HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. With respect to the religious principles of that they were not animated by true piety, or these royal sons of the church, we may observe, a genuine spirit of religion. They may have believed the doctrines of Christianity; or, per faith which they found established in their dominions. They attended mass with decorous regularity, witnessed ceremonial observances with a serious and devout aspect, and promoted among their subjects a religious uniformity. But they did not endeavour, like true Christians, to correct their evil propensities, amend their hearts, or reform their lives. They did not study to preserve peace upon earth;" they did not cherish "good will towards men." Their religion (in the language applied by a respectable historian* to William the Conqueror) "prompted them to endow monasteries, but at the same time allowed them to pillage kingdoms: it threw them on their knees before a relic or a cross, but suffered them unrestrained to trample upon the liberties and the rights of mankind." THE continued attacks of the Protestants upon the church of Rome had forced the out-haps, they merely affected to give credit to the works, and weakened the barriers of that establishment: but it still presented a bold front to its assailants, and numbered among its votaries the major part of the inhabitants of Europe. Its greatness was impaired, but not subverted; and it had an imposing, if not a very formidable aspect. The pope's power of interdiction and excommunication had ceased to fill nations with dismay. Some of the potentates of his communion addressed him in a tone which many of his predecessors would not have endured; harassed him with various pretensions, and encroached upon that authority which he deemed legitimate and even divine. Notwithstand ing these assaults, he retained some degree of power and a considerable portion of influence, and was supported in the dignity of supreme pontiff by the greatest princes of the continent. The prelate who occupied this high station at the commencement of that century of which we are now treating, was Clement XI. or John Francis Albani, who, having acquired reputation by his skill in the management of affairs, and being also of a spirited character, had been unanimously chosen by the conclave at a time when the political horizon of Europe threatened a storm. He rejected the offered tiara with a greater appearance of sincerity than that which an English divine usually displays when he says, on the offer of a bishopric, nolo episcopari; but his scruples and objections were removed by the arguments, representations, and importunities of the cardinals. We have no concern with the war into which the rival princes entered, as it is unconnected with the history of the church. It arose from temporal motives, and referred to grand political objects. Both princes promised that, if the war should extend to Italy, the papal territories should remain uninjured and unmolested: but this promise was violated, on the part of Leopold, by the irruption of an Austrian detachment into the province of Ferrara. Clement having bitterly complained of this conduct, the troops retired: but, as they again encroached, he ordered an army to be levied. Louis, and his grandson the new king of Spain, earnestly requested his holiness to enter into an alliance with them, promising great advantages not only to the holy see, but to the pontiff himself, as the price of his condescension. He had no wish to take part with either of the contending families, and therefore refused to accede to the confederacy. A report was propagated of his assent to the offered terms; and it derived strength from the appearance of the duke of Berwick at Rome; but that nobleman was merely sent from France by the royal exile, James II., to congratulate Albani on his elevation to the papal throne. He made a good beginning of administration. He redressed some grievances, discountenanced vice and criminality of every kind, performed acts of beneficence, gave an example of devotional regularity, and filled vacant of fices and preferments with men of merit. He then directed his attention to politics, and testified a desire of preventing a war between the king of France and the emperor, on the subject of the Spanish succession. He wrote a letter to each of those princes, exhorting them to accommodate all disputes without rushing into hostilities. They received his advice with pro- Unable to check the rage of war, the pope fessions of respect for his character, but did not soothed his anxiety, and gratified his religious Buffer it to regulate their conduct. Ambition zeal, by promoting the diffusion of the catholic still inflamed the aged Louis: his thirst of do- faith. He even expressed a wish that he could minion still urged him to send forth his legions, visit the remotest parts of the globe for that and wantonly (for a lust of power was no suffi- pious and salutary purpose, and lamented his cient motive,) to shed the blood of his unoffend- inability of accomplishing