Part 13

The Elector of Brandenburg, it will be recalled, was the first to abjure Catholicism, and founded what became in 1701 the Prussian monarchy.

There was no general Diet since 1656. The Estates no longer met, and the rulers imposed taxes at their will. Peasants fled to Poland, or became mendicant vagrants or brigands.

The Lutheran clergy were mere puppets in the hands of their tyrannical rulers, who even dictated or revised their sermons at times. Prussian despotism reached high-water mark under Frederick the Great, but he being a frank and consistent rationalist, who believed “in letting every man be blessed in his own way,” religious persecution ceased.

In Brunswick and Hanover the spoils of the Church appeased for a time the greed of reformation princes, but habits of luxury were engendered by their ill-gotten wealth, and they soon resorted to “money clipping.” The towns lost all their inherited independence. For the decisions of municipal councils were substituted governmental decrees and circulars, as in France to-day, and ere long all trace of the ancient freedom of the Estates was lost. “The clergy,” writes Havemann, “had long since sunk into dependence.... The cities were languishing from lack of public spirit.... The power of modern states was unfolding itself over the sad remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates.”

In Saxony there was a nip-and-tuck struggle between Lutheranism and Calvinism in which the rack and the scaffold were freely used by Lutheran princes, who enforced their form of Protestantism according to the axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_.

On the Church lands in England had lived a dense population of tenant farmers. When these lands were confiscated by Henry VIII, thousands of these peasantry became helpless paupers under the new regime. Vagrancy and mendicancy reached alarming proportions. It was enacted that vagrant beggars should be enslaved. If they tried to escape they were to be killed.

It appeared to Burnet (_History of Reformation_) that the intention of the nobility was to restore slavery. According to Lecky there were 72,000 executions in the reign of Henry VIII; vagrant beggars furnishing a large contingent.

Under Elizabeth charity by taxation or poor rates was resorted to for the first time in the history of Christendom.

I think we must admit that liberty, both civil and religious, made shipwreck at the Reformation, and that the champions of the Protestant revolt were not exactly actuated by a desire for the well-being and freedom of conscience of their fellow-men.

In England all was laboriously reconquered till 1829, when Catholics were _emancipated_ on their native soil.[25]

Some Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, were saved from the horrors of religious wars, but all felt the effects of the new rationalistic spirit, which, being a diminution of Christianity, was also a diminution of liberty. They lost many civil liberties, and despotism strengthened its bands, till the great upheaval of 1790 destroyed the whole fabric of Europe and inaugurated a system of constitutional representative government.

Representative government, our modern fetish, was not unjustly rated by J. J. Rousseau, when he said “that a people with a representative government were slaves except during the period of elections, when they were sovereigns.” France to-day is a striking illustration.[26]

An amusing incident is related by Leroy Beaulieu of a Neapolitan who hired donkeys to tourists. He was an eager advocate of representative government in 1869. Questioned as to his reasons, he said that since twenty-one years he had been hiring donkeys to English, French, and American tourists, who enjoyed representative governments and were all rich. Some years later the eminent economist met him again, and congratulated him on Italy’s having acquired a representative constitution. The disabused peasant bitterly denounced the new regime in that the burden of taxation had trebled, and that the very donkey he hired out was taxed.

If the laws, or at least all important ones, were submitted to untrammelled public vote, then only might we say that the government was truly representative.

In many cases universal suffrage means the tyranny of ignorant, unprincipled majorities, while nowhere can it oppose an effective barrier against the accumulation of immense wealth in a few hands, and the creation of all-powerful oligarchies. When the majorities and the oligarchies come into collision, liberty will succumb. There will be more than one Bridge of Sighs.

It is in vain that false philosophers would persuade us that altruism, some vague “moral element of Christianism,” will combine with rationalism and perpetuate our Christian civilization in some transcendent form.

Christian civilization and morality are intimately and indissolubly connected with Christian dogma. The Fatherhood of God, Jupiter Optimus, was not unknown to the ancients, but the brotherhood of man, involving personal liberty and also civil liberty by extension, is essentially a Christian predicate, and is based on the dogma of the Incarnation.

