of a pope. Many members were thoroughly penetrated with the conviction that reform was of instant necessity, and such men as Gerson, Peter d'Ailly of Cambrai, and Nicholas de Clamenges were prepared to shrink from none of the means requisite for so hallowed an end. In the existing corruption, however, of the body from which representatives were drawn, such men could scarcely form a controlling majority. After the council had been in session for nearly two years, the reformers began to despair of effecting anything, and Clamenges did not hesitate to assert that nothing was to be expected from men who would regard reform as the greatest calamity that could befall themselves;1 while another of the members of the council declared that every one wanted such a reform as should allow him to retain his own particular form of iniquity. These estimates, indeed, of the character of the majority of the good fathers of Constance are borne out by the contemporary accounts of the multitudes who flocked to it to ply their trades among the assembled dignitaries of the Church, showing that they were by no means all devoted to mortifying the flesh.3 2 The feelings of those who sincerely desired reform, as they saw the prospect rapidly fading before their eyes, may be estimated by a sermon of a sturdy Gascon abbot, Bernhardus Baptisatus, preached before the council in August 1517, about three months before the conservatives succeeded in carrying their point by electing Martin V. He denounces the members of the council as Pharisees, falsely pretending to be devout in order to elude the punishment due to their crimes. The masses and pro 1 Nic. de Clamengiis, Disput. sup. Mat. Conc. General. This work was written in 1416, after the council had been in session for nearly two years. 2 Theobaldi Conquestio (Von der Hardt T. I. P. xix. p. 904). 3 Item, fistulatores, tubicenæ, joculatores, 516; item, meretrices, virgines publicæ, 718.-Laur. Byzynii Diar. Bell. Hussit. A Catholic contemporary, however, reduces the number of courtesans to 450 and that of jugglers and minstrels to 320 (Joann. Fistenportii Chron. ann. 1415.-Hahn. Collect. Monument. I. 401). www cessions, which were the main business of the assemblage, he declares to be valueless in the eyes of God, for most of those who so busily took part in them were involved solely in worldly cares, laughing, cheating, sleeping, or demoralising the rest with their ungodly conversation. The Holy Spirit did not hold the acts of the council acceptable, nor dwell with its unrighteous members.1 Such a convocation could have but one result. It is easy therefore to understand the influences that were brought to bear to defeat the expectations of the reformers: how the subject could be postponed until after the questions connected with the papacy and with heresy were disposed of; and how, after the election of Martin V., those who shrank from all reform could assume that it might safely be entrusted to the hands of a pontiff so able, so energetic, and so virtuous. In all this they were successful. The council closed its weary sessions, 22 April, 1418, and during its three years and a half of labour it had only found leisure to regulate the dress of ecclesiastics, the unclerical cut of whose sleeves was especially distasteful to the representative body of Christendom.2 Still, the reformers had made a stubborn fight, and had procured the appointment of a commission to consider all reformatory propositions and prepare a general scheme for the adoption of the council. This body laboured as diligently as though its deliberations were to be crowned with practical results, and various projects of reform proposed by it have been preserved. In one of these the severest measures of repression were suggested to put an end to the scandal of concubinage which was openly practised in the majority of dioceses. Under this scheme, while all the canonical punishments heretofore decreed were maintained 1 Bernhardi Baptisati Sermo (Von der Hardt T. I. P. XVIII. pp. 884-5). in full vigour, deprivation was pronounced against all holders of ecclesiastical preferment, from bishops down, who should not within one month eject their guilty partners; their positions were declared vacant ipso jure, and their successors were to be immediately appointed. Those who did not hold benefices were similarly to be declared ineligible to preferment. It appears that scandals had arisen in many places from the Hildebrandine and Wickliffite heresy, whereby parishioners declined the ministrations of those who were living in open and notorious sin; and to avoid these, while the commission declined to pass an opinion on the propriety of such action, it advised that such private judgment should not be exercised. In another elaborate system of reform, which bears the marks of mature deliberation, the attempt was made to eradicate the long-standing abuse of admitting to preferment the illegitimate children of ecclesiastics, and it was declared that papal dispensations should no longer be recognised except in cases of peculiar fitness or high rank. The same code of discipline struck a significant blow at the inviolability of the monastic profession when it endeavoured to check the prevailing and deplorable licentiousness of the nunneries by decreeing that no woman should be admitted to the vows beneath the age of twenty, and that all vows taken at a younger age should be null and void. These projects are interesting merely as indicating the direction in which the reforming portion of the Church desired to move, and as showing that even they did not propose to remove the celibacy which was the chief cause of the evils they so sincerely deplored. 