Books: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

J >> John William Draper >> History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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An illiterate condition everywhere prevailing, gave opportunity
for the development of superstition. Europe was full of
disgraceful miracles. On all the roads pilgrims were wending
their way to the shrines of saints, renowned for the cures they
had wrought. It had always been the policy of the Church to
discourage the physician and his art; he interfered too much with
the gifts and profits of the shrines. Time has brought this once
lucrative imposture to its proper value. How many shrines are
there now in successful operation in Europe?

For patients too sick to move or be moved, there were no remedies
except those of a ghostly kind--the Pater-noster or the Ave. For
the prevention of diseases, prayers were put up in the churches,
but no sanitary measures were resorted to. From cities reeking
with putrefying filth it was thought that the plague might be
stayed by the prayers of the priests, by them rain and dry
weather might be secured, and deliverance obtained from the
baleful influences of eclipses and comets. But when Halley's
comet came, in 1456, so tremendous was its apparition that it was
necessary for the pope himself to interfere. He exorcised and
expelled it from the skies. It slunk away into the abysses of
space, terror-stricken by the maledictions of Calixtus III., and
did not venture back for seventy-five years!

The physical value of shrine-cures and ghostly remedies is
measured by the death-rate. In those days it was, probably, about
one in twenty-three, under the present more material practice it
is about one in forty.

The moral condition of Europe was signally illustrated when
syphilis was introduced from the West Indies by the companions of
Columbus. It spread with wonderful rapidity; all ranks of
persons, from the Holy Father Leo X. to the beggar by the
wayside, contracting the shameful disease. Many excused their
misfortune by declaring that it was an epidemic proceeding from a
certain malignity in the constitution of the air, but in truth
its spread was due to a certain infirmity in the constitution of
man--an infirmity which had not been removed by the spiritual
guidance under which he had been living.

To the medical efficacy of shrines must be added that of special
relics. These were sometimes of the most extraordinary kind.
There were several abbeys that possessed our Savior's crown of
thorns. Eleven had the lance that had pierced his side. If any
person was adventurous enough to suggest that these could not all
be authentic, he would have been denounced as an atheist. During
the holy wars the Templar-Knights had driven a profitable
commerce by bringing from Jerusalem to the Crusading armies
bottles of the milk of the Blessed Virgin, which they sold for
enormous sums; these bottles were preserved with pious care in
many of the great religious establishments. But perhaps none of
these impostures surpassed in audacity that offered by a
monastery in Jerusalem, which presented to the beholder one of
the fingers of the Holy Ghost! Modern society has silently
rendered its verdict on these scandalous objects. Though they
once nourished the piety of thousands of earnest people, they are
now considered too vile to have a place in any public museum.

How shall we account for the great failure we thus detect in the
guardianship of the Church over Europe? This is not the result
that must have occurred had there been in Rome an unremitting
care for the spiritual and material prosperity of the continent,
had the universal pastor, the successor of Peter, occupied
himself with singleness of purpose for the holiness and happiness
of his flock.

The explanation is not difficult to find. It is contained in a
story of sin and shame. I prefer, therefore, in the following
paragraphs, to offer explanatory facts derived from Catholic
authors, and, indeed, to present them as nearly as I can in the
words of those writers.

The story I am about to relate is a narrative of the
transformation of a confederacy into an absolute monarchy.

In the early times every church, without prejudice to its
agreement with the Church universal in all essential points,
managed its own affairs with perfect freedom and independence,
maintaining its own traditional usages and discipline, all
questions not concerning the whole Church, or of primary
importance, being settled on the spot.

Until the beginning of the ninth century, there was no change in
the constitution of the Roman Church. But about 845 the Isidorian
Decretals were fabricated in the west of Gaul--a forgery
containing about one hundred pretended decrees of the early
popes, together with certain spurious writings of other church
dignitaries and acts of synods. This forgery produced an immense
extension of the papal power, it displaced the old system of
church government, divesting it of the republican attributes it
had possessed, and transforming it into an absolute monarchy. It
brought the bishops into subjection to Rome, and made the pontiff
the supreme judge of the clergy of the whole Christian world. It
prepared the way for the great attempt, subsequently made by
Hildebrand, to convert the states of Europe into a theocratic
priest-kingdom, with the pope at its head.

