It was their duty to regulate the daily life of the General, to control his private expenditure on the scale which they determined, to prescribe what he should eat and drink, to appoint his hours for sleep, and religious exercises, and the transaction of public business.... The Company of Jesus was thus based upon a system of mutual and pervasive espionage. The novice on entering had all his acts, habits, and personal qualities registered. As he advanced in his career, he was surrounded by jealous brethren, who felt it their duty to report his slightest weakness to a superior. The superiors were watched by one another and by their inferiors.
Ma.s.ses of secret information poured into the secret cabinet of the General; and the General himself ate, slept, prayed, worked, and moved beneath the fixed gaze of ten vigilant eyes."[691]
Historians have not been slow to point out the evils which this Society has wrought in the world, its purely political aims, the worldliness which deadened its spiritual life, and its degradation of morals, which had so much to do with sapping the ethical life of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is frequently said that the cool-headed Lainez is responsible for most of the evil, and that a change may be dated from his Generalship. There seems to be a wide gulf fixed between the Mystic of Manresa, the revival preacher of Vicenza, the genuine home mission work in Rome, and the astute, ruthless worldly political work of the Society. Yet almost all the changes may be traced back to one root, the conception which Ignatius held of what was meant by true religion. It was for him, from first to last, an unreasoning, blind obedience to the dictates of the catholic hierarchic Church. It was this which poisoned the very virtues which gave Loyola"s intentions their strength, and introduced an inhuman element from the start.
He set out with the n.o.ble thought that he would work for the good of his fellow-men; but his idea of religion narrowed his horizon. His idea of "neighbour" never went beyond the thought of one who owed entire obedience to the Roman Pontiff--all others were as much outside the sphere of the brotherhood of mankind as the followers of Mahomet were for the earliest Crusaders. G.o.dfrey of Bouillon was both devout and tender-hearted, yet when he rode, a conqueror, into Jerusalem up the street filled with the corpses of slaughtered Moslems, he saw a babe wriggling on the breast of its dead mother, and, stooping in his saddle, he seized it by the ankle and dashed its head against the wall. For Ignatius, as for G.o.dfrey, all outside the catholic and hierarchic Church were not men, but wolves.
He was filled with the heroic conception that his Company was to aid their fellow-men in every department of earthly life, and the political drove out all other considerations; for it contained the spheres within which the whole human life is lived. Thus, while he preferred for himself the society of learned and devout men, his acute Basque brain soon perceived their limitations, and the Jesuit historian Orlandino tells us that Ignatius selected the members of his Company from men who knew the world, and were of good social position. He forbade very rightly the follies of ascetic piety, when the discipline of the _Exercises_ had been accomplished; it was only repeated when energies flagged or symptoms of insubordination appeared. Then the General ordered a second course, as a physician sends a patient to the cure at some watering-place. The Const.i.tution directs that novices were to be sought among those who had a comely presence, with good memories, manageable tempers, quick observation, and free from all indiscreet devotion. The Society formed to fight the Renaissance as well as Protestantism, borrowed from its enemy the thought of general culture, training every part of the mind and body, and rendering the possessor a man of the world.
No one can read the letters of Ignatius without seeing the fund of native tenderness that there was in the stern Spanish soldier. That it was no mere sentiment appears in many ways, and in none more so than in his infinite pity for the crowds of fallen women in Rome, and in his wise methods of rescue work. It was this tenderness which led him to his greatest mistake. He held that no one could be saved who was not brought to a state of abject obedience to the hierarchic Church; that such obedience was the only soil in which true virtues could be planted and grow. He believed, moreover, that the way in which the "common man"
could be thoroughly broken to this obedience was through the confessional and the directorate, and therefore that no one should be scared from confession or from trust in his director by undue severity.
