Affected with the great distresses of the pontiff, Francis I. resolved to march to his a.s.sistance, and made arrangements which compelled Charles to become reconciled with Clement. Charles, crowned emperor by Clement in 1530, promised to re-establish the Medicis in Florence, for the pontiff did not neglect the interests of his family; he married his niece Catherine, to the son of Francis I, that niece but too famous in the annals of France, down to the year 1589. It was in these circ.u.mstances Henry VIII. of England thought of putting away his wife, Catherine of Arragon, aunt of the emperor, in order to marry Ann Boleyn.
While the war continued between the Holy See and Charles, Clement seemed favourable towards this project, and the bull of divorce was prepared.
The reconciliation of the pope and the emperor led to quite ah opposite decision. In vain did the theologians of England, of France, and of Italy, declare, that the marriage of a brother with his brother"s widow should be considered void; this was the situation of Henry with Catherine of Arragon; Charles dictated to Clement a decision which declared the validity and indissolubility of this marriage. Henry is excommunicated if he persists in the divorce. The monarch appeals to a general council on the matter; the English clergy decide, that the pope has no authority over Great Britain: the parliament gives him the t.i.tle of supreme head of the church. Thus is completed a schism it Would have been so much the more easy to avoid, as the king abhorring the name of heretic, and emulous of the glory of being a very zealous catholic, had written against Luther, and obtained from Leo X. the t.i.tle of defender of the faith. Henry, cut off from the church, fell to persecuting alike the partisans of the pope and the Lutherans.
Paul III. who reigned from 1534 to the end of the year 1549, confirmed the excommunication of Henry, convoked the council of Trent, approved the new inst.i.tution of the Jesuits, and was the first author of the bull, "In cna Domini". Those who appeal from the decrees of the pope to a general council, those who favour the appellants, those who say that a general council is superior to a sovereign pontiff; those who, without consent from Rome, exact from the clergy contributions for the necessities of the state; the civil tribunals which presume to try bishops, priests, those who are only tonsured, or monks; chancellor, vice-chancellors, presidents, counsellors, and, attorney-generals, who decide ecclesiastical causes: all those, in fine, who do not admit the omnipotence of the Holy See and the absolute independence of the clergy, are anathematized by this bull, which, published for the first time on holy Thursday, of the year 1536, was to be so published annually on the same day: it is on this account, therefore, denominated: In coena Domini; for the practice of thus publishing it every year at Rome was established in despite of the just remonstrances of sovereigns.
We shall here render homage to certain cardinals and prelates who addressed to Paul III. some very judicious, though very useless remonstrances.45
"You are aware," they say, "that your predecessors were "willing to be flattered. It was unnecessary to de- "sire it, they would have been sufficiently so without "exacting it; for adulation follows princes as a sha- "dows follows a body, and to this day the throne is "difficult of access to uncompromising truth. But, "in order to secure themselves the better from its "intrusion, your predecessors surrounded them- "selves with skilful doctors, whom they commanded "not to teach duties, but to justify caprices. The "talents of these doctors were to be exercised, "in discovering every thing to be lawful which pre- "sented itself as agreeable. For instance they have "declared the sovereign pontiff absolute master of "the benefices of Christendom; and, as a lord has "the right of selling his domains, that so, they con- "clude, the head of the church can never be guilty "of simony, and that in affairs relating to benefices, "simony can only exist when the seller is not pope.
"By this, and similar reasoning, they have arrived "at the sweeping conclusion they were to demon- "strate, to wit, that, that which is pleasing to the "pope is always lawful to him. Behold, holy fa- "ther, the remonstrating cardinals add, behold the "indubitable source from whence have issued as "from the wooden horse, all the abuses, and all the "plagues which have afflicted the church of G.o.d."
4 It commences with these words: "Consuererunt Romiani Pontiiicis,"
and contains twenty-four paragraphs.
