dispensation which specially set aside the decrees of bishops and local councils.1

In 1530 Clement VII. addressed himself vigorously to the task of putting an end to the scandalous practice of hereditary transmission of benefices, which he describes as almost universal. A special bull was issued, prohibiting the children of priests or monks from enjoying any preferment in their father's benefices, and, recognising that the Roman Curia was one of the chief obstacles to all reform, he provided that if he or his successors should grant dispensations permitting such infraction of the canons, they should be considered as issued unwittingly, and be held null and void. Like so many others, this bull seems to have been forgotten almost as soon as issued, and the pecuniary needs of the Roman court rendered it unable to abandon so lucrative a source of revenue. Even as soon as 1538 the cardinals to whom Paul III. committed the task of drawing up the project of reformation cautiously intimate that they hear of such dispensations being granted, and to this they attribute a large share of the troubles of the Church and the enmity felt towards the Holy See. This warning passed unheeded, and, as we have seen, in 1559 a Scottish council prayed the Queen-regent to use her influence with the Pope to prevent dispensations being granted to enable illegitimate children to hold preferment in their fathers' benefices, while in 1562 the frequency and readiness with which such dispensations were still

3

1 Pro concubinario absoluto et dispensatio super irregularitate: et hoc contra provinciales et synodales constitutiones, g. vii.-Libellus Taxarum super quibusdam in Cancellaria Apostolica impetrandis, fol. 17a (White, Historical Library, Cornell University, A. 6124).

2 Bull. ad Canonum (Mag. Pull. Roman. Ed. 1692, I. 682).

Alexander III., in prohibiting the sons of priests from enjoying their fathers' benefices, had permitted it if a third party intervened and a dispensation for the irregularity were obtained. The letter of this law was frequently observed, but its spirit eluded by nominally passing the preferment through the hands of a man of straw, and it was this abuse which Clement desired to eradicate.

3 Consilium de Emend. Eccles. (Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. II. 599.) 4 Wilkins IV. 209.

obtained are enumerated in a list of abuses laid before the Council of Trent by Sebastian, King of Portugal, as one of the matters requiring reformation by the supreme power of the council. To this and other similar appeals the papal legates loftily replied that laws were not to be prescribed to the Holy See; and the motive for the refusal is easily comprehended when we see that in the "Taxes of the Penitentiary" the price for a dispensation admitting the bastard of a priest to holy orders was a ducat and a carlino.3

2

In Spain, Ribadeneira, the disciple of Ignatius Loyola, tells us that the priestly concubines were accustomed to pledge their faith to their consorts as if united in wedlock, and that they wore the distinguishing costume of married women, as though glorying in their shame, which so scandalised St. Ignatius, on his return, in 1535, to his native land, that he exerted his influence with the temporal authorities to procure the enactment and enforcement of sundry laws which relieved the Spanish Church of so great an opprobrium. We may reasonably, however, doubt the success of his efforts. Some ten years later, Alphonso de Castro asserts that the priesthood was one of the efficient causes of the spread of heresy, and that

1 Le Plat, V. 88. The opinion which was held of the venality of the Roman court in such matters is forcibly expressed in the instructions given to Laussac, the French ambassador at Trent. He is ordered to press the abolition of the papal power of dispensation "attendu que nul n'en est refusé s'il a argent."Ibid. p. 153.

2 Ejus sanctitati lex non sit præscribenda.—Ibid. p. 385.

3 Tax. Sac. Pœnitent. Ed. Gibbings, p. 13.-This was only one carlino (the tenth part of a ducat, equal to about fourpence) more than the charge for the bastard of a layman.

4 Ribadeneira, Vit. Ignat. Loyola, Lib. II. cap. v. From this it would appear that the 'custom of permanent unions, described by Bishop Pelayo two centuries earlier, was still flourishing. As stated above (p. 17), Ferdinand and Isabella, in repeated edicts, from 1480 to 1503, had endeavoured to put an end to notorious concubinage, by fining, scourging, and banishing the women (Novisima Recopilacion, Lib. XII. Tit. xxvi. leyes 3-5.-Coleccion de Cidulas, III. 113, Madrid, 1829), for the men were beyond their jurisdiction. Possibly it was these laws that Loyola sought to revive.