In his eagerness to secure these inestimable benefits for the largest number of men, he over and over again enjoined the members of his Society to be very cautious in coming to the conclusion that any of their penitents was guilty of a mortal sin. Such was the almost innocent beginning of that Jesuit casuistry which in the end almost wiped out the possibility of anyone who professed obedience committing a mortal sin, and occasioned the profane description of Father Bauny, the famous French director--"Bauny qui tollit peccata mundi per definitionem."
The Society thus organised became powerful almost at once. It made rapid progress in Italy. Lainez was sent to Venice, and fought the slumbering Protestantism there, at Brescia, and in the Val Tellina. Jay was sent to Ferrara to counteract the influence of Renee of France, its d.u.c.h.ess.
Salmeron went to Naples and Sicily. The chief Italian towns welcomed the members of the new Order. n.o.ble and devout ladies gave their aid.
Colleges were opened; schools, where the education was not merely free, but superior to what was usually given, were soon crowded with pupils.
Rome remained the centre and stronghold of the Company.
Portugal was won at once. Xavier and Rodriguez were sent there. They won over King John, and he speedily became their obedient pupil. He delivered into their hands his new University at Coimbra, and the Humanist teachers, George Buchanan among them, were persecuted and dispersed, and replaced by Jesuit professors.
Spain was more difficult to win. The land was the stronghold of the Dominicans, and had been so for generations; and they were unwilling to admit any intruders. But the new Order soon gained ground. It was native to the soil. It had its roots in that Mysticism which pervaded the whole Peninsula. Ignatius gained one distinguished convert, Francis Borgia, Duke of Candia and Viceroy of Catalonia. He placed the University he had founded in their hands. He joined the Order, and became the third General. His influence counterbalanced the suspicions of Charles V., who had no liking for sworn bondmen of the Vatican, and they soon laid firm hold on the people.
In France their progress was slow. The University and the _Parlement_ of Paris opposed them, and the Sorbonne made solemn p.r.o.nouncement against their doctrine. Still they were able to found Colleges at St. Omer, Douai, and Rheims.
Ignatius had his eye on Germany from the first. He longed to combat heresy in the land of its birth. Boabdilla, Faber, and Jay were sent there at once. Boabdilla won the confidence of William, Duke of Bavaria; Jay insinuated himself into the counsels of Ferdinand of Austria, and Faber did the most important work of the three by winning for the Society, Petrus Canisius. He was the son of a patrician of Nymwegen, trained in Humanist lore, drawn by inner sympathy to the Christian Mysticism of Tauler, and yet steadfast in his adherence to the theology of the mediaeval Church. Faber soon became conscious of his own deficiencies for the work to be done in Germany. His first appearance was at the Religious Conference at Worms, where he found himself face to face with Calvin and Melanchthon, and where his colleagues, Eck and Cochlaeus, were rather ashamed of him. The enthusiastic Savoyard lacked almost everything for the position into which, at the bidding of his General, he had thrust himself. Since then he had been wandering through those portions of Germany which had remained faithful to Rome, seeking individual converts to the principles of the Society, and above all some one who had the gifts for the work Ignatius hoped to do in that country.
It is somewhat interesting to note that almost all the German Roman Catholics who were attracted by him to the new Order were men who had leanings towards the fourteenth century Mystics--men like Gerard Hammond, Prior of the Carthusians of Koln. Faber caught Canisius by means of his Mysticism. He met him at Mainz, explained the _Exercitia Spiritualia_ to him, induced the young man to undergo the course of discipline which they prescribed, and won him for Loyola and the Company. "He is the man," wrote Faber to Ignatius, "whom I have been seeking--if he is a man, and not rather an angel of the Lord."
Ignatius speedily recognised the value of the new recruit. He saw that he was not a man to be kept long in the lower ranks of the Company, and gave him more liberty of action than he allowed to his oldest a.s.sociates. Faber had sent him grievous reports about the condition of affairs in Germany. "It is not misinterpretation of Scripture," he wrote, "not specious arguments, not the Lutherans with their preaching and persuasions, that have lost so many provinces and towns to the Roman Church, but the scandalous lives of the ministers of religion." He felt his helplessness. He was a foreigner, and the Germans did not like strangers. He could not speak their language, and his Latin gave him a very limited audience. People and priests looked on him as a spy sent to report their weaknesses to Rome. When he discoursed about the _Exercitia_, and endeavoured to induce men to try them, he was accused of urging a "new religion." When he attempted to form student a.s.sociations in connection with the Company, it was said that he was urging the formation of "conventicles" outside the Church"s ordinances.