5 See Appendix.
Paul III. had destined for his grandson, Octavius Farnese, the States of Parma and Placentia: Charles V. who intended to unite them to the duchy of Milan, was threatened with the heaviest censures. Afterwards the pontiff wished for Parma for the Holy See, and they say, died of grief when he learned that Octavios was on the point of obtaining this duchy.
Julius III. by agreement with the emperor, refused the invest.i.ture to Farnese; but the king of France, Henry II. protected the duke, and sent him troops. At this news Julius excommunicated the king of France, and threatened to place the kingdom under interdict. Henry was not terrified; he forbade his subjects from taking money to Rome, or addressing themselves to others than the usual prelates in ecclesiastical matters. This firmness softened the holy father, who even laboured to reconcile the emperor with the king of France.
After Marcellus II. who reigned but twenty-one days, John Peter Caraffa, was elected pope, who took the name of Paul VI.:
"Although he was se- "venty nine years old," says Muratori, "his head "was an epitome of Mount Vesuvius near which he "was born. Overbearing, pa.s.sionate, cruel, inflex- "ible, his zeal for religion, was without prudence, "and without bounds. His savage look, his eyes "hollow, but sparkling and inflamed, presaged a "a severe and sullen government. Paul neverthe- "less began with acts of clemency and liberality "which seemed to belie the apprhensions which "his character had inspired: he so lavished "favors and courtesies, that the Romans erected "a statue to him in the capitol. But his natural tem- "per soon returned, burst the banks, and verified the "most unfortunate forebodings."
Family interests made him the enemy of Spain: he not only persecuted the Sforzi, the Columnas, and other Roman families attached to this power, but he entered into a league with France to deprive the Spaniards of the kingdom of Naples. The cardinal of Lorain and his brother, the duke of Guise, led Henry II. into this league in spite of the constable, Montmorenci. But the cardinal Pole, minister of Mary, Queen of England, and wife of Philip the Spaniard, had the address to make the French monarch sign a truce of five years with the court of Madrid. Paul is enraged; his nephew, the cardinal Caraffa, comes to France to complain of the treaty they have presumed to make with Spain, without the knowledge of the Court of Rome. The duke of Alba, viceroy of Naples is dessous of lulling this quarrel; he sends a delegate to the pope, whom the pope imprisons. This outrage compels the viceroy to take arms; he makes himself master in a short time of a great part of the ecclesiastical state. Alarmed at the progress of the duke of Alba, tbe court of France sends an army of twelve thousand men against him, commanded by the duke of Guise. But, in the mean time the French lose the battle of Saint Quentin: to repair this loss, they are obliged to recall Guise and his troops, and the pope is compelled to negotiate with the viceroy.
Charles V. in uniting the imperial crown to that of Spain and of the Two Sicilies, had obtained, not only in Italy, but in Europe, a preponderance vainly disputed by Francis I. The abdication of Charles, in 1556, divided his power between his brother Ferdinand, who became emperor, and his son, Philip II. who reigned over Spain and Naples. But, in spite of this division, this house was nevertheless, during the greatest part of the sixteenth century, that which most justly excited the jealously of the sovereign pontiffs; and Paul IV. in declaring war against him, was led into it by the general policy of the Holy See, as much as by family interests and personal resentments. He refused to confirm Ferdinand"s election to the empire, and maintained that Charles V. had no power to abdicate this dignity without the approbation of the Court of Rome6 Frederick had the good sense to dispense with the pope"s concurrence, and the succeeding emperors followed his example.
The most certain means of restraining the pontifical power within just bounds was, to suppress in this way, the forms and ceremonies which had so importantly contributed to extend it.
6 We shall transcribe in our 2d vol. some of the arguments of Paul and his theologians, to prove that the pope was the "superior" of the emperor.
Elizabeth, who succeeded her sister Mary in 1558 on the British throne, was disposed by the circ.u.mstances of her accession to favor catholicity.
