the Jesuits very powerful auxiliaries to the Papacy. The 
 Pope condemned the Freemasons and the Carbonari (a secret 
 society which had the liberation of Italy for its aim), excited the 
 Congregation of the Index to renewed activity, restricted the 
 translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue, and fought 
 against that liberal evolution in Spain and Portugal which 
 was presently to be arrested by French intervention. His 
 successors were scarcely more happily inspired. But the supreme 
 perils and difficulties were reserved for Pius IX. (Masta'i 
 Ferretti, 1846-1878). At the beginning of his reign he showed 
 a disposition to grant the reforms demanded by the wretched 
 economical condition of his States. But after a popular out- 
 break, which obliged him to take refuge in Gaeta (November 
 1848), his attitude changed completely. The French Republic 
 declared war against the Roman : Rome was taken, and Pius 
 IX. replaced on his throne (April 1850). He abused his power 
 like a tyrant. Between 1850 and 1855 more than ninety people 
 were condemned to death in Rome for political offences. Between 
 1849 and 1856, no fewer than 276 executions took place in 
 Bologna. The Papal Government was for years in the hands of 
 the unworthy Cardinal Antonelli, who scandalised Europe with 
 the reign of terror he established. A Jewish child, Mortara, 
 baptised by a servant, was taken by force from its parents at 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 173 
 
 Bologna and kept in a convent, in spite of the energetic protests 
 of Napoleon III., of the English Government, and of liberal 
 Europe generally (1858). Four years earlier Pius IX. had pro- 
 mulgated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. In 1864 
 he published, or allowed to be published, what was called The 
 Syllabus. This was a summary of all the opinions condemned 
 in his previous Bulls and allocutions. Every one of the con- 
 demned propositions is such as any sensible man and liberal 
 Christian would accept without hesitation. It was a defiance 
 to secular Europe, to science, to the very idea of progi'ess. 
 Napoleon III. forbade its official publication in France, and 
 would, indeed, have abandoned Pio Nono's government to its 
 fate but for certain feminine influences which hampered him. 
 The States of the Church had been greatly diminished in 1860, 
 to the gain of the new kingdom of Italy. Ever since 1850 
 a French garrison had occupied Rome, upholding Antonelli's 
 oppressive regime. In 1864 it was withdrawn at the instance 
 of the Italian Government. In 1867 Garibaldi marched against 
 the Papal States. A French division was landed to oppose 
 him ; it added the pitiful name of Mentana to the list of French 
 victories, and renewed that occupation of Rome which lasted 
 until 1870. 
 
 48. It occurred to the Jesuits to have a new council, in 
 order that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility might be erected 
 into a dogma. This only meant, of course, that the Pope should 
 be declared infallible when proclaiming a religious proposition 
 from his chair {ex cathedra). But even when so restricted, 
 infallibility wounded the reason not less than the teachings of 
 the past. It was an outcome of that Ultramontanism which 
 the Dominican Lacordaire once declared to be " the greatest 
 piece of insolence yet put forward in the name of Jesus Christ." 
 The first result was to elevate the Pope's authority in dogmatic 
 questions above that of a council. The second was to give 
 the lie to undeniable historical facts, such as the condemnation 
 of the heresy of Pope Honorius I. by the QEcumenical Council 
 of 681 and a whole series of its successors. Enlightened pre- 
 lates, in France, Germany and Austria, were hostile to the 
 doctrine of Infallibihty ; but the Jesuits, relying on the 
 
174 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 support of the fanatical masses, pushed on to their goal, and 
 the dogma was proclaimed on July 18, 1870, on the eve of 
 the declaration of war between France and Prussia. At that 
 moment, Napoleon III. might perhaps have saved his crown 
 and secured the military co-operation of Victor Emmanuel 
 by abandoning Rome to Italy. The Catholic coterie at the 
 Tuileries prevented him. But he was soon obliged to withdraw 
 the French garrison from Rome. After a slight bombardment^ 
 the Italian troops marched in through the breach on September 20, 
 and put an end to the temporal power of the Popes. Pius IX. 
 refused to accept the laiv of ffuarcmtee, which left him, with 
 certain other privileges, the sovereignty of the Vatican and the 
 Lateran. Until his death in 1878 he never ceased to protest 
 against the Italian usurpation, and his successors, Leo XIII. 
 and Pius X., have done the same. But the Italian Government 
 has shown the greatest deference towards the Popes. It has 
 scrupulously refrained from pushing its authority over the 
 thresholds of the pontifical palaces. That has not prevented 
 the country clergy from talking of the " prisoner of the 
 Vatican," or from describing to emotional peasants " the damp 
 straw of the Pope's dungeon." 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 49. As early as the end of the eighteenth centur}^ the 
 Catholic reaction began to show itself in France in the domain 
 of ideas. La Harpe, the protege and servile admirer of Voltaire, 
 chanted a palinode after the Terror and posed as an enemy of 
 the philosophers. A Breton noble, more highly gifted than La 
 Harpe, published in 1802 a brilliant and superficial work which 
 foreshadowed Romanticism and had an extraordinary success. 
 This was Chateaubriand's Genie du Christianisine. The Catho- 
 licism of Chateaubriand was mainly sentimental and aesthetic ; 
 that of Bonald, also proclaimed in 1802, was simply theological, 
 and even theocratical. Joseph de Maistre, a Savoyard by birth, 
 went still further in his hatred of revolutionary principles, in 
 his exaltation of the Papacy of the Middle Ages, in his impudent 
 denials of, and apologies for, the misdeeds of the Church. 
 This gifted fanatic was the founder of the Ultramontane 
 School, so called because it looks for its inspiration to Rome, 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPAEDIA TO MODERNIS^M 175 
 
 " beyond the Alps." Throughout the nineteenth century Jesuit 
 intolerance of the Gallican tendencies shown by many of the 
 French clergy, and of the liberal trend of opinion generally, 
 found its spokesmen among the publicists of this school. Of 
 these men the most noisy and aggressive was Louis Veuillot 
 (1813-1883). Most of the present members of the Royalist 
 party known as the Action fran^aise are followers of Joseph de 
 Maistre and Veuillot, although personally they may be avowed 
 sceptics. One of the worst features of Ultramontane polemics 
 is their scurrility. Once enrolled in the party, even cultivated 
 laymen talk like monks of the League, lying and insulting 
 ad libitum. Writing in 1850, Victor Hugo thus castigated 
 Veuillot and his organ, V Univers : 
 
 Regardez : le voili ! Son journal frenijtique 
 Plait aux devots et semble ecrit par de8 bandits. 
 II fait des fausses clefs dans rarriure-boiitique 
 Pour la ports du Paradis. . . . 
 
 C'est ainai qu'outrageant gloires, vertus, g^nies, 
 Charmant par tant d'horreurs quelquea niais fougueux, 
 II vit tranquillement dans les ignominies, 
 Simple j^suite et triple gueux. 
 
 50. Of a higher order than these men whose pens were 
 steeped in gall were the Liberal Catholics, who endeavoured 
 to reconcile Catholicism not only with the principles of 1789, 
 but even with more recent aspirations towards fraternity and 
 social justice. The first organ of this party in France was 
 VAvenir (1830), a journal edited by the Abbe de Lamennais 
 (1782-1854), Pere Lacordaire (1802-1861), and Montalembert 
 (1810-1870). It exhorted the Church to accept democracy, and 
 was denounced as subversive to Gregory XVI. Lamennais made 
 his submission in 1832, but shortly afterwards published his 
 Paroles (Tun Croyant, in which he aggravated what were called 
 his errors. A bishop stigmatised it as an " Apocalypse of the 
 devil." He was excommunicated, and passed over to the 
 revolutionary party. Lacordaire submitted without reserve in 
 1832, after which he devoted his great powers to preaching. 
 He became a Dominican in 1840, and did much to revive the 
 glory of the Order in France. No less docile under the censures 
 of the Church, the Comte de Montalembert took refuge in 
 
176 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 politics, and became a brilliant defender of oppressed nationali- 
 ties — the Poles, the Irish — but nevertheless did his best to stem 
 the flowing tide of democratic ideas, which terrified him. Men 
 like Due Victor de Broglie, and the two Cochins, Augustin and 
 Denys, followed the same route down to our own time, a 
 route midway between Ultramontanism on the one hand, and 
 aristocratic Liberalism on the other. 
 
 51. Catholic democracy was also represented by the priest 
 Murri, in Italy, and in France by the lay society of the 
 Silloji, founded by Marc Sangnier. The Sillon displeased some 
 French bishops by its independence, and its alleged Franciscan 
 tendencies, while Murri was ordered by Pius X. to cease his 
 publications, and excommunicated (March 1909) for having 
 disobeyed the injunction. 
 
 52. The political reaction which followed the Hundred Days 
 was marked, in Southern France, by a sanguinary persecution of 
 Protestants and Liberals. This was called the Terreu?- hlanche, 
 or White Terror. In Paris, and in spite of the moderation of 
 the Voltairian Louis XVIII., who was hostile to Joseph le 
 Maistre, the so-called introuvahle Chamber seemed desirous of 
 bringing back the Middle Ages. It was dissolved by the king 
 on the advice of his minister Richelieu (September 1816). 
 Thereupon a society of priests and laymen, known as the Con- 
 gregation (originally founded under the Directory) rose to 
 considerable importance in politics. Its leaders were the Comte 
 d'Artois (Charles X.), the Vicomte de Montmorency and Prince 
 Jules de Polignac. It opposed Liberal ideas with all its force, 
 especially in matters of education. In its solicitude for the 
 throne and the altar, it imposed upon Louis XVIII. the shame- 
 ful Spanish expedition which restored despotism in that unhappy 
 country. Under Charles X. the Congregation was powerful 
 enough to secure the passing of the Loi du sacrilege (1825), 
 which, among other severities, put the profanation of the host 
 on the same level as parricide. It must be allowed that this 
 law was never put in force. 
 
 53. The extravagances of the Congregation should not 
 mislead us, however. Its members were inspired more by 
 politics than by religious fanaticism. These survivors from the 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 177 
 
 eighteenth century put the throne before the altar, and what 
 the throne had to give before the thi'one itself. While the 
 Chavih'e introuvable was still in existence, Lameunais was writing 
 his Essai sur Vlndifference, in which he reproached the upper 
 classes of his time with infidelity, and with giving all their 
 aspirations to temporal matters. One has only to read the 
 Mcmoires of the Comtesse de Boigne and of the Duchesse de 
 Dino to be convinced that the aristocracy of those days looked 
 upon religion mainly as a guarantee of the social order which 
 safeguarded their interests. 
 
 54. Louis Philippe, who had ousted the legitimate monarchy, 
 thought a great deal more about the throne than about the 
 altar. The University, founded by Napoleon, possessed the 
 monopoly of instruction. She clung to it jealously, and 
 the struggles in favour of what was called liberty of teaching — 
 that is, the teaching of the Jesuits — did not succeed. There 
 was a change after the Revolution of 1848. In their hatred of 
 the Orleanists, the clergy made common cause with the Repub- 
 licans, especially after those sanguinary days of June which 
 terrified the Conservative middle classes. " Let us throw our- 
 selves at the feet of the bishops ! " cried Victor Cousin. The 
 Jesuits at once reappeared in France. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, 
 elected President in December, had need of the clergy in his 
 meditated usurpation. He gave them a pledge of his good 
 intentions by the expedition to Rome which restored the govern- 
 ment of Pius IX. But the chief aim of the Jesuits was to lay 
 their hands once more on the machinery of secondary education. 
 Thanks to the interested complaisance of the President and the 
 unscrupulous skill of the Comte de Falloux, an apologist for the 
 Inquisition, they succeeded in their aim (1850). From that 
 time forward, French youth was divided into two camps. The 
 most wealthy, and, in consequence of the desire of the bourgeois 
 to rub shoulders with the noble, the most rapidly increasing 
 was that which grew up in the hatred of Liberalism, and in the 
 worship of an intolerant and despotic past. In twenty years 
 this regime bore fruit ; the Third Republic, long captive to the 
 ^^ parti noir,'''' tasted all its bitterness. 
 
 55. The insatiable pretensions of the Roman Church were a 
 
 N 
 
178 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 cause of weakness to the Second Empire. Napoleon III., liberal 
 enough himself, but married to a devout Spanish wife, was 
 gradually driven, by the pressure of cardinals, bishops, and 
 Jesuits, to sacrifice his throne and country to the cause of Pius 
 IX. In home affairs his most liberal and best-liked minister, 
 Victor Duruy, was continually called upon to defend the teach- 
 ing of the University against the calumnies and chicaneries of 
 the Clericals. The Emperor was the captive of his past. The 
 Church had sung the Te Deum after the cojip d'etat, so he was 
 compelled to put up with its encroachments. 
 
 56. The disasters of 1870-71 brought about a religious and 
 political reaction. France fell into the grip of Clericalism. 
 While awaiting the restoration of the monarchy and the 
 temporal power of the Papacy, the clergy developed their 
 educational machinery in every direction and founded Catholic 
 universities. Two reactions, baffled by universal suffrage, those 
 of May 24, 1873, and May 16, 1877, were the scarcely masked 
 work of the Clerical party, which had found a discreet but safe 
 protector in Marshal MacMahon, who had succeeded Thiers as 
 President of the Republic. Under a third President, Jules 
 Grevy, the Republican party became the majority, and, awaken- 
 ing at last to the source of its pei-il, obtained the dissolution of 
 all non-legalised congregations (1880). This dissolution was 
 a farce, very discreetly combined, of which we do not yet under- 
 stand the details. A few years afterwards the Jesuit schools 
 w^ere even more numerous and flourishing. It was within their 
 walls, especially within those of the £,cole de la Rue des Pastes 
 in Paris, that future officers of the army and navy were pre- 
 pared. The Congregations supported General Boulanger in his 
 attempt at a dictatorship (1887), and imprudently threw in 
 their lot with those Anti-Semitic, Anti-Protestant, and Anti- 
 Liberal movements which declared themselves after 1885. Pope 
 Leo XIII. advised Catholics to rally to Republican institutions 
 (1891). Their chiefs obeyed, Avithout enthusiasm, and set 
 themselves to prepare a Clerical republic. 
 
 57. The condemnation for treason of a Jewish officer, Alfred 
 Dreyfus (December 1894), was a triumph for the Clericals. 
 Unhappily for them, Dreyfus was innocent. He had been 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPAEDIA TO MODERNISM 179 
 
 saddled with the crime of a quondam papal officer, Esterhazy, 
 who had passed into the service of France. As soon as Scheurer- 
 Kestner, Vice-President of the Senate, had convinced himself of 
 the prisoner's innocence, he formed a party to demand the 
 revision of his trial. The one document on which Dreyfus 
 had been condemned and sent to the He du Diable (Guiana), 
 was a letter in which all the expert paleographers recognised 
 the writing of Esterhazy, as soon as they had had an opportunity 
 of compai'ison (1897). The evidence was decisive, and the 
 whole business might have been settled in a fortnight. It took 
 nearly ten years. In spite of all the proofs of his felony, Ester- 
 hazy was acquitted. Colonel Picquart, Avho had discovered and 
 asserted the innocence of Drevfus even before Scheurer-Kestner, 
 was thrown into prison. Those who cried for justice were 
 accused of forming a " syndicate of treason," and the whole 
 Church, priests and monks, with a few honourable exceptions, 
 cast its influence into the scales on the side of injustice, flooding 
 the entire country with calumnies and lies. The Assumptionists 
 especially distinguished themselves in the disgraceful campaign. 
 Their organ, La Croix, rivalled that of the declared Anti- 
 Semites in preaching a new St. Bartholomew. The head of the 
 General Staff of the army. General Boisdeffre, was an intimate 
 friend of Father du Lac, the most influential of the Jesuits. 
 The Jesuits had in their hands the supply of officers and their 
 promotion. Every Republican and Liberal officer had a bad 
 mark against him. The President himself, Felix Faure, had 
 been captured by the Clericals, who had their creatures and 
 accomplices in all the public offices. For two years a real terror 
 hung over France. Encouraged by practically the whole of 
 external Europe, the Intelleciuels fought for the honour of their 
 country under a flood of insults at home. Their final success, 
 modest though it was, was due to the help of the Socialists, who, 
 indifferent at first to what they looked upon as a bourgeois 
 quarrel, understood at last that they would be the first victims 
 of any political reaction. Condemned a second time at Rennes 
 (1899), but afterwards pardoned by the new President, Loubet, 
 Dreyfus did not regain his rank until 190G, when his rehabilita- 
 tion followed upon an inquiry which enabled the Cour de 
 
180 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Cassation to quash the Rennes conviction. During the war of 
 1914-8, he served in the artillery and was promoted lieutenant- 
 colonel. Picquart became Minister of War after being promoted 
 General, but the amnesty voted by the Chambers in 1900 pre- 
 vented the prosecution of those who had gravely sinned against 
 justice and honesty. 
 
 58. Waldeck-Rousseau, who was Prime Minister in 1899, 
 had been stirred by the scenes of disorder which had marked 
 the election of President Loubet at the beginning of the year. 
 He determined to make an end of those whom he called mo'ines 
 Ugueurs and mohics (Taffmres (Leaguers and commercial monks). 
 Various circumstances led to a regrettable increase in the rigour 
 of his early proposals. Emile Combes, who succeeded him as 
 minister, was not a man to be content with half- measures. This 
 time the non-authorised congregations were really dispersed. 
 It might have been well had an exception been made in favour 
 of many inoffensive, and even useful, congregations. In 1905 
 the Chambers passed a law for the separation of the Churches 
 from the State, which put an end to the Concordat of 1801. 
 But the hi Falloux of 1850 has not been abrogated, no doubt 
 because too many respectable interests are still concerned in its 
 maintenance. 
 
 59. In the bosom of French Protestantism the two opposite 
 tendencies, obscurantist and liberal, were represented by the 
 rival faculties of INIontauban and Strasburg. After 1871 the 
 latter was transferred to Paris. This rivalry gave rise to a 
 wretched occurrence in 1861, when Coquerel, a pastor in the 
 capital and an adherent of the Union Protestante Lihcrale, was 
 deprived by the Conseil Preshyteral at the instance of Guizot. 
 This historian, who pretended to believe in miracles, brought 
 about a general synod at which an obligatory confession of faith 
 was drawn up. Orthodox Protestantism, which is a caricature 
 of Romanism, has again sown dissension in the attempt, made 
 at the Synod of Orleans in 1906, to impose a creed on the active 
 members of the Protestant Associations formed after the 
 separation of the Churches from the State (1905). 
 