But the adhesion of Canisius changed all that. He was a German, one of themselves; his orthodoxy was undisputed; he was an eminent scholar, the most distinguished of the young masters of the University of Koln, a leader among its most promising students. Under his guidance the student a.s.sociations grew strong; after his example young men offered themselves for the discipline of the _Exercises_. Loyola saw that he had gained a powerful a.s.sistant. He longed to see him personally at Rome; but he was so convinced of his practical wisdom that he left it to himself either to come to Italy or to remain in Germany. Canisius decided to remain.
Affairs at Koln were then in a critical state. The Archbishop-Elector, Hermann von Wied, favoured the Reformation. He had thoughts of secularising his Electorate, and if lie succeeded in his design his example might be followed in another ecclesiastical Electorate, with the result that the next Emperor would be a Protestant. Canisius organised the people, the clergy, the University authorities against this, and succeeded in defeating the designs of the Archbishop. When his work at Koln was done, he went to Vienna. There he became the confessor and private adviser of Ferdinand of Austria, administered the affairs of the diocese of Vienna during a long episcopal interregnum, helped to found its Jesuit College, and another at Ingolstadt. These Colleges became the centres of Jesuit influence in Germany, and helped to spread the power of the Society. But with all this activity it can scarcely be said that the Company was very powerful in that country until years after the Council of Trent.
The foreign mission activity of the Jesuits has been often described, and much of the early progress of the Company has been attributed to the admiration created by the work of Francis Xavier and his companions.
This was undoubtedly true; but in the earliest times it was the home mission successes that drew most attention and sympathy; and these have been too often left unmentioned.
Nothing lay nearer the hearts of devout persons who refused to accept the Reformation than the condition of the great proportion of the Roman Catholic priests in all countries, and the depravity of morals among laity and clergy alike. Ignatius was deeply affected by both scandals, and had resolved from the first to do his best to cure them. It was this resolve and the accompanying strenuous endeavours which won Ignatius the respect and sympathy of all those in Italy who were sighing for a reform in the moral life of people and clergy, and brought the Company of Jesus into line with Italian Reformers like Contarini, Ghiberti, and Vittoria Colonna. His system of Colleges and the whole use he made of education could have only one result--to give an educated clergy to the Roman Church. It was a democratic extension of the work of Caraffa and Gaetano da Thiene. Ignatius had also clear views about the way to produce a reformation of morals in Rome. Like Luther, he insisted that it must begin in the individual life, and could not be produced by stringent legislation; "it must start in the individual, spread to the family, and then permeate the metropolis." But meanwhile something might be done to heal the worst running sores of society. Like Luther, Ignatius fastened on three--the waste of child life, the plague of begging, and what is called the "social evil"; if his measure of success in dealing with the evils fell far short of Luther"s, the more corrupted condition of Italy had something to do with his failure.
His first measure of social reform was to gather Roman children, either orphans or deserted by their parents. They were gratuitously housed, fed, and taught in a simple fashion, and were instructed in the various mechanical arts which could enable them to earn a living. In a brief time, Ignatius had over two hundred boys and girls in his two industrial schools.
How to cure the plague of beggars which infested all Roman Catholic countries, a curse for which the teaching of the mediaeval Church was largely responsible,[692] had been a problem studied by Ignatius ever since his brief visit to his native place in 1535. There he had attempted to get the town council of Azpeitia to forbid begging within the bounds of the city, and to support the deserving and helpless poor at the town"s cost. He urged the same policy on the chief men in Rome.