The impetuous Paul, mistook the prudence of this queen for weakness and fear: he replied to the amba.s.sador of Elizabeth, that she was but a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and that England was but a fief of the Holy See; that the pretended queen ought to commence by suspending the exercise of her functions, until the Court of Rome had sovereignly p.r.o.nounced on her claims. A bull declared that all prelates, princes, kings and emperors, who fall into heresy, are, by the act itself, deprived of their benefices, states, kingdoms and empires, which belong to the first catholic who may wish to make himself master of them, and that the said heretical princes or prelates never can resume them. From this moment Elizabeth no longer hesitated to establish the English schism; she embraced, favoured, and propagated heresy: we must blame her no doubt; but how can we excuse a pope whose violence led him to such extremities, and who refrained not from partic.i.p.ating in the conspiracies framed against the authority and even life of this sovereign? When after four years reign this pontiff died, the Romans broke his statue and cast it into the Tiber; scarcely could his body be secured from the fury of the populace: the prison of the Inquisition was burned; Paul had made a terrible use of this detestable tribunal, and he reproached with severity the German princes for their indulgence towards heretics.
Pius IV. exercised against the nephews of Paul the most cruel revenge, advised to it, it is said, by the King of Spain, Philip II., the implacable enemy of the Caraffa. The Queen of Navarre was summoned by this pope to appear at Rome within six months, under the usual penalties of excommunication, deprivation, and degradation: menaces almost as ridiculous as they were criminal, the only effect of which was to irritate the court of. France. But the pontificate of Pius is especially remarkable for the termination of the council of Trent, which had lasted eighteen years, from 1545 to 1563. The doctrinal decisions of this council do not concern us: we shall say something of its legislative decrees.
The council of Trent p.r.o.nounces, in certain cases, excommunication, deposition and deprivation, against kings themselves. It ascribes to bishops the power to punish the authors and the printers of forbidden books, to interdict notaries, change the directions of testators, and apply the revenues of hospitals to other uses. It renders the marriages of minors, without the consent of parents, valid: it permits ecclesiastical judges to have their own decisions against laymen executed, by seizure of goods and imprisonment of person; it screens from the secular jurisdiction all the members of the clergy, even those who have only received simple tonsure; it desires that criminal proceedings against bishops should be judged only by the pope; it authorises the pope to depose non-resident bishops, and appoint successors to them; it subjects in fine its own decrees to the approval of the sovereign pontiff, whose unbounded supremacy it recognizes.
Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and Julius III., never aspired to a more absolute theocracy, more subversive of all civil authority and of all social principle.7 In consequence, they determined in France, that the council of Trent, infallible in its dogmas, was not so in its legislation; and not to be surprised into it, they published neither its legislation nor dogmas: the States of Blois in 1570, and of Paris in 1614, opposed themselves warmly to this publication, demanded by the popes, and solicited even by the clergy of France; for we are obliged to avow, that since 1560 the larger proportion of this body did not cease, whatever they may say to the contrary, to confound its interests with those of the court of Rome; and if it appeared for a while to detach itself from it, by the Five Articles of 1682, of which we shall shortly treat, it has since amply repaid by compliances and connivance, a step into which peculiar circ.u.mstances had led it.
7 We here beheld with what immense auxiliaries the clergy had encompa.s.sed and enriched their pastoral office. "They had," says Pasquin, "extended their spiritual jurisdiction over so many matters and affairs, that the suburbs became thrice as large as the city."-Researches on France, 1. 3, x. 22.
Pius V. had been grand inquisitor under Paul IV.; he continued to act the part when pope: no pontiff has burned more heretics, or persons suspected of heresy, at Rome than he. Among the victims of his zeal we observe many learned men, and especially Palearius, who had compared the Inquisition to a poignard directed against men of letters; "sicam districtam in jugula litteratorum." A bull of Pius V. against certain propositions of Michael Baius, was the first signal of a long and melancholy quarrel. This pope in renewing and amplifying the bull of Paul III. "In caena Domini," commanded it to be published on holy thursday throughout all the churches; previously it had been fulminated only at Rome:8 it may be said, that Pius V. wished to arm against the Holy See the remnant of the Catholic princes, and to condemn them to the alternative of renouncing the independence of their crowns or the faith of their ancestors.
