received and adopted by other Churches, though it has since been altered in the Roman Church. The "Filioque" clause was first adopted in Spain. PART II. The second part, though much longer (sixty-one out of eighty-seven pages), is hardly of equal interest to the English reader, and I shall merely indicate its general line of argument. In it Masdeu traces the downfall of the early Spanish National Church chiefly to the action and the influence of the French Benedictine Monks of Cluny, and their authority with the Pope Alexander II. and Gregory VII. Before this time the doctrine of the Papal Temporal Supremacy was wholly unknown in Spain. He then sketches out the history of the substitution of the Roman for the Gothic (Mozarabic) liturgy throughout Spain, except at Toledo,1 and shows that the latter was exempt from any trace of doctrinal error. To disprove the credit of the monks of Cluny he quotes largely from St. Bernard's letters, especially from those to Eugenius III. He then brings forward particular instances in Spanish history of Papal excess, extortion, and interested political double-dealing, especially in the matter of prohibitions of, or dispensations for, royal marriages. He points out that it was the very best kings, such as St. Ferdinand of Spain and St. Louis of France, who most earnestly and vigorously rejected the 1 Cf. Menendez Pelayo's Historia de los Heterodoxos, tomo i. 365. He gives, or alludes to, the same facts, but his conclusions as to the results are exactly opposite to those above given. Papal claims. The Sedes Apostolica of Spain up to the tenth century was Santiago de Compostella, not Rome. He details the gradual usurpation of episcopal rights by the Pope, and his acquisition of power over the temporalities of churches and monasteries. Then comes the story of the humiliation of the royal power; how the clergy were exempted first from the civil authority, and that thence arose the lamentable necessity of episcopal prisons and police. Then the nomination of bishops and the power of convoking national councils were taken from the kings; though the former has since been partially recovered. Concubinage among the clergy, with other disorders unknown before, followed on the introduction of monasticism. Both the burning of heretics, this impious cruelty (esta impia crueldad), and the Inquisition were introduced from France. The early Spaniards were tolerant.1 They held that it was lawful as Span 1 There is no doubt that Masdeu is quite right on this point, which Buckle wrongly attacks McCrie for having asserted. The documents published by F. Gonsalez in his Mudéjares en Castilla, the early travels lately published, all show that foreign ecclesiastics and visitors were astonished at the tolerance of the Spanish court. How the opposite feeling arose is too long to tell here. It is curious to notice that while Gams, Die Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, vol. iii. 511 (Regensburg, 1879), tries to throw the odium of the Inquisition off the Church on the nation, and has been called a heretic for so doing, Menendez Palayo, tomo ii. 690, obra citata 1880, resolutely accepts it and defends the institution and its punishments. We may cite also a verse from the thirteenth-century poem "Roncesvalles," first printed by R. P. F. Fita, S.J., in the Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia, tomo iv. p. 174 (Madrid, 1888), then by M. l'Abbé V. Dubarrat, Roncevaux (Pau, 1889). iards to attack Mohammedans with spiritual arms, but not with temporal; that we might, as Christians, at the peril of our life introduce the Gospel among the followers of the Koran, but only with the tongue, which is the sword of Jesus Christ. Intolerance was introduced by foreign crusaders. It was a wrong and excessive piety which added the word "Roman to the "Catholic Church" in the creed; but the greatest wrong of all to the National Church was the abolition of the national and provincial councils, and the greatest actual need is their restoration. The above may seem poor and commonplace to an English Churchman. The significance of the paper consists in the position of the writer more. even than in the facts which he brings forward. The essay is evidence of the deep unrest and dissatisfaction which exists among several of the most learned and best-informed theologians of the Roman Church-especially if they are students of early ecclesiastical history-at the position of the National Churches and of the episcopate under Papal absolutism. It shows us how strongly these feelings existed at the beginning of the century in Masdeu's case, a Jesuit who yielded implicit outward obedience to the injunctions of his superiors to the end of his life, being ordered from his studies in Barcelona to do simple school-work in Valencia, "Porta patet omnibus, infirmis et sanis. Et, ut dicam breviter, bonis et profanis." G in which uncongenial occupation he soon died. The wrongs alleged above have been since intensified tenfold, and the hidden feeling of dissatisfaction, in spite of all outward repression, is intensified also. What may be the issue is in God's knowledge only. This particular evidence of dissatisfaction might, I have thought, be of interest, and perhaps even of service to English Churchmen, showing as it does that even a Jesuit theologian can look back with envy on a National Church, under royal protection, and with bishops appointed directly by the Crown. V IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND THE COUNTER REFORMATION 1 "THE Catholicism of the present day rests upon the Counter-Reformation of the seventeenth century." So runs the opening sentence of E. Gothein's recent work, Ignatius von Loyola und die Gegenreformation. It is a book which gives almost more than it promises. The Counter-Reformation is often taken to mean merely the result of the action of the Jesuits, and the Council of Trent, the stamping out of the Reform movements in Italy and Spain, their restriction in Belgium and France, and the religious division of Europe fixed by the Thirty Years' War in Germany. But Herr Gothein, in this history of the Counter-Reformation, like M. Philippson in La Contre-Révolution réligieuse au XVIème Siècle, does not come down to these times. The limit of both these writers is the close of the Council of Trent, and the history of the early Jesuits. Philippson nearly agrees with Gothein in 1Ignatius von Loyola und die Gegenreformation, von Eberhard Gothein. (Max Niemeyer, Halle, 1895.) 2 La Contre-Révolution réligieuse au XVI Siècle, par Martin Philippson. (Bruxelles et Paris, 1884.) |