The lofty contempt our modern rationalists express for the fierce controversy waged over two Greek vowels by the partisans of _Homoousion_ and _Homoiousion_ merely betrays their ignorance of its vital importance. On that dogma, so nobly maintained by the See of Peter and Athanasius, rests our whole fabric of Christian civilization, the brotherhood of man, and its logical sequence, freedom from slavery.

It is as absurd to suppose that the “moral element of Christianity” will continue to exist after the erosion of Christian dogma, as to expect that a tree we have hewn down will continue to bear fruit. It may indeed for a time remain verdant, and even put forth new shoots, just as we often see the loveliest flowers and fruits of Christianity in the lives and characters of individuals with whom the Christian faith has almost ceased to exist. But let us not be deceived. The lingering sap will cease to flow, and the last semblance of life will fade away. “The elements of dissolution have been multiplying all around us,” writes Lecky. And when rationalism or secularism, or neo-paganism in other words, which has already corroded Christendom to so great an extent, shall have accomplished its work of disintegration with the aid of godless schools and gross literature, society will, I repeat, be compelled to restore Christianity, or slavery, or perish.

CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION

“At the end of the fourth century,” writes Guizot, “the Church saved Christianity ... resisted the internal dissolution of the Empire and the barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of civilization.... Had the Church not existed the whole world must have been abandoned to purely material force” (_History of Civilization_, I, 38).... “When all was chaos, when every great social combination was vanishing, the Church proclaimed the unity of her doctrine and the universality of her right; this is a great and powerful fact which has rendered immense service to humanity” (_ibid._, II, 19).

This unity was indeed the great factor in European civilization. On it the new civil societies, like wild olive branches, were grafted, so to speak. It became the bond of political unity, a kind of centripetal force, we may say, and the redemption from that inordinate love of independence which characterized the barbarians.

Consequently the new civil societies made the maintenance of religious unity the foremost object of their policy. It became the public law of all Europe and the common law of each state. To impugn this unity was considered a most heinous offence not against God only, but against the nation and against all Christendom.

“Thus,” writes another great Protestant, “Christianity became crystallized into a single bond embracing all nations, and giving to all life, civilization, and all the riches of the mind” (Hurter, _Life of Innocent III_, I, 38).

A corollary of this system of an universal Christian society was the recognition of a supreme tribunal. “One of the most elevated principles of the age,” writes the same eminent German, “was that, in the struggles between the peoples and their rulers, there should be a superior authority charged to recall laws not made by men, though their interpreter were himself a man.” Referring to the fiercely contested election of Othon, he continues: “Othon was the first to have recourse to Rome, the tribunal with whom rested the decision in these matters, when the parties did not wish to resort to the arbitrament of war.”

In France we find the great Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, remonstrating with the Bishop of the free chartered city of Beauvais, brother of the King, with whom he was often at odds.

“I beseech you not to raise a guilty hand against the King ... for you must see the consequences of armed insurrection against the King, especially if it be without consulting the Sovereign Pontiff.... If the King, drawn aside by evil counsellors, has not acted rightly, it was proper to have informed him by the bishops and notables, or rather by our Holy Father the Pope, who is at the head of the whole Church, and could easily have reconciled all differences.”

In England we have many instances of both laymen and clergy appealing to the arbitrament of the Papacy.

“The recognition of some principle of right, powerful enough to form a bond of lasting concord, has always been the dream of statesmen and philosophers,” writes Lecky. “Hildebrand sought it in the supremacy of the spiritual power, and in the consequent ascendency of moral law” (_History of Rationalism_, 245).

Voltaire pays homage to this public policy of the Middle Ages. “The interests of the human race required a controlling power to restrain sovereigns and protect the lives of peoples. This controlling power of religion could well be placed in the hands of the Papacy. The Sovereign Pontiffs warning princes and people of their duties, appeasing quarrels, rebuking crimes, might always have been regarded as the images of God on earth. But men, alas, are reduced to the protection of laws without force” (_Essai sur les mœurs_, II).

He describes what really did exist for centuries, though, of course, papal arbitration was not always efficacious. Every great institution needs time to develop and mature. It would not be great were it otherwise. Moreover there were, unfortunately, many troublous times between the sixth and the fifteenth century, in which the Papacy itself was captive, buffeted, demeaned, and exiled by the struggles and ambitions of turbulent political factions in Rome itself. The very day on which Gregory VII excommunicated the German Emperor, he was seized and imprisoned by a noble Roman bandit, until his people were able to deliver him by main force.