his desire. Coning fellow creatures. Leopold professed antracting his views he contented himself with equal regard for religion, but was equally uninfluenced by justice or humanity. * George Lord Lyttleton. tory, as Leopold was unwilling to inflict any serious injury on the pontiff. As soon as Joseph became emperor, he manifested a stronger inclination than his father had evinced, to thwart and harass the head of the church. He restricted the papal authority in point of presentation to benefices; seized Comacchio, and claimed Parma and Placentia as imperial fiefs. His troops levied contributions in the ecclesiastical state, and alarmed the timid inhabitants. At length, however, he consented to an accommodation,* and ceased to be a refractory son of the church. sending legates into various regions, particu-|| larly into Persia, India, and China, to support and extend the interests of Christianity: but the success of these heralds of the Gospel did not correspond with the wishes of the religious world. We are informed, however, that his entreaties and expostulations procured, for the catholics of Thrace, Armenia, and Syria, a respite from Mohammedan persecution, and an allowance of the free exercise of their religion.* This freedom, however, was occasionally interrupted and disturbed by the brutality of furious infidels, and the animosity of barbarian zealots. The legate upon whom he chiefly depended, A revival of the contest between the Jansenfor the success of the eastern mission, was ists and the Jesuits had for some time conspirMaillard de Tournon, who was ready to en- ed with politics and war to disturb the trancounter every danger in the cause of Christi- quillity of the court of Rome.† M. Du-Pin anity. This missionary visited India and China had published, in 1703, a Case of Conscience, with a weak and declining frame, but with a in which (according to the pope's letter to the heart full of pious zeal. He introduced him- king of France) various errors already conself to the Chinese emperor at Pekin; was po- demned were revived, and the heretical tenets litely received, and complimented with various of Jansenius defended; and for this offence he presents; and was gratified with permission to was banished from Paris into the province of preach the Gospel, and expound the doctrines Bretagne. Forty doctors of the Sorbonne, of the catholic faith. The imperial potentate, whose names appeared among the signatures however, did not mean that this permission of approbation that accompanied the Case, should so far operate, as to authorise the legate were desired to submit to the will of the ponand his associates to oppose the prevalence of tiff; and many of them recanted, while others popular institutions and ceremonies, sanction- denied that they had given assent to the book. ed by long practice. Unwilling to make any For the more effectual repression of Jansenism, concessions to the prejudices of paganism, a new apostolical constitution was issued in Tournon loudly exclaimed against the idola- 1705, condemning such errors with menaces trous usages of the Chinese, and sharply re- of papal indignation. The archbishop of Seproved the ministers of state and of religion, baste, vicar of the holy see in Holland, was for suffering the continuance of such degrading || removed from his employment for a supposed absurdities. By this freedom he gave great collusion with the Jansenists; and these sectaoffence to the court; and he was even accused ||ries were again subjected to ecclesiastical cenof treason against the emperor. Defying the sure in 1708, when the pope condemned the odium which he considered as unmerited, he Moral Reflections of their celebrated associate, proceeded in his pious career, until he was Quesnel, upon the New Testament. This banished from the capital, in 1707, and sent theologian answered the damnatory bull with to the island of Macao, where he was impri- a spirit which inflamed the contest. The parsoned with five of his fellow missionaries. Ad- tisans of Rome called for a new and more exmiring his undaunted zeal, the pope elevated plicit condemnation of the Reflections; and him to the dignity of a cardinal; an honour the king of France, prejudiced against a sect which he declared he would not accept, if he which the Jesuits represented as even more should be expected to relinquish his mission; dangerous to the church than that of the Hufor he was prepared to suffer every inconveni- guenots, earnestly solicited the promulgation ence, and undergo every species of persecution, of a rigorous edict. Hence arose that dein the discharge of Christian duties. When cree which was addressed to the whole cathothe governor of the Philippine islands offered || li^ world, but which more particularly demandto facilitate his escape, he peremptorily refused | ed the attention and observance of the Gallito quit his prison. He died, not without sus- can church.‡ picion of poison, after he had been confined above three years. The mission was continued after his death; but it did not promise to be successful, as the prejudices of the Chinese were too firmly fixed to be easily eradicated.