8 In 1580, many French bishops attempted to publish, in their dioceses, the bull "In coena Domini," but on the complaint of the procureur general, the parliament of Paris ordered the seizure of the temporal revenues of the prelates who should publish this bull, and declared, that any attempt to enforce it would be reputed rebellion and the crime of high treason.
The remonstrances were universal; Philip II. the most superst.i.tious of the kings of this period, forbade under severe penalties the publication of this bull in his states. By another bull Pius excommunicated Elizabeth: an anathema at least superfluous, and which produced no other consequence than the execution of John Felton, who had ventured to placard this sentence in London. A league entered into between the Pope, Spain, and Venice, against the Turks, was successful: Don John of Austria, rendered himself ill.u.s.trious by the victory of Lepanto; and the pope was not afraid to apply to this warrior, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Charles V.
these words of the Gospel: "There was a man sent from G.o.d, and this man"s name was John." Finally, by the power which he said he held from G.o.d, and in character of pastor charged with examining into the claim of those who had merited extraordinary honours by their superior zeal for the Holy See, Pius V. decreed the t.i.tle of grand duke of Tuscany to Cosmo de Medicis. The emperor remonstrated in vain: Cosmo with his new t.i.tle had himself crowned at Rome, and took the oath at the hands of the pope. But that which is most remarkable here is, the reasons a.s.signed to Maximilian by the cardinal Commendon to justify this pontifical act: Commendon said, that the pope had deposed Childerick, invested Pepin, transferred the empire of the East into the West, appointed the electors, confirmed and crowned the emperors; from whence he concludes that the pope is the distributor of thrones, of t.i.tles, and in some sort, the nomenclator of princes, as Adam had been that of animals.
We shall here remark that the same Pius V. who, to avenge some articles of the Catholic faith, armed Christian against Christian, wrote to the Persians and to the Arabs, that in spite of the diversity of worship, a common interest ought to unite Europe and Asia to combat the Mussulmans.
This apparent contradiction should surprise no one: we know that in religious dissensions, hatred is proportionately lively as the sentiments recede least from each other.
Gregory XIII. crowned pope the 25th of May, 1572, three months before the too celebrated St. Bartholomew"s day, no sooner heard of this ma.s.sacre than he caused cannon to be discharged, and kindled fires, for joy: he returned thanks to heaven in a religious ceremony; and history records a picture which attested the formal approbation bestowed by the pontiff on the a.s.sa.s.sins of Coligny: "Pontifex Colignii necem probat."
In 1584, Gregory also sanctioned the league, on the expose of the Jesuit Mathieu, who was deputed to Rome for this purpose. "For the rest,"
writes this Jesuit, "the pope does not think it proper to attempt the life of the king; but if they can secure his person, and give him those who will hold him in rein, he will approve it much." Gregory even avoided signing any writing which the league could take advantage of; he a.s.sisted them only with the "small money" of the Holy See, said the Cardinal of Este: now this money consisted of indulgences.
The dissensions which distracted France at this time had without doubt various causes, but among them the abolition of the "pragmatic" and the establishment of the concordat were not sufficiently noted. On one side, so fatal an alteration in the discipline, in scaring people"s minds, had disposed them to receive new doctrinal opinions disapproved by the court of Rome; on the other, the ultramontane maxims that the concordat had introduced, and that Catherine de Medicis had propagated, inspired sentiments of intolerance in those who remained in the communion of the Holy See: the "pragmatic" would have preserved France both from heresy and from persecuting zeal. Under the reign of the concordat, these two seeds of discord, rendering each other fruitful, had enveloped with their horrible fruits, the reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. The new interests which the concordat gave to the clergy of France, rendered them devoted to the court of Rome, and weakened more and more the ties which ought to have held them to the state. They applied themselves so to the maintenance and renewal of the maxims of the middle age, that Gregory ventured, in this enlightened age, a new publication of the decree of Gratian; but the pope, in reforming the calendar, performed a service which the people separated from the Romish communion had, for a long time, the folly not to profit by.