“Another corollary of this universal Christian Society was that right found a protector in the common Father of the faithful; in the grand idea of a supreme chief who without employing material force judged in last resort.... What great misfortunes would France and all Europe have been spared if, in the reign of Louis XVI, an Innocent III had been Pope. His rôle would have been to save the lives of the people” (Hurter’s _Innocent III_, II, 200-23). To German Protestant writers like Hurter, Voigt, Neander, etc., is due the honour of vindicating the true rôle of the Papacy in the Middle Ages.

The rights of suzerainty exercised by the Papacy also formed part of the public law of Europe. In those wild, lawless days, when robber barons enjoyed the privilege of being highwaymen on their own estates, and often extended their depredations to those of their neighbours, property rights had no sanction, and the weaker succumbed to the stronger in virtue of the “fist right,” which we now translate variously by “the right of the strongest,” political “majorities,” and the “survival of the fittest.”

The practice then arose among weak owners of dedicating their lands to the Church, in order to obtain spiritual or moral protection against the brute force of stronger neighbours. What private owners did in a small way was done by princes on a larger scale.

Referring to the peculiar incidents when roving Norman pirates, in possession of Sicily and Naples, seized the person of the Pope and insisted on becoming his vassal, Voltaire writes as follows:--“Robert Guiscard, wishing to be independent of the German Emperor, resorted to a precaution which private owners took in those days of trouble and rapine. The latter gave their property to the Church under the name of Oblata, and, paying a slight tax, continued to enjoy the use of it. The Normans resorted to this custom, placing under the protection of the Church in the hands of Nicholas II (1059) not only what they held, but also their future conquests (on the Saracens). This homage was an act of political piety like Peter’s Pence; the two pence of gold paid by the Kings of Portugal; like the voluntary submission of so many kingdoms” (_Essai sur les mœurs_, II, 44).

It was thus that England became a fief of the Holy See, a most unfortunate circumstance, as the temporal pecuniary obligations arising therefrom were exploited to estrange the English from the See of Peter, in the following centuries.

“In 1329,” continues Voltaire, “the King of Sweden, who wished to conquer Denmark, addressed the Pope as follows: ‘Your Holiness knows that Denmark depends on the Roman See and not on the German Emperor.’ ... I only wish to show,” Voltaire adds, “how every prince who wished to recover or usurp a domain appealed to the Pope.... In this case the Pope defended Denmark, and said he could only decide on the justice of the case when the parties had appeared before his tribunal, according to the ancient usage.”

Nor did Christians alone appeal to this spiritual tribunal. The bull of Innocent III, cited by Hurter, is an excellent exponent of the mind of the Church in all times. “As they (the Jews) claim our succour against their persecutors, we take them under our special protection, following in this the example of our predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, Clement, and Celestin. We forbid every one to force a Jew to be baptized, for he who is compelled cannot be said to have the faith. No Christian must dare commit any violence against them, nor seize their property, without a legal judgment. Let no one trouble them on their feast days by striking or throwing stones at them,” etc.

It will be objected that the fulcrum of Western civilization was a spiritual despotism. But these terms exclude each other. Can we call an authority despotic which had no material force, and rested only on a divine commission and the common sense of prince and people, recognizing its credentials--on public opinion in fact?

It was a fundamental law of every state that any one, no matter what his rank, who impugned the Unity of the Faith, or committed offences so heinous as to justify the supposition that he was no longer a Christian, fell under the ban of the Church and became outlawed, if at the end of a year he had not been absolved. In his _Historia Imperatorum_ Schafnaburg explains the wintry flight of Henry IV across the Alps to Canossa by his eagerness to be absolved before the year had revolved, because otherwise he would have forfeited his crown. _Ut ante hanc diem non absolveretur, deinceps juxta Palatinas leges indignus regio honore habeatur._

Three causes were generally admitted as sufficient for the excommunication of a sovereign. First, if he fell from the faith. Second, if he ravaged or seized ecclesiastical lands or desecrated churches. Third, if he repudiated his own wife or appropriated his neighbour’s. This latter point, as Voltaire and Montesquieu have pointed out, was the cause of nearly all the quarrels between the French kings and the Papacy, a fact which our Jacobins, in the Chambers and elsewhere, deliberately ignore, when they mendaciously misrepresent the Church as having constantly encroached on the civil power. The case of Philippe Augustus and the hapless Ingleburge of Denmark was a test case, so to speak.