† Clement, in the mean time, continued to observe, with an anxious eye, the commotions of Europe. When the emperor had proclaimed his son (the archduke Charles) king of Spain, his holiness refused to acknowledge the young prince in that capacity. A new invasion of Ferrara followed; but the Austrians did not venture to make a conquest of that terri * Guarnacci, Vit. et Res Gest. Pontificum Romanorum et Cardinalium, usque ad Clementem XII. tom. ii p. 7. † Guarnacci, Vit. Pontif. et Cardin. tom. ii. p. 143, .44. The Anti-Jansenist ordinance, as it commenced with the terms Unigenitus Dei Filius, was quickly known throughout Christendom by the appellation of the bull Unigenitus. Alleging and lamenting the inefficacy of the former condemnation of Quesnel's book, the pontiff was determined, he said, to apply a stronger remedy to the growing disease. Some catholic truths, he allowed, were mingled with the mass of corrupt doctrine: but, as the insidious *In the year 1708. For an account of the rise of this controversy, and of the doctrines propagated by Jansenius, see Dr. Mosheim's fifth volume. cent. xvii. sect. ii. part i. chap. i. Guarnacci, Vit. Pontif. et Cardin. tom. ii. p. 11, 18, 19.-Histoire de France, sous le Regne de Louis XIV. par M. de Larrey, tom. iii. This bull made its appearance on the 8th of September, 1713, N. S. and seductive manner in which the errors were || bound to protect. To the cardinal de Noailles brought forward, had occasioned a neglect of he sent a letter, mingling expostulations with the sound portion of the work, it was necessary entreaty, which did not subdue the firmness of to separate the tares from the wheat. He and that prelate. The cardinal's appeal from the his counsellors, therefore, had extracted a hun- bull or "constitution of the holy father to the dred and one propositions from the book; and pope better advised, and to a future genera' these he now condemned as false, captious, council," was condemned by the court of i scandalous, pernicious, rash, seditious, impi- quisition at Rome as a scandalous libel; and its ous, blasphemous, schismatic, and heretical. circulation and perusal were strictly prohibitNot content with censuring these passages, he ed. A papal brief afterwards appeared,* comsubjoined a prohibition of the whole perform- manding all Christians throughout the world ance, and cautioned the people, on pain of ex- to withhold their favour and regard from the communication, against the perusal of any opposers of the constitution, and threatening vindication or defence of it, which had been, these unworthy sons of the church, in case of or might be, offered to the public. prolonged contumacy, with a forfeiture of all ecclesiastical privileges. This brief, exciting the indignation of the Parisian parliament, was suppressed by an arret. This bull, perhaps, the good sense of Clement would have forborne to promulgate, if the zeal of the bigoted and domineering Louis had not overawed or perverted the pontiff; though it may with equal plausibility be supposed, that the pope's zeal was sufficient for the object, without any solicitation whatever. The Jansenists, persecuted by that intolerant prince for disregarding the new papal constitution, expected less rigorous treatment when Philip duke of Orleans became regent of France. The cardinal de Noailles, who had warmly supported their cause, was introduced into the cabinet: those who had been banished were recalled: the resolutions which the Sorbonne had adopted in favour of the bull, were annulled, as the effect of constraint; and the conduct of the court of Rome was publicly and acrimoniously condemned. The pope remonstrated against these proceedings, and urged the propriety of submitting to the holy see: but the Jansenists called for a general council, calculated to heal the disorders of the church. The Jesuits denied the necessity of such a convocation, and complained of the ar-tory aid or argumentative enforcement. rogance of the demand. The regent at length began to listen to the persuasions of the bigoted party, and menaced the opposers of the bull with his resentment. He banished M. Ravechet, syndic of the Sorbonne, into Roussillon; but he would not consent to the disposition of that resolute acadernic, who died in the midst of these disputes. An assembly of prelates, convoked by Philip, in vain endeavoured to reconcile the parties; and twenty commissioners, nominated for the same purpose, were not more successful in their exertions. The parliament of Paris took cognizance of the affair, in consequence of an appeal from some priests whom the archbishop of Rheims had excommunicated for their opposition to the will of his noliness. The spiritual sentence was declared null and void, and the prelate who had pronounced it was condemned in costs and damages. The Jansenists now became more bold in their attacks, until the regent, alleging the inutility of these disputes, imposed silence by a royal declaration.