The successor of Gregory was the too famous Sixtus V., a sanguinary old man, who knew how to govern his states only by punishments, and who, without advantage to the Holy See, reanimated by bulls the troubles which disturbed other kingdoms. He professed a high esteem for Henry IV.
and for Elizabeth; he excommunicated both, but in some measure for form sake alone, and because such a step seemed required in his pontifical character. He detested and dreaded Philip II.: he wished to take the kingdom of Naples from him; he supported him against England. A solemn bull gave Great Britain to Philip, declared Elizabeth a usurper, a heretic, and excommunicated; commanded the English to join the Spaniards to dethrone her, and promised rewards to those who should deliver her to the catholics to be punished for her crimes. Elizabeth with the same ceremony excommunicated the pope and the cardinals at St. Paul"s cathedral in London. Nevertheless Philip failed in his undertaking, and Sixtus was almost as well pleased as Elizabeth at it; he invited this princess to carry the war into the heart of Spain.
Notwithstanding his detestation and contempt of the league, Sixtus launched his anathemas against the king of Navarre and against the prince of Conde, calling them an impious blasted race, heretics, relapsed enemies of G.o.d and of religion; loosed their present and future subjects from their oaths of allegiance, finally declaring these two princes and their descendants deprived of all rights, and incapable of ever possessing any princ.i.p.ality. This bull commences with the most insolent display of the pontifical power:
"superior to all the potentates of the earth, "inst.i.tuted to hurl from their thrones infidel princes, "and precipitate them into the abyss of h.e.l.l as the "ministers of the devil."
The king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. acted like Elizabeth; he excommunicated Sixtus, "styling himself pope," and Sixtus applauded this courageous resistance. But these bulls, which their author himself laughed at, did not serve the less as cause of civil wars; the fanaticism they cherished in the catholics, compelled Henry III. to persecute the calvinists the more rigorously, to command them to abjure or quit the kingdom; while, on his part, the king of Navarre found himself compelled to take severe measures against the catholics. Henry III. more than ever distracted between the two parties, had neither the skill nor the power that such a situation demanded. We behold him depriving the king of Navarre of the right of succession to the throne of France, and afterwards throwing himself into the arms of this generous prince. This reconciliation provoked a Monitory, in which Sixtus orders Henry III. to appear at Rome in person, or by Attorney, within sixty days, to give an account of his conduct, and declares him excommunicated if he do not obey. We must conquer, said the king of Navarre to Henry III. whom this anathema had terrified, we must conquer: if we are beaten we shall be excommunicated and hara.s.sed again and again. These censures had preserved so little of their ancient power, that a bishop of Chartres said, they were without force at this side of the mountains, that they froze in pa.s.sing the Alps. The poignard of James Clement was more efficacious. Henry III. fell beneath the blows of the a.s.sa.s.sin: and, if we may believe the league, Sixtus V. was in an extacy at so daring an enterprise, compared it to the incarnation of the word and the resurrection of Jesus.
If it were necessary to explain the policy of this pontiff we would say, that his real enemy, the rival whom he wished to overthrow, was Philip, whom he did not excommunicate, and against whom he dared not do any thing openly: circ.u.mstances did not permit it. Sixtus hoped, no doubt, that the commotions excited in England, and kept up in France by pontifical anathemas, would extend further and lead to some result fatal to Philip. This display of the papal supremacy, exhibited against the kings of Navarre and of England, more truly menaced him who, governing Spain, Portugal, Belgia, the Two Sicilies, and a part of the new world, surpa.s.sed in riches and in greatness every other potentate. To declare Great Britain a fief of the Roman church, was to renew abundantly the pretensions of the church over the kingdom of Naples; and, when the pope erected himself into a sovereign arbiter of kings, he gave it plainly to be understood, that an error or a misfortune might suffice to draw after it the fall of the most powerful.
Unhappily, the catholicity of Philip was impregnable; Henry IV. was satisfied in defending himself against Spain, Queen Elizabeth preferred securing her own throne to disturbing those of others, and Sixtus finally died too soon.?
