The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

Of a sudden, as if in another gust of passion, he made a clean sweep of the obstacles which his own perversity had placed in his path, and then took up in terrible earnest the work of church reform. He would allow no appointment savoring of corruption to any spiritual office; he would hear of no exception to the duty of residence; he completely abolished dispensations for marriages within prohibited degrees. Into the general management of the churches of the city, as well as into that of his own papal court, he introduced so strict a discipline that Rome was likened to a well-conducted monastery. But the agency which above all others he encouraged was that which his own advice had established in the centre of the Catholic world—the Inquisition. From the sacred college downward, no sphere of life was exempted from its control; and his intolerance extended itself to the very Jews whose privileges in the papal states he ruthlessly revoked. On his death-bed he recommended the Inquisition with the holy see itself to the pious cardinals surrounding him. It was afterward observed that many reforms decreed in its third period by the Council of Trent were copied from the ordinances issued by Paul IV in this memorable biennium. But inasmuch as during his pontificate the Church of Rome had lost ground in almost every country of Europe except Italy and Spain, his death (August 18, 1559) naturally brought with it a widespread renewal of the demand for remedies more effective than those supplied by his feverish activity and by the operations of his favorite institution.

Personally, Pius IV (1559-1566) was regarded, and probably chosen, as an opponent of the late Pope; his family history inclined him to the Imperial interest, and he was understood to favor concessions to Germany with a view of bringing her stray sheep back into the fold. But in general he furthered rather than arrested the religious reaction. Above all, the Inquisition, though he is not known to have done anything to intensify its rigor or augment its authority, went on as before. Carlo Borromeo,[56] the nephew of Pius IV, served the holy see in a spirit of unselfish devotion, and began those efforts on behalf of religion which in the end obtained for him a place among the saints of the Church—a position not reached by many popes' nephews. With the aid of this influence, Pius IV came to perceive that the future, both of the Church and of the papacy, depended on the spirit of confidence and cohesion which could be infused into the former; nor had he from the very outset of his pontificate ever doubted the expediency of reassembling the council at Trent.

The emperor Ferdinand and the French Government, who persisted in treating the reunion of the Church as the primary object of the council, at first strongly urged the substitution for Trent of a genuinely German or French town, where the German bishops, and perhaps even the Protestants, would feel no scruple about attending. But a totally free and new council of this description lay outside the horizon of the papacy; and Pius IV might have let fall the plan altogether but for the fear of the entire separation in that event of the Gallican Church from Rome. In France, Protestantism had made considerable strides during the reign of Henry II (1547-1559). About six weeks before the death of Henry the first national synod of Protestants was held at Paris (May, 1559). Under Francis II the Guise influence became paramount, and the persecution of the Protestants continued. But though the suppression, just before this, of the so-called conspiracy of Amboise had temporarily added to the power of the Guises, it had also made the Queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, resolve not to let the power of the state pass wholly out of her hands. Hence the appointment of the large-hearted L'Hôpital as chancellor, and the assembly of notables at Fontainebleau (August), where the grievances against Rome found full expression, and where arrangements were made for a meeting of the States-general and a national council of the French Church. This resolution determined Pius IV to lose no further time. On November 29, 1560, he issued a bull summoning all the prelates and princes of Christendom to Trent for the following Easter. The invitation included both Eastern schismatics and Western heretics, Elizabeth of England among the rest; but neither she nor the German Protestant princes assembled at Naumburg, nor the kings of the Scandinavian North, would so much as receive the papal summons. In France the death of Francis II (December 5, 1560) further depressed the Guise influence; and Catherine entered into negotiations with the Pope with a view to concessions such as would satisfy the Huguenots while approved by the French bishops. The "Edict of January" (1562), which followed, long remained a sort of standard of fair concessions to the Huguenots.

The first deliberations of the reassembled council were barren. The question which really came home to the fathers of the Church assembled at Trent presented itself again when the sacrament of orders had in due course to be debated. The imperial and French ambassadors still coöperated as actively as ever, and the episcopal party, the Spanish prelates in particular, entered upon the struggle with a full sense of its critical importance. If the right divine of episcopacy could be declared, with it would be established the divine obligation of residence. Pius IV accordingly showed considerable shrewdness in instructing the legates at once to formulate a decree on residence, which, while leaving the question of divine obligation open, imposed penalties on nonresidence—except for lawful reasons—sufficient to meet practical requirements. But though such a decree was passed by the council, the debates on the origin of the episcopal office, which involved nothing less than the origin and nature of the papal supremacy, continued (November); and the critical nature of the discussion was the more apparent when in the midst of it there at last arrived nearly a score of French bishops, headed by the Cardinal of Lorraine. Hitherto France had been represented at the council by spokesmen of the French court and of the Parliament of Paris; now the foremost among the prelates of the monarchy, whose abilities, however, unfortunately fell far short of his pretensions, announced in full conciliar assembly the demands of his branch of the Church. The recent January edict proved the strength of the Huguenots in France; and though the Cardinal's first speech at Trent breathed nothing but condemnation of these heretics, it suited him to pose as the advocate of as extensive a series of reforms as had yet been urged upon the council.