Gregory VII., the author of this great attempt, saw that his
plans would be best carried out through the agency of synods. He,
therefore, restricted the right of holding them to the popes and
their legates. To aid in the matter, a new system of church law
was devised by Anselm of Lucca, partly from the old Isidorian
forgeries, and partly from new inventions. To establish the
supremacy of Rome, not only had a new civil and a new canon law
to be produced, a new history had also to be invented. This
furnished needful instances of the deposition and excommunication
of kings, and proved that they had always been subordinate to the
popes. The decretal letters of the popes were put on a par with
Scripture. At length it came to be received, throughout the West,
that the popes had been, from the beginning of Christianity,
legislators for the whole Church. As absolute sovereigns in later
times cannot endure representative assemblies, so the papacy,
when it wished to become absolute, found that the synods of
particular national churches must be put an end to, and those
only under the immediate control of the pontiff permitted. This,
in itself, constituted a great revolution.

Another fiction concocted in Rome in the eighth century led to
important consequences. It feigned that the Emperor Constantine,
in gratitude for his cure from leprosy, and baptism by Pope
Sylvester, had bestowed Italy and the Western provinces on the
pope, and that, in token of his subordination, he had served the
pope as his groom, and led his horse some distance. This forgery
was intended to work on the Frankish kings, to impress them with
a correct idea of their inferiority, and to show that, in the
territorial concessions they made to the Church, they were not
giving but only restoring what rightfully belonged to it.

The most potent instrument of the new papal system was Gratian's
Decretum, which was issued about the middle of the twelfth
century. It was a mass of fabrications. It made the whole
Christian world, through the papacy, the domain of the Italian
clergy. It inculcated that it is lawful to constrain men to
goodness, to torture and execute heretics, and to confiscate
their property; that to kill an excommunicated person is not
murder; that the pope, in his unlimited superiority to all law,
stands on an equality with the Son of God!

As the new system of centralization developed, maxims, that in
the olden times would have been held to be shocking, were boldly
avowed--the whole Church is the property of the pope to do with
as he will; what is simony in others is not simony in him; he is
above all law, and can be called to account by none; whoever
disobeys him must be put to death; every baptized man is his
subject, and must for life remain so, whether he will or not. Up
to the end of the twelfth century, the popes were the vicars of
Peter; after Innocent III. they were the vicars of Christ.

But an absolute sovereign has need of revenues, and to this the
popes were no exception. The institution of legates was brought
in from Hildebrand's time. Sometimes their duty was to visit
churches, sometimes they were sent on special business, but
always invested with unlimited powers to bring back money over
the Alps. And since the pope could not only make laws, but could
suspend their operation, a legislation was introduced in view to
the purchase of dispensations. Monasteries were exempted from
episcopal jurisdiction on payment of a tribute to Rome. The pope
had now become "the universal bishop;" he had a concurrent
jurisdiction in all the dioceses, and could bring any cases
before his own courts. His relation to the bishops was that of an
absolute sovereign to his officials. A bishop could resign only
by his permission, and sees vacated by resignation lapsed to him.
Appeals to him were encouraged in every way for the sake of the
dispensations; thousands of processes came before the Curia,
bringing a rich harvest to Rome. Often when there were disputing
claimants to benefices, the pope would oust them all, and appoint
a creature of his own. Often the candidates had to waste years in
Rome, and either died there, or carried back a vivid impression
of the dominant corruption. Germany suffered more than other
countries from these appeals and processes, and hence of all
countries was best prepared for the Reformation. During the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the popes made gigantic
strides in the acquisition of power. Instead of recommending
their favorites for benefices, now they issued mandates. Their
Italian partisans must be rewarded; nothing could be done to
satisfy their clamors,. but to provide for them in foreign
countries. Shoals of contesting claimants died in Rome; and, when
death took place in that city, the Pope claimed the right of
giving away the benefices. At length it was affirmed that he had
the right of disposing of all church-offices without distinction,
and that the oath of obedience of a bishop to him implied
political as well as ecclesiastical subjection. In countries
having a dual government this increased the power of the
spiritual element prodigiously.