 • ■ • • • 
 
 60. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Switzerland 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPAEDIA TO MODERNISM 181 
 
 had engaged in a civil war, which ended in the triumph of 
 the Reformers (1712), although the numerical proportion of 
 Catholics and Protestants remained practically unchanged ; but 
 in Switzerland, as elsewhere, the Reformed cantons were the 
 richest and the most industrious. The recall of the Jesuits to 
 Fribourg (1818) was the signal for intrigues and disturbances 
 throughout the Catholic cantons. To put an end to these, 
 the Helvetic Diet suppressed the convents ; upon which the 
 Catholic cantons formed a league, the Sonderhund, in open 
 preparation for civil war. General Dufour, at the head of 
 30,000 men, averted this calamity by his energy; he took 
 possession of Fribourg, which the Jesuits evacuated, not, how- 
 ever, without a sanguinary encounter, in which the Catholics 
 were defeated ; the Sonderhund was dissolved, and the dis- 
 affected cantons submitted. The new Swiss Constitution of 
 1848, while it proclaimed liberty of association and of worship, 
 forbade the Jesuits to settle in the territory of the Confederation. 
 Nevertheless, they returned to the Catholic cantons after 1858 ; 
 the University of Fribourg belongs ostensibly to the Dominicans, 
 but the theology taught there is that of the Jesuits. 
 
 61. Thus, as we have seen, the Catholicism of the nineteenth 
 century was dominated by the Pope and the Jesuits, always 
 closely united " for the greater glory of God." Of the 20,000 
 Jesuits struck at by the sentence of Clement XIV., the greater 
 part, secretly favoured by Pius VL, took refuge in the Confra- 
 ternities of the Heart of Jesus, and in those of the Fathers of the 
 Faith, or Paccanarists, founded by Father Paccanari in 1797.1 
 
 Russia was the only country where they subsisted openly. 
 Catherine II., who wanted them in Poland, even allowed them 
 to affiliate foreign Jesuits to their body. Pius VII. formally 
 re-established the order in Rome (1801) and in Sicily (1804). 
 He restored it in its entirety on August 7, 1814 ; but at first 
 the Jesuits were only received in Spain, Naples, Sardinia and 
 Modena ; even Austria and France would not have them. 
 
 62. In 1820, the Jesuits were banished from Russia, where 
 
 1 Napoleon to Fouche (Dec. 17, 1807) : " I won't have any Fathers of the 
 Faith, I won't allow them to meddle with education, and poison the mind of 
 youth by their ridiculous Ultramontane principles" (Lecestre, Lettrcs inddUcs 
 de XapoUon, i. p. 129). 
 
182 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 their propaganda had alarmed Greek Orthodoxy. Leo XII. 
 consoled them for this check by entrusting the Roman College 
 to them (1824), thus placing the entire education of the clergy 
 in their hands. In 1836, Gregory XVI. also confided the 
 direction of the College of the Propaganda to them, and 
 delighted them by the canonisation of Alfonso of Liguori, not 
 a Jesuit himself, but one of their favourite theologians. The 
 General of the Order, living either at Fiesole or Rome, became 
 known in popular speech as the Black Pope. 
 
 63. In Spain, the Jesuits were the mainstay of despotism 
 until their banishment in 1834 by the Queen Regent, Maria 
 Christina; they returned shoi'tly afterwards, notwithstanding 
 this measure. In 1838 they established themselves in Austria, 
 and still dominate all the education of the country. They have 
 also regained their power in Belgium since the Revolution of 
 1830, which was rather clerical than liberal ; but here, in spite 
 of the extraordinary multiplication of convents, the secular 
 clergy remained strong enough to counterbalance the influence 
 of the Congregations. 
 
 64. Louis XVIII. would not admit the Jesuits ; but by an 
 ordinance of October 5, 1814, he left the direction of the 
 smaller seminaries in the hands of the bishops, who appointed 
 Jesuit professors. Soon their colleges at Saint-Acheul and 
 Montrouge, and also a propagandist society founded by them 
 at Lyons, gave the Government a good deal of anxiety, and 
 provoked the ordinance of 1828. The colleges were closed. 
 The Revolution of 1830 expelled the Jesuits again, not without 
 some outbreaks of popular violence. As usual, they returned 
 quietly, and began to be talked of again in 1838 ; the elocpience 
 of one of their number, Pere de Ravignan, contributed greatly 
 to their growing credit, which Eugene Sue denounced as a 
 danger in a famous novel, The Wandering Jexc. In 1845 some 
 legal proceedings made it evident that the Jesuits were very 
 numerous in France, in spite of a law which threatened them 
 with imprisonment. The Chamber of Peers was alarmed, and 
 Guizot, then Prime Minister, took certain ineffectual measures 
 against them ; the Second Republic was soon to make them 
 reparation. 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 183 
 
 65. In spite of the defeat of their party in Switzerland, the 
 Jesuits profited by the Revolution of 184<8 ; they became the 
 directors of the reactionary policy of Pius IX. ; they acquired 
 or regained a preponderating influence in Prussia and Austria; 
 they laid hands on education in France (1850). The events of 
 1870-71 were unfavourable to them in Prussia, where they 
 were forbidden by a law of 1872 to establish themselves ; but 
 in all Catholic countries, the close alliance of the Papacy, the 
 Episcopacy and Jesuitism, uniting to suppress free thought, 
 made the Jesuits the true masters of the faithful, while the 
 Anglo-Saxon countries were once more open to their propa- 
 ganda. In the United States and in England, the Jesuits, 
 now numerous and very active, have hitherto left public opinion 
 and parliaments quite indifferent to their progress. 
 
 66. One of the great sources of strength of the Jesuit Order, 
 setting aside its admirable recruiting system, is the absence of 
 any rivalry between it and the other religious orders. The 
 reconciliation between Dominicans and Jesuits has long been an 
 accomplished fact. Assumptionists, Redemptorists or Liguorists 
 are mere insti'uments, sometimes mere aliases, of the Jesuits. 
 These have no charitable organisations ; their activities are all 
 lucrative, and even very lucrative ones, notably schools for the 
 well-to-do classes ; thus the Jesuits are richer than all the other 
 orders, and can command support among the laity when they 
 require it. Nearly the whole of the Catholic Press in both 
 hemispheres is controlled by them, and they have affiliated 
 members even in the Liberal Press. In spite of the measures 
 taken against them in France, the Jesuits rival the bureaucracy 
 (in which their influence has long been and still remains 
 powerful) as the best organised power in the country. 
 
 67. The Vatican Council ended in the triumph of the Jesuits. 
 After the proclamation of Papal Infallibility (July 18, 1870), 
 in spite of the opposition or abstention of many bishops, 
 Pius IX. embarked upon reprisals against the dissentient 
 German bishops ; abandoned by their Governments, which were 
 absorbed in the war, they submitted. The learned Canon 
 Dollinger (1799-1890) then organised the opposition of Old 
 
184 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Catholics at Munich (April 1871) ; they formed themselves into 
 associations for worship, choosing for their bishop Reinkens, 
 professor of theology at Breslau (1873) who was consecrated by 
 a Dutch Jansenist bishop. The Old Catholics were recognised 
 by several of the German States, and penetrated into Switzer- 
 land ; but the celebration of worship in the orthodox Catholic 
 churches set up grave difficulties, which were further increased 
 by Germany's reaction in favour of Leo XIII. 's policy, after 
 the check administered to Bismarck's attempt to humiliate 
 Catholicism {Kulturhampf, 1872-79). There is no longer 
 faith enough in Western Europe to make the creation of a new 
 religion possible ; the Old Catholics subsist, but with difficulty, 
 and in small numbers. Reinken's successor, Bishop Weber 
 (1896), was recognised only by Prussia, Hesse and the Grand 
 Duchy of Baden ; there was also an Old Catholic Bishop at 
 Berne, Eduard Herzog. 
 
 68. The French bishops of the opposition, Darboy and 
 Dupanloup, had submitted in 1870, when men's minds were 
 oppressed by other and more cruel preoccupations. In 1869, a 
 former Barefooted Carmelite, Hyacinthe Loyson, after a brilliant 
 career as a preacher, was censured on several occasions for the 
 freedom of his opinions. In 1871 he went to see Dollinger at 
 Munich, and tried to create a Church in France analogous to the 
 Anglican Church. Loyson, who married in 1872, remained to 
 an advanced old age the disciple of truth and justice, those 
 consolations of the disillusioned theologian ; but his attempt at 
 schism was even less successful than that of the German Old 
 Catholics. 
 
 69. Leo XIII. (1878-1903) was a skilful diplomatist, and 
 showed that the prestige of the Holy See had as a fact gained 
 by abolition of a temporal power in which its spiritual dignity 
 was often compromised. His successes in the United States, in 
 England, in France, in Germany, and even in Italy itself, belong 
 more especially to political history ; it will be sufficient to allude 
 to them here. Not only did the KulturJcampf directed against 
 Catholicism by Bismarck end in the victory of Leo XIII., but 
 the German Catholic party, known as the Centre, became the 
 pivot of the policy of the Empire. In France the Pope enjoined 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 185 
 
 the Catholics to rally to the Republic, a measure which put a 
 great number of the highest posts in the State into the hands 
 of Clericals calling themselves Republicans ; the success of this 
 " turning movement " was so complete that but for the Dreyfus 
 affair, in which the French Church embarked on a fatal course, 
 France would have become a Clerical Republic. In the domain of 
 religion, Leo XIII. did not favour Modernism, but he was careful 
 not to adopt a bellicose attitude towards it. His successor, 
 Pius X. (1903-14) was the antithesis of a clever politician ; 
 he was simply an honest parish priest. Bossuet said of Pope 
 Innocent XI. : " Good intentions combined with a limited in- 
 telligence are fatal in high places." Guided by fanatical and 
 ill-informed Spanish cardinals, Pius harshly condemned the 
 Modernists in France and Italy, as well as in Germany ; he 
 refused the conciliatory offers of the French Government, pro- 
 hibited the formation of Catholic associations for worship, 
 which were readily admitted by French Protestants, and even 
 by the majority of Catholic bishops, and thus caused the 
 partial ruin of the Church of France ; separated from the State 
 since 1905, she has great difficulty in finding means of sub- 
 sistence, and in recruiting the secular clergy for the parishes. 
 Reacting against the prudent policy of his predecessor, Pius X. 
 subjected the ecclesiastics to a military discipline, threatening 
 the daily bread of the recalcitrant, and organising a system of 
 espionage which transformed even the moderates into suspects. 
 However, one good result of the disestablishment, from the 
 Catholic point of view, has been to intensify the intercourse 
 between the faithful and the clergy, the latter being obliged to 
 pay frequent visits and make individual appeals in order to 
 collect the necessary funds for public worship, schools, pensions 
 for aged priests and other useful work on the same lines. 
 
 70. The influence of the Order of Jesus is not only exercised 
 upon dogma, upon politics and upon social life ; it penetrates 
 all the religious manifestations of Catholicism. The senti- 
 mental or puerile aberrations of the worship of the Virgin 
 and the saints (as, for instance, of St. Anthony of Padua, who 
 causes lost objects to be found), the exploitation of relics, 
 
186 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 amulets and miraculous springs, have been established or 
 developed under its protection. But all that is food for the 
 ignorant masses only, and the no less ignorant middle classes. 
 The same Order supports in Brussels a small group of very 
 learned Jesuits called Bollandists (in memory of that giant of 
 knowledge, John Bolland, 1596-1665), intrusted with the 
 publication of the Lives of the Saints {Acta Sanctorum^ 62 
 folios, in progress) and of a periodical, Analecta Bollandiana, 
 which has done more than all lay criticism to uproot baseless 
 legends and expose pious frauds. This is another and little 
 known aspect of Jesuitism, in relation to the history of religion 
 and the vindication of truth. 
 
 71. The worship of St. Joseph, which was non-existent in 
 the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, grew up under the 
 Jesuit influence of the nineteenth century. Pius IX. raised St. 
 Joseph to the rank of a patron of the Catholic Church, above 
 the Apostles Peter and Paul (1870) ; this promotion was con- 
 firmed by Leo XIII. (1889). To the Christian conception of 
 the Trinity, the Jesuits have added one which is expressed by 
 the formula JMJ — that is to say, Jesus, Mary, Joseph. It has 
 practically superseded the other. God is too lofty, and the 
 Holy Spirit too immaterial ; the people must have white idols, 
 with plenty of gold, pink and blue. An aristocratic contempt 
 for the devout masses is a ruling sentiment among the Jesuits, 
 one they shared with their pupil Voltaire. 
 
 72. The Jesuits also instituted the worship of the Sacred 
 Heart of Jesus, beside which that of the Pure Heart of Mary 
 holds but a secondary place. A girl-mystic. Marguerite or 
 Marie Alacoque, had a vision of the bleeding heart of Jesus 
 Christ (1675) ; she gave Him hers, and received His in exchange. 
 Her Jesuit confessor, Pere La Colombiere, exploited the utter- 
 ances of this mad woman, and founded a new cult, which Rome 
 at first energetically condemned. But special confraternities 
 propagated Cordkolism under the protection of the Jesuits, 
 mainly in France, Germany and Poland, in spite of the attacks 
 of the Jansenists. Pius VI. yielded to the popular idolatry, and 
 sanctioned the worship. Pius IX. went still further ; he insti- 
 tuted the Feast of the Sacred Heart for the whole Church, and 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPAEDIA TO MODERNISM 187 
 
 proclaimed the beatification of Marie Alacoque (1864). The 
 Church had originally insisted on the symbolic character of the 
 heart, but the mystic materialism of the Jesuits, harmonising 
 with the spirit of the nineteenth century, proposed the adoration 
 of the actual heart of the Saviour. This conception, a sur- 
 vival fi'om very primitive religion, was approved by Pius IX. 
 Painted images of the Sacred Heart have found their way into 
 all the churches. The National Assembly of 1871 pronounced 
 the construction of a basilica at Montmartre, dedicated to the 
 Sacred Heart, to be a work of public utility. It was begun in 
 1875, and the white mass of its buildings now towers over 
 Paris from the height. It will stand to future ages as a monu- 
 ment of Jesuist theology, and of the illimitable credulity of the 
 human mind. 
 
 73. The increased facilities of communication in the nine- 
 teenth century multiplied pilgrimages and brought increasing 
 crowds to privileged altars, to the relics of the saints and to 
 healing springs. Commercial exploitation of faith has kept 
 pace with the mystic exaltation which has been stimulated by 
 every possible means. Those who wish for information on this 
 score should read Paul Parfait's Dossier des Pclerinages. The 
 Jesuits have been foremost among the religious orders which 
 have encouraged these practices : the learned and pacific orders, 
 such as the Benedictines and the Oratorians, have held signifi- 
 cantly aloof In France the mania for pilgrimages developed 
 chiefiy under the Third Republic ; a special newspaper, Le 
 Pelerin {The Pilgrim), with a circulation of hundreds of thou- 
 sands, fans the ardour of the ignorant by tales of miracles ; and 
 wealthy society — Voltairian at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, and Jesuitical at the dawn of the twentieth — adopts 
 these debased forms of piety in fear of the political and social 
 conse(]uences of free-thought. 
 
 74. In 1846, a fanatic, one Mdlle. de la Merliere, dressed 
 herself in yellow robes and a sugar-loaf hat, and " appeared "" 
 on the mountain of La Salette (Isere) to two little shepherds, 
 revealing herself to them as the Blessed Virgin. A subsequent 
 legal inquiry exposed the fraud, against which the Cardinal 
 Archbishop of Lyons had protested from the first. Nevertheless, 
 
188 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the canonical examination resulted in the confirmation of the 
 miracle by the Bishop of Grenoble in 1847. A congregation 
 was founded to exploit it. Pilgrimages began, and still con- 
 tinue, to La Salette, where a certain spring was supposed to 
 work miraculous cures. 
 
 75. " Three years after the day on which, by a solemn act of 
 Pius IX., the Virgin was declared free from the taint of original 
 sin, she appeared in a little town of the French Pyrenees to a 
 child of the people. When asked her name, she replied : ' / am 
 the Immaculate Conception.'' This was the definition of heaven 
 following on that of earth. A doctrine had been taught to 
 the world by the Church : God put His sign manual upon it ! " ^ 
 Bernadette Soubirous, the little girl to whom the Virgin Mary 
 declared that her name was that of a dogma, an obvious 
 absurdity,^ saiv the Virgin several times from Februai-y to July, 
 1858 ; she lived twenty years after this, supported by the nuns 
 " as a destitute sick person," but the celestial vision " never 
 again appeared to dazzle and delight her eyes." 
 
 Ecclesiastical authority did not neglect this striking miracle. 
 It was, indeed, forced to take action by popular credulity, which 
 made the grotto a place of pilgrimage. Very soon a report that 
 the water of the spring cured all sorts of diseases found credence, 
 and religious commerce took the matter in hand. The grotto 
 became a sanctuary over which an imposing church was built. 
 The little town was covered with hotels and boardins-houses ; 
 hundreds of thousands of pilgrims flocked to it, and a great 
 number of miraculous cures after immersion in the piscina were 
 certified. Cures equally wonderful had been recorded twenty 
 centuries before of sufferers issuing from ^the dormitories of 
 Asklepios at Epidaurus and Cos; whether they were due to 
 suggestion or to the radio-active qualities of the water is a 
 scientific, not a religious, question. The " Fathers of the 
 
 ^ G. Bertrin, Histoire critique (sic) des ivenements des Lourdes, new ed. 
 Paris, 1908. 
 
 * The error may be explained by a confusion arising out of the inscription 
 on a devotional print. Coloured pictures of the Virgin inscribed The Im- 
 maculate Coyiceplion have been widely circulated, especially since the year 1852, 
 when the Louvre acquired Murillo's famous picture of this name for the 
 enormous sum of 61.5,000 fr. A confusion of the same sort arose of old at 
 Athens (Acts xvii. 18) : the philosophers thought Paul was preaching a new 
 deity, Ajiastasif, when he announced the Resurrection, 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 189 
 
 Grotto"" have become very wealthy, and the Government is 
 indulgent to their traffic, in order not to ruin the town of 
 Lourdes. Official consecration of this worship was given by 
 Leo XIIL, who had a model of tlie grotto and the church put 
 up in the Vatican gardens. But as the Council of Trent 
 decided at its twenty-fifth session that all new miracles should be 
 recognised and approved by the bishops before being published 
 to the world, cases of healing are always submitted to the 
 Church. On June 14, 1908, the Parisian Sema'me relig'ieuse 
 published an ordinance of the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. 
 Amette, declaring that the cures of five young girls at Lourdes, 
 from 1891 to 1899, which had been studied with the utmost 
 attention by the connnissioners, were to be attributed to a 
 special intervention of God, brought about by the intercession 
 of the Virgin, and consequently were to be accounted miracles. ^ 
 
 76. Those whose piety takes them to Lourdes are not seek- 
 ing their salvation in the world to come, or preparing a blessed 
 eternity for themselves ; their most pressing preoccupations are 
 purely secular and terrestrial ; they ask for health and long 
 life. The Church of the sixteenth century sold indulgences : 
 she abused this traffic, and the merchandise lost its value. In 
 the twentieth century, at Lourdes and elsewhere, she no longer 
 claims to give dispensation from Purgatory, but to put off the 
 day of reckoning ; she opposes sacerdotal to secular medicine, 
 and thus, consciously or unconsciously, returns to the errors of 
 pagan materialism. 
 
 • • « • « 
 
 77. Mysticism, a supposed communion with God in ecstasy, 
 is a chronic delusion of the human heart. The Church has 
 beatified or canonised certain mystics, but she has silenced many 
 more. The Spanish Inquisition showed a good deal of sense in 
 this connection ; it treated mystics as impostors rather than as 
 persons possessed. One of the benefits of Christianity as 
 organised into Churches has been to regulate mysticism and the 
 superstitions to which it gives rise ; wherever official religion 
 
 ^ From 1905 to October 1908, a score of episcopal ordinances of this kind 
 were promulgated ; a certain number of cures are always under canonical 
 consideration. 
 