When he failed in his large and public schemes, he attempted to work them out by means of charitable a.s.sociations connected with and fostered by his Society.
Nothing, however, excited the sympathy of Loyola so much as the numbers and condition of fallen women in all the larger Italian towns. He was first struck with it in Venice, where he declared that he would willingly give his life to hinder a day"s sin of one of these unfortunates. The magnitude of the evil in Rome appalled him. He felt that it was too great for him to meddle with as a whole. Something, however, he could attempt, and did. In Rome, which swarmed with men vowed to celibacy simply because they had something to do with the Church, prost.i.tution was frequently concealed under the cloak of marriage. Husbands lived by the sinful life of their wives. Deserted wives also swelled the ranks of unfortunates. Loyola provided homes for any such as might wish to leave their degrading life. At first they were simply taken into families whom Ignatius persuaded to receive them.
The numbers of the rescued grew so rapidly that special houses were needed. Ignatius called them "Martha-Houses." They were in no sense convents. There was, of course, oversight, but the idea was to provide a bright home where these women could earn their own living or the greater part of it. The scheme spread to many of the large Italian towns, and many ladies were enlisted in the plans to help their fallen sisters.
Loyola"s a.s.sociations to provide ransom for Christian captives among the Moslems, his attempts to discredit duelling, his inst.i.tutions for loans to the poor, can only be alluded to. It was these works of Christian charity which undoubtedly gained the immediate sympathy for the Company which awaited it in most lands south of the Alps.
Almost all earlier monastic Orders provided a place for women among their organisation. An Order of Nuns corresponded to the Order of Monks.
Few founders of monastic Orders have owed so much to women as Ignatius did. A few ladies of Barcelona were his earliest disciples, were the first to undergo the discipline of the _Exercises_, then in an imperfect shape, and encouraged him when he needed it most by their faith in him and his plans.[693] One of them, Isabella Roser (Rosel, Rosell), a n.o.ble matron, wife of Juan Roser, heard Ignatius deliver one of his first sermons, and was so impressed by it, that she and her husband invited him to stay in their house, which he did. She paid all his expenses while he went to school and college in Spain. She and her friends sent him large sums of money when he was in Paris. Ignatius could never have carried out his plans but for her sympathy and a.s.sistance. In spite of all this, Ignatius came early to the conclusion that his Company should have as little as possible to do with the direction of women"s souls (it took so much time, he complained); that women were too emotional to endure the whole discipline of the _Exercises_; and that there must never be Jesuit nuns. The work he meant his Company to do demanded such constant and strained activity--a Jesuit must stand with only one foot on the ground, he said, the other must be raised ready to start wherever he was despatched--that women were unfit for it. That was his firm resolve, and he was to suffer for it.
In 1539 he had written to Isabella Roser that he hoped G.o.d would forget him if he ever forgot all that she had done for him; and it is probable that some sentences (unintentional on the part of the writer) had made the lady, now a widow, believe that she was destined to play the part of Clara to this Francis. At all events (1543) she came to Rome, accompanied by two friends bringing with them a large sum of money, sorely needed by Ignatius to erect his house in Rome for the Professed of the Four Vows. In return, they asked him to give some time to advise them in spiritual things. This Ignatius did, but not with the minuteness nor at the length expected. He declared that the guidance of the souls of the three ladies for three days cost him more than the oversight of his whole Society for a month. Then it appeared that Isabella Roser wanted more. She was a woman of n.o.ble gifts, no weak sentimental enthusiast. She had studied theology widely and profoundly. Her learning and abilities impressed the Cardinals whom she met and with whom she talked. She desired Ignatius to create an Order of Jesuit nuns of whom she should be the head. When he refused there was a great quarrel. She demanded back the money she had given; and when this was refused, she raised an action in the Roman courts. She lost her case, and returned indignant to Spain.[694] Poor Isabella Roser--she was not a derelict, and so less interesting to a physician of souls; but she needed comforting like other people. She forgave her old friend, and their correspondence was renewed. She died the year before Ignatius.