Rights of every kind were remorselessly overthrown to complete
this centralization. In this the mendicant orders were most
efficient aids. It was the pope and those orders on one side, the
bishops and the parochial clergy on the other. The Roman court
had seized the rights of synods, metropolitans, bishops, national
churches. Incessantly interfered with by the legates, the bishops
lost all desire to discipline their dioceses; incessantly
interfered with by the begging monks, tho parish priest had
become powerless in his own village; his pastoral influence was
utterly destroyed by the papal indulgences and absolutions they
sold. The money was carried off to Rome.

Pecuniary necessities urged many of the popes to resort to such
petty expedients as to require from a prince, a bishop, or a
grand-master, who bad a cause pending in the court, a present of
a golden cup filled with ducats. Such necessities also gave
origin to jubilees. Sixtus IV. established whole colleges, and
sold the places at three or four hundred ducats. Innocent VIII.
pawned the papal tiara. Of Leo X. it was said that he squandered
the revenues of three popes, he wasted the savings of his
predecessor, he spent his own income, he anticipated that of his
successor, he created twenty-one hundred and fifty new offices
and sold them; they were considered to be a good investment, as
they produced twelve per cent. The interest was extorted from
Catholic countries. Nowhere in Europe could capital be so well
invested as at Rome. Large sums were raised by the foreclosing of
mortgages, and not only by the sale but the resale of offices.
Men were promoted, for the purpose of selling their offices
again.

Though against the papal theory, which denounced usurious
practices, an immense papal banking system had sprung up, in
connection with the Curia, and sums at usurious interest were
advanced to prelates, place. hunters, and litigants. The papal
bankers were privileged; all others were under the ban. The Curia
had discovered that it was for their interest to have
ecelesiastics all over Europe in their debt. They could make them
pliant, and excommunicate them for non-payment of interest. In
1327 it was reckoned that half the Christian world was under
excommunication: bishops were excommunicated because they could
not meet the extortions of legates; and persons were
excommunicated, under various pretenses, to compel them to
purchase absolution at an exorbitant price. The ecclesiastical
revenues of all Europe were flowing into Rome, a sink of
corruption, simony, usury, bribery, extortion. The popes, since
1066, when the great centralizing movement began, had no time to
pay attention to the internal affairs of their own special flock
in the city of Rome. There were thousands of foreign cases, each
bringing in money. "Whenever," says the Bishop Alvaro Pelayo, "I
entered the apartments of the Roman court clergy, I found them
occupied in counting up the gold-coin, which lay about the rooms
in heaps." Every opportunity of extending the jurisdiction of the
Curia was welcome. Exemptions were so managed that fresh grants
were constantly necessary. Bishops were privileged against
cathedral chapters, chapters against their bishops; bishops,
convents, and individuals, against the extortions of legates.

The two pillars on which the papal system now rested were the
College of Cardinals and the Curia. The cardinals, in 1059, had
become electors of the popes. Up to that time elections were made
by the whole body of the Roman clergy, and the concurrence of the
magistrates and citizens was necessary. But Nicolas II.
restricted elections to the College of Cardinals by a two- thirds
vote, and gave to the German emperor the right of confirmation.
For almost two centuries there was a struggle for mastery between
the cardinal oligarchy and papal absolutism. The cardinals were
willing enough that the pope should be absolute in his foreign
rule, but the never failed to attempt, before giving him their
votes, to bind him to accord to them a recognized share in the
government. After his election, and before his consecration, he
swore to observe certain capitulations, such as a participation
of revenues between himself and the cardinals; an obligation that
lie would not remove them, but would permit them to assemble
twice a year to discuss whether he had kept his oath. Repeatedly
the popes broke their oath. On one side, the cardinals wanted a
larger share in the church government and emoluments; on the
other, the popes refused to surrender revenues or power. The
cardinals wanted to be conspicuous in pomp and extravagance, and
for this vast sums were requisite. In one instance, not fewer
than five hundred benefices were held by one of them; their
friends and retainers must be supplied, their families enriched.
It was affirmed that the whole revenues of France were
insufficient to meet their expenditures. In their rivalries it
sometimes happened that no pope was elected for several years. It
seemed as if they wanted to show how easily the Church could get
on without the Vicar of Christ.