* In the progress of the contest, the pope's. adherents strengthened their party; and the Jansenist leaders assumed a more conciliatory tone. The cardinal declared his readiness to accept the constitution, according to his own explanation of it; and, with this qualification, he condemned the work of Quesnel. Some of the clergy disapproved the explanations, a being almost equally objectionable with the bull itself; and, on the other hand, the chief promoters of that act or decree insisted on an absolute and unreserved submission to its obvious import. Many of the French bishops condescended to explain it, in the hope of removing the scruples of the conscientious Jansenists; but the pope, while he commended the zeal and good intentions of those prelates, denied the necessity of their exertions, as the wisdom and authority of the head of the church, who was allowed to dictate to the faithful, did not require, from any of its members, explana An edict which confounded the advocates of truth and of sound doctrine with misguided zealots, displeased both parties. The pope accused the regent of insincerity and injustice, and of enmity to that church which he was * October 7, 1717, N. S.-Guarnacci, Vit. Pontificum et Cardin. tom. ii. p. 21, 22. VOL. II.-47 The pope ultimately prevailed in the contest. The regent resolved to gratify the majority of the higher clergy by giving the sanc tion of the court to the papal edict, after it had been for seven years an object of dispute. It was ordained, that the constitution Unigenitus, received by the bishops, should be observed by all orders of people in the French dominions; that no university or incorporated society, and no individual of any description whatever, should speak, write, maintain or teach, directly or indirectly, any thing repugnant to the ordinance, or to the explanations given of it by the dignitaries of the Gallican church; that all appeals and proceedings against it should be deemed void; and that the courts of parliament, and all judges, should assist the prelates in the execution of spiritual censures. The parliament of Paris at first refused to register this decree, which, said some of its members, not only derogated from the dignity of the crown, but militated against the rights of the subject, and the liberties of the Gallican church; but it was confirmed by the great council, and promulgated as an operative law. Even the cardinal de Noailles at length acquiesced in it; and a parliamentary registration was procured by menaces of removal or of exile.t The exertions of the cardinal Du-Bois were || 1724, at the age of 68. Few pontiffs were of signal service in subduing the spirit of the ever more popular among their temporal subprincipal Jansenists, and, after the registration|jects than Innocent XIII., whose death, thereof the edict, he made occasional use of lettres de cachet against refractory individuals, and revived the oath introduced by Louis XIV. which all candidates for holy orders, and for academical degrees, were obliged to take, importing that the five propositions of Jansenius, respecting grace and free will, were justly condemned. fore, was sincerely lamented. His successor was cardinal Vincent Orsini (eldest son of the duke of Gravina,) who, having an early sense of piety, had rejected the offer of a splendid marriage, renounced a rich inheritance in favour of a younger brother, and entered into the clerical order, in which he distinguished himself by his indefatigable zeal as a preacher, by his rigid attention to all points of duty, and his scrupulous avoidance of every species of luxury and excess. The beginning of the pontificate of Benedict XIII,-for so the new pope was styled-was marked by an edict against luxury and fantas Clement was highly pleased at this accommodation; but his joy was allayed by the consideration of his declining health. He died in the spring of the following year, at the age of seventy-one years, during twenty of which he had occupied the pontifical throne. His catholic biographer ascribes to him an acute understand-tic ing and a tenacious memory, an unwearied zeal in the pursuit of learning, a firmness of mind united with benevolence of disposition and courtesy of manners, and a freedom from anger and resentment.* extravagance in dress; and, that he might not seem to attend more to minutiœ than to objects of importance, he took every opportunity of recommending a strict regard to moral and social duties, and a steady practice of Christian virtues. His exhortations and inHis secretary, cardinal Paulucci, would have junctions had some effect: but, when one head been chosen to succeed him, if the intrigues of of the hydra of vice was stricken off, another the Austrian faction had not baffled the views instantly grew in its place. If the wishes of of the Italian members of the conclave, whose Benedict, however, were not answered, he conadvantage in point of number yielded to im- soled himself by reflecting that he had done perial tyranny. After a vacancy of seven his duty. That consciousness will always imweeks, the