When the Society of Jesus was at the height of its power in the seventeenth century, another and equally unsuccessful attempt was made to introduce an Order of Jesuit nuns.
Ignatius died at the age of sixty-five, thirty-five years after his conversion, and sixteen after his Order had received the apostolic benediction. His Company had become the most powerful force within the reanimated Roman Church; it had largely moulded the theology of Trent; and it seemed to be winning back Germany. It had spread in the swiftest fashion. Ignatius had seen established twelve Provinces--Portugal, Castile, Aragon, Andalusia, Italy (Lombardy and Tuscany), Naples, Sicily, Germany, Flanders, France, Brazil, and the East Indies.
CHAPTER V.
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.[695]
-- 1. _The a.s.sembling of the Council._
The General Council, the subject of many negotiations between the Emperor and the Pope, was at last finally fixed to meet at Trent in 1545.[696] The city was the capital of a small episcopal princ.i.p.ality, its secular overlord was the Count of the Tyrol, whose deputy resided in the town. It was a frontier place with about a thousand houses, including four or five fine buildings and a large palace of the Prince Bishop. It contained several churches, one of which, Santa Maria Maggiore, was reserved for the meetings of the Council.[697] Its inhabitants were partly Italian and partly German--the two nationalities living in separate quarters and retaining their distinctive customs and dress. It was a small place for such an a.s.sembly, and could not furnish adequate accommodation for the crowd of visitors a General Council always involved.
The Papal Legates entered Trent in state on the 13th of March (1545).
Heavy showers of rain marred the impressive display. They were received by the local clergy with enthusiasm, and by the populace with an absolute indifference. Months pa.s.sed before the Council was opened. Few delegates were present when the papal Legates arrived. The representatives of the Emperor and those of Venice came early; Bishops arrived in straggling groups during April and May and the months that followed. The necessary papal Brief did not reach the town till the 11th of December, and the Council was formally opened on the 13th. The long leisurely opening was symptomatic of the history of the Council. Its proceedings were spread over a period of eighteen years:--under Pope Paul III., 1545-47, including Sessions i. to x.; under Pope Julius III., 1551-52, including Sessions xi. to xvi.; under Pope Pius IV., 1562-1563, including Sessions xvii. to xxv.[698]
The Papal Legates were Gian Maria Giocchi, Cardinal del Monte, a Tuscan who had early entered the service of the Roman Curia, a profound jurist and a choleric man of fifty-seven (_first_ President); Marcello Cervini, Cardinal da Santa Croce; and Cardinal Reginald Pole, the Englishman. The three represented the three tendencies which were apparent in ecclesiastical Italy. The first belonged to the party which stood by the old unreformed Curia, and wished no change. Cervini represented the growing section of the Church, which regarded Cardinal Caraffa as their leader. They sought eagerly and earnestly a reform in life and character, especially among the clergy; but refused to make any concessions in doctrines, ceremonies, or inst.i.tutions to the Protestants. They differed from the more reforming Spanish and French ecclesiastical leaders in their dislike of secular interference, and believed that the Popes should have more rather than less power.
Reginald Pole was one of those liberal Roman Catholics of whom Cardinal Contarini was the distinguished leader. He was made a Legate probably to conciliate his a.s.sociates. He was a man whom most people liked and n.o.body feared--a harmless, pliant tool in the hands of a diplomatist like Cervini. The new Society of Jesus was represented by Lainez and Salmeron, who went to the Council with the dignity of papal theologians--a t.i.tle which gave them a special standing and influence.
According to the arrangement come to between the Emperor and the Pope, the Bull summoning the Council declared that it was called for the three purposes of overcoming the religious schism; of reforming the Church; and of calling a united Christendom to a crusade against unbelievers. By general consent the work of the Council was limited to the first two objects. They were stated in terms vague enough to cover real diversity of opinion about the work the Council was expected to do.