2 3 Martin V. had assumed the responsibility of reforming the Church, and he did, in fact, attempt it after some 1 De Ecclesiæ Reformat. Protocoll. cap. xxxiii. (Von der Hardt T. I. P. x. pp. 635-6.) 2 Reformatorii Constant. Decretal. Lib. I. Tit. v. (Ibid. p. 679). 8 Ibid. Lib. III. Tit. x. cap. 20 (p. 722.) fashion, though he apparently took to heart Dante's axiom Lunga promessa, con l'attender corto Ti farà trionfar nel' alto seggio. In 1422 Cardinal Branda of Piacenza, his legate, when sent to Germany to preach a crusade against the Hussites, was honoured with the title of Reformer General, and full powers were given to him to effect this part of his mission. The letters-patent of the Pope bear ample testimony to the depravity of the Teutonic Church,' while the constitution which Branda promulgated declares that in a portion of the priesthood there was scarcely left a trace of decency or morality. According to this document, concubinage, simony, neglect of sacred functions, gambling, drinking, fighting, buffoonery, and kindred pursuits, were the prevalent vices of the ministers of Christ; but the punishments which he enacted for their suppression-repetitions of those which we have seen proclaimed so many times before— were powerless to overcome the evils, which had become part and parcel of the Church itself. This condition of affairs was not the result of any abandonment of the attempt to enforce the canons. Local synods were meeting every year, and scarcely one of them failed to call attention to the subject, devising fresh penalties to effect the impossible. The result is shown in the lament of the Council of Cologne in 1423.3 2 1 For instance, as regards the religious houses-"In nonnullis quoque monasteriis... norma disciplinæ respuitur, cultus divinus negligitur, personæ quoque hujusmodi, vitæ ac morum honestate prostrata, lubricitati, incontinentiæ, et aliis variis carnalis concupiscentiæ voluptatibus et viciis non sine gravi divinæ majestatis offensa tabescentes, vitam ducunt dissolutam.”—Martin V. ad Brandam § iii. (Ludewig Reliq. Msctorum XI. 409.) 2 Usque adeo nonnullorum clericorum corruptela excrevit, ut morum atque honestatis vestigia apud eos pauca admodum remanserint.—Constit. Brandæ § 1 (Op. cit. XI. 385.) 3 “Quia tamen, succrescente malitia temporis moderni, labes hujusmodi criminis in ecclesia Dei in tantum inolevit, quod scandala plurima in populo sunt exorta, et verisimiliter exoriri poterunt in futurum, et ex fide dignorum relatione percepimus quod quidam ecclesiarum prælati et alii, etiam capitula . . . tales in suis iniquita What was the condition of clerical morals in Italy soon after this may be learned from a single instance. When Ambrose was made General of the austere order of Camaldoli he set vigorously to work to reform the laxity which had almost ruined it. One of his abbots was noted for abounding licentiousness; not content with ordinary amours, he was wont to visit the nunneries in his district to indulge in promiscuous intercourse with the virgins dedicated to God. Yet Ambrose in taking him to task did not venture to punish him for his misdeeds, but promised him full pardon for the past and to take him into favour, if he would only abstain for the future-a task which ought to be easy, as he was now old, and should be content with having long lived evilly, and be ready to dedicate his few remaining years to the service of God.1 When a reformer, who enjoyed the special friendship and protection of Eugenius IV., was forced to be so moderate with such a criminal, it is easy to imagine what was the tone of morality in the Church at large. While the Armagnacs and Burgundians were rivalling the English in carrying desolation into every corner of France, it could not be expected that the peaceful virtues could flourish, or sempiternal corruption be reformed. Accordingly, it need not surprise us to see Hardouin, Bishop of Angers, despondingly admit, in 1428, that licentiousness had become so habitual among his clergy that it was no longer reputed to be a sin; that concubinage was public and undisguised, and that the patrimony of tibus sustinuerunt et sustinent." So far, however, were the decrees of the council from being effective, that the Archbishop was obliged to modify them and to declare that they should only be enforced against those ecclesiastics who were notoriously guilty, and who kept their concubines publicly.-Concil. Coloniens. ann. 1423 can. i. viii. (Hartzheim V. 217, 220). 1 Ambrosii Camaldulensis Lib. v. Epist. xii. (Martene Ampliss. Collect. III. 119-21). This was not the only case of abbots whose scandalous lives were treated with equal forbearance. See Epistt. xiii., xiv. |