pontifical chair was filled with Mi-part pleasure to a pious mind. It will soothe chael Angelo Conti, son of the duke of Poli, who assumed the designation of Innocent XIII. Being in a weak state of health at the time of his election, he did not long preside over the church, his government not being extended by Providence to the end even of the third year. the Christian moralist amidst the evils of life, and at the approach of death. It was in the first year of his government that the affair of Thorn occurred, which, while it contributed to the supposed advantage of the catholic church by injuring the protestant interest in Poland, wounded the feelings of the pontiff, who lamented and reprobated the cruelty that attended the triumph of the Roman It was one of the first cares of this pontiff to accommodate the dispute respecting the investiture of the kingdom of Naples. The emperor and the king of Spain had in vain soli-ists on that occasion. Some Lutherans necited that favour from the late pope: but it was glecting or refusing to kneel at a procession of now granted to the former prince, on the ac- the host, a student of the Jesuits' college reknowledgement of tributary subjection to the proached and even struck them, and some holy see. Another object of Innocent's atten- other zealots of that seminary afterwards in tion was the maintenance of the papal claim sulted the peaceful inhabitants. The aggressor to the sovereignty of Parma and Placentia; but being apprehended and confined, his comrades he did not, in that respect, succeed to his wish. demanded and obtained his release: but they In the mean time he exercised his authority at were not suffered to rescue another who had Rome with mildness, and sometimes with that been seized by the city-guard. Enraged at this severity which appeared to be necessary. To disappointment, they committed various outother parts of Christendom he also extended rages; and, in retaliation, the college was athis care and vigilance: and Spain, in particu- tacked and plundered by the populace. The lar, felt his corrective hand. Observing with president of the city, on pretence of his conserious concern, and indeed with strong dis- nivance at this tumult on the part of the peogust, the dissolute manners both of the clergyple, was decapitated by order of a Polish triand laity in that country, he issued an admo-bunal: nine other citizens were subjected to nitory and threatening edict for the repression the same fate; and the privileges of the Luof irregular, disorderly, and vicious practices. theran inhabitants were arbitrarily annulled. He had no doubt of the religious zeal and decorous behaviour of his catholic majesty, but lamented, on this occasion, the insufficient fluence even of royal example.‡ This barbarity disgusted those catholics who had any sense of humanity, and excited the in-indignation of every protestant community. The Jesuits, however, maintained, that they had only inflicted due chastisement on their insolent adversaries, who had entered into a nefarious conspiracy against their catholic fellow-citizens; and the king of Poland boasted, in the same spirit of bigotry that he had vin dicated, by the punishment of profane heretics. the honour and dignity of true religion That Amidst the cares of spiritual and temporal government, Innocent found his health seriously declining. Hydropic symptoms alarmed him; and other disorders conspired to put an end to his life, in the spring of the year * Guarnacci Vit. Pontificum et Cardinalium, tom. prince seemed to think that he had sufficiently ü. p. 36. blended mercy with justice, by sparing the lives of the vice-president and some other citi- || zens who had been condemned. The Jesuits had, at this time, too great an influence at the court of Warsaw; and they rarely exerted that influence in the cause of justice or of humanity. The more humane and benevolent pontiff consoled himself, amidst these sanguinary deeds, || by a bloodless triumph of that religion which he superintended. We allude to the jubilee of the year 1725, which he opened with great solemnity, and which gladdened the faithful with the confident hopes of a plenary remission of their sins. He afterwards held a provincial council in the Lateran church, chiefly for a reform of the conduct of the clergy; and the assembly voted for an enforcement of some decrees that had been enacted by the council of Trent, but which had fallen into disuse. On another occasion, he rose above the bigotry of his predecessors, by expressing a wish for the diffusion of scriptural knowledge; and, with that view, he permitted the people in general to peruse the sacred volume, and encouraged the multiplication of copies in the modern languages. This permission displeased the rigid catholics; but it was approved by a majority of the members of that church. Benedict, about the same time, testified his devotion to the Muses, by publicly decorating Perfetti, a Tuscan poet, with a crown of laurel. tone; and the prudence of Benedict suggested the propriety of compliance, not indeed