CHURCH HISTORY

CHIEFLY IN SPAIN AND FRANCE

BY

REV. WENTWORTH WEBSTER, M.A., Oxon

CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY

OF HISTORY OF MADRID

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE

LONDON:

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,

NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.

BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET.

PREFACE

THE student will see at once that the writer of the following pages has lived away from libraries, and that he has neither the means nor the pretension to write a Church History. These gleanings are only from a few outlying fields; but they have been honestly gathered, not pillaged in bulk from other men's sheaves.

A good deal of misconception would be avoided if English Churchmen, desirous of information on the tenets of the Church of Rome, would seek it from accredited documents, not from manuals written in English ad hoc. The last compendious authoritative utterance of the Church of Rome is contained in the Acta et Decreta of the LatinAmerican Council held at Rome in 1899, and in the accompanying Appendix volume of documents (see Chap. xvi. below). An example will illustrate the difference between the two classes of publication. I have before me a 16mo vol. of 430 pages, entitled Catholic Belief, by the very Rev. Joseph Faa di Bruno, fourth edition, re-ordered and revised (Burns and Oates, 1883). It bears the imprimatur of Cardinal Manning. Not a word is said in it about the Cult of the Sacred Heart. The LatinAmerican Council was solemnly consecrated to the Sacred Heart. In sections 42 and 43 we read—

"42. Omnes Christi Fideles, pro more in Catholica Ecclesia recepto, latriæ cultum, qui vero Deo debetur, sanctissimo Eucharistiæ sacramento in veneratione exhibere tenentur." "43. Eodem latriæ cultu adoramus Cor Jesu: Cor nempe personæ Verbi." See also sections 375-9. In the opening of his Encyclical De sanctissima Eucharistia, May 27, 1902, Leo XIII. speaks of two recent acts, the recollection of which is peculiarly grateful to him. The first is: "Quum optimum factu censuimus augusto Cordi Christi Redemptoris universitatem humani generis peculiari ritu devoveri.” 1

The reader will perhaps also be astonished at the use made of Jesuit writers. Most people think of Jesuits as all cut after the same pattern, all ultraconservatives, all holding the same opinions. But there is almost as much difference of opinion to be found among Jesuits on political and social matters as among any other set of men. Three of the writers made use of in the following pages, Burriel (1719-1762), Larramendi (1690-1766), and Masdeu (1740-1817), are among the most liberal historians of Spain. The last has been almost too sceptical in his searching criticism of the sources of Spanish history; and no one can study Spanish Church history without being under a debt of obligation to the learned Jesuit, R. P. F. Fita, as I gratefully acknowledge. To give a fascination of terror to any body of men is a great mistake. In the time of Louis Philippe, when all France was ringing with the passionate declama

1 This was done by the Encyclical Annum Sacrum, May 25, 1899.

tions of Quinet and Michelet against the Jesuits, and the newspapers were full of calumnies against them, the Jesuits in Paris interrupted their usual religious lection at the refectory, and read instead the most violent of these denunciations. Some few weak-kneed men left them, but the great majority who remained were henceforth proof against attack, and inaugurated a fresh era of prosperity for the Society in France. A work which has also been made much use of in the following pages is the Historia de los Heterodoxos Españoles, by the great critic Don Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo.

Another object of these papers is to show how like in many respects was the action of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Charles V., and of Philip II., towards the Church in Spain to that of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth towards the Church of England. The close alliance of relationship between the Tudor sovereigns and the Spanish kings has been too much overlooked by recent English Church historians. More than once was a breach with Rome and the establishment of a Spanish national Church threatened by Spanish kings.

With the exception of the last, all these chapters have appeared in the pages of the Anglican Church Magazine or of the Foreign Church Chronicle. Most of them have been considerably enlarged, all are brought down more or less to date, and references, which could not be given in the pages of a magazine, have been added.