In fact, the Tridentine reform, so loudly heralded as a panacea for all the evils afflicting the Church, was everywhere confessedly a failure. When, in 1583, President d'Espeisses presented to Henry III. a memorial against the publication of the council in France, he drew one of his arguments from the greater corruption of the Italian Church, where, though the council was received without demur, yet none of its orders reforming the morals of the clergy received the least attention.1 That the Tridentine canons in this respect were wholly inefficacious throughout Italy, and that the officials, with rare exceptions, did not venture to enforce them, can indeed be seen in the series of provincial councils held during the remainder of the century, from Lombardy to Naples.

The papacy had succeeded in crushing the reformers who had responded in so many Italian cities to the uprising in Germany; it had then convoked and managed at its will the great congress of Catholic Christendom which was to put an end at once and for ever to all the evils which had led to the schism; it had every opportunity and every motive for vindicating itself from the aspersions of its enemies, and yet we see it at once recur to the old machinery of local councils enacting canons whose frequency and wordy severity are the inverse measure of their efficiency. Had the promises of reform so liberally made been possible in their fulfilment, there had been no need of further legislation. A convocation of the ecclesiastics of each province to receive and publish the decrees

tainly be regarded as a prejudiced authority, declares that "les excès des Humiliés surpassoient ceux des laïques les plus débauchés." Pius V., in his bull suppressing the order, is equally emphatic, and vouches for the truth of the miracle by which the life of St. Charles was preserved.-Bull. Quemadmodum sollicitus (Mag. Bull. Rom. II. 326).

1 Vû que par toute l'Italie on le vit reconnoitre pour l'usage et observations de toutes les ordonnances, on n'en voit une seule entretenue de celles qui concerne la reformation de la vie et mœurs des ecclesiastiques. . . . Et ce peut dire pour ce regard que l'église n'est en autre lieu de la Chrétienté si déréglée et difforme qu'ès pays où le pape a commandement et puissance absolu.-Le Plat, VII. 259.

of Trent would have been all-sufficient. When, therefore, we see the endless iteration with which the guilty clergy were threatened with the Tridentine canons, and with other new or revivified penalties as at the councils of Milan in 1565 and 1582,1 and at those of Manfredonia in 1567, of Ravenna in 1568, of Urbino in 1569, of Florence in 1573, of Naples in 1576, of Cosenza in 1579, of Salerno in 1596, of S. Severino in 1597, and of Melfi in 15972-we can only conclude that the evil was irremediable, in spite of the well-meant efforts to suppress it or to throw off the responsibility of its existence.

In fact, the manner in which the Council of Trent was greeted by the clergy may be judged from its treatment in the archiepiscopate of Utrecht. Though Philip II. had authoritatively ordered its reception in 1565, we find the Duke of Alva in May 1568 issuing his commands to the prelates of the five Churches of Utrecht to offer no further opposition to it. Even so stern a ruler could not obtain immediate obedience, however, to so obnoxious a series of regulations, and they responded by pleading their ancient privileges. This availed them little, for in June he replied that his instructions were positive, and he proceeded to enforce them by sending royal commissioners to the province, empowered to carry them out. In July, therefore, the Archbishop assembled his clergy, and in conjunction with the commissioners issued a series of regulations designed to give effective force to the canons of the council. Visiting nunneries and haunting taverns, joining in dances and

1 Concil. Mediolanens. ann. 1565 P. II. Const. xiv (Harduin. X. 661)-Concil. Mediolanens. ann. 1582 Const. xiv. (Ibid. p. 1117.)

2 Concil. Sipontin. ann. 1567 De Vit. et Honest. Cleric.-Concil. Ravennat. ann. 568 De Vit. et Honest. Cleric. c. v.-Concil. Urbinat. ann. 1569 De Vit. et Honest. Cleric. c. vi.-Concil. Florent. ann. 1573 Rubr. XXXVII. c. 3, 4.-Concil. Neapol. ann. 1576 cap. XXII.-Concil. Consentin. ann. 1579 Sess. IV.-Concil. Salernit. ann. 1596 cap. XVIII.-Concil. S. Severin. ann. 1597 De Vit. et Honest. Cleric.-Concil. Amalfitan. ann. 1597 De Vit. et Honest. Cleric. c. v.-(Labbei et Coleti Supplement. T. V. pp. 827-1331.)

hunting and indecent songs were forbidden. The clergy were ordered to shave their beards and to give up their concubines, whom they were not to retake or to replace. Even yet they did not yield, but while they were ashamed to claim the right to keep their female companions, they demurred as to the sacrifice of their beards, and the Archbishop was obliged to issue another peremptory command.1

It was not, however, only concubinage which the Council of Trent failed to extirpate. Even the denial of sacerdotal marriage, which it had elevated to the dignity of a point of faith, was stubbornly opposed, and was not accepted until after a protracted struggle.

