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Clement VIII. who allowed the barefooted Carmelites to have their own chief or general. But after having withdrawn themselves from the others, these austere friars quarrelled among themselves, and in a few years their dissensions grew to an intolerable height; hence they were divided anew, by the pontiff last mentioned, into two communities, each of which were governed by their respective general.'

XVII. The most eminent of all the new orders that were instituted in this century, was, beyond all doubt, New monas that of the Jesuits, which we have already had tic orders. occasion to mention, in speaking of the chief pillars of the church of Rome, and the principal supports of the declining authority of its pontiffs. Compared with this aspiring and formidable society, all the other religious orders appear inconsiderable and obscure. The reformation, among the other changes which it occasioned even in the Roman church, by exciting the circumspection and emulation of those who still remained addicted to popery, gave rise to various communities, which were all comprehended under the general denomination of regular clerks. And as all these communities were, according to their own solemn declarations, formed with a design of imitating that sanctity of manners, and reviving that spirit of piety and virtue, that had distinguished the sacred order in the primitive times; this was a plain though tacit confession of the present corruption of the clergy, and consequently of the indispensable necessity of the reformation.

The first society of these regular clerks was formed in the year 1524, under the denomination of Theatins, which they derived from their principal founder, John Peter Caraffa, then bishop of Theate, or Chieti, in the kingdom of Naples, and afterward pope, under the title of Paul IV. who was assisted in this pious undertaking by Cajetan, or Gaetan, and other devout associates. These monks, being by their vows destitute of all possessions and revenues, and even secluded from the resource of begging, subsist entirely upon the voluntary liberality of pious persons. They are called by their profession and institute to revive a spirit of devotion, to purify and reform the eloquence of the pulpit, to assist the sick and the dying by their spiritual in

s Helyot, Histoire des Ordres, tom. i. ch. xlvii. p. 340,

structions and counsels, and to combat heretics of all denominations with zeal and assiduity.' There are also some female convents established under the rule and title of this order.

The establishment of the Theatins was followed by that of the regular clerks of St. Paul, so called from their having chosen that apostle for their patron; though they are more commonly known under the denomination of Barnabites, from the church of St. Barnabas at Milan, which was bestowed upon them in the year 1545. This order, which was approved by Clement VII. and confirmed about three years after by Paul III. was originally founded by Antonio Mavia Zacharias of Cremona, and Bartholomew Ferrari, and Jacob. Ant. Morigia, noblemen of Milan. Its members were at first obliged to live after the manner of the Theatins, renouncing all worldly goods and possessions, and depending upon the spontaneous donations of the liberal for their daily subsistence. But they soon grew weary of this precarious method of living from hand to mouth, and therefore took the liberty, in process of time, of securing to their community certain possessions_and stated revenues. Their principal function is to go from place to place, like the apostles, in order to convert sinners, and bring back transgressors into the paths of repentance and obedience."

The regular clerks of St. Maieul, who are also called the fathers of Somasquo, from the place where their community was first established, and which was also the residence of their founder, were erected into a distinct society by Jerome Emiliani, a noble Venetian, and were afterward successively confirmed, in the years 1540 and 1563, by the Roman pontiffs Paul III. and Pius IV." Their chief occupation was to instruct the ignorant, and particularly young persons, in the principles and precepts of the Christian religion, and to procure assistance for those that were reduced to the unhappy condition of orphans. The same important ministry was committed to the fathers of the Christian doctrine in France and Italy. The order that bore this title in France was instituted

t Helyot Histoire des Ordres, tom. iv. ch. xii. p. 71.

u Helyot, loc. cit. tom. iv. ch. xvi. p. 100. In the same part of this incomparable work, this learned author gives a most accurate, ample, and interesting account of the other religious orders, which are here, for brevity's sake, but barely mentioned.

w Acta Sanctor. Februar. tom. ii. p. 217.

ligions com

by Cesar de Bus, and confirmed, in the year 1597, by Clement VIII. while that which is known in Italy under the same denomination derives its origin from Mark Cusani, a Milanese knight, and was established by the арprobation and authority of Pius V. and Gregory XIII. XVIH. It would be an endless, and indeed an unprofitable labour to enumerate particularly that prodigious multitude of less considerable orders and Other new rereligious associations, that were instituted in Ger- munities. many and other countries, from an apprehension of the pretended heretics, who disturbed by their innovations the peace, or rather the lethargy of the church. For certainly no age produced such a swarm of monks, and such a number of convents, as that in which Luther and the other reformers opposed the divine light and power of the gospel to ignorance, superstition, and papal tyranny. We therefore pass over in silence these less important establishments, of which many have been long buried in oblivion, because they were erected on unstable foundations, while numbers have been suppressed by the wisdom of certain pontiffs, who have considered the multitude of these communities rather as prejudicial than advantageous to the church. Nor can we take particular notice of the female convents, or nunneries, among which the Ursulines shine forth with a superior lustre both in point of number and dignity. The priests of the oratory, founded in Italy by Philip Neri, a native of Florence, and publicly honoured with the protection of Gregory XIII. in the year 1577, must however be excepted from this general silence, on account of the eminent figure they have made in the republic of letters. It was this community that produced Baronius, Raynaldus, and Laderchius, who hold so high a rank among the ecclesiastical historians of the sixteenth and following centuries; and there are still to be found in it men of considerable erudition and capacity. The name of this religious society was derived from an apartment, accommodated in the form of an oratory, or cabinet for devotion, which St. Philip Neri built at Florence for himself, and in which, for many years, he held spiritual conferences with his more intimate companions."