Almost all believed that the questions of reforming the Church and dealing with the religious revolt were inseparably connected; but the differences at once emerged when the method of treating the schism was discussed.
Many pious Roman Catholics believed that the Lutheran movement was a divine punishment for the sins of the Church, and that it would disappear if the Church was thoroughly reformed in life and morals. They differed about the agency to be employed to effect the reformation. The Italian party, who followed Cardinal Caraffa, maintained that full powers should be in the hands of the Pope; non-Italians, especially the Spaniards, thought it vain to look for any such reformation so long as the Curia, itself the seat of the greatest corruption, remained unreformed, and contended that the secular authority ought to be allowed more power to put down ecclesiastical scandals.
The Emperor, Charles V., had come to believe that there were no insuperable differences of doctrine between the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics, and that mutual explanations and a real desire to give and take, combined with the removal of scandals which all alike deplored, would heal the schism. He had never seen the gulf which the Lutheran principle of the spiritual priesthood of all believers had created between the Protestants and mediaeval doctrines and ceremonies.[699] He persisted in this belief long after the proceedings at Trent had left him hopeless of seeing the reconciliation he had expected brought about by the Council he had done so much to get summoned. The Augsburg Interim (1548) shows what he thought might have been done.[700] He was badly seconded at Trent. The only Bishop who supported his views heartily was Madruzzo, the Prince Bishop of Trent; his representative, Diego de Mendoza, fell ill shortly after the opening of the Council, and his subst.i.tute, Francisco de Toledo, did not reach Trent until March 1546.
-- 2. _Procedure at the Council._
Tho ablest of the three Legates, Cervini, had a definite plan of procedure before him. He knew thoroughly the need for drastic reforms in the life and morals of the clergy and for purifying the Roman Curia; but, with the memories of Basel and Constance before him, he dreaded above all things a conflict between the Pope and the Council, and he believed that such a quarrel was imminent if the Council itself undertook to reform the Curia. His idea was that the Council ought to employ itself in the useful, even necessary task of codifying the doctrines of the Church, so that all men might discern easily what was the true Catholic faith. While this was being done, opportunity would be given to the Pope himself to reform the Curia--a task which would be rendered easier by the consciousness that he had the sympathy of the Council behind him. He scarcely concealed his opinion that such codification should make no concessions to the Protestants, but would rather show them to be in hopeless antagonism to the Catholic faith. He did not propose any general condemnation of what he thought to be Lutheran errors; but he wished the separate points of doctrine which the Lutherans had raised--Justification, the authority of Holy Scripture, the Sacraments--to be examined carefully and authoritatively defined. In this way heretics would be taught the error of their ways without mentioning names, and without the specific condemnation of individuals.
He expounded his plan of procedure to the Council.
His suggestions were by no means universally well received by the delegates. The proposal to leave reforms to the Pope provoked many speeches from the Spanish Bishops, full of bitter reproaches against the Curia; and his conception of codifying the doctrines of the Church with the avowed intention of irrevocably excluding the Lutherans was by no means liked by many.
A great debate took place on Jan. 18th, which revealed to the Legate that probably the majority of the delegates did not favour his proposed course of procedure. Madruzzo, the eloquent Prince Bishop of Trent, and a Cardinal, made a long speech, in which he a.s.serted that the Council should not rashly take for granted that the Lutherans were irreconcilable. They ought to acknowledge frankly that the corrupt morals of the mediaeval clergy had done much to cause dissatisfaction and to justify revolt. Let them therefore a.s.sume that these evils for which the Church was responsible had produced the schism. Let them invite the Protestants to come among them as brethren. Let them show to those men, who had no doubt erred in doctrine, that the Catholic Church was sincerely anxious to reform the abounding evils in life and morals, and, with this fraternal bond between them, let them reason amicably together about the doctrinal differences which now separated them. The eloquent and large-minded Cardinal condensed the recommendations in his speech in one sentence: "c.u.m corrupti mores ecclesiasticorum dederint occasionem Lutheranis confingendi falsa dogmata, sublata causa, facilius tolletur effectus; subdens optimum fore, si protestantes ipsos amicabiliter et fraterne literis invitaremus, ut ipsi quoque ad synodum venirent, et se etiam reformari paterentur."[701] We are told that this speech raised great enthusiasm among the delegates, and that the Legates had some difficulty in preventing its proposal from being universally accepted.