190 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 has lost its power, individual magic and charlatanism have 
 become rampant. This phenomenon was noticeable in France 
 towards the close of the eighteenth century, when clairvoyants 
 and swindlers like the Comte de St. Germain {d. 1784), Cag- 
 liostro {d. 1795), St. Martin {d. 1803), and Mesmer {d. 1815), 
 acquired an amazing ascendancy in a society which was reading 
 Voltaire, but was not content with that. 
 
 78. The most influential of eighteenth-century mystics was 
 the learned Swede Emmanuel Swedenborg, the son of a clergy- 
 man (1688-1722). His followers still exist as members of the 
 Church of New Jerusalem. After having done good service in 
 many branches of natural sciences, where he sometimes showed 
 the way to Buffbn, Laplace and Goethe, Swedenborg had his 
 first vision in 1743. From 1745 onwards he gave himself 
 up entirely to theosophy, which means individual theology, in 
 contrast with that of the accepted creeds. In 1749 he wrote as 
 follows : " It has been granted to me, now for several years, to 
 be constantly and uninterruptedly in company with spirits and 
 angels ... I have thus been instructed concerning the state 
 of souls after death." Later on, he conversed with Jesus, the 
 Apostle Paul, Luther and others. His diary for 1744, dis- 
 covered in 1858, shows clearly that he was deranged and 
 probably remained so ; but there was little of a miracle- 
 monger or of a charlatan about him. His theology, founded 
 not only on revelation, but on allegorical interpretation of 
 Scripture, may even be called reasonable and humane when 
 compared with the orthodox teaching on salvation, damnation 
 and the like. Swedenborg believed himself to be the herald 
 of the Second Coming. Jesus had, in fact, returned, having 
 paid a visit to Swedenborg. "All rehgion," he said, "has 
 relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good." That 
 warm desire to benefit humanity associates him, in spite of his 
 vagaries and dreams, with the more temperate philosophers of 
 his age. 
 
 79. Territory gained by science is always lost to dogmatic 
 religion. Nevertheless, certain writers have tried to add lustre 
 to the latter by the, as yet, very obscure phenomena which 
 belong, broadly speaking, to the domain of spiritualism^ because 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 191 
 
 they are attributed to the intervention of spirits. The Roman 
 Church has wisely opposed this tendency. She only admits the 
 marvels that are under her own control. All the rest are the 
 work of the devil, or of human rascality. Magic, be it white or 
 black, cannot be the handmaid of Religion. 
 
 Every one has heard of table-turning, spirit-rapping, evo- 
 cations of the dead, who appear as phantoms and dictate 
 answers and revelations to mediums. These mediums, several of 
 whom have become famous in our times — the Englishman, 
 Daniel Dunglas Home, for instance, who deceived the famous 
 scientist Crookes, and Eusapia Paladino, who cheated many 
 others — were charlatans who had recourse to subtle methods 
 of fraud, and always refused to operate in daylight and in the 
 presence of learned bodies ; but the progress of science, and 
 more especially the study of nervous phenomena, have brought 
 to light physiological or psychological facts which must neces- 
 sarily have seemed miraculous in the eighteenth century, and 
 even later. Thus, it has been shown that nervous persons 
 may be thrown into a hypnotic sleep ; some even assert that, 
 receiving orders in this state, they will carry them out on 
 waking. It has also been said that persons of this tempera- 
 ment are amenable to suggestions made at a distance. The 
 power of suggestion of some persons is undeniable, and has 
 alread}'^ effected cures which resemble those obtained by 
 pilgrimages and relics. The facts of telepathy — that is to say, 
 of communications from a distance, such as a sudden vision, 
 sometimes confirmed by the event, of the death of a friend — 
 are not yet scientifically established ; but, after all, they do not 
 seem any more extraordinary than the experiments of wireless 
 telegraphy. 
 
 80. When the spirits dogmatise, they show a disposition to 
 amalgamate existing religions, in order to rise to forms they 
 hold to be superior. The most striking instance of this syn- 
 cretism in the nineteenth century is furnished by the so-called 
 Thcosophists or Occultists, founded at New York about 1875 by 
 Colonel Olcott (d. 1906) and Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891). 
 This sect, which has met with increasing favour, claims 
 to combine Buddhism, Platonism, Christianity, and certain 
 
192 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 mysterious doctrines, such as the Jewish Kabbalah. The 
 Russian lady pretended to derive her knowledge from two 
 Tibetan sages, with whom she enjoyed instantaneous com- 
 munication ; but her works are full of extracts from printed 
 books and not always reliable translations. Indian and other 
 philosophies had better be studied at first hand. 
 
 81. In the Middle Ages there were, in addition to the 
 stationary guilds of masons, a number of free-masons, who 
 travelled from town to town ; they constituted, it is said, a 
 confraternity whose headquarters were at Strasburg. These 
 associations existed in England longer than elsewhere, and the 
 Great Fire of London {\<6QQi\ which necessitated the rebuilding 
 of the city, increased their activity. After the completion of 
 St. Paul's Cathedral (1717), the last four groups of masons 
 founded a Grand Lodge in London, designed, not for the 
 furtherance of their calling, but for the amelioration of the 
 moral and material condition of man. Side by side with and 
 above temples of stone, was to rise the spiritual temple of 
 humanity. From the end of the sixteenth century, members 
 who were not masons had been admitted to these conventicles — 
 a modification of the primitive character of the institution. 
 But certain features were preserved with a jealous and, indeed, 
 pedantic care : such were the distinctions between masters, 
 associates and apprentices, the exclusion of non-members, and 
 the oath never to reveal the proceedings in the lodges. The 
 constitution of the Freemasons was the work of the preacher 
 James Anderson. It binds its adherents to respect for morality, 
 humanity, and the fatherland ; each member may continue to 
 practise his special religion, but the connnunity is further to 
 hold collectively the religious principles of all mankind, the 
 rest being accounted merely individual opinion. The religion 
 of English Freemasonry is, accordingly, a sort of humanitarian 
 deism, which found, and still finds, many adherents in Great 
 Britain. 
 
 82, A few English noblemen established the first Lodge in 
 Paris in 1725 ; in spite of the interdict of Louis XV. (1737), 
 it made numerous recruits. In 1733 a Lodge was founded 
 at Florence and at Boston, and in 1737 at Hamburg. The 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 193 
 
 Hamburg Lodge included the Crown Prince of Prussia, after- 
 wards Frederick the Great, among its members. After his 
 accession, he created a Lodge at Berhn, and became its Grand 
 Master. Since this period, all the Kings of Prussia down to 
 William II, have presided over this Lodge. William II. de- 
 clined the office, but nominated Prince Frederick Leopold of 
 Prussia as his substitute. In the course of the eighteenth 
 century, Freemasonry took root in all European countries and 
 also in North America. Catholicism naturally could not 
 tolerate a society of religious tendencies which ignored it ; the 
 Pope condemned Freemasonry as early as 1738. An edict of 
 the Cardinal Secretary of State of January 14, 1739, pro- 
 nounced sentence of death not only against Freemasons, but 
 against all who should seek admittance to the order, and all 
 who should let premises to the association.^ The Papacy has 
 never ceased the renewal of these prohibitions. Leo XIII. 
 solemnly reiterated them in his Encyclical of April 20, 1884. 
 
 83. Shortly after this, a Frenchman who had written some 
 scurrilous pamphlets against the Church, under the pseudonym 
 of Leo Taxil, declared himself a convert to Catholicism, and 
 offered to reveal the secrets of Freemasonry. He had his 
 information, he declared, from a young American, Miss Diana 
 Vaughan, who had been initiated into all the details of the 
 Satanic rites performed in the Lodges. Taxil published several 
 absurd books, full of horrors and divagations borrowed from 
 ancient trials for witchcraft ; they had an immense success in 
 CathoHc circles. Cardinal Parocchi sent the Papal benediction 
 to Miss Vaughan. In 1896, an international Anti-Masonic 
 Congress was held at Trent. As doubts were here cast upon 
 Leo Taxil's statements, the rascal thought it better to unmask 
 himself. He summoned a large meeting at Paris, and there, to 
 the great scandal of the assembled priests and clericals, he 
 declared that the Satanic Diana Vaughan had never existed, 
 and that he had been deceiving the Roman Church for ten 
 years (April 19, 1897). The laugh was hardly on the side of 
 the Jesuits and their friends, the protectors or dupes of Leo 
 Taxil. 
 
 ^ Lea, History of the Inquisition in Spain, vol. iv. p. 297. 
 O 
 
194 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 84. Freemasonry was complicated and perverted by all kinds 
 of affectations and impostures in the course of the eighteenth 
 century. Superior grades were created, such as the Templai's, 
 the Rosicrucians and the Egyptian Masons ; absurd pretensions 
 were formulated, connecting these with the Knights Templars, 
 the medieval Rosicrucians, and the mystic teachings of the 
 Egyptian priesthood. The Egyptian or Coptic Order was 
 founded by Joseph Balsamo {d. 1795), the soi-disant Count 
 Cagliostro. Spiritualism, the search for the philosopher's stone, 
 and innumerable other chimeras were grafted on to Masonic 
 Deism and its principles of tolerant philanthropy. Fortunately, 
 most of the Lodges held aloof from these follies. 
 
 85. English Freemasonry separated from French Free- 
 masonry in 1877, when the latter pronounced a belief in God 
 to be non-essential. In England, Scotland and Northern 
 Germany, the Masonic Lodges have remained merely centres 
 of humanitarian philosophy ; in France, from the Revolution 
 onwards, they have played a certain political part, which has, 
 however, been greatly exaggerated by their enemies. In 1903, 
 General Andre, Minister of War, a free-thinker, but not himself 
 a Freemason, was imprudent enough to ask the provincial 
 Lodges to furnish reports on the religious opinions of officers 
 in the array. This system of denunciation was betrayed to the 
 clericals by a defaulting clerk of the Grand Orient of Paris ; 
 the result was the so-called scandal of the Fklies {i.e., dockets), 
 which showed that it is easier to combat Clericalism than to 
 break with the tradition it has instilled. 
 
 86. A similar mania (intelligible enough, indeed) for imitat- 
 ing Catholicism while claiming complete emancipation from 
 its influence, appears throughout the nineteenth century in 
 rationalist sects with a pi'actical philosophy, tending to the 
 material and spiritual amelioration of man. Though the 
 Comte de St. Simon, the founder of Saint-Simonism, was content 
 to be a prophet, his disciples, Bazard and Enfantin, behaved 
 like pontiffs or bonzes. Auguste Comte, the founder of 
 Positivism, in his Sijsthne de Politique positive, sets forth a 
 social programme almost identical with the conventual reg-ime 
 established by the Jesuits in Paraguay. He even sought to 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 195 
 
 enrich Positivism with the worship of the Virgin and the saints ; 
 his Virgin, however, was to be his dead friend, Clotilde de Vaux, 
 his "Sainte Clotilde," and his saints the illustrious men, or 
 men he considered illustrious, whose grotesque nomenclature 
 encumbers the Positivist calendar.^ The basis of Fourierism 
 (Fourier, d. 1837) also rests upon medieval Catholicism ; its 
 phalansteries are closely akin to monasteries. Even the Socialism 
 of Karl Marx's disciples betrays the same intellectual habits, the 
 fruits of a long apprenticeship to servitude ; modern Socialists 
 have pontiffs, councils which excommunicate, credos they claim 
 to impose, a discipline no less tyrannical than that of the Jesuits. 
 Among them there are persons who think themselves revolu- 
 tionaries when they preach paradoxes twenty centuries old. 
 Thus the anti-militarist crotchet called Herveism (once dear 
 to Professor G. Herve in France) is a doctrine of the second 
 century, aggravated by a menace of civil war. It is the mystic 
 doctrine of non-resistance, of abhorrence of all service but that 
 of God, which the philosopher Celsus made a reproach to the 
 Christians when he exhorted them to unite with the pagans to 
 defend the threatened Empire against the barbarians. ^ 
 
 87. The Roman Church, which cannot afford to alienate the 
 middle classes, has hitherto shown no disposition to ally itself 
 with Socialism ; but it has insisted on its solicitude for the 
 working classes. Leo XIII. even published an Encyclical " on 
 the condition of workmen,"" in which he suggests as a remedy 
 for the social evil "equitable payment," without saying how 
 this is to be fixed. Both in France and Austria, indeed, 
 Catholics who call themselves Socialists are not uncommon, 
 and taking into account the fondness of clerical strategy for 
 " turning movements," there may be reason to distrust these 
 more extreme Socialists, whose extravagances may sometimes 
 be suggested by the party which openly combats their views. 
 
 1 I deal here with Comte as a mystic, and am nob concerned with his 
 philosophy, which has exercised a legitimate influence on the modern mind. 
 But I may recall Huxley's saying: " Positivism is the incongruous mixture 
 of bad science with eviscerated papistry." {Colleclrd Essays, vol. v., p. 255.) 
 
 * '' We Christians," replied Origen {Contra Celsvm, viii. 73) "fight for the 
 Emperor even more than do the others ; it is true that we do not follow him 
 into the field when he orders us, but we form an army of piety for him, and 
 support him by our prayers." This did not satisfy Emperor Decius, 
 
196 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 In Protestant countries, Socialist doctrines have found 
 
 numerous adherents among the clergy. "Christianity is the 
 
 theory of which Socialism is the practice," said a clergyman 
 
 at the Pan- Anglican Conference in London (1908). The same 
 
 doctrine was taught by the Avant-Garde, the organ of the 
 
 French pastors who professed modern Socialism. This is a 
 
 novel example of the old anti-historical illusion of Concordism ; 
 
 it consists in harmonising, by means of a partisan exegesis, the 
 
 mystic conceptions of two thousand years ago, with the realistic 
 
 and practical ideas of reform which have sprung up in the 
 
 industrial societies of our age.^ 
 
 . . . ■ • 
 
 88. Together with German Pietism, the influence of which 
 is even perceptible in the philosophy of Kant, Voltairian free- 
 thought had grown up, especially at Berlin. The reaction was 
 not Pietist, but poetic and scientific. Schleiermacher (1768- 
 1834) pointed out a new path for the Reformation, that of 
 religious Romanticism, in which sentiment plays a greater part 
 than dogma, and allies itself with the critical study of history. 
 "Religion," he said, "should float about human life hkeasweet 
 and pleasant melody, a vague but beneficent presentiment of a 
 life of dreams in which the human soul can find felicity." This 
 was at once to exalt religion and to make it inoffensive to 
 science, by assigning it a separate sphere. Schleiermacher, the 
 translator of Plato, the admirer of Spinoza and of Kant, 
 encouraged the critical exegesis of the New Testament. His 
 pupil Neander, a converted Jew (1789-1850), built up the 
 history of primitive Christianity on a solid basis. But the 
 great German school of exegesis, that of Tiibingen, was formed 
 more especially under the influence of the " doctrine of develop- 
 ment " due to Hegel, who introduced the idea of evolution into 
 science before Darwin. Anything I could say of it here would 
 be insufficient, and therefore obscure ; but it is well to remember 
 that the scientific liberty of German criticism was mainly 
 
 * " There is no more absurd error than to represent Jesua as an apostle of 
 Socialism. The exhortation to voluntary abnegation in the Gospel bore upon 
 the idea of the approaching Parousia, or Second Coming of Christ in Glory ; it 
 was purely mystical, or rather at once mystical and utilitarian, without any 
 economical or social applioation." — Dide [a former pastor], La Fin des 
 Religions, p. 130. 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPAEDIA TO MODERNISM 197 
 
 effected by the teaching of two philosophers, Schleiermacher 
 and Hegel. 
 
 89. One of the noblest thinkers of the nineteenth century, 
 Alexandre Vinet (of Ouchy, 1797-1847), holds a place in 
 French Protestantism analogous to that of Schleiermacher in 
 Germany. Less a reformer than a religious initiator, he com- 
 bated all forms of official intolerance, claimed the independence 
 of Churches in relation to the State, and preached a pacific 
 Christ, reconciled to modern civilisation, and still living in the 
 conscience of humanity. This ideal has been shared by many 
 superior minds. But one may reasonably ask which Christ they 
 mean — the Christ of Mark or the Christ of John ? They 
 must choose, for the two are historically irreconcilable. Jesus 
 as he may actually have lived and taught is inaccessible to us ; 
 the only concrete reality we have before us is Christianity, which 
 is divided into many hostile sects. Is it not therefore simpler 
 to seek a moral law in our consciences, the depositories of all 
 the experiences and teachings of the past, including those of 
 Christianity ? 
 
 • » • • • 
 
 90. The name Ajnericanism has been given by theologians 
 to a very broad form of Catholicism which was propagated 
 mainly in the United States by Father Isaac Hecker, of the 
 Paulist Order {d. 1888). The Papacy has always shown indul- 
 gence to the Catholicism of America, both North and South, 
 on condition of its making no attempt to extend beyond that 
 continent. About 1890, Americanism, of which Archbishop 
 Ireland (of St. Paul, Minnesota) was the accepted high priest, 
 began to penetrate into Europe. Its distinguishing doctrine 
 was the characteristically American exaltation of good works 
 over faith. Leo XIII. nipped it in the bud by a letter 
 addressed to Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, which brought 
 about the submission of Archbishop Ireland (1899). A curious 
 incident in this connection was the publication in the United 
 States in 1896 of a book by a monk. Father Zahm, purporting 
 to reconcile Darwinism and the Book of Genesis. Its author was 
 congratulated by Leo XIII., but the work was at once "with- 
 drawn from circulation " after its translation into Italian (1899). 
 
198 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 The Pragmatism of the American psychologist, William 
 James, responds to some extent to the practical tendency of 
 Americanism. Doctrines are not, he says, solutions of problems, 
 but principles of action. They must, therefore, be judged by their 
 fruits, and according to their moral efficacy. This conception, 
 applied to religious dogmatism, would perhaps sanction the 
 sophism of " beneficent errors," and contempt of the historical 
 criticism which seeks to combat them, 
 
 91. The last years of the nineteenth century witnessed the 
 rise, especially in France, of the momentous Catholic movement 
 commonly called Modernism. In its general outlook it is 
 related to Newman, and his doctrine o^ development ; but 
 Modernism is something more and something better than a 
 religious philosophy. It is the assimilation of criticism by 
 orthodox Catholicism. As such, it is essentially French, for 
 it may claim descent from Richard Simon, the real founder, 
 together with Spinoza, of critical exegesis of the Scriptures. 
 This science, which was received with suspicion in France, passed 
 into Germany, and flourished there in the Protestant Univer- 
 sities from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. The 
 most famous, if not the most readable book it has produced, is 
 David Strauss's celebrated Life of Jesus, translated into English 
 by "George Eliot," and into French by Littre. An Alsatian 
 Protestant, Edouard Reuss, a scholar of the highest rank, and 
 Michel Nicolas, a pastor of Nimes, who held a professorship at 
 Montauban, made an attempt to popularise these studies in 
 France; but the general public and the Catholic seminaries 
 remained impenetrable, in spite of the sensation created by 
 Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus. The author's lectureship at the 
 College de France was suppressed because he contested the 
 divinity of Christ (1862). Religious teaching continued to be 
 very antiquated in the seminaries, dwelling complacently on the 
 puerilities of Concordism. Strange to say, reform has come, 
 not from the laity, but from the Church herself. The Catholic 
 Institute of Paris was founded in 1875, and the Abbe Duchesne, 
 still a young man, was appointed professor of sacred history. 
 Duchesne, prudent and discreet, wrote in general on non- 
 scriptural subjects, but he nevertheless inculcated a severe 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPAEDIA TO MODERNISM 199 
 
 scientific method among his pupils. He himself applied it, 
 exciting the acrimonious disapproval of the orthodox, in refuting 
 the absurd legends of the Apostolic origin of the French 
 Churches, These had been condemned as puerile even by the 
 pious Tillemont (1637-1698), but they had found favour again 
 as a result of the debasement of theological study, and the 
 ingenuous credulity of hagiographers. 
 