in every particular, but in most of the litigated points. An allowance of the general right of royal presentation to bishoprics and other preferments, a considerable diminution of the papal fees, and a precise settlement of jurisdiction, allayed the displeasure of Victor Amadeus; and an agreement was signed in the year 1727. An accommodation was not so easily adjusted with the king of Portugal, who, not being gratified with regard to the appointment of a priest whom he recommended as a candidate for the dignity of cardinal, recalled his ambassador from Rome, ordered the papal nuncio to quit his realm, and permitted the patriarch of Lisbon to grant dispensations, and decide those points and causes which had usually been subject to the pope's determination. Benedict left the settlement of this dispute to his successor; but he found an opportunity of effecting an accommodation with the emperor, on the subject of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and discipline in the Neapolitan realm; a reconciliation which he purchased by relinquishing some of the rights of the holy see.* In the devotional and ritual concerns of the church, this pontiff approved the office of Gregory VII. and ordered it to be read and observed in every church dependent on the Romish hierarchy. The laity, in France and other countries, were not very willing to comply with the order: but Benedict, in this point, insisted upon their obedience and submission. If the sovereigns of those states had interfered on this occasion, he would probably have given up the point. A grand scheme of religious comprehension was formed by this respectable ruler of the church. It was of no less magnitude than the union of the four communities that divided Christendom. He proposed, that four councils should be holden at different places at the same time, each consisting of a certain number of representatives of the Romish, Greek, Luthe- Indefatigable in his apostolical duties, he ran, and Calvinist churches, with a president continued to pray and preach, attend to all of one or other church in each assembly; that pontifical and sacerdotal functions, and direct the mass should be so altered as not to be re- the conduct of subordinate prelates and minispugnant to the feelings of the three last deno-ters of the church. He frequently visited the minations of Christians; that unpleasing or ob- poor, and not only gave them spiritual comnoxious doctrines should be mutually softened, fort, but relieved them by his bounty; selling and various concessions reciprocally made. A for that purpose the presents which he receivscheme of this kind can only be expected to be ed. He habituated himself to the plainest successful, when the greater part of the pro- fare, and lived in the most frugal manner, like fessors of each religion have relinquished all a hermit in his cell, that he might more liberemains of cool animosity, overweening conceit, rally bestow upon others the blessings of forand contemptuous illiberality, and when they tune. But it is to be lamented, that, from inhave learned to distinguish properly between attention to his political duty, he suffered caressential objects and immaterial points. Such dinal Coscia, an unprincipled Neapolitan, to a state of mind has never yet been observed to pursue a shameful course of rapine and extorinfluence the members of different sects, as- tion. Yet he died‡ without losing his populasembled for deliberation and discussion; and rity, in the eighty-second year of his age, and we may easily conclude, that, if the four coun- the sixth of his pontificate. cils had met, and the result of their separate meetings had been submitted to the consideration of a general assembly, the desired union would not have taken place. The scheme, indeed, was not prosecuted by the pontiff who entertained it; and the churches in question are still divided. However disposed was his holiness to remain upon amicable terms with the catholic princes, he could not easily avoid all occasions of dispute. A contest had long subsisted with the court of Turin, upon three grounds,-the right of patronage, the extent of jurisdiction, and the Sovereignty of different towns. The king of Sardinia asserted his pretensions with a high Clement XII., of the Corsini family, was * Guarnacci, Vit. Pontif. t. ii. p. 417-22.-Hist. de Portugal, t. iii. † So we are informed by the baron de Polnitz; and the assertion is not disputed by the impartial. Guar nacci, without stating any particulars of the cardinal's misconduct and criminality, says, that he great. ly increased his fortune, and governed the pope's dominions at his discretion. Clement XII. punished him with a long imprisonment, subjected him to a heavy fine, and deprived him of the archbishopric of Benevento. On the 21st of February, 1730.-He ought to be mentioned as an author; for many sermons, some accounts of the proceedings of synods, a commentary upon the book of Exodus, and sacred epigrams, have been published as his productions. His literary merit, however is not of the Inghest kind. |