After him Urban VII. reigned but thirteen days, Gregory XIV. but ten months, and Innocent IX. but eight weeks. Gregory had sufficient time to encourage the leaguers, notwithstanding, to excommunicate Henry IV., and to levy at a great expense an army of brigands, who ravaged some of the provinces of France.
? In execution of a decree of the council of Trent, a decree p.r.o.nounced in 1546, Sixtus published in 1590, an official edition of the Vulgate; and, in a bull which served as a preface, he declares of his personal knowledge, and with the plenitude of his power, that this was the version consecrated by the holy council, commanding every old edition to be corrected by it, forbidding all persons from publishing any not exactly copied from this model, under penalty of the greater excomunication by the act alone. Who would believe that after such a sentence, this edition, which had been waited for forty and four years, should have been suppressed immediately after the death of Sixtus, and replaced, in 1592, by that which bears the name of Clement VIII. Between these two editions they reckon about two thousand variations, the most of which, however, are trifling. But the edition of Clement has prevailed in the catholic church; it is recognised and revered by it as the true Vulgate. We make this remark as one of those tending to prove, that even in matters of doctrine, the general consent of the churches abrogates, or confirms, the decisions of the popes. "We must admit, says Dumarsais, either that Clement was wrong in revising the Bible of Sixtus V.; or, that Sixtus erred in declaring by his bull, that the edition published by his order was very correct and in its purity." Exposition of the doctrine of the Gallican church, pa. 163 of the 7 vol. of Dumarais works.
Clement VIII., the last pope of the 16th century, having ordered the French to choose a king catholic in name and in deed, the sudden Catholicism of Henry turned the tables on the court of Rome, the league, and the intrigues of Spain. The pope preferred absolving Henry to seeing him reign and prosper in defiance of the Holy See. In truth, the representatives of the king, Perron and d"Ossat, lent themselves very complaisantly to the ceremonies of the absolution; and they had not much difficulty in obtaining the suppression of the formula: "We reinvest him in his royalty." But the absolved prince took a decisive measure against the pretensions of the court of Rome, in securing to the Protestants, by the Edict of Nantes, the free exercise of their religion and full enjoyment of their civil rights. When the catholic clergy came to require of him the publication of the decrees of the council of Trent, he evaded the proposition with that ingenious and easy politeness which distinguished the manners of the French, and which embellished in those of Henry IV. courage, fort.i.tude and truth. Yet this Henry, publicly adored by the nation, fanaticism proscribed in secret; and the Jesuits, whom the poignards of Barriere and John Chatel had ill served, sharpened that of Ravaillac.
Bossuet Def. Clsr. Gall. 1. 3. c. 28.
In 1597, Alphonso II. duke of Ferrara, dying without children, Clement resolved to make himself master of this duchy, and made so good a use of his spiritual and temporal arms, that he succeeded in this undertaking to the exclusion of Cesar d"Este, the heir of Alphonso. This pope and his predecessors have been often reproached, since the death of Julius II. with a vacillating policy, and an extreme fickleness in their enmities and alliances. Let us not mistake these charges for proofs of unskilfulness; they evidence only the difficulties of the circ.u.mstances, and the state of weakness, in which the the schism of Avignon, the progress of heresy, and the ascendancy of some princes, had placed the Holy See. If during the sixteenth century the chair of St. Peter has been almost continually occupied by skilful pontiffs, this age also presents to us seated on most of the thrones, celebrated sovereigns, whose virtues, talents, or energetic characters, severally recommended them to the historian: for example, Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth, in England; Louis XII. Francis 1. and Henry IV. in France; Charles V. and Philip II. in Spain. None of our modern eras has been more fertile in memorable men in all pursuits. And yet the court of Rome renounced none of its pretensions; it upheld the traditions of its ancient supremacy; it continued to speak in the language of Gregory VII.
and Innocent III. What more could she do in the midst of so many formidable rivals? It was doing much to weather the tempests and preserve herself for better times. But these times did not come, and the popes of the seventeenth century, far inferior to those of the sixteenth, to Julius II. to Leo X. and to Sixtus V. have suffered even the hope to be lost of ever re-establishing in Europe the pontifical authority.