 92. One of Duchesne's pupils, the Abbe Loisy {b. 1857), a 
 Hebrew scholar and an Assyriologist, made a very brilliant 
 debiit^ and was soon himself nominated a professor of exegesis at 
 the Catholic Institute. About the year 1890 this young priest 
 was the pride of the Galilean Church ; a splendid future seemed 
 assured to him. But the orthodox, and more especially the 
 Jesuits, soon detected in his lectui'es and writings what they 
 called '' Protestant infiltrations" (1892). When Mgr. d'Hulst, 
 the Rector of the Catholic University, published a liberal article 
 in the Correspondant, in which he proposed to abandon the 
 thesis of the infallibility of the Old Testament in scientific and 
 historical matters, this daring attempt was attributed to the 
 influence of Loisy. As a fact, he had nothing to do with 
 it, but Mgr. d'Hulst had supposed himself inspired by Loisy's 
 ideas. Leo XIII. responded by an Encyclical on Scriptural 
 studies (called Providentisshims), in which the infallibility of the 
 Sacred Books was reaffirmed, in accordance with the teaching 
 of the Council of Trent, but discounted by so many linguistic 
 niceties that the question was left very much as before (1893). 
 This Pope was patient and prudent ; he knew that Loisy was 
 greatly respected by the French clergy, and he dreaded a revolt. 
 Loisy, though continually denounced by the monks and canons, 
 published in 1902 his V^vcmgile et VEgiise, in which he 
 formulated his doctrine in reply to the Essence of Christianity 
 of Harnack, a Protestant theologian of Berlin ; this was followed 
 in 1903 by his commentary on the Fourth Gospel, the historic 
 character of which he denied. At the same time, the enfant 
 terrible of the party, the Abbe Houtin, gave the history of 
 Biblical study in France with much grace and a spice of malice. 
 An English Jesuit, Tyrrell, several German professors, and even 
 a German Jesuit, Father Hummelauer, manifested tendencies 
 
200 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 that were disquieting to the orthodox exegesists of the Sacred 
 Books. Pius X., after hesitating for a while, felt called upon 
 to act ; in 1907 he published in rapid succession a decree of 
 the Inquisition (Lamentahili) and an Encyclical (Pascendi), 
 which were aimed at the very heart of Modernism. Loisy, 
 whose books had already been put upon the Index, was excom- 
 municated, and soon after this was elected professor of the 
 College de France ; Tyrrell was deprived of the Sacraments, and 
 left, as it were, on the threshold of the Church ; Hummelauer 
 was reduced to silence. 
 
 93. " The Pope has spoken — Modernism is no more ! " wrote 
 Paul Bourget with naive fervour. What greater insult could 
 he have offered to the thousands of honest and intelligent 
 priests of the Catholic clergy, who cannot change their opinions 
 as they change their cassocks, or, following the example of the 
 snobs M. Bourget knows so well, accept without conviction the 
 credo of the houses Avhere they dine ! Modernism once con- 
 demned, Rome exacted from the priests the " antimodernist 
 oath ■" ; there remained no avowed Modernists in the Church, 
 but Modernism only gained more ground, Iliacos intra muros et 
 extra. Serious Catholic writers on Scripture respect and occasion- 
 ally reiterate the antiquated decisions of the Biblical Commis- 
 sion in the Vatican, but they give such full accounts of the 
 contrary theses that the competent reader has an easy choice. 
 In dogmatic matters, we have seen the French Cardinal Billot, 
 author (it is said) of the Encyclical Pascendi, convicted ot 
 indulging in the purest principles of Modernism when writing 
 about original sin and the condition of infidels after death. 
 Indeed, Modernism has proved an irresistible movement, for it 
 is founded on Catholic science. Orthodoxy has defended itself 
 successfully against the libels of laymen and the aggressive 
 erudition of Protestants ; the strength and menace of Modernism 
 lie herein, that it was born in the Church herself, at the foot 
 of the altar; that it is a product of the learning of clerics, 
 who, by the study of the texts, have arrived at conclusions 
 even more radical than those of Protestant and liberal 
 historians. 
 
 94. The accepted thesis of the Roman Church is that the 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 201 
 
 authority of the Sacred Books is guaranteed by the Church, 
 and that the authority of the Church is founded on that of 
 the Sacred Books. Is not this to argue in a circle? Pro- 
 testantism was content Avith the authority of the Sacred Books, 
 as demonstrated by a study of these books themselves. But 
 Modernism — or, to be more precise, the Modernist Left — main- 
 tains that neither the existence of God, nor the redeeming 
 mission, nor the divinity, nor the miracles of Jesus, nor a single 
 dogma, nor a single sacrament, can be founded on the fragile 
 historical basis of the Scriptures. This leaves us face to face with 
 a great fact, indisputably historical ; this is the Church itself, 
 inspired by the Scriptures, in the shadow of which hundreds 
 of millions of souls have lived, which is the realisation of the 
 Scriptures throughout the ages, whatever the authority of these 
 may be. The Church has been able to promulgate dogmas, 
 which have evolved like herself, but not historical truths, which 
 beloncr to the domain of criticism alone. Thus the whole 
 edifice is without an ontological foundation ; and yet it is an 
 edifice, the most magnificent the world has seen, and this is 
 enough for those who seek shelter in it. Thus enlarged, it may 
 receive not only Protestants and Jews, but all " men of good- 
 will." The evolution of the Christian temple makes it a house 
 of refuge for all humanity. Such, at any rate, are the conclu- 
 sions that may be drawn from the thesis of Modernism ; it is 
 obvious that the Roman Church cannot accept them, and no 
 less obvious that her narrow orthodoxy is doomed to founder 
 sooner or later, though not suddenly, in utter discredit. 
 
 95. The Church has not only to reckon with erudite 
 Modernism, but with parallel philosophical tendencies. In 
 1834, Gregory XVI. condemned the so-called Fideist thesis of a 
 Strasburg ahhc, Bautain, according to which reason is powerless 
 to establish truths, the benefit of which must be sought in the 
 traditional faith. This doctrine was resuscitated from Pascal ; 
 it is also to be found in the writings of Bonald and Lamennais. 
 But Rome maintains that there can be no conflict between faith 
 and reason, and that the use of reason, the gift of God, precedes 
 the act of faith. In spite of the condemnation reiterated by the 
 Vatican Council in 1870, Fideism made numerous recruits in the 
 
202 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Catholic world, especially in France, where Brunetiere, Blondel, 
 Labcrthonniere, and Le Roy showed themselves to be more or 
 less imbued with it. In its principles, as in its conclusions, it is 
 akin to Modernism, to Pragmatism, and to the Symbolism of 
 the Alexandrians of the third century. It has even been said 
 that Loisy's Modernism was the historic form of Fideism, as 
 Brunetiere's Catholicism was the social form. Fideism had its 
 uses when historical criticism was as yet non-existent. Now 
 that this has become a positive science, any system which tends 
 to dispense with it is open to the suspicion of ignoring it. 
 
 • « • • • 
 
 96. Conversions of cultured unbelievers to Protestantism 
 are rather rare ; but in the latter decades of the past century 
 and the first of this, numerous distinguished men of letters and 
 artists, especially in France and in Italy, have I'eturned, with 
 some ostentation, to Catholicism : one of them was Psichari, 
 Ernest Renan's grandson, who fell a victim to the war. Such 
 conversions are usually sentimental and quite independent of 
 theological knowledge. Even a scholar like Brunetiere, when 
 asked what he really believed in (he had been an agnostic from 
 the age of thirteen), answered : " Go and inquire from Rome ! " 
 hinting thereby that he accepted a discipline, not a creed. 
 Many conversions of poets and novelists savour of dilettantism 
 and drawing-room devoutness. The religion of these converts 
 is a kind of modernised Franciscanism, with no small mixture 
 of sensuousness and frivolity. The real and enduring power of 
 the Roman Church rests not on such brilliant and self-advertis- 
 ing recruits, but on the great and silent mass of the faithful 
 who strain every nerve and faculty to support a Church now 
 abandoned to her own resources by the State. 
 
 97. Down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, the 
 missionaries of the Gospel were, for the most part, Catholics ; 
 since this period the Protestant sects, more particularly those 
 of England and the United States, have shown even greater 
 activity. The sums now spent by Protestants and Catholics in 
 non-Christian countries must be counted by tens of millions. 
 They are applied to the construction and maintenance of 
 churches, schools, training colleges and hospitals, and to the 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 203 
 
 distribution of Bibles and catechisms in all tongues. It cannot 
 be said that this money is always well spent. No praise can be 
 too great for the courage and self-denial of certain missionaries, 
 the labours of a Livingstone or a Hue, which have benefited 
 both the cause of civilisation and that of science ; thousands of 
 obscure heroes have fallen in like manner on the field of honour, 
 victims of disease and often of cruel tortures. But in too many 
 cases the indiscreet zeal of missionaries, their interference in the 
 home affairs of States, their national and denominational 
 rivalries, have brought discredit upon their work. In China, 
 more especially, the protection they give to their converts, often 
 the dregs of the population, is largely responsible for the native 
 abhorrence of foreigners. 
 
 98. The centre of the Catholic missions is the Roman con- 
 gregation of the Propaganda {De Propaganda fide) ; its most 
 important branch was, up to our time (1922), the Societe de 
 Saint-Xavier at Lyons, which dispensed an annual budget of 
 7,000,000 francs (^^280,000). A French society, called the 
 Sainte-Enfance (1843), has spent nearly 80,000,000 francs 
 (i^3,200,000) in a half-century to ensure the baptism of 
 heathen children at the point of death ; China has been the 
 chief beneficiary of this extravagance. The Protestant missions, 
 English and American, spend about -^2, 400,000 a year ; Pro- 
 testant Germany contributes about i?240,000 to the same 
 cause, France and Switzerland together about c£40,000. The 
 Russian Church has missionaries in Siberia ; Buddhism sends its 
 emissaries into the Far East, and Islam proselytises mainly 
 among the negroes of Africa, where it has made rapid progress 
 within the last sixty or seventy years. 
 
 99. Following the example of Jesus in Israel, the Church 
 has also organised missions to convert the " heathen at home," 
 criminals, infidels, and ignorant persons. This was one of the 
 favourite ideas of St. Vincent de Paul. As the tempoi'al sword 
 was blunted in the nineteenth century, these missions have per- 
 force become civilising and charitable undertakings, especially in 
 Protestant countries, where the religious orders which carry on 
 the work in other lands are lacking. Germany reveres the pastor 
 Bodelschwingh (1831-1910), who founded many charities for 
 
204 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the sick, labour colonies, asylums and workmen's dwellings. 
 But no efforts in this direction have equalled those of the 
 Salvation Army (the name dates from 1878 only), founded in 
 London in 1872 by the Reverend William Booth. This charity, 
 Avhich is organised on a purely military model, and is not afraid 
 of advertisement even of the noisiest kind, has done an immense 
 amount of good, both in England and abroad. " General " 
 Booth and his wife remain popular figures throughout the 
 world. To procure the funds necessary for its far-reaching 
 benevolence, the Salvation Army has become a manufacturing, 
 commercial and agricultural enterprise ; it undertakes banking 
 and insurance, and extends its influence and its relations every- 
 where. Originally an off-shoot of Methodism, it has gradually 
 lost its sectarian character, to concentrate its efforts upon the 
 elevation of the masses ; the spirit which now inspires it is 
 essentially philanthropical. Some critics have found fault with 
 its Socialist tendencies, others with its abuse of advertisement 
 and its buffoonery ; but the work it has done and is still doing 
 in the slums of London and New York is enough to command 
 gratitude and respect for it. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 100. It may be asked whether moral progress or the in- 
 fluence of Christianity was the determining factor in the 
 abolition of slavery, that blot upon antiquity which had come 
 down to the nineteenth century. No doubt the two influences 
 were at work side by side ; but in justice we must not forget 
 that the Book of Deuteronomy (xv. 14 ; xxiii. 16) bears witness 
 to a touching solicitude for slaves, that the Jewish Essenes and 
 Therapeutists alone in the civilised world of antiquity refused 
 to keep slaves, and that the Primitive Church looked upon 
 slaves as brothers — spiritu fratres, relig'ione C07iservi, as Lac- 
 tantius says in imitation of Seneca.^ She facilitated enfranchise- 
 ment and reckoned it among good works. Although she 
 made no direct attempt to abolish slavery, and even herself 
 owned slaves in the Middle Ages, she made great efforts 
 to redeem the Christian slaves of the Musulmans, and when 
 the conquest of America introduced negro slaves into the 
 
 ^ Lactantius, List. v. 15, 3 (written about a.d, 300). 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 205 
 
 Continent, she did her utmost to improve their condition. 
 " The Christian principle," as Paul Viollet truly says, " slowly 
 struck at the heart of slavery." 
 
 101. In the twelfth century, slavery tended to disappear in 
 the North-West of Europe, but serfdom survived in France 
 until the eighteenth. In the South and the East, slavery 
 persisted much longer, as a result of contact with Islam ; the 
 Crusaders even had Greek Christians as slaves. The restoration 
 of Roman law, and the sanction of Aristotle — who considered 
 slave-holding a natural right — were obstacles to the reform for 
 which Eastern monks had prepared the way in the fifth century. 
 There were Saracen slaves at the Papal Court in the fifteenth 
 century, and in 1548 Paul III. confirmed the rights of laity and 
 clergy to own them. The importation of negro slaves to 
 Portugal began in 1442 ; in 1454, this traffic was endorsed by 
 Nicholas V. In the New World, the Spaniards and the 
 Portuo-uese reduced the natives to a state more terrible than 
 slavery ; they died by hundreds as a result of forced labour 
 in the mines. The Dominican, Bartolomeo de Las Casas, sought 
 to save them by advising the importation of negroes. His 
 counsel was followed, and at the end of his life he repented 
 it, realising too late that the negroes were men as well as the 
 Indians. The traffic in negroes became a very profitable trade, 
 entailing horrible cruelty, both in Africa and America. By the 
 year 1790, there were 200,000 negroes in Virginia alone. The 
 economic rivalry between North and South played a part in the 
 Abolitionist campaign, which began in the North; but the 
 Quakers of Pennsylvania, who had prohibited the slave-trade in 
 their State as early as 1696, were actuated by religious motives. 
 In 1776, the House of Commons rejected a motion of David 
 Hartley's " that the slave-trade is contrary to the laws of God 
 and the rights of man." Undaunted by this, the English 
 Quakers formed an Anti-Slavery Association in 1783; others 
 sprang up in America. Wilberforce (1759-1833), a member of 
 the House of Commons, has the honour of having effected the 
 repudiation of the traffic by England (1807), following the 
 example of Denmark, who had led the way in 1792. In France, 
 the Convention decreed the enfranchisement of slaves (1794), a 
 
206 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 measure which was repealed under the Consulate (1802). 
 Slavery did not disappear from the English colonies till 1833, 
 and from the French colonies till 1848. Its abolition in the 
 United States was only brought about by a long civil war 
 (1860-1865). The wisdom of Dom Pedro gradually delivered 
 Brazil from the evil (1871 and onwards) ; finally, a French 
 prelate, Lavigerie, threw himself with great fervour into a 
 campaign against the traffic in negro slaves for the Musulmans. 
 The Anti-Slavery Congress held at Brussels in 1889 also took 
 measures in this connection, which have proved more or less 
 futile. We must unfortunately add that certain forms of 
 slavery, notably the forced labour of the blacks, still obtain in 
 the European colonies of Africa, and that the Chinese coolies 
 are often treated like slaves where they are employed in mines 
 c on public works. In this long struggle against an execrable 
 custom, the part played by the Catholic clergy has been, on 
 the whole, less prominent than that of the Protestant Churches. 
 
 102. It was not generally recognised by the society of the 
 eighteenth century that religions, and even superstitions, 
 are conservative forces. The French Revolution opened its 
 eyes. Society did not become religious, but it pretended to 
 do so ; it desired that women, children, and the poor should be 
 disciplined and tempered by faith. This is the hypocrisy 
 denounced afresh by Leo Tolstoy on the day of his Jubilee 
 (July, 1908): "The infamous lie of a religion in which we do 
 not believe ourselves, but which we forcibly impose on others," 
 This lie filled the nineteenth century, and has survived it. The 
 French University, by nature liberal, was long obliged to pay 
 homage to it, notably in the teaching of the so-called spiritualist 
 philosophy, a Christianity without dogmas, but not without 
 theological prejudices. Sainte-Beuve remarked playfully that 
 whereas the bishops spoke of the IIoIt/ Scriptures, Victor 
 Cousin said the most Holfj Scriptures. What is known as 
 "Society" has been the greatest offender in this respect; 
 seconded by the middle-class infirmity of snobbery, it has con- 
 strained its members either to adopt the conventional falsehood, 
 or to keep silence. Throughout the reign of Queen Victoria, 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 207 
 
 England set the example of this insincerity ; free-thought was 
 considered disreputable. But nowhere has the tyrannical power 
 of the so-called upper classes, coalescing to stifle truth in favour 
 of a clerical faction, manifested itself more painfully than in 
 France, at the time of the Dreyfus affair, when the revision of a 
 trial in which all the evidence was in favour of the right was 
 resisted by the Jesuits and nearly all the French clergy at their 
 commands, and divided all France into two hostile camps. No 
 one could belong to " Society " and retain his place in it if he 
 would not voluntarily shut his eyes to the truth, and take the 
 part of Jesuitism against justice. Even in the literary world 
 there were examples of lamentable weakness which had not 
 even the excuse of religious conviction. The Esau of the 
 Scriptures sold his birthright for a mess of pottage ; our 
 iin-de-siecle Trissotins bartered their right of judgment for 
 truffles. 
 