it would be difficult for orthodoxy to maintain itself without the direct interposition of God, in view of the scandalous lives and general worthlessness of all orders of ecclesiastics, whose excessive numbers, turpitude, and ignorance exposed them to contempt.1 His contemporary, the canon lawyer Bernardius Déaz de Luzo, indeed, finds in the universality of concubinage a reason for its partial condonation, for, while deploring its frequency, he warns judges not to be over severe in its repression, since so few are found guiltless, and there is danger that those who are restrained from it may be forced into darker sins. How difficult, under such circumstances, was any reform may be gathered from a memorial presented in 1556 to Philip II. by Inquisitor-General Valdés. He relates that when he became Archbishop of Seville, in 1546, he found the clergy and the dignitaries of the cathedral so demoralised that they had no shame in their children and grandchildren: their women lived with them openly as though married, and accompanied them to church, while many kept in their houses public gaming tables, which were the resort of disorderly characters. To remedy these evils he instituted vigorous measures of reform, but in this he was greatly impeded and put to much expense by appeals and suits in Rome and in Granada, and in the Royal Council and before apostolic judges. In view of the facility with which absolutions and dispensations could be procured, it is easy to see how readily a persistent reformer could be embroiled with the Holy See.

About the same time Herman von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne, undertook the reformation of his extensive diocese. He assembled a council, which issued a series of 275 canons, prescribing minutely the functions, duties,

1 Alphonsi de Castro de justa Hæreticorum Punitione, Lib. III. cap. 5.

2 Díaz de Luco, Practica criminalis canonica, cap. lxxiii. (Venetiis, 1543.)

3 Archivo general de Simancas, Patronato Real, Inquisicion, Legajo unico fol. 76.

and obligations of all grades of the clergy. As regards the delicate subject of concubinage, he contented himself with quoting the Nicene canon prohibiting the residence of women not nearly connected by blood, and added that if the degeneracy of the times prevented the enforcement of a regulation so strict, at all events he forbade the companionship of females obnoxious to suspicion.1 The good archbishop himself could hardly have expected that so mild an allocution would have much effect upon a perverse and hardened generation, but custom had so established itself that even the loftiest prelates shrank from encountering the risk attendant upon an attempt to enforce the canons. This is seen when, in 1537, Matthew, Archbishop of Salzburg, assembled his provincial synod, which, recognising the urgent necessity of preserving the Church and protecting the people, adopted a series of reformatory decrees. Afraid of promulgating them, it was resolved to suppress them for the present, under the pretext that the approaching General Council would regulate the discipline of the Church at large; and the archbishop contented himself with a pastoral letter addressed to his suffragans, in which he urged upon them to consider the contamination to which the laity were exposed through the vices of their pastors, and timidly suggested that, if the clergy could not restrain their passions, they should at all events indulge them secretly, so that scandal might be avoided and the punishment of their transgressions be left to an avenging God.'

This timidity finds its explanation in the report by the papal nuncio Morone of an interview, in 1542, with the Archbishop of Mainz, on the subject of the reform of

1 Concil. Coloniens. ann. 1536, P. II. c. 28. Six years later, in 1542, Bishop Hermann embraced Lutheranism, married, and in 1546 was driven from his see and retired to his county of Wied, where he died some years afterwards, at the ripe age of 80 years.

2 Concil. Salisburg. XLI. (Dalham, Concil. Salisburgens. pp. 296-322.)

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the clergy, which was acknowledged to be the pressing question of the hour. The archbishop flatly admitted his impotence; until the Council should be held no reformation was possible. Priestly concubinage, he said, could not be suppressed without great scandals-in fact, persuasion was the only course open, for the clergy of Mainz, Trèves, and Cologne had formed so strong an organisation for mutual defence that they would all rise in resistance if the least of them were prosecuted.1

In the Council of Trent itself, the Bishop of St. Mark, in opening its proceedings with a speech, 6 January, 1546, drew a fearful picture of the corruption of the world, which had reached a degree that posterity might possibly equal but not exceed. This he assured the assembled fathers was attributable solely to the wickedness of the pastors, who drew their flocks with them into the abyss of sin. The Lutheran heresy had been provoked by their own guilt, and its suppression was only to be hoped for by their own reformation. At a later session, the Bavarian orator, August Baumgartner, told the assembled fathers that the progress of the Reformation was attributable to the scandalous lives of the clergy, whose excesses he could not describe without offending the chaste ears of his auditory. He even asserted that out of a hundred priests there were not more than three or four who were not either married or concubinarians—a statement repeated in a consultation on the subject of ecclesiastical reform drawn up in 1562 by order of the Emperor Ferdinand, with the addition that the clergy would rather see the whole structure of the Church destroyed than submit to even the most moderate measure of reform.*

1 Lämmer, Monumenta Vaticana Sæculi XVI. p. 412.

2 Acta Concil. Trident. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VIII. 1063-9.)

3 Sarpi, Istor. del Concilio Trident. Lib. VI. (Ed. Helmstad. II. 140).-Cf. Le Plat, V. 337-8.

4 Le Plat, V. 235.