Among the numerous writings published in the course of this century on the liberties of the Gallican church, that of Peter Pithou in 1504 is particularly distinguished. Comprised in eighty-three articles, it has the form and has almost obtained the authority of a code; for, we find it not only quoted in pleadings but in the laws themselves. The pragmatic of St Louis in tbe thirteenth century, the Vergers Dream in the fourteenth, the pragmatic of Charles VII. in the fifteenth, Pithou"s treatise in the sixteenth, and the Four Articles in 1682, present, among the French, an unbroken tradition of the soundest doctrine on the limits of the pontifical office.
The 50th article of Pithou is cited in the edition of 1719.
CHAPTER X. ATTEMPTS OF THE POPES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
NO pope since the year 1600 united to an energetic ambition talents worthy of seconding it. Henceforward the Holy See becomes but a power of the second order, which, scarcely capable of bold aggressions, defends itself by intrigue, and no longer attacks but by secret machinations.
The reforms which separated from the Romish Church one part of Christendom, serve to deliver the remainder from the pontifical tyranny.
Everywhere the civil power became confirmed; disturbances even tended either to organize and especially to enfranchise it. The annals of the popes become more and more detached from the general history of Europe, and thus lose all their splendour and a great part of their interest. We shall therefore only have to collect into this chapter a very limited number of facts, after we shall have considered in a general point of view the influence of the Roman court in the seventeenth century over the princ.i.p.al courts of Europe.
In England, James I. the successor of Elizabeth had escaped, himself, his family and his parliament, from the powder plot, hatched by the Jesuits and other agents of the sovereign pontiff. A prodigal and consequently indigent king, James had seen the formation of the opposite parties of Whigs and Tories. The House of Commons, in which the Whigs governed, resisted Charles I.; Charles menaced, they insulted him; he takes arms, they compel him to fly; he perishes on a scaffold, the ign.o.ble victim of tragical proceeding. The protector of the English republic, Cromwell, tyrannizes over it, and renders it powerful: but Cromwell dies, and Monk delivers England up to Charles II. The inconstancy and contradictions which acc.u.mulated during this new reign, disclose the indecisive influence of the Roman court; the catholics are tolerated, accused, protected, excluded from employments; five Jesuits are decapitated; the king dissolves the parliament, and signs the act of Habeas Corpus; an anti-papistical oath is enacted, and the duke of York, who refuses to take it, is, nevertheless, appointed to the rank of high admiral; soon after he succeeds Charles his brother, under the name of James II. and wearies by barbarous executions the patience of his subjects. James without friends, even among the catholics whom he loaded with favours, deserts himself, and loses without a combat his degraded sceptre. The English government re-organized itself, and William of Na.s.sau, prince of Orange, the son-in-law of James, was called to the throne of Great Britain. William, at the same time Statholder in Holland, and king of England, governed both countries with energy, and triumphed over the conspiracies continually fomented or encouraged against him by the Holy See. Thus disturbances and crimes, the weakening of catholicity, the restoration of the civil authorities, such have been among the English of the seventeenth century the only results of the dark manuvres of the court of Rome.
The peace of Munster, in 1648, proclaimed the independence of the united provinces. In spite of the soil, the climate, and their discord, Holland, already flourishing, and freed from the Spanish yoke, a.s.sumed a distinguished rank among the powers escaped from the dominion of the Holy See. The king of Spain, Philip III. also lost Artois, which Louis XIV. became master of, and Portugal which crowned the duke of Braganza king. Charles II. son of Philip IV. lost Franche Comte, died without children, and bequeathed his kingdom to a grandson of the king of the French. The ascendancy which the popes still possessed over Spain, so fallen herself, and who seemed to place herself under French influence, was therefore a weak resource.
In Germany, the orthodoxy of the emperors Ferdinand II. Ferdinand III.