 103. Amidst all these shades of hypocrisy, and all the 
 honourable bonds of tradition and habit, it is impossible to 
 determine, even after long investigation, in what measure 
 religion still retains its hold upon the souls of our con- 
 temporaries. How are we to distinguish those who conform 
 without believing from those who believe without professing 
 conformity .? But a general fact, which was already perceptible 
 towards the middle of the nineteenth century, becomes more 
 and more apparent in our days. In the time of Voltaire, free- 
 thought lighted up the summits only ; it did not descend 
 into the depths. In the nineteenth century, the leisured 
 classes professed without believing ; the workers, in the towns 
 at least, ceased to believe and dared to say so. The working 
 classes are everywhere escaping from the authority of the 
 Chuix'hes ; even the peasants are emancipating themselves. 
 Musset's apostrophe to Voltaire is being verified : 
 
 Ton si^cle ^tait, dit-on, trop jeune pour te lire : 
 
 Le notre doit te plaire, et tes homines sont ues. . . . 
 
 But as free-thought, without the support of solid knowledge, is 
 only an inverted dogmatism, leaving the field open to other 
 attacks upon the reason, one of the most pressing duties of the 
 
208 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 twentieth century is to fortify the reason by study, with a view 
 to the cahn and dehberate exercise of free-thought. 
 
 104. Rehgious instruction, which exists in ahnost every 
 country in Europe, has been suppressed in French schools, those 
 "schools without God," as their detractors call them. And 
 further, it has been impressed upon the teachers in the name of 
 " scholastic neutrality "" that they are never to speak of religion 
 to their pupils. This silence is sensible enough in the elemen- 
 tary schools, where the minds of children are not sufficiently 
 cultivated to receive scientific knowledge. But the adolescent 
 pupils of the colleges and higher schools know nothing of the 
 Pentateuch, the Prophets and the Gospels, the origin and the 
 evolution of dogmas, save the historical errors taught in 
 the catechisms, or the equally pernicious absurdities dear to the 
 free-thinking orator of the wine-shop. In Protestant countries 
 the Scriptural texts are better known, but those who read do 
 not, as a rule, understand them, and criticism of them is 
 reserved for scholars. Thus practised, " scholastic neutrality " 
 is at once a neglect of duty on the part of the State as in- 
 structor, and an abdication of its powers in favour of those 
 who propagate error. Not only in France, but throughout the 
 world, the salvation of thinking humanity must be sought in 
 education, and if there is one duty more imperative than 
 another laid upon secondary education, it is to teach young 
 men, the future fathers of families, wherein religions consist, 
 when and how they have met a universal want, what indis- 
 putable services they have rendered, but also how past 
 generations have suffered from ignorance and fanaticism, on 
 what literary frauds the domination of the Church was estab- 
 lished in the Middle Ages, and finally, what a consoling 
 prospect the ultimate reign of reason and the enfranchisement 
 of thought opens out before the human mind. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 General sources the same as for Chapter III. 
 
 1. A. Lorand, L'^tat et les jSglises (constitutional texts regulating their 
 relations in the different countries), Brussels, 1904. 
 
 2. H. Br^mond, Hist. litt. dii, sentiment reiigieux in France, vol. iv. , 1920. 
 3-4. In general, see Lanson, Histoire de la litt&ature frai^aise, 1894. — On 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 209 
 
 isyb. on J J. Rousseau, L. Ducros, 3 vols., 1918 i' ouainanisme, 
 
 prolan ct:j^tZB\^^,^::iYuS^ ^^^ ^'^^^-•^-' ^^ 
 
 7. Peyrat, La Mvohition, 1866. 
 
 8. R. Allier, Voliairc et Galas, 1898. 
 !?■ 'f ^heiner, (?j^cAic;i<c cZc5 Pontifikats Klnnens XIV., 2 vols 1852 
 
 . 12. E. Chenon, Z'^^fee et la Revolution, U^nlise som leCoZvlnWn'w ■ 
 in Lavsse and Ranibaud's ITistoire genM, vols vii and irgnfiV-^-^"''' 
 
 1911 ; Champion, S^a^^.'^e^^'^27^:^^'t70r Sos'Tr? 
 
 Id Au ard, Ze C?«Z^c f^c Z« liaison et de VEtre Suvrtme ISQc • Po'f r 
 premiere separation, 1920. '^ujmvie, liH)2 ; Patry, Za 
 
 16' N 5Jfn^^;i'/"^^^"^,^f«'^^^'-^i^^'^. 1904; Annales r6vol. , 1921, p 441 
 17 T n 7^ The Story of the Scottish Church, 1919 1^" 
 
 Mennonites, 1920 ^' ^ "' *"• Henry Smith, The 
 
 /r..^;Tn Hauck. ^'"''' ^"''^'^ '"^ ^^^^■^^^^■*"^' ^ vols., 1878; art. Darly and 
 
 ^ _^^- A. M^jor, Af. mdyet la Science chrmenne IQlo lu r< • ^7 • • 
 -S«.«<:., in the Siiddeutsche 3fonatshefte June mi' ^^^^•~^- ^^'^^^' Christian 
 
 26 Art' ^Tr&iT^'S'' T Hastings, EncycL of Religion, vol. i. (1908) 
 -7-34. Art. R2tualismus, Traktarianismus Newvian Pi/ieu in TTo„.i r. 
 
 Manning, mi; Shane Le'l'ie, Tnie subj^^t Ig^l " A ^G^n'^t 't''''^"^ 
 34 trV/ ''^- '''"^^' / ^'^^^'^''^' 1899- -^i 'cMcm;ecl% '{T^ 
 
 Burton!' rt%'7^lTJ^8''6r?wiV)'^f ^'•'^^^^ ^-5~-> 1912; 
 
 38. k. Ritter! taierZep'h!/ mf- b'TI'' V^' ''^K''^' 
 1909; Pirenne, hst. de AlgFque Wv iSq ' ^'■^"""''^ '^'''P^ ^^•' 
 
 39. Art. rte^ermcA in Hauck '' 
 
 ^ ^-"iitl'^OnSn^^^^^ ^^«1- i:.1907; vol. ii., 1909; Pisani, 
 
 42. Art. ^rui;.. in HkSk ^ "'"' ^'"'^"'^ ^«^«^^^^-s, 1921. 
 
 l?'^?^^^^l'.;^' ^%'etoire (in ZTw^. .>< iJ^Zi^fow, p. 153). 
 44-45. Matthieu, Le Concordat IQns f^f Tf-.Lu i ' t 
 
 p. 96); Welschinger, LeZeet SJ^L Too? V '''• '^ -n '^'^"^•,P0*' 
 romaine et V Empire, 3rd ed 5 vols K nl^?? ' ^^"^^^^yiHe. X'^^^i^g 
 
 46. Brosct OtKhKhl, <ks KinhtnstaM,, vol. ii 1881 R,„l„ n,- - 
 f^.<«, v„,. „,, ,874 (English translation,; Sti'La", Vie S f/'/^ 
 
 K vio,,.t, rv...„s- KSC^ro4r!!Sctift.™sSi,:s 
 
210 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 (Immaculate Conception) and Vatikanischcs Konzil. — Prince Jerome Napoleon, 
 Les alliaiicts de V Empire (in Revue des Deux Mondes, April 1, 1878). 
 
 49. J. de Maistre (Ste.-Beuve, Portr. lift., vol. ii. p. 379, and Lundis, 
 vol. iv, p. 150). — Bonald {Lundis, vol. iv. p. 328). — Veuillot (Nouveaux Lundis, 
 vol. i. p. 42). — On the Action fran^aise and the Catholic atheism of some of 
 its adherents : I). Pai'odi, Pages Litres, May 30 and June 6, 1908. — The verses 
 by V. Hugo quoted are in Les Chdtiments. 
 
 50. Ch. Boulard, Lamennais, 1905. — Lacordaire (Ste.-Beuve, Lundis, vol. i., 
 p. 208, and Nouv. Lundis, vol. iv. p. 392). — Montalembert {Lundis, vol. i., 
 p. 74 ; Peyrat, Hist, et Religion, 1858, p. 86) ; G. Weill, Hist, dii catholicismc 
 liberal en France, 1909. There are full bibliographies in Hauck's articles. 
 
 51. Marc Sangnier, CUricalisvie ct d6mocratie, 1907. — Condemnation of Le 
 Billon by the bishops : Revue du eUrgi, March 1909. — On the Sillon, see Pages 
 Libres, April 24, 1909. — Italian social modernism : A. della Torre, appendix to 
 the Italian version of Orjiheus, vol. ii. p. 1013. 
 
 52-53. E. Daudet, La Terreur blanche, 1887; G. de Grandmaison, La 
 Congregation (1801-1830), 1889 ; A. Bardoux, Le comte de Montlosier et le 
 gallicanisme, 1891. 
 
 54. Thureau-Dangin, L'^ylise et VMat sous la monarchic de Juillet, 1880 ; 
 Colani, Le jMrti catholique sons la monarchic de Juillet (in Etudes de critique, 
 p. 137) ; H. Michel, La loi Falloux, 1905 ; F. Mouret, Le Mouvement cathol. en 
 ifVa:?2/^e (1830-1850), 1917. 
 
 55. See the histories of the Second Empire by Taxile Delord and P. de la 
 Gorce. — E. Bourgeois and E. Clermont, Rome et Na-poUon III., 1907. 
 
 56. A. Debidour, L'^glise catholique et I'^tat sous le troisiemc Ripublique, 
 2 vols., 1906-1909.— P. Cloche, Le seize mai (in Pages Libres, October 10, 1908). 
 
 57-59. J. Reinach, Histoire de V affaire Dreijjus, 7 vols., 1901-1911 ; T. R., 
 art. Dreyfus in the Jewish Encycl. — L. Chaine, Les cathol. franrais et leurs 
 difficultes actuelles, 1903 (confessions of a Lyonese Catholic on the ugly part 
 played by the Church during the crisis) ; Anat. France, Le parti noir 
 (Brussels), 1905 ; Fred. Conybeare, Roman Catholicism, 1901. — P. Sabatier, 
 Siparation des Sglises et de I'^tat, 1905 ; Russacq, Apres la Separation (in Pages 
 Libres, September 28, 1907) ; Eth. Taunton, The Holy See and France (in 
 Nineteenth Century, March 1906, p. 495). — C Coignet, Le protestantisme 
 ^ran/^is au XIX' siecle, 1908 ; T. Bricout, Les ^glises riformies de France (in 
 Rev. du clergi, 1908, pp. 156, 268) ; H. Kuss, Constitution des Assoc. cuUuelles 
 des ^glises riformies en France, 1907. 
 
 60. Wceste, Histoire du Kulturkampf en Suisse, 1887. 
 
 61-66. Art. Jesuitenordeyi in Hauck. 
 
 67-70. Art. Altcatholicismus, DoUinger and Ultramontanismus in Hauck ; 
 J. F. Schulte, Dollinger, 3 vols., 1901.— On the Kulturkampf : C. Goyau, 
 UAllemagnc religieuse, le Catholicisme, 4 vols., 1905-1908 ; L. de Behaine, I^ion 
 XIII. et Bismarck, 1898. — A. Houtin, La question bihlique au XX' siecle, 1906 ; 
 La arise du clergi, 1907 ; Le Pere Hyacinthe, 2 vols. , 1920, 1922.— D'Avenel, Rev. 
 des Deux Mondes, August 19, 1921.— J. Bournichon, Le Compagnie de J6sus en 
 France, 1921 ; M. Charny, Cahiers des Droits de I'Homme, June 25, 1922. 
 
 70-76. P. Parfait, L'arsenal de la dSvotion, 9th ed., 1879 ; Le dossier des 
 pelerinages, 4th ed., 1879; La /aire aux reliques, 1879; Colani, Essais,Tp. 123; 
 G. T^ry, Les cordicoles, 1902; art. Herz Jezu in Hauck. 
 
 77-80. Lea, Inquis. of Spain, vol. iv. p. 2 et seq. : R. P. Rolfi, La magie 
 moderne, 1902; D. P. Abbott, Behind the Scenes with the Mediums, 1908; 
 Thulie, PMnomenes mystiques (in Rev. mensuelle d'anthrop., October 1908); 
 L. Wintrebert, L'occuUisme (in Revue du elcrgi, August, 1, 1908, p. 327) ; cf. 
 art. Magic in Hauck.— On Neo-Buddhism : Barth, Rev. Hist. Relig. 1902, 
 vol. xlv. p. 346; art. Blavatzky and Theosophy in Brit. Encycl.— E. Ca,TO, 
 Saint Martin, 1862.— E. Bersot, Mesmer, 1853.— G. Ballet, Swedenborg, 1902; 
 G. Trobridge, Swedenborg, 1907. 
 
 81. Rob. Freke Gould, Concise History of Freemasonry, 1887.— Vauthier, 
 Rev. Univ. de Brux., November 1908, p. 134.— Art. Freimaurer, in Hauck. 
 
 83. Lea, Ldo Taxil, Diana Vaughan and the Roman Church, 1901. 
 
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA TO MODERNISM 211 
 
 86. G. Weil, VlScole Saint- Simonienne, 1896 ; Li^vy-Bruhl, Philos. (VAuguste 
 Comle, 1899 ; G. Dumas, Psychologie de Deux Messies positivitcs (Saint-Simon 
 and Comte), 1905. — Positivist calendar: Morley, Critical Miscellanies, vol. iv. , 
 1908. — H. Bourgin, Fourier, 1907. — On the anti-military ideas of the early 
 Christians : Harnack, Militia Christi, 1905 ; P. Gerosa, S. Agostino e la, 
 decadenza dell' Impero, 1916. 
 
 88. Schleiermacher, Redenuber Religion, 1800. — A. Otto, Fr. Schleiermacher, 
 1899 ; art. SchUierinacher, in Haiick ; A. Neander, General History of the 
 Christian Religion and Church, Engl, ed., 1853 (coll. Bohn); art. Neander, in 
 Hauck; Hegel, Vorlesungen ilher die Philosophie der Religion, 1832. — See also 
 art. Tiibinger SchuU (School of Tiibingen) in Hauck. 
 
 89. Edm. Scherer, Alex. Vinet, 1853. 
 
 90. Houtin, V AmSricanisme, 1903; S. Reinach, Cultes, vol. iii. p. 510; 
 Marcel Hebert, Le Pragmatisme, 1908; L. Stein, PhilosDphische Str&iiiungen, 
 1908, p. 37 ct seq. ; Edinburgh Revieu\ April 1909 (Pragmatism). 
 
 91. Guignebert, Modernisme ct tradition catholique, 1907; A. Houtin, La 
 crise du clerg6, 1907 ; La question biblique au XX' siecle, 1906 ; La q. bibl, au 
 XIX' sikle, 1902; VapostoliciU des J^glises de France, 3rd ed., 1903; Eist. du 
 modernisme, 1913. — Evolution in theology : S. Reinach, Cultes, vol. i. p. 410 ; 
 Bricout, Le cUveloppement da dogmc (in Revue du clerg^, April 15, 1908, p. 150). — 
 Works of the Abb6 Loisy : L'Evangile el V&glise, 1902 (in answer to Harnack, 
 Das Wcsen des Christentums, 1900) ; Autour d'lcn petit livre, 1903 ; Quelques 
 ettres and Simp Us rdflexiovs, 1908. 
 
 On Strausss, Reuss and M. Nicolas, see the articles in Hauck's Encycl. — 
 On Nicolas, see also E. Stapfer, in Etudet de thdologie, 1901, p. 153. — On 
 Renan: Seailles, Ernest Rcnan, 2nd ed., 1895. — On the syllabus Lamentabili, 
 see Paiges Libres, August 10, 1907. 
 
 92. Modernism in England and Germany : Revue dit clerqi, March 1909, 
 p. 541, 678.— M. Petre, Life of G. Tyrrell, 1912 (d. July 1909). 
 
 93. On Cardinal Billot : E. Perrin, Rev. hist. litt. rel., 1921, p. 319. 
 
 95. M. Hebert, U iSvolution de lafoi catholique, 1905, p. 132 et seq. 
 
 96. Converts : Huby, Lcs Etudes, May 20, 1918 ; S. Reinach, Revue sud- 
 amiricaine, May 1914. 
 
 97. Art. Mission in Hauck ; J. B. Piolet, Les missions catholiques, 6 vols., 
 1902; Louvety, Les miss, cathol. au XIX' siecle, 1898; R. AUier, Les troubles 
 en Chine et les missions, 1901 ; J. Feillet, Mccristes et Canaqucs (Brussels), 
 1906. 
 
 97. M. Goyau, L'Alle-magne religieuse, le protestantisme, 1898 ; Le catho- 
 licisme (1800-1870), 4 vols., 1905-1908.— Art. Heilsarmee (Salvation Army) 
 in Hauck ; Les J^tudes, August 20, p. 1920 (Booth). 
 
 100. Lea, The Church and Slavery (in Studies in Church History, p. 524. — 
 Zadok Kahn, L'Esclavage selon la Bible et le Talmud, 1867. — Art. Slavery in 
 Encycl. Brit. ; art. Sklaverei und Chrisientum in Hauck. 
 
 101-102. See Colani's Etudes, which are full of judicious observations on 
 these questions, notably the essays on the Bible, and on the revival of the 
 Catholic party among the middle classes in the reign of Louis Philippe. 
 
 104. See on "Scholastic Neutrality" G. hsinson, Revue Bleue, April-May, 
 1905. 
 
 P 2 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 Established Churches played a very small part in the great 
 world-war (1914-1918). No doubt, the chief offenders, Austrian 
 and Prussian nobles, were Lutheran Pietists or Roman Catholics ; 
 but their crime was a result of their greed, not of their creed. 
 The various religions afforded solace to millions of broken hearts 
 and broken limbs ; they stimulated charitable work ; but patriot- 
 ism and love of humanity did just the same. Religions, as such, 
 remained powerless. Vainly did the Khalif proclaim the sacred 
 war: Arab Musulmans fought by the side of the British to 
 conquer Jerusalem (1918). The Orthodox Church of Russia, 
 enslaved by despotism, was no element of strength to be 
 reckoned with, and collapsed miserably in the short struggle 
 against miscreant Bolshevism. Even the Japanese SUjUo was 
 made subservient to a clever policy of " wait and see."" 
 
 If established religions stood aloof, some sort of religion 
 did not. Christianity is a universal religion, regardless of 
 nations and frontiers ; Rousseau even thought that it was 
 directly antagonistic to patriotism. In the beginning of the 
 twentieth century, decaying creeds had tried, like Paganism in 
 the fourth century, to identify themselves with patriotism ; it 
 was generally said, though not believed, that a true Frenchman 
 should be Roman Catholic, a true Russian should be Orthodox, 
 &c. When the war began and shook the nerves of the nations, 
 patriotism at once imbibed the spirit, energy and intolerance 
 of religions. National saints, like St. George and Joan of Arc, 
 came to the fore ; in Germany, the " German God," repeatedly 
 appealed to by William II., was not the Christian God, but the 
 Odin or Thor of Norse mythology.^ If Islam seemed to break 
 
 1 On the religious chai-acter of Germanism, see Rev, hist., cxxiv. p. 130. 
 
 212 
 
EPILOGUE 213 
 
 down, patriotic Panislamism and Turkish nationalism took its 
 place. The greater number of the Jews rallied around the flag 
 of Zionism, not a form of religious Judaism, but a new religion 
 founded on the misconception of race. In those days of strife 
 and hatred between groups of nations, internationalism was 
 looked upon with the same suspicion and ire as would have been 
 free-thought in the time of the Crusades. 
 