“It was not,” writes Hurter, “a question of contested claims of the Papacy, but of this great question, Is the sovereign subject to the laws of Christianity? It had to be decided whether the royal will should triumph or not over the force regarded as constituting the unity of Christendom” (_Life of Innocent III_). Montesquieu’s testimony is unimpeachable when he testifies that this Public Law of Europe was universally recognized. “All the sovereigns,” he writes, “with inconceivable blindness, themselves accredited and sanctioned, in public opinion, which had no force except by it.”

If the laws against heretics, who were to our forefathers what the anarchists are to us, were oppressive, some of the blame should surely be apportioned to the laymen who sat in the mixed assemblies in which they were made. “Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was deluged in bloodshed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities.” It is in this disingenuous way that Lecky refers to the operations of the Public Law of Europe against the Albigenses or Manichæans of Provence, and probably to the wars of Italian independence and the Thirty Years War. Until the thirteenth century he assures us that practically no persecutions (prosecutions) against heretics occurred. It was then that the Public Law of Europe began to be trampled on by sectarians who adopted and propagated Gnostic, Paulician, Manichæan, and other subversive theories, imported from the East by Semitic-Islamic settlers in the fair lands of Provence. Spain and Italy, the countries in which the Public Law of Europe was maintained, were the only ones who were spared the horrors of civil religious wars. They were saved by inquisitions, it will be retorted.

Without seeking to defend the system, we may be permitted to inquire whether it were not preferable, at that time, to execute some ringleaders of religious revolt (30,000 in three centuries is a fair estimate), than to deluge whole countries in blood for many decades, about controversies which not one in a million could possibly grasp? Lecky the rationalist assures us that “the overwhelming majority of the human race, necessarily, accept their opinions from authority. Avowedly like Catholics, or unconsciously like Protestants. They have neither time nor opportunity (nor capacity) to examine for themselves” (_History of Rationalism_, I, 101).

Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by Presbyterians in the United States?

In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as a means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon, “the least-erected spirit that fell,” Moloch, “horrid king besmeared with blood,” Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between “the serpent’s seed and the seed of the woman.”

In this unholy struggle “all the bonds of cohesion on which political organization depended were weakened or destroyed,” writes Lecky. “The spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury” (_History of Rationalism_, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary. He describes the Hussites as “wild beasts whom the severity of the emperor had roused to furor.”

In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of _Thirty Years War_ Schiller writes as follows:--

“The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen).... It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish himself in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army. His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him.”

It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown.

What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the _tu quoque_ argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained the upper hand, just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_ was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. “If any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed under the Papacy” (Walch’s _Augs._, XIV, p. 520).

In this same connexion Schiller makes the following statement. “No country changed religion oftener than the Palatinate. Unhappy weathercock of the political and religious versatility of its sovereigns, it had twice been forced to embrace the doctrines of Luther and then to abandon them for those of Calvin. Frederick III deserted the Confession of Augsburg, but his son re-established it by most violent and unjust measures. After closing all the Calvinist temples and exiling the ministers and school teachers, he ordered by his will that his son should be brought up by Lutherans; his brother, however, annulled this will and became regent under the young Frederick IV, who was confided to Calvinists with strict orders to destroy in his mind the “heretical doctrines of Luther by all means, by beating and whipping even.” It is easy to guess how subjects were treated when the heir to the throne was thus tyrannized over” (_Thirty Years War_, p. 40).

What, I ask, has Europe gained by the overthrow of its public law? Strife, anarchy, nihilism in religion as in philosophy. After centuries of dabbling, floundering, and blundering, we are again seeking to devise some principle of unity, some Amphictyonic Council to supplement the illusory balance of power; to set up a Court of Arbitration to replace the one that really did exist in the Middle Ages and functioned as well as could be expected in those days of liquescence.