In 1569 we find the synod of the extensive and important province of Salzburg virtually dividing its clergy into two classes-those who haunt the taverns under pretext of getting their meals, but really for the purpose of indulging in drunken riots with their parishioners, and those who keep houses, with concubines under the guise of female servants, whom they secretly marry, and who are openly known by their husbands' names. To meet this condition of affairs, the synod devised an elaborate system by which the richer clergy were directed to keep as domestics respectable middle-aged married women with their husbands, while the poorer ecclesiastics were to club together for the same purpose. This expedient proved as fruitless as its predecessors, for in 1572 Gregory XIII. complained to the Archbishop that in many places priests who were known to be married were permitted by their bishops to celebrate Mass and to handle

2

1 The documents are in Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. VII. 199–201. For the condition of morals in the Church of Holland, see Synod. Harlem. ann. 1564; Synod. Ultraject. ann. 1564; Concil. Ultraject. ann. 1565 (Hartzheim, VII. 5, 22, 137). It was to the publication of the Council of Trent that William of Orange attributed the inevitable revolution which followed (Strada de Bell. Belgic. Lib. iv.). 2 Synod. Salisburg. ann. 1569 Const. XXVII. cap. xviii., xix., xx., xxi., xxii. (Hartzheim, VII. 306–8.)

the sacred elements.1 In spite of all this the evil continued unabated, and in 1616 the Archbishop of Salzburg, in his instructions for a general visitation, ordered that all priests should remove their concubines to a distance of at least six miles, and should not allow their illegitimate children to live openly with them, except under special licence from him.2

In 1565, Anthony, Archbishop of Prague, promulgated the Council of Trent in his provincial synod. He was a man of more than ordinary vigour; he had been the imperial orator at Trent, understood fully the views of the council, and was not likely to underrate either their importance or their authority. Armed with the Tridentine canons, he set actively to work and instituted a very thorough system of inquisitorial visitations, which ought to have succeeded if success were possible. Yet, after the lapse of thirteen years, in a special mandate issued by him in 1578 he deplores the obstinate blindness of many of his clergy, who still believed, with the heretics, that marriage was not incompatible with priesthood, while those who did not marry were guilty of the less dangerous error of maintaining concubines and children on the revenues of their benefices.3

The same wilful ignorance apparently existed in the diocese of Wurzburg, for Bishop Julius, in 1584, found it necessary, in his episcopal statutes, to discountenance clerical matrimony and to prove its nullity by laboriously quoting innumerable canons and decretals; and he even condescended to remind his priesthood that in taking orders they had willingly and knowingly entered into an agreement of continence, by the consequences of which they must be prepared to abide."

1 Concil. Salisburg. XLVII. (Dalham, Conc. Salisb. p. 583.)

2 Visitat. Salisburg. ann. 1616 Tit. 1. cap. vi. (Hartzheim, IX. 266.)

3 Decret. Reformat. Pragens. (Hartzheim, VII. 53.)

4 Statut. Rural. Julii Wirceburg. P. III. c. iv. (Gropp Script. Rer. Wirceburg. I. 471-4). It is somewhat remarkable that Bishop Julius attributes the prohibition of marriage to the Council of Nicæa. After describing the custom of the Greek Church,

A provincial synod of Gnesen, of which the date is uncertain, but which was probably held in 1577, deplored the insane audacity displayed by ecclesiastics in marrying, and threatened them with the Tridentine anathema.1 This warning appears to have been completely disregarded, for the Bishop of Breslau, a suffragan of the metropolis of Gnesen, in opening his diocesan synod in 1580, still complained that many of his clergy were guilty of this perversity, and he was at some pains to disavow any complicity with it, or any connivance at the licentiousness which was prevalent among the unmarried. In 1591 the

synod of Olmutz asserted that many clerks in holy orders contracted pretended marriages, and were not ashamed of the families growing up publicly around them, while others indulged in scandalous concubinage with women, whom they styled housekeepers or cooks. In endeavouring to put an end to this state of affairs the synod manifested its estimation of the morals of the priesthood by renewing the hideous suggestions which we have seen in the tenth and twelfth centuries, for pastors were allowed to have near them the female relatives authorised by the Nicene canons, but, in view of the assaults of the tempter, were prudently advised not to let them reside in their houses. The disregard of the Tridentine canon continued, and as late as 1628, at the synod of Osnabruck, the orator who opened the proceedings inveighed in the vilest terms against the female companions of the clergy, who not only occupied the position of wives, but were even dignified with the title."

3

he proceeds," Permissio vero et consuetudo illa duravit usque ad Nicænum concilium, in quo generali decreto abrogata est, statutumque ne aliquis habens uxorem consecretur sacerdos "—a falsification which is equally singular whether it proceeded from ignorance or fraud, and an admission that celibacy was not of apostolic origin which was rare in a Catholic prelate of that period.

1 Synod. Gnesens. c. xxxiii. (Hartzheim, VII. 891.)

2 Synod. Wratislav. ann. 1580 (Hartzheim, VII. 890).

3 Synod. Olomucens. ann. 1591 c. xiii. (Hartzheim, VIII. 352.)

4 Synod. Osnabrug, ann. 1628 (Hartzheim, IX. 431). As usual, a distinction is