 Superstitions of the grossest sort and childish legends — such 
 as that of guardian angels protecting the British retreat from 
 Mons — flourished both in the armies and among distressed 
 civilians. Soothsayers never had better opportunities ; prophets 
 found audiences ; amulets were sold by the million ; ^ the 
 absurdities of occultism and spiritualism spread like prairie 
 fires. Superstitions are older than religions ; they are often 
 disciplined and purified by these ; they run wild when religions 
 decline. Belief or disbelief in accepted creeds is a thousand times 
 more attractive and attainable than rationalism, and therefore 
 much more frequent in our day. 
 
 One great spiritual power remained, which could have 
 interposed to prevent the outbreak of the war. But Pius X. 
 vainly bade his Nuncio admonish the Austrian Emperor; he 
 failed even to get a hearing from that well-guarded old imbecile. 
 The next Pope, Benedict XV., had to reckon with a majority of 
 pro-German cardinals, with the hatred of the monastic Orders 
 for " persecuting " France, with the aristocratic leaning towards 
 mdhority which, in many Catholic countries, such as Spain,^ 
 gained sympathy for the German cause. He strove to remain 
 strictly neutral. He spoke words of solace to Belgium, but not 
 one word of reproof to the invaders, murderers and burglars 
 though they were ; he protested against new and abominable 
 methods of warfare, but did not condemn those who first resorted 
 to them ; he ordered prayers for peace, peace without victory, 
 but disregarded the responsibilities incurred by the aggressors 
 and the legitimate demands of the oppressed.^ The time came 
 when truly Christian words about the infamy of the war and 
 
 ^ Bellucci, Folklore di guerra, 1920. 
 
 * F. Girerd, Spain during the ivar, in Revue da cleiye, February 1917. 
 ^ Anonymous, La politique de Benoit XV., in Revue de Paris, October 15, 
 1918 ; Glorieux, Benoit XV. et la guerre, in Revue du derge, August 1, 1916. 
 
214 EPILOGUE 
 
 hopes for the advent of a better era were uttered only by the 
 Protestant professor, President Wilson, whom Loisy, lecturing 
 at the College de France, called " the Pope of humanity." 
 
 Perilous as it was, because over-cautious, the Roman Pope's 
 policy was not unsuccessful. He had disappointed many expec- 
 tations, but wounded no susceptibilities. His charity, if not his 
 judgment, had been impartial. When the German star declined, 
 Benedict found good words for his "dear France " ; the French 
 national heroine, Joan of Arc, was canonised (1920) ; diplomatic 
 relations were renewed betweeii France and the Holy See (1921) ; 
 the Italian Government was no longer held in suspicion, and 
 Benedict's successor, Pius XI. (February 1922), received official 
 Italian honours when he ascended the throne. 
 
 The prospects of Catholicism are now indeed very bright. 
 Two new independent States that are Catholic, Poland and 
 Hungary, stand in close contact with the schismatic Slavs, who 
 may be induced to reunite. Syria and Palestine are under Chris- 
 tian rule, widely open to Catholic teaching and proselytism. 
 Catholicism remains all-powerful in Austria and in western 
 Germany. France, having recovered Alsace-Lorraine, where 
 Catholic traditions prevail, and occupied the left banks of the 
 Rhine, has been obliged to modify her policy of ignoring the 
 Church. The Catholic part of Ireland has become practically 
 independent (December 1921). In Great Britain itself, the 
 religious Orders and their schools have risen to great prosperity. 
 In the United States, the Church of Rome is more influential 
 than ever; a Catholic union, the Knights of Columbus, have 
 made themselves conspicuous in peace and in war. 
 
 But that is not all. In our revolutionary days, a great and 
 very ancient authority is an element of stability not to be 
 despised. Russian Bolshevism has terrified the better classes all 
 over the world.^ Even agnostics reverence a power which may 
 avert similar collapses of civilisation.^ This does not mean nor 
 foreshadow a truly religious revival, though there are symptoms 
 of such a revival in Russia ; but it does mean for all Churches, 
 and especially for the well-organised Roman Church, a renewal 
 
 * Marc Slonim, Le Bolchivisme, 1921. 
 
 * See Leg Etudes, August 5, 1921. 
 
EPILOGUE 215 
 
 of past influence in politics. Empires and kingdoms have 
 crumbled to dust; the "servant of God's servants'' in the 
 Vatican, having survived them all, and teaching a better lesson 
 than theirs, has at least a chance of being recognised once 
 more as one of the solid pillars of this shaken world. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Ab^lard, 81, 94 
 
 Acilius Glabrio, 45 
 
 Acts of the Apostles, 2-3 ; date of, 26 ; 
 apocryphal Acts, 26-7 
 
 Adrian I, Pope, 68 
 
 IV, Pope, 72 
 
 Albertua Magnus, 94 
 
 Albigenses, 73, 92, 97 ; and see Cathari 
 
 Alexandria Church, 52, 102 
 
 Alfonso of Liguori, 182 
 
 Alva, Duke of, 125. 
 
 Amboise, conspiracy of, 130 
 
 Ambrose, St., 58-9 
 
 America : Moravian influence in, 96 ; 
 bigotry in (eighteenth century), 
 101 ; Catholicism in, 122, 166, 214 ; 
 French Protestants and Quakers in, 
 127-8; the Inquisition in, 146-7; 
 Baptists, Methodists, and Plymouth 
 Brethren in, 159-61 ; Jesuits in, 183 ; 
 polygamy forbidden in, 167 ; reli- 
 gious liberty in, 166 
 
 Americanism, 197-8 
 
 Anabaptists, 113-14, 117 
 
 Anglican Church : Edward VI's Prayer 
 Book, 118; in the Commonwealth 
 and Stuart period, 126-7 ; the Wes- 
 leyan rupture, 160 ; in eaily nine- 
 teenth century, 162 ; the Ritualistic 
 party, 163-5 ; their attitude to the 
 Roman Church, 124 ; relations with 
 the Orthodox Church, 103 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, 64, 161-2 
 
 Anselm, Archbishop, 93 
 
 Antichrist, 35-6 
 
 Antioch, 52 
 
 Antonelli, Cardinal, 172 srq. 
 
 Apocalypse, The, 2-3, 31-2 ; St. 
 Peter's, 2 
 
 ApoUos, 41, 43 
 
 Arab Empire, 64 
 
 Arianism, 53-4, 58 
 
 Aristotle, 93 
 
 Armenians, 102 
 
 Arminians, 125 
 
 Arnaud, Henri, 92 
 
 Arnaulds, 140-2 
 
 Arnold of Brescia, 90 
 
 Art in the Church, 89 
 
 Asia, Central, 65 
 
 217 
 
 Assumption, Feast of the, 81 
 
 Athanasian Creed, 54 
 
 Atheism : denial of Roman gods, 45 ; 
 free thought in seventeenth century, 
 139 ; in eighteenth century, 158 
 
 Atonement doctrine, 93 
 
 Augustine, St., and his teaching, 11 
 and note \ 121 ; literary campaign 
 against the Donatista, 51, 55 and 
 note^ ; the Jansenist controversy, 
 140-1 ; Luther's attitude to his doc- 
 trine, 111 ; cited on Purgatory, 56 
 
 Augustine the Monk, 64 
 
 Augustinians, 110 
 
 Austria, 123 ; the Thirty Years' War, 
 128 ; Catholic re-action and Pro- 
 testantism in (eighteenth century), 
 168; Los von Rom movement (nine- 
 teenth century), 168-9 ; the Jesuits 
 in, 182-3 
 
 Avenir, L', 175 
 
 Avignon, 74, 171 
 
 Bacon, Roger, 94 
 
 Baptismal rites, 90, 102, 167 
 
 Baptists, 159 and note ; and see Ana- 
 baptists 
 
 Barabbas, 19 
 
 Barlaam and Joasaph, 78 
 
 Barnabas, St., 41 
 
 Basil, St., 58 
 
 Basle, Council of, 75 
 
 Bayle, 139 
 
 Becket, Thomas a, 72 
 
 Benedict XV, Pope, 213-14 
 
 Benedict, St., 51 
 
 Benedictines, attitude of, to Jesuits, 
 123 ; to Pilgrimages, 187 ; erudition 
 of, at St. Maur, 138 ; and see Moimsti- 
 cism 
 
 Bernard, St., 76 ; quoted, 93 
 
 Beziers, 91 
 
 Bible, Cyril's translation of, 65 ; 
 Erasmus' of N.T., 95 ; Wyclit's, 95; 
 Luther's, 111 ; see also Scriptures 
 
 Bishops, 33, 43, 97, 124; in Eastern 
 Church, 103-4 
 
 Bismarck, Prince, 184 
 
 Black Pope, the, 182 
 
 Blondel, 69 
 
218 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bohemia, 65, 96 
 
 Boileau's epitaph on Arnaiul, 142 
 
 Bollandists, 186 
 
 Bolshevism, 104, 212, 214 
 
 Bonald, 174 
 
 Boniface, St., 64 
 
 VIII, Pope, 70 
 
 Bora, Catherine, 112 
 
 Bossuet, 141, 144; cited 101 7io(e*; 
 
 quoted, 137 
 Bouillon, Godfrey de, 66-7 
 Boulanger, General, 178 
 Bridget, St., 79, 82 
 Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament, 
 
 121 
 Brueys, Pierre de, 91 
 Buddhism, 78, 90; Neo-Buddhists, 
 
 191-2 
 Bulgaria, 65, 103 
 Bunyan, John, 159 7io(e 
 Byzantium, 102 
 
 Calas, 155 
 
 Calixtenes, 84, 96 
 
 Calvinism: 115-16, 119-20, 140; 
 eucharistic doctrine of, 110 ; in Eng- 
 land and Scotland, 159, 162 
 
 Camalduli, Order of, 75 
 
 Camisards, 135 
 
 Canon of the Church, 2, 27 seq., 48 
 
 Canonisation, 83 ; no provision for, in 
 Eastern Church, 104 
 
 Carcassonne, 91 
 
 Carlstadt, 112 
 
 Carmelites, Order of, 76 
 
 Carthusians, Order of, 76 ; attitude to 
 Jesuits, 123 
 
 Casuistry, 121 
 
 Cathari, 78, 90 
 
 Catherine of Siena, St., 79, 82 
 
 Catholic Apostolic Church (Irvingites), 
 161 
 
 Institute of Paris, 198-9 
 
 Celibacy of the Priesthood: 44, 52; 
 influence on the Roman Church, 87 ; 
 not enforced in the Eastern Church, 
 103; "Luther's door," 112 
 
 Celsus, True Discourse " by, 46 
 
 Cenobites, 51 
 
 Cerinthus the Gnostic, 43 
 
 Charlemagne, 65, 68 
 
 Charles I, King of England, 126 
 
 II, King of England, 126-7 
 
 V, Emperor of Germany, 113- 
 
 114 
 
 IX, King of France, 131-2 
 
 Chateaubriand, 155, 174 
 China, 65, 122, 123 
 Christ, str. Jesus 
 Christian Brothers, 138 
 
 Christian Scientists, 161 
 
 Christianity, origin of, 1-2, 40-41 ; 
 as a spiritual force, 23-24 ; first 
 communities, 40 seq. ; supersedes 
 Judaism and defeats Gnosticism, 43; 
 spread and effects of, 44-5 ; lying 
 rumours concerning, 46 ; early litera- 
 ture regarding, 46-7 ; fine charac- 
 teristics of early Christians, 47 ; in 
 a privileged position under Constan- 
 tine, 49-51 ; imposed on Europe by 
 the Church, 63 ; evolution of modern 
 Christianity, 48 ; rites and festivals 
 borrowed from paganism, 52-3, 59, 
 89, 103 
 
 Christmas, 52 
 
 Chrysostom, St., 58, 59 
 
 Church, Primitive {see also Anglican, 
 Eastern, Roman), organisation of, 
 about A. D. 80, 43; becomes a govern- 
 ing body, 48 ; changes etfected in 
 fourth century, 52-3 ; Hierarchy 
 adopted, 52 ; Hellenised, 53 ; perse- 
 cutions by, 53, 55 ; growth of luxury 
 in, 59 ; the Coptic Church, 56 
 
 of Christ Scientist, 161 
 
 of Latter Day Saints, 167 
 
 of New Jerusalem, 190 
 
 Cicero, 121 
 
 Circumcelliones, 51 
 
 Cistercians, Order of, 76 
 
 Civil tribunals, bigotry of, 101 
 
 Clara, St., of Assisi, 78 
 
 Claude, Bishop of Turin, 91 
 
 Clement, Bishop of Rome, 34, 48 
 
 II, Pope, 71 
 
 X, Pope, 142 
 
 XI, Pope, 142 
 
 XIV, Pope, 156 
 
 Clermont, Council of, 67 
 
 Clotilde, 64 
 
 Clovis, 59 
 
 Cluny, Order of, 75, 86 
 
 Coligny, Adm. de, 130-1 
 
 Columba, St., 76 
 
 Comte, Auguste, 194 
 
 Conceptualists, 93 
 
 Concordat of 1516, 118, 156, 170; 
 Concordat of 1802, 170-71 ; of 1813, 
 171 
 
 Confession, auricular, 85-6 ; the con- 
 fessional box, 120 
 
 Confessors as distinguished from mar- 
 tyrs, 47 _ 
 
 Congregationalists, 124 
 
 Constance, Council of, 74-5, 139; 
 burning of John Huss, 96, 98 
 
 Constantine, Emperor, seeks support of 
 Christians, 49 ; so-called donation of 
 Italy to the Pope, 68 
 
INDEX 
 
 219 
 
 Constantinople, the seat of the Empire, 
 53 ; Church of St. Sophia, 59, 66 ; 
 the Latin Empire of, 68 
 
 , the Patriarch of, 102-3 
 
 , Council of, 54 
 
 Convents, morality in, 76 
 
 Coptic Church, the, 56 
 
 Corporation and Test Acts, 162 
 
 Cranmer, Archbishop, 117 
 
 Creeds, 54 ; and see Symbols 
 
 Croix, La, 179 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 126-7 
 
 Cross, "the true," 65 
 
 Crusades, the, 66-8 ; not invoked by 
 Christian Princes, 64 ; the instigators 
 of, 66; in south of France (1208), 
 90-1 
 
 Cyprian, Bishop, 49 
 
 Cyril, St., 50, 55 
 
 the Monk, 64-5 
 
 D'Alembert, 153-4 
 
 Darby, Rev. John, 160-1 
 
 Darius, 20 
 
 Darwinism, 196-7 
 
 Deacons, 40, 43 
 
 Dead, the, prayers for, 57; Feast of, 
 86; baptism for, 167 
 
 Deeius, Emperor, 49 
 
 Decretals, false, 68-9 
 
 Denmark, 65, 112 
 
 Develup7nent of Christian Doctrine, 
 Essay on the (Newman), 165 
 
 Didache, the, 34 
 
 Diderot, 152 scq. 
 
 Diocletian, Emperor, 49 
 
 Docetes, the, 21 
 
 Dodwell cited, 46 
 
 DoUinger, Canon, 183 
 
 Dominicans, Order of, 73, 76, 79 ; their 
 treatment of Huss, 96 ; in charge of 
 Inquisition tribunals, 97-9, 101 ; 
 the "Monks' Quarrel," 110 ; attitude 
 to Copernicus, 147 ; reconciled to 
 the Jesuits, 183; and see Monasti- 
 cism 
 
 Domitian, 45 
 
 Douatists, 50-1, 55 
 
 Dragonades, 134-5 
 
 Dreyfus, Alfred, 155, 178-80, 185, 207 
 
 Dukhobortsy, 169 
 
 Duns Scotus, 94 
 
 Easter, 53 
 
 Eastern Church, 102-4 ; Immaculate 
 Conception doctrine not accepted by, 
 82; worship of images in, 88-9, 103; 
 attitude of, to clergy and monks, 
 89, 104 ; "Old Believers " in Russia, 
 169 
 
 East Indies, the Inquisition in, 147 
 
 Ebionites, 25, 47 
 
 Eddy, Mrs. M. B., 161 
 
 Egypt, 51 
 
 Elders: primitive, 43; Baptist, 159 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen of England, 118 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 166 
 
 Encyclopxdia, The, 139, 152 scq. 
 
 England : Church of, see Anglican 
 Church; Normans and Danes in, eon- 
 verted, 65 ; in relation to the Holy 
 See, 69, 72-3, 118 ; Cromwell's treat- 
 ment of Catholics, 126; the "No 
 Popery "motto, 127, 164; Noncon- 
 formists in, 159, 162; the Tractariau 
 Movement, 163; attitude to Pius 
 IX (1858), 173 ; to Jesuits, 183 
 
 Ephesus, 42-3 ; Council of, 55-6 
 
 Episcopacy, 33, 43, 124 ; in Eastern 
 Church, 103-4 
 
 Epistles : in the Canon 27 scq.; others, 
 32-3 
 
 Erasmus, 95 
 
 Erastianism, 127 
 
 Essenes, 51 
 
 Eucharist, the, 44 ; mystery surround- 
 ing, 46; dogmas regarding— transub- 
 stautiatiou, etc., 83-4, 110, 118; 
 the elevation of the Host, 84 ; the 
 Feast of the Holy Sacrament, 84-5 ; 
 Communion in one kind, 84, 102 ; 
 Luther's doctrine, 110 
 
 Eudoxia, Empress, 58 
 
 Evolutionary Catholicism, 165, 197 
 
 Excommunications, 70 ; abuse of, 98 
 
 Exorcisms, 112 
 
 Fabliaiix of fourteenth century, 139 
 
 Falloux, Comte de, 177 
 
 Feasts and Festivals : Sundays, 43 ; 
 Christmas, 52 ; Easter, 53 ; Blessed 
 Virgin Mary's Assumption, 81 ; the 
 Holy Sacrament, 84-5 ; the Dead, 
 86; Fools, 88; the Sacred Heart, 
 186 
 
 Fenelon quoted on civil toleration, 137 ; 
 Maximcs des Saints and Tdtviaqice 
 by, 144-5 
 
 Fideism, 201-2 
 
 Filioque quarrel, 102 
 
 Flagellants, 92 
 
 Flavins Clemens, 45 
 
 Florence, 96-7 ; Council of, 57, 102 
 
 Fourierism, 195 
 
 Fox, George, 127 
 
 France, Church of, see Galilean 
 Church ; attitude to Peter's Pence, 
 70; Monastic orders in, 75, 137-8 ; 
 Crusade against Albigenses (1208), 
 90-1; the Reformation 118-20; 
 