X

x Helyot, Hist. des Ordres, &c. tom. viii. ch. iv. p. 12.

Ly He was peculiarly assisted in these conferences by Baronius, author of the Ecclesiastical Annals, who also succeeded him as general of the order, and whose An

The state of

XIX. It is too evident to admit of the least dispute, that all kinds of erudition, whether sacred or profane, learning. were held in much higher esteem in the western world since the time of Luther, than they had been before that auspicious period. The Jesuits, more especially, boast and perhaps not without reason, that their society contri buted more, at least in this century, to the culture of the languages, the improvement of the arts, and the advancement of true science, than all the rest of the religious orders. It is certain, that the schools and academies, either through indolence or design, persisted obstinately in their ancient method of teaching, though that method was intricate and disagreeable in many respects; nor would they suffer themselves to be better informed, or permit the least change in their uncouth and disgusting systems. The monks were not more remarkable for their docility than the schools; nor did they seem at all disposed to admit into the retreats of their gloomy cloisters, a more solid and elegant method of instruction than they had been formerly accustomed to. These facts furnish a rational account of the surprising variety that appears in the style and manner of the writers of this age, of whom several express their sentiments with elegance, perspicuity, and order, while the diction of a great part of their contemporaries is barbarous, perplexed, obscure, and insipid.

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Cesar Baronius, already mentioned, undertook to throw light on the history of religion by his annals of the Christian church; but this pretended light was scarcely any thing better than perplexity and darkness. His example however excited many to enterprises of the same nature. The attempts of the persons they called heretics, rendered indeed such enterprises necessary; for these heretics, with the learned Flackius and Chemnitz at their head," demon

nals, on account of his imperfect knowledge of the Greek language, are so remarkably full of gross faults, misrepresentations, and blunders.

z The learned Isaac Casaubon undertook a refutation of the Annals of Baronius, in an excellent work, entitled Exercitationes, &c. and though he carried it no farther down than the 34th year of the Christian era, yet he pointed out a prodigious number of palpable, and, many of them, shameful errors, into which the Romish annalist has fallen during that short space. Even the Roman catholic literati acknowledge the inaccuracies and faults of Baronius; hence many learned men, such as Pagi, Noris, and Tillemont, have been employed to correct them. And accordingly, a few years ago, a new edition of these Annals were published at Lucca, with the corrections of these reviewers at the foot of each page.

a The former in the Centuria Magdeburgenses; the latter in his Examen Concilii Tridentini.

strated with the utmost evidence, that not only the declarations of holy Scripture, but also the testimony of ancient history, and the records of the primitive church, were in direct opposition both to the doctrines and pretensions of the church of Rome. This was wounding popery with its own arms, and attacking it in its pretended strong holds. It was therefore incumbent upon the friends of Rome to employ, while it was time, their most zealous efforts in maintaining the credit of those ancient fables, on which the greatest part of the papal authority reposed, as its only foundation and support.

xx. Several men of genius in France and Italy, who have been already mentioned with the esteem that is due The state of to their valuable labours," used their most zealous philosophy. endeavours to reform the barbarous philosophy of the times. But the excessive attachment of the scholastic doctors to the Aristotelian philosophy on the one hand, and on the other the timorous prudence of many weak minds, who were apprehensive that the liberty of striking out new discoveries and ways of thinking might be prejudicial to the church, and open a new source of division and discord, crushed all these generous endeavours, and rendered them ineffectual. The throne of the subtile Stagirite remained therefore unshaken; and his philosophy, whose very obscurity afforded a certain gloomy kind of pleasure, and flattered the pride of those who were implicitly supposed to understand it, reigned unrivalled in the schools and monasteries. It even acquired new credit and authority from the Jesuits, who taught it in their colleges, and made use of it in their writings and disputes. By this however these artful ecclesiastics showed evidently, that the captious jargon and subtilties of that intricate philosophy were much more adapted to puzzle heretics, and to give the popish doctors at least the appearance of carrying on the controversy with success, than the plain and obvious method of disputing, which is pointed out by the genuine and unbiassed dictates of right reason.

XXI. The church of Rome produced, in this century, a prodigious number of theological writers. The Theological most eminent of these, both in point of reputa- of the tion and merit, are as follow: Thomas de Vio, suasion.

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