Toward the close of the eleventh century the Roman Church became
the Roman court. In place of the Christian sheep gently following
their shepherd in the holy precincts of the city, there had
arisen a chancery of writers, notaries, tax-gatherers, where
transactions about privileges, dispensations, exemptions, were
carried on; and suitors went with petitions from door to door.
Rome was a rallying-point for place-hunters of every nation. In
presence of the enormous mass of business-processes, graces,
indulgences, absolutions, commands, and decisions, addressed to
all parts of Europe and Asia, the functions of the local church
sank into insignificance. Several hundred persons, whose home was
the Curia, were required. Their aim was to rise in it by
enlarging the profits of the papal treasury. The whole Christian
world had become tributary to it. Here every vestige of religion
had disappeared; its members were busy with politics,
litigations, and processes; not a word could be heard about
spiritual concerns. Every stroke of the pen had its price.
Benefices, dispensations, licenses, absolutions, indulgences,
privileges, were bought and sold like merchandise. The suitor had
to bribe every one, from the doorkeeper to the pope, or his case
was lost. Poor men could neither attain preferment, nor hope for
it; and the result was, that every cleric felt he had a right to
follow the example he had seen at Rome, and that he might make
profits out of his spiritual ministries and sacraments, having
bought the right to do so at Rome, and having no other way to pay
off his debt. The transference of power from Italians to
Frenchmen, through the removal of the Curia to Avignon, produced
no change--only the Italians felt that the enrichment of Italian
families had slipped out of their grasp. They had learned to
consider the papacy as their appanage, and that they, under the
Christian dispensation, were God's chosen people, as the Jews had
been under the Mosaic.

At the end of the thirteenth century a new kingdom was
discovered, capable of yielding immense revenues. This was
Purgatory. It was shown that the pope could empty it by his
indulgences. In this there was no need of hypocrisy. Things were
done openly. The original germ of the apostolic primacy had now
expanded into a colossal monarchy.

NEED OF A GENERAL COUNCIL. The Inquisition had made the papal
system irresistible. All opposition must be punished with death
by fire. A mere thought, without having betrayed itself by
outward sign, was considered as guilt. As time went on, this
practice of the Inquisition became more and more atrocious.
Torture was resorted to on mere suspicion. The accused was not
allowed to know the name of his accuser. He was not permitted to
have any legal adviser. There was no appeal. The Inquisition was
ordered not to lean to pity. No recantation was of avail. The
innocent family of the accused was deprived of its property by
confiscation; half went to the papal treasury, half to the
inquisitors. Life only, said Innocent III., was to be left to the
sons of misbelievers, and that merely as an act of mercy. The
consequence was, that popes, such as Nicolas III., enriched their
families through plunder acquired by this tribunal. Inquisitors
did the same habitually.

The struggle between the French and Italians for the possession
of the papacy inevitably led to the schism of the fourteenth
century. For more than forty years two rival popes were now
anathematizing each other, two rival Curias were squeezing the
nations for money. Eventually, there were three obediences, and
triple revenues to be extorted. Nobody, now, could guarantee the
validity of the sacraments, for nobody could be sure which was
the true pope. Men were thus compelled to think for themselves.
They could not find who was the legitimate thinker for them. They
began to see that the Church must rid herself of the curialistic
chains, and resort to a General Council. That attempt was again
and again made, the intention being to raise the Council into a
Parliament of Christendom, and make the pope its chief executive
officer. But the vast interests that had grown out of the
corruption of ages could not so easily be overcome; the Curia
again recovered its ascendency, and ecclesiastical trading was
resumed. The Germans, who had never been permitted to share in
the Curia, took the leading part in these attempts at reform. As
things went on from bad to worse, even they at last found out
that all hope of reforming the Church by means of councils was
delusive. Erasmus exclaimed, "If Christ does not deliver his
people from this multiform ecclesiastical tyranny, the tyranny of
the Turk will become less intolerable." Cardinals' hats were now
sold, and under Leo X. ecclesiastical and religious offices were
actually put up to auction. The maxim of life had become,
interest first, honor afterward. Among the officials, there was
not one who could be honest in the dark, and virtuous without a
witness. The violet-colored velvet cloaks and white ermine capes
of the cardinals were truly a cover for wickedness.