220 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Concordat of 1516, 118, 156, 176; 
 images and relics, 119 ; attitude to 
 Jesuits, 123 ; French Protestants in 
 America, 127 ; demand of the States- 
 General for liberty of worship (1561), 
 130 ; under the last Valois, 130-2 ; 
 massacre of S. Bartholomew, 131 ; 
 Edict of Nantes, 132-4 ; its revoca- 
 tion, 134-7 ; Protestants under 
 Louis XIV, 133 seq. ; state of, 
 under Louis XIII, 137-8 ; libertinage 
 in seventeenth century, 139-40 ; 
 Acceptans and Eefusans, 143 ; 
 Catholic with Jansenist tendency in 
 eighteenth century, 152 ; Protest- 
 ants admitted to Civil rights (1787), 
 155; the Revolution, 152 ; National 
 Assembly's decrees regarding re- 
 ligion, 156-7; Civil calendar (1793- 
 1805), 157; persecution of Catholics, 
 157; the Directory: revival of 
 Catholicism, 170 scq. ; Concordat 
 of 1801, 170-1; ended, 180, 185; 
 the Republic's war against Roman 
 Republic, 172 ; Liberal Catholicism, 
 174 scq. ; political reaction (1816), 
 176; the White Terror, 176; Ex- 
 travagances of the Congi-egation 
 (1825), 176-7 ; education controlled 
 by the Church and Jesuits, 135-6, 
 168, 177, 183 ; the Loi Falloux 
 (1850), 177, 180 ; Jesuitical influence, 
 178, 186-7; clerical influence after 
 1870-71, 178; the Dreyfus affair, 
 155, l7«-80, 185, 207; Protestant- 
 ism after 1871, 180 ; Freemasonry, 
 192-4; suppression of religious in- 
 struction, 208 ; canonisation of Joan 
 of Arc, 212, 214 ; relations with the 
 Papacy resumed, 214 
 
 Francis I, King of France, 118-19, 
 170 
 
 Francis, St., of Assisi, 77 and note^; 
 "the sweet memory of," 78 
 
 Franciscans, Order of, 76-9 ; laymen 
 and women aflSliated with, 78 ; oppo- 
 sition to St. Thomas Aquinas, 94 ; 
 treatment of Savonarola, 97 ; see also 
 Monasticism 
 
 Franks, 64 
 
 Frederick I, Emperor, 90 
 
 II, Emperor, 73 
 
 Free thought, 139, 158, 207-8 
 
 Freemasons, 172, 192-4 
 
 Fribourg University, 181 
 
 Friends, see Quakers 
 
 of God, 92 
 
 Galileo, 147-8 
 Gall, St., 76 
 
 Galilean Church : demands persecu- 
 tion of Protestants, 133; under 
 LouisXIII, 137-8 ; attitude to Rome : 
 the four resolutions of 1682, 138-9; 
 in eighteenth century, 152 ; under 
 the Revolution, 156-7 ; separated 
 from the State, 180, 185 ; opposition 
 to Infallibility decree, 184 ; blight- 
 ing influence on, of Pius X, 185 
 
 Gallicanism, 74 
 
 Garibaldi, 173 
 
 Geneva, Council of, 115-16 
 
 Gentiles, 41, 64 
 
 Germany : conflict with the Papacy, 
 59, 71 ; Christianised, 64 ; Innocent 
 VIII's Bull, 101 ; reaction against 
 Romanism, 109; Lutheranism, 112- 
 14, 129 ; the Thirty Years' War, 128 ; 
 Baptists, 159; toleration established 
 (1781), 168 ; opposition to Papal 
 Infallibility, 183 ; Catholic party, 
 the pivot of the policy of the Empire, 
 184 ; historical criticism in, 95, 
 196 ; AVilliam IPs German God, 212 
 
 Ghibellines and Guelphs, 72 
 
 Glossolaly, 44 
 
 Gnosticism, 25, 43-4, 47-8 
 
 Golden Legend, 83 
 
 Gospels, the, not the work of eye- 
 witnesses, 3-4, 6-7 ; dates of, 5-6 ; 
 synoptical gospels, 6-7, 10-11 ; dis- 
 crepancies with S. John's, 10 ; legends 
 in, 22 ; untrustworthy evidence in, 
 23; Apocryphal Gospels, 24-5 ; divine 
 inspiration of Canonical Gospels 
 affirmed, 48; no foundation therein 
 for the seven sacraments, 85 
 
 Gr&udier, Urbain, 101 note^ 
 
 Greek Empire lost to Christianity, 68 
 
 Greeks, modern, 103 
 
 Gregory VII, Pope, 66, 69-71 
 
 IX, Pope, creates Inquisition tri- 
 bunals, 97 
 
 XIII, Pope, Huguenot policy of, 
 
 132 
 
 XVI, Pope, 182 
 
 of Nazianzen, St., 58 
 
 Guises, 130-1 
 Gunpowder xilot, 126 
 Guyon, Madame, 144-5 
 Guzman, Domingo di, 79 
 
 Hammer of Witches, The, 101 
 
 Hapsburgs, 74 
 
 Harnack, 199 
 
 Hegel, 196-7 
 
 Henry II, King of England, 72 
 
 Ill, Emperor, 71 
 
 IV, Emperor, 71 
 
 IV, King of Navarre, 130-3 
 
INDEX 
 
 221 
 
 Henry VIII, King of England, 116-18 
 
 Heresy {see also Arianism, etc. ), edicts 
 against, 54-5, 73 ; Church's attitude 
 to, 87-8; detinition of a heretic, 
 89 ; two classes of heresies, 89 
 
 Hermits, 51 
 
 Historical criticism, 95, 196 ; see also 
 Modernism 
 
 Hohenstaufens, 74 
 
 Holland, Inquisition in (1565), 125; 
 attitude of, to Catholic worship, 125 ; 
 Huguenot emigration into, 134; 
 Jansenists in, 143 
 
 Holy Alliance, the, 169 
 
 League, the, 123, 131-2 
 
 Honorius, Emperor, 50 
 
 , Pope, crusade of, against Prus- 
 sians, 65 
 
 Hospitallers, 80 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 175 
 
 Huguenots: origin of, 115; massacres 
 of, in 1562, 130 ; in 1572, 131 ; 
 Edict of Nantes and its revocation, 
 132 seq 
 
 Humanists, 95 
 
 Hungary, 65, 67 
 
 Huss, John, 95-6, 93 
 
 Huxley, Professor, quoted, 195 note ' 
 
 Hypatia, 50 
 
 Iconoclasts, 88-9, 102 ; ai\d see Image 
 worship 
 
 Icons, 103 
 
 Ignatius, St., 21, 22 note 
 
 Image worship, 57, 89, 103, 119 
 
 Imitation of Christ, the, 94 
 
 Immaculate Conception : meaning of, 
 82 ; the doctrine promulgated, 102, 
 165, 173 ; Lourdes vision and cures, 
 188 and note^ 
 
 Incarnation, doctrine of, in the Gos- 
 pels, 11-12, 14-22; Motlier of God 
 controversy, 55 ; adoption theory, 
 81 
 
 Independents, 124, 127 
 
 India, Catholicism in, 122 
 
 Indulgences, 66; sale of, 69, 120; 
 monks' trafBc in, 86-7 ; given to 
 Inquisitors, 98 ; the final cause of 
 the Reformation, 110; distributed 
 to Huguenot persecutors, 132 ; in 
 contrast with Lourdes cures, 189 and 
 7iote 
 
 Infallibility dogma, 165, 173-4 ; and 
 see under Papacy 
 
 Innocent III, Pope, 73, 90 
 
 VIII, Pope, 101 
 
 IX, Pope, 136, 139 
 
 Inquisition, the Papal, precursors of, 
 65; establishment of (1232), 91; 
 
 punishments inflicted by, 80-1, 92, 
 98-9 ; methods of, 98-9 ; organisa- 
 tion of, 97-8 ; manuals of, 99 ; crimes 
 of, 99-101; decline and death of, 152 
 
 Inquisition, the Spanish, 124, 145-7 
 
 Invocation of saints, 57 
 
 Ireland : evangelised, 64 ; mercenaries 
 from, as persecutors of the Waldenses, 
 92 ; faithful to Kome, 118, 214 ; per- 
 secutions in, 127 
 
 Irene, Empress, 89 
 
 Irving, Edward, 161 
 
 Islamism, crusades against, 64-6; in- 
 fluence of, on Templars, Hospitallers 
 and Jesuits, 123; persecution of 
 Musulmans, 145-6 
 
 Italy, so-called donation of, to Pope 
 Sylvester, 68 ; Protestantism in 
 (1542), 122; the Carbonari, 172; 
 attitude of the new kingdom to the 
 Papacy, 173-4, 214 
 
 James, St., 42 ; Epistle of, 2, 30 
 
 I, King of England, 126 
 
 II, King of England, 127 
 
 Jansenism, 140 seq.; the Bull Uni- 
 genittts, 142-3 
 
 Japan, 122-3 
 
 Jerome, St., 55, 57-8 
 
 of Prague, 95-6 
 
 Jerusalem : the compromise at first con- 
 ference, 41 ; destruction of (a.d. 70), 
 44 ; massacre (1098), 66 ; overthrow 
 of the Christian kingdom, 68 ; re- 
 conquest of (1918), 212 
 
 Jesuits, the Order of : their control of 
 education, and their social, political 
 and religious influence, 78, 120-1, 
 177, 185-6 ; the Jansenist contro- 
 versy, 140-1 ; abolished in 1773, 
 151, 155-6, 181; re-established 
 (1814), 172, 181-2 ; Propaganda and 
 the Roman College entiiisted to 
 (1824-36), 182 ; in France after 
 1848, 177 ; in the Dreyfus aftair, 
 179 ; responsible for reactionary 
 policy of Pius IX, 183, 186 ; duped 
 by Freemasons, 193; their "Trinity, 
 54, 186 
 
 Jesus Christ: Myth of Christ, 1, 22 
 aninote; genealogies of Jesus, 11; 
 history of: contemporary authors' 
 silence regarding, 14-15 ; no definite 
 date of His birth, activities and 
 death, 16-18 ; Passion Stories, 17 
 seq. ; the Crucifixion, 18-20 ; no 
 relation to Socialism, 196 note ; Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, 10 ; His speedy 
 return expected bv Primitive Church, 
 44 
 
222 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jewish particularism and Christiau 
 Universalism, struggle between, 
 41-2 ; influence of Judaism on 
 Christianity, 43 
 
 Jews, dispersal of, 44-5 ; laws against, 
 73; their persecution in Spain, 
 145-6 ; regulations regarding, in 
 Fi-ance, 171 ; clerical antagonism to, 
 178 seq. 
 
 Joan of Arc, 99, 212, 214 
 
 John the Apostle, St., 32, 42 ; Epistles 
 of, 2, 30 ; Gospel of, 2-3 ; its unique 
 nature, 6, 8 ; its sources and author- 
 ship, 9-10, 42-3 ; theological and 
 non-historic in character, 12 
 
 the Presbyter, 42 
 
 King of England, 73, 74 
 
 XXII, Pope, tariff for sin formu- 
 lated by, 69 
 
 Joseph, St., worship of, 54, 186 
 
 II, Emperor of Germany, 168 
 
 Josephus silent regarding Jesus, 14- 
 15 and note ^ 
 
 Jubilees, 87 
 
 Judas the Apostle, 18 
 
 Jude, St., Epistle of, 2, 30, 31 
 
 Julian, Emperor, 50, 51 
 
 Juliair Calendar, 104 
 
 Justin, 35 
 
 Justinian, Emperor, 50 
 
 Justus of Tiberias, 15 
 
 Kant, 93, 196 
 
 Kieff, 64 
 
 Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, 80 
 
 of the Sword, 80 
 
 Templars, 80-1 
 
 Knox, John, 118 
 Kriidener, Baroness, 169-70 
 Kyrie Eleison, the, 70 
 
 La Croix, 179 
 
 La Rochelle, 133 
 
 La Salette, 187-8 
 
 La Trappe Community, 138 
 
 L'Avenir, 175 
 
 Lacordaire, Pere, 175 
 
 Lamennais, Abb^ de, 175 
 
 Lateran Council, Fourth, 67, 73 
 
 Latin in Church Services, 70, 124 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, 126 
 
 Lazarists, 138 
 
 Lea : History of the Inquisition, cited, 
 101 
 
 Legends and Stories: of St. Francis, 77, 
 79; of Catherine of Siena, 79-80, 
 82 ; of Templars, 80 ; of the house 
 of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 81-2; 
 of St. Bridget, 82; of the tailor's 
 apprentice, 82; Golden Legend, 
 
 83; Hole in the Moon, 84; "The 
 Prayers of Odilon," 86; Luther's 
 vision of the Devil, 112; John of 
 Leyden's vision, 114 ; Pascal's 
 niece, 141 ; the Deacon Paris, 143; 
 Madame Guyon, 145 ; the revela- 
 tion to Joseph Smith, 166 ; Madame 
 de Kriidener, 169-70; Marie Ala- 
 coque's vision, 186; La Salette, 
 187 ; the Immaculate Conception, 
 188 ; Lourdes, 189 ; Swedenborg, 
 190; Helena Blavatsky, 191-2; 
 Diana Vaughan, 193; Mons Retreat, 
 213 
 
 Leo the Isaurian, Emperor, 89 
 
 X, Pope, 75, 101; Bull of ex- 
 
 communication burnt by Luther, 
 110 ; concordat with Francis I, 118, 
 156, 176 
 
 XIII, Pope, 31 ; efforts towards 
 
 re-union, 102, 164 ; advice to French 
 Catholics, 178, 185; diplomacy of, 
 197, 199 ; Prov identissimus Encycli- 
 cal, 199 ; estimate of, 184-6 
 
 Leyden, John of, 114 
 
 Libellatici, 49 
 
 Lindsay, Theophilus, 165 
 
 Literature of antiquity preserved by 
 the Church, 63 
 
 Lithuanians, 65 
 
 Loisy, Abbe, 165, 199-200; quoted, 
 on the canon, 2-5; on Christianity 
 as a spiritual force, 23-4 ; on the 
 Jansenists, 141; on President 
 Wilson, 214 ; cited, 26 
 
 Lollards, 95 
 
 Lombard, Peter, 85 
 
 and Venetian Valley witch-burn- 
 ings, 101 
 
 Lombards, 68, 91 
 
 Loretto, 81-2 
 
 Louis, St., 66, 74 
 
 XIV, King of France, cruelty of, 
 
 to Protestants, 127 ; revokes Edict 
 of Nantes, 134 seq.; attitude to 
 French Catholicism, 137 ; re-claims 
 the Regale, 139 
 
 Lourdes, 188-9 
 
 Loyola, Ignatius, 123; The Book of 
 apiritual Exercises, 123 
 
 Loyson, Hyacinthe, 184 
 
 Luke, St., 42 ; Gospel of, 2-3, 5-7 
 
 Luther, Martin, 31, 36, 114 ; the 
 Reformation, 108-13 ; at the Witten- 
 berg Synod, 1 1 2-1 3 ; his translation 
 of the Bible, 111 ; Captivity of 
 Babylon, 110 
 
 Lyons : persecution in A.D. 177, 46 ; 
 thirteenth council of, 72 ; the Poor 
 Men of, 91 
 
INDEX 
 
 223 
 
 Magdeburg, 128-9 
 
 Maistre, Joseph de, 174-5 
 
 Malagiida, 155 
 
 Manichaeism, 55, 89, 90 
 
 Marcion, 9, 48 
 
 Marie Alacoque beatified, 187 
 
 ilark, St., 42 ; his Gospel, 2-7 ; its 
 text tampered with, 4 ; its basis, 9 
 
 Maronites, 102 
 
 Martineau, James, 166 
 
 Martyrs, 47 
 
 Mary, St. {see also Immaculate Con- 
 ception) : belief in her virginity, 12 ; 
 story of her sojoiu-n in Ephesus and 
 death, 43 ; Mother of God controversy, 
 55 ; growth of her worship; 71, 81-2, 
 185 
 
 Mary Tudor, Queen, 117 
 
 Mars, 83 
 
 Mathurins, the Order of, 76 
 
 Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, 71 
 
 Matthew, St., 42 ; his Gospel, 2-3, 
 5-7 ; its basis, 9 
 
 Mazdeism (Persian), 90 
 
 Medici, 96-7 
 
 Melaucthon, 112 
 
 Mendicant friars, 76-7 ; their traffic 
 in Indulgences, 86-7 
 
 Messiah, the, 11-12 
 
 Methodism, 96, 159, 160 
 
 Methodius, 64-5 
 
 Micholet quoted, 66 
 
 Middle Ages : conflict of the Papacy v, 
 the Empire, 71 ; unpopularity of 
 monks and nims in, 76 ; impression 
 on, of St. Francis' life, 77-8 ; Christi- 
 anity " high and dry " in, 78 ; cha- 
 racteristics of, 89 ; Catholicism of, 94 ; 
 Jewish books of, 95 ; Satan all-per- 
 vading in, 100-1; Byzantine Greeks 
 of, 103; j^rolongation of, in Spain, 
 146; survival of, amongst the intel- 
 lectually deficient of eighteenth 
 century, 152 ; slavery in, 204-5 ; 
 Church's supremacy in, based on 
 literary frauds, 208 
 
 Milton, 159 and iwte 
 
 Miracles, Christ's, allegorical character 
 
 of, 13 
 Missionaries, 202-4 
 Modernism, 141, 165, 198 seq. ; atti- 
 tude to, of Leo XIII and Pius X, 
 185, 200 ; attitude of, to historical 
 basis of the Scriptures, 201 
 Molay, Jacques de, 81 
 Moliere, 139, 141 ; Tariuffe, 121 note 
 Monasticism {see also names of Orders), 
 good derived from, 51-2 ; Crusades 
 instigated by monks, 66 ; spread of, 
 75 ; reform demanded, 76 ; fame of 
 
 the Mendicant Orders, 76 ; work 
 done by, and decline of, before 1200, 
 76 ; monks' sale of Indulgences, 
 86-7 ; image manufacture profitable 
 to monks, 89 ; monks in Greek 
 Church held in no esteem, 104 
 
 Monophysism, 55-6 
 
 Mons retreat superstition, 213 
 
 Montaigne, 139 
 
 Montalembert, Conite de, 175-6 
 
 Montanism, 48-9 
 
 Montesquieu, 153 
 
 Montuiartre Basilica, 187 
 
 Moravians, 96 
 
 Morraonigm, 166-7 
 
 Music in religious services, 124 
 
 Musulinans, see Islamism 
 
 Mysticism in seventeenth century, 144 ; 
 in eighteenth century, 158 ; Church's 
 attitude to, 189 
 
 Nantes, Edict of, 132 seq., 155, and see 
 under France 
 
 Napoleon I, Emperor, 22 note ; as First 
 Consul : his Organic Articles (1801), 
 170-1 ; suppresses Spanish Inquisi- 
 tion (1808), 146 ; his attitude to 
 Jesuits, 181 note 
 
 Ill, Emperor, relations with Pius 
 
 IX, 173-4, 178 
 
 Navarre, Queen of (Marguerite), 118- 
 20 
 
 Neo- Buddhists, 191-2 
 
 Nepotism, 120 
 
 Nero, Emperor, 45 
 
 Nestorian chmches, 55, 65 
 
 Netherlands, see Holland 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 163-5 ; his in- 
 fluence on Modernism, 165, 198 
 
 New Testament, see under Scriptures 
 
 Nictea, Councils of (325), 53-4; (787), 
 102 
 
 Nicholas of Cues, 68 
 
 Noailles, Cardinal de, 142-3 
 
 Nominalists, 93 
 
 Normans and Danes, conversion of, 65 
 
 Nuns, 51, 138 ; in Eastern Church, 103 
 
 CEcumenical Patriarch 102 
 
 Old Catholics, 183-4 
 
 Oratorians, 138 ; their liberalism, 187 
 
 Origen, 46, 48, 49 ; quoted on non- 
 resistance, 195 and note^ 
 
 Original sin, disputes regarding, 24, 
 56 ; defined by Council of ftent, 
 122 
 
 Oxford University, 163 
 
 Pagan influence on the Church, 52-3, 
 59, 89 ; on Eastern Church, 103 
 
224 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Paleologi, 68 
 
 Papacy, the, not founded by Jesus, 
 12 ; not founded by Peter, 48 ; in- 
 stigates the Crusades, 66 ; plunged 
 into poverty, 68 ; Crusades tax, In- 
 dulgences, etc. , 67, 69, 72 ; Peter's 
 Pence, 69-70 ; Denier de St. Pierre, 
 70 ; debasement of, in ninth and 
 tenth centuries, 70 ; at end of fif- 
 teenth century, 75 ; Schism : the 
 rival Popes, 74 ; relations with the 
 Templars, 81 ; responsible for the In- 
 quisition, 98-9, 101 ; effect on, of the 
 Counter-Reformation, 120 ; attitude 
 to Huguenots, 130-2 ; Edict of 
 Nantes never accepted by, 133 ; re- 
 sponsibility and rejoicings for its 
 revocation, 136-7 ; attitude to the 
 Spanish Inquisition, 146 ; Infalli- 
 bility doctrine promulgated (1870), 
 165, 173-4 ; the doctrine opposed by 
 Eastern Church, 102 ; by Galilean 
 Church, 139, 184 ; by Anglican 
 Church, 164 ; by German Bishops, 
 183-4; temporal power of: its 
 foundation, 68-9 ; the suzerainty 
 claim and medieval conflict with 
 Germany, 59, 71, 72, 74 ; Concordat 
 of 1122, 72 ; supreme power in 
 Europe, 67 ; pretensions to govern 
 Christendom, 102; decline of tempo- 
 ral power (1216), 73 ; its restoration 
 (1815), 172: its diminution (1860), 
 173; its end (1870), 174; its loss a 
 gain to spiritual dignity, 184 
 
 Papal States, the : Revenues from, 69 ; 
 niisgovernment of, 172 ; Mentana, 
 173 
 
 Papias, Bishop, 6-8 ; cited, 25 
 
 Paraguay, Jesiiits in, 123 
 
 Paris {and see France) : observances of 
 the Holy Sacrament in, 85 ; the 
 centre of theological studies (1150- 
 1200), 93-4 ; attitude of the Uni- 
 versity and Parliament to King 
 and Pope (1516), 118-19 ; Faculty of 
 Theology denounces Jansenism, 141 ; 
 Montniartre Basilica, 187 ; Catholic 
 Institute of, 198-9 
 
 Pascal : Provincial Letters^ 141 
 note * 
 
 Pastor of Hermas, The, 33 
 
 Patrick, St., 64 
 
 Paul, St. : chronology of his life, 
 conversion and preaching of, 
 character of his preaching, 21-2 ; at 
 Athens, 188 note'"; legendary tales 
 of his trial and death, 42 ; Original 
 Sin dogma derived from, 24 ; his 
 attitude to women, 26-7, 44, 49 ; his 
 
 and 
 
 30; 
 41; 
 
 theory of marriage, 29 ; his Epistles ; 
 the best historical evidence of Jesus, 
 2, 22; their nature, 27-9; false 
 epistles circulated under his name, 
 35 ; the Peter and Paul rivalry, 26, 
 35, 41-2 
 
 Paul III, Pope, Jesuit Order instituted 
 by, 123 ; his attitude to slavei-y, 
 205 
 
 Peasants' War, 113-14 
 
 Pelagius, 56 
 
 Pderin, Le, 187 
 
 Penn, William, 128 
 
 Pentecost, 53 
 
 Pepin le Bref, 68 
 
 Persecutions {and see Inquisitions ; also 
 Huguenots, Waldenses, etc.) : the 
 first, between the synagogue and the 
 dissenters, 40 ; so-called First (a.d. 
 65), 45 ; under Domitian, 45 ; under 
 Decius and Diocletian, 46 note, 49 ; 
 ' ' the ten, "46 and note 
 
 Peter, St., primacy of, 12; legend of, 
 in Rome, 30 ; his attitude to the 
 Gentiles, 41 ; his death — legendary 
 tales, 42 ; the Peter and Paul rivalry, 
 26, 35, 41-2 ; his Epistles, Apoca- 
 lypse and Gospel, 2, 25, 30-1, 34; 
 forgeries, 32 ; Patrimony of, see Papal 
 States 
 
 Peter the Hermit, 67 
 
 Philip the Deacon, 40 
 
 Philip the Fair, King of France, 70, 
 74, 80-1 
 
 Philip II, King of Spain, 123, 124 
 
 Philo cited, 11 ; his silence regarding 
 Jesus, 15 
 
 Photius, Patriarch, 15, 102 
 
 heretics in, 124 
 
 its influence on Metho- 
 
 Piedmont, 91 
 
 Pietism, 129; 
 dists, 160 
 
 Pilate traditions, 16-18 
 
 Pilgrim Fathers, 127 
 
 Pilgrimages : in primitive times, 65 ; in 
 Eastern Church, 104 ; multiplication 
 of, in nineteenth century, 187 
 
 Pisa, Council of, 74 
 
 PiusV, Pope, 130 
 
 VII, Pope, 147 ; Concordat with 
 
 France, 170-1 ; re-establishes the 
 Jesuits (1814), 172, 181; his re- 
 actionary policy, 171-2 
 
 IX, Pope, canonises Pedro 
 
 Arbues, 83; The Syllabus, 173; his 
 tyranny, 172-4, 178, 183 
 
 X, Pope, 185; his attitude to 
 
 Modernism, 200 ; to the European 
 War, 213 
 
 Plato's Works in Western Europe, 96 ; 
 Hepublic quoted, 23 and natt ^ 
 
INDEX 
 
 225 
 
 Pliny the Younger : his picture of the 
 
 early Christians, 45-6 
 Plymouth Brethren, 160-1 
 Poland, 65, 129, 169 
 Policeman-God concept, 154, 177 
 Polytheism, downfall of, 50 
 Poor Clares, 76, 78 
 Port Royal, 140-2 
 Portugal, Jesuits expelled from, 123 
 Positivism, 194-5 and note 
 Pragmatism, 74 and note i 
 Predestination doctrine, 28-9, 125 
 Premonstrants, the Order of, 76 
 Presbyterian System, 124 
 Presbyterians, Anglicanism rejected 
 
 by, 126-7 ; Reformed Presbyterians, 
 
 158 
 Priestley, Joseph, 165-6 
 Priests, derivation of name, 43 
 Printing invention, 95, 109 
 Priscillian, 31, 55 
 Prophecies, alleged fulfilments of, 4, 
 
 22-3 and note 
 Protestantism (see also Reformation): 
 
 origin of, 113; as inspired by St. 
 
 Paul and St. Augustine contrasted 
 
 with Jesuitical Catholicism, 121 ; its 
 
 attitude to Scripture, 201 ; to 
 
 slavery, 206 
 Proveuijal civilisation as affected by 
 
 the Crusade and the Inquisition, 91 
 Prussia, Jesuits forbidden in, 183 
 Purgatory, doctrine of, not in the 
 
 Gospels, 56 ; proclaimed a dogma of 
 
 the Church, 57 ; abuse of, 86 ; 
 
 Eastern Church's objection to, 102 
 Pusey, Dr., 163-4 
 Pythagoreans, 51 
 
 Q document, 8-9 
 Quakers, 96, 117, 
 Quietism, 144-5 
 
 128 
 
 Rabelais, 139 
 
 Racine, 141 
 
 Rationalism, 93 
 
 Ratisbon Council (792), 81 
 
 Ravaillac, 133 
 
 Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, 90-1 
 
 Realists, 93 
 
 Reason, Goddess of, 157 
 
 Recocfnitions, The, 34 
 
 Reformation, the, causes leading to, 
 10%seq. ; successes and miscarriages, 
 100, 109; triumph of, at Basle, 
 114; in England, 116-18; in 
 France, 118-20 ; in Holland, 125 ; 
 the Counter- Reformation, 120-2 ; 
 attitude of the Reformed Churches 
 to Orthodox Church and Roman 
 
 Chm'ch, 103 ; contrast between 
 Reformed Chm-ches and Roman, as 
 to relations with civil power, 124 
 
 Regale, the, 138 
 
 Relics, worship of, 57 ; in Eastern 
 Church, 104; cures by, resembling 
 those by telepathic suggestion, 191 
 
 Religious instruction, 206-8 
 
 order's and communities, 51, 75- 
 
 81, 138, 140-2 
 
 wars of 16th century, 120 
 
 Remigius, St., 64 
 
 Renaissance, the, 94 
 
 Renan, Ernest, 198 ; cited, 34 
 
 Resurrection doctrine, a pious belief, 
 13-14 
 
 Reuchlin, Hans, 95 
 
 Richelieu, Cardinal, 101 note*, 128, 
 133, 176 
 
 Revivals, 158 
 
 Robespierre, 157 
 
 Rochelle, La, 133 
 
 Roman Church, early supremacy of, 
 33-48 ; services of, to medieval 
 society, 62-3 ; inculcates mercy in 
 theory, 63 ; democratic at base, 63- 
 4 ; violent proselytism inaugurated 
 A.D. 1000, 65 ; its use of excommuni- 
 cations, 70 ; simony rampant in, 70- 
 1 ; reforms attempted — in ninth and 
 tenth centuries, 91 ; in 1431, 75; 
 Papal schism (1378), see loiider 
 Papacy ; saints honom-ed by, 83 ; 
 accepts Transubstantiation dogma, 
 84 ; feast of the Holy Sacrament 
 established, 84-5; decides (twelfth 
 century) on the Seven Sacraments, 
 
 85 ; domination in temporal matters 
 after 1000, 85 ; attitude to women, 
 
 86 ; Confession made obligatory, 86 ; 
 Feast of the Dead established, 86 ; 
 traffic in Indulgences, 86, ayid see 
 Indulgences ; altitude to heresy, 87- 
 8 ; tolerant within limits, 88 ; bar- 
 barous usages permitted, 88 ; wealth 
 and corruption of clergy (about 1150), 
 90; motivesactuating the Inquisition, 
 92-3; recourse to the civil power, 
 98-101; sorcery persecutions, 101 
 and note * ; efibrts towards re-union, 
 102; exactions of Roman Curia, 109; 
 the Counter-Reformation, 120-22 ; 
 contrasted with Reformed Churches 
 in its relation to civil power, 124 ; 
 severe control of education, 135-6, 
 168, 177-8, 183 ; Modernism, lQ5and 
 see that heading ; Liberal Catholicism 
 in, 175 ; attitude to magic, 191 ; to 
 Freemasonry, 193 ; to Socialism, 195 ; 
 to slavery, 204-6; relation to the 
 
226 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Scriptures, 201 ; conversions of cul- 
 tured unbelievers, 202 ; its present 
 o])portunity, 214-15 
 
 Romanticism, 163 
 
 Rome : Imperial, attitude of, to Chris- 
 tians, 45-6 ; a Christian capital, 52; 
 in time of Leo X, 75; besieged and 
 taken (1155), 90; French occupation 
 of (1850-70), 173-4; Indulgences 
 sold to provide funds for St. Peter's, 
 110 
 
 Rosary, the, 85 
 
 Roumanian Church, 103 
 
 Rousseau, J. J., 153-5 ; influence on, 
 of Fenelou, 145 ; (quoted, 20 ; cited, 
 212 
 
 Russia : early efforts to evangelise, 64 ; 
 the Othodox Church, 103-4, 169, 
 212; no real Christianity in, 104; 
 sects in, 169 ; Jesuits in (nineteenth 
 century), 181 ; banished, 181 
 
 Rutheuians, 169 
 
 Sacsa, Feast of the, 19-20 
 
 Sacrament, Feast of the Holy, 84-5 
 
 Sacramental system, no part of Christ's 
 teaching, 13 
 
 Sacramentarians, 112 
 
 Sacraments, question of efficacy of: 
 the Douatist theory, 50 
 
 Sacred Heart cult, 186-7 
 
 St. Bartholomew massacre, 131 ; the 
 medal, 132 
 
 St. Germain, Edict of, 130, 133 
 
 Saint-Simonism, 194 
 
 Salette, La, 187-8 
 
 Salvation Army, 204 
 
 Saturnalia, the Roman, 19-20 
 
 Savonarola, 96-7 
 
 Saxony, 113 
 
 Schleiermacher, 163, 196-7 
 
 Scholastic philosophy, 93-4 
 
 Scotists and Thomists, 94 
 
 Scotland : Catholic v. Protestant wars 
 in, 118 ; the Anglican Liturgy re- 
 fused by Scottish Pm-itans, 126 ; 
 opposed to Erastianism, 127 ; the 
 Solemn League and Covenant, 162 ; 
 disruptions and amalgamations in, 
 158 ; the Westminster Confession in, 
 159 
 
 Scriptures, the, before a.d. 150, 2 and 
 note *; canon established about 350, 
 2, 27, 48 ; forbidden to the laity, 85 ; 
 Greek text of N. T. published by 
 Erasmus and translated into Latin, 
 95 ; allegorical interpretation of, 
 190; infallibility of: Providentissi- 
 mus Encyclical, 199 ; the historic 
 basis of, 201 ; authority of, guaran- 
 
 teed by the Church, 201 ; translations 
 
 of, see Bible ; Gospels, see that 
 
 heading ; Pauline Epistles, see under 
 
 PauL 
 Sermon on the Mount, 10 
 Servetus, Miguel, 115-16 
 Sigismund, Emperor, 96 
 Simon, Richard, completed Luther's 
 
 work, 110; attitude to Modernism, 
 
 198 ; quoted, 133 
 Simon Magus, 34-5 
 Simony, 70-1 
 Sisters of Charitj', 138 
 Slavery, 204-6 
 Socialism, 195-6 
 Socinians, 129 
 
 St. Sophia, Church of, 59, 66 
 Spain, resists the Church, 64 ; attitude 
 
 to Peter's Pence, (0; the Inquisition, 
 
 124, 145-7 ; persecution of Jews and 
 
 Moors, 145 ; Jesuits in (nineteenth 
 
 century), 182 
 Spener, Philip Jakob, 129 
 Spinoza, 196, 198 
 Spiritualism, 166, 190-1, 194 
 Stephen, St., 35, 40 
 Suetonius, 15 
 Summa Theologiee, 94 
 Sundays, 43 
 
 Superintendents, 43, 124 
 Superstitions, as conservative forces, 
 
 206 ; in the European War, 213 
 Sweden, 65, 112 
 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 190 
 Switzerland : the Jesuits and the 
 
 Sonderhiitid, 181 
 Sylvester, Pope, 68 
 Symbols : of the Apostles, 33, 48 ; 
 
 Athanasian, 54 
 Syria, 65, 67 
 
 Tacitus' Annals, record in, regarding 
 
 Jesus, 15-16 
 Talmud, the, legend in, regarding 
 
 Jesus, 15 
 Tariffs for sin, 69 
 Taxil, Leo, 193 
 Telepathy, 191 
 Templars, the, 80-1 
 TertuUian's Apolofiy, 46 ; his attitude 
 
 to Montanism, 48 
 Teutonic knights, 80 
 Thekla, 26 
 Theodosius I, Emperor, 50 
 
 II, Emperor, 50, 55 
 
 Theophilanthropists, 157-8 
 Theosophy, 191-2 
 Theresa, St., 144 
 "Third Order," the, 78 
 Thirty Years' War, 128 
 
INDEX 
 
 227 
 
 Thomas a Kempis, 94 
 
 Aquinas, St. , 94 
 
 Tiberius, Emperor, 16 
 
 Tithes from Chiu'ch to Princes (twelfth 
 century), 67 
 
 Tolstoy, Leo, quoted, 206 
 
 "Tongues, speaking with," 44 
 
 Torquemada, 145-6 
 
 Toulouse, 90 
 
 Trajan, Emperor, quoted, 45 
 
 Transubstantiation Doctrine (see also 
 Eucharist), 83, 84, 110 ; "test" im- 
 posed against, in England, 162 
 
 Trappe, La, 138 
 
 Trent, Council of, 121-2 
 
 Trinity, the, Doctrine of, 31, 54, 115 
 
 of the Jesuits, 54, 186 
 
 Truces established by the Church, 63 
 
 Ultramontanism, 173-5 
 Unitarianism, 114, 129, 165-6 
 Urban VIII, Pope, 147 
 
 Vacandard quoted, 148 
 
 Veuillot, 175 
 
 Vigilantius, 55, 57-9 
 
 Vincent de Paul, St., 138 
 
 Vinet, Alexandre, 197 
 
 Visionaries, 44 
 
 Voltaire, estimate of, 153 ; his intoler- 
 ance, 154; his aristocratic contempt 
 for the masses, 186 ; correspondence 
 with D'Alembert, 153-4 ; The 
 Encyclopcedia, 152 seq. ; Ecrasons 
 Vinjfamr, 154 ; quoted, on democratic 
 base of the Roman Church, 64 ; on 
 the Crusades, 66 ; on the tarilf for 
 sin, 69 ; on the False Decretals, 69 ; 
 on Gregory VII, 71; on supreme 
 powers of the Papacy, 73 ; on St. 
 
 Francis of Assisi, 77-8 ; on Rome's 
 attitude to reason, 88; on Wyclif, 
 95 ; on "infamous superstition," 
 97; on Eucharistic doctrines, 110; 
 on Luther's alleged yision of the 
 devil, 111-12; on Luther as anti- 
 Pope, 112-13 ; on the Reformation 
 in England, 117; on Quakers, 117 ; 
 on Fenelon, 144 ; on Spaniards' 
 silence, 146 : cited, 98, 108-13, 116 
 
 Waldenses, Church of the, 91 ; doctrines 
 of, preached by Wyclif, 95 ; perse- 
 cution of, 91 ; massacre of, 119 
 
 Waldo, Pierre, 91 
 
 Wandering Jew, The, 182 
 
 War of 1914-18, superstitions in, and 
 attitude to, of the Churches, 212-15 
 
 Wesley, John and Charles, 159 
 
 Westminster Confession, 159 
 
 Westphalia Treaty, 128-9 
 
 Whitefield, George, 159-60 
 
 William of Orange, 127 
 
 the Silent, 125 
 
 Willibrod, St., 76 
 
 Witches, 100-1 
 
 Wladimir, conversion of, 64 
 
 Women, St. Paul's attitude to, 26-7, 
 44, 49 ; Montanist attitude to, 49 ; 
 Franciscan attitude to, 78 ; Roman 
 Church's attitude to (1215), 86 
 
 Worms, Council of (1076), 71 ; Diet 
 of (1521), 111 seq. 
 
 Wyclif, John, 95 
 
 Xavier, St. Francois, 122 
 Young, Brigham, 167 
 Zwingli, 114-15 
 
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