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History Of The Christian Church (1892) Philip Schaff
VOLUME 6 Sixth Period: Medieval Christianity (3),
The Decline of the Papacy and the Preparation for Modern Christianity,
from Boniface VIII. to Martin Luther.
AD 1294-1517. ============================================================
Preface
This volume completes the history of the Church in the Middle Ages. Dr.
Philip Schaff on one occasion spoke of the Middle Ages as a terra incognita
in the United States,-a territory not adequately explored. These words
would no longer be applicable, whether we have in mind the instruction
given in our universities or theological seminaries. In Germany, during the
last twenty years, the study of the period has been greatly developed, and
no period at the present time, except the Apostolic age, attracts more
scholarly and earnest attention and research.
The author has had no apologetic concern to contradict the old notion,
perhaps still somewhat current in our Protestant circles, that the Middle
Ages were a period of superstition and worthy of study as a curiosity
rather than as a time directed and overruled by an all-seeing Providence.
He has attempted to depict it as it was and to allow the picture of high
religious purpose to reveal itself side by side with the picture of
hierarchical assumption and scholastic misinterpretation. Without the
mediaeval age, the Reformation would not have been possible. Nor is this
statement to be understood in the sense in which we speak of reaching a
land of sunshine and plenty after having traversed a desert. We do well to
give to St. Bernard and Francis d'Assisi, St. Elizabeth and St. Catherine
of Siena, Gerson, Tauler and Nicolas of Cusa a high place in our list of