The unity of the Church, and therefore its power, required the
use of Latin as a sacred language. Through this, Rome had stood
in an attitude strictly European, and was enabled to maintain a
general international relation. It gave her far more power than
her asserted celestial authority, and, much as she claims to have
done, she is open to condemnation that, with such a signal
advantage in her hands, never again to be enjoyed by any
successor, she did not accomplish much more. Had not the
sovereign pontiffs been so completely occupied with maintaining
their emoluments and temporalities in Italy, they might have made
the whole continent advance like one man. Their officials could
pass without difficulty into every nation, and communicate
without embarrassment with each other, from Ireland to Bohemia,
from Italy to Scotland. The possession of a common tongue gave
them the administration of international affairs with intelligent
allies everywhere, speaking the same language.

Not without cause was the hatred manifested by Rome to the
restoration of Greek and introduction of Hebrew, and the alarm
with which she perceived the modern languages forming out of the
vulgar dialects. Not without reason did the Faculty of Theology
in Paris re-echo the sentiment that, was prevalent in the time of
Ximenes, "What will become of religion if the study of Greek and
Hebrew be permitted?" The prevalence of Latin was the condition
of her power; its deterioration, the measure of her decay; its
disuse, the signal of her limitation to a little principality in
Italy. In fact, the development of European languages was the
instrument of her overthrow. They formed an effectual
communication between the mendicant friars and the illiterate
populace, and there was not one of them that did not display in
its earliest productions a sovereign contempt for her.

The rise of the many-tongued European literature was therefore
coincident with the decline of papal Christianity; European
literature was impossible under Catholic rule. A grand, a solemn,
an imposing religious unity enforced the literary unity which is
implied in the use of a single tongue.

While thus the possession of a universal language so signally
secured her power, the real secret of much of the influence of
the Church lay in the control she had so skillfully obtained over
domestic life. Her influence diminished as that declined.
Coincident with this was her displacement in the guidance of
international relations by diplomacy.

CATHOLICITY AND CIVILIZATION. In the old times of Roman
domination the encampments of the legions in the provinces had
always proved to be foci of civilization. The industry and order
exhibited in them presented an example not lost on the
surrounding barbarians of Britain, Gaul, and Germany. And, though
it was no part of their duty to occupy themselves actively in the
betterment of the conquered tribes, but rather to keep them in a
depressed condition that aided in maintaining subjection, a
steady improvement both in the individual and social condition
took place.

Under the ecclesiastical domination of Rome similar effects
occurred. In the open country the monastery replaced the
legionary encampment; in the village or town, the church was a
centre of light. A powerful effect was produced by the elegant
luxury of the former, and by the sacred and solemn monitions of
the latter.

In extolling the papal system for what it did in the organization
of the family, the definition of civil policy, the construction
of the states of Europe, our praise must be limited by the
recollection that the chief object of ecclesiastical policy was
the aggrandizement of the Church, not the promotion of
civilization. The benefit obtained by the laity was not through
any special intention, but incidental or collateral.

There was no far-reaching, no persistent plan to ameliorate the
physical condition of the nations. Nothing was done to favor
their intellectual development; indeed, on the contrary, it was
the settled policy to keep them not merely illiterate, but
ignorant. Century after century passed away, and left the
peasantry but little better than the cattle in the fields.
Intercommunication and locomotion, which tend so powerfully to
expand the ideas, received no encouragement; the majority of men
died without ever having ventured out of the neighborhood in
which they were born. For them there was no hope of personal
improvement, none of the bettering of their lot; there were no
comprehensive schemes for the avoidance of individual want, none
for the resistance of famines. Pestilences were permitted to
stalk forth unchecked, or at best opposed only by mummeries. Bad
food, wretched clothing, inadequate shelter, were suffered to
produce their result, and at the end of a thousand years the
population of Europe had not doubled.

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