At the most they were able to prevent any definite conclusion being come to about the procedure at the close of the sitting. Cervini saw that he could not get his way adopted. He agreed that proposals for reform and for the codification of doctrine should be discussed simultaneously, his knowledge of theological nature telling him that if he once got so many divines engaged in doctrinal discussions two things would surely follow: their eagerness would make them neglect everything else, and their polemical instincts would carry them beyond the point where a conciliation of the Protestants required them to come to a halt. So it happened. The Council found itself committed to a codification and definition of Catholic doctrine. The suggestion of the Bishop of Feltre (Thomas Campeggio) was adopted, that the discussion of doctrines and the proposals for reform should be discussed by two separate Commissions, whose reports should come before the Synod alternately. The Legates obtained a large majority for this course, and the protest of Madruzzo was unavailing.
The decision to attack the question of reform was very unacceptable to the Pope. He went so far as to ask the Legates to get it rescinded; but that was impossible, and he had to content himself with the a.s.surances of Cervini that no real harm would come of it.
This important question being settled, the Council decided upon the details of procedure. The whole Synod was divided into three divisions or Commissions, to each of which allotted work was given. Each question was first of all to be prepared for the section by theologians and canonists, then discussed in the special Commission to which it had been entrusted. If approved there, it was to be brought before a general Congregation of the whole Synod for discussion. If it pa.s.sed this scrutiny, it was to be promulgated in a solemn session of the Council.
-- 3. _Restatement of Doctrines._
It ought to be said, before describing the doctrinal labours of the Council, that the work done at Trent was not to give Conciliar sanction to the whole ma.s.s of mediaeval doctrinal tradition. There was a thorough revision of doctrinal positions in which a great deal of theology which had been current during the later Middle Ages was verbally rejected, and the rejection was most apparent in that Scotist theology which had been popular before the Reformation, and which had been most strongly attacked by Luther. The Scotist theology, with its theological scepticism, was largely repudiated in name at least--whether its spirit was banished is another question which has to be discussed later. A great many influences unknown during the later Middle Ages pressed consciously and unconsciously upon the divines a.s.sembled at Trent and coloured their dogmatic work. Although the avowed intention of the theologians there was to defeat both Humanism and the Reformation, they could not avoid being influenced by both movements. Humanism had led many of them to study the earlier Church Fathers, and they could not escape Augustine in doing so. They were led to him by many paths. The Dominican theologians had begun, quite independently of the Reformation, to study the great theologian of their Order, and Thomas had led them back to Augustine. The Reformation had laid stress on the doctrines of sin, of justification, and of predestination, and had therefore awakened a new interest in them and consequently in Augustine. The New Thomism, with Augustinianism behind it, was a feature of the times, and was the strongest influence at work among the theologians who a.s.sembled at Trent. It could not fail to make their doctrinal results take a very different form from the theology which Luther was taught by John Nathin in the Erfurt convent. Christian Mysticism, too, had its revival, especially in Spain and in Italy, and among some of the reconstructed monastic orders. If it had small influence on the doctrines, it worked for a more spiritual conception of the Church. What has been called Curialism, the theory of the omnipotence of the Pope in all things connected with the Church"s life, practice, and beliefs, was also a potent factor with some of the a.s.sembled fathers. But above all things the theologians who met at Trent were influenced by the thought and fact of the Lutheran Reformation. This is apparent in the order in which they discussed theological questions, in the subjects they selected and in those they omitted. All these things help us to understand how the theology of the Council of Trent was something peculiar, something by itself, and different both from what may be vaguely called mediaeval theology and from that of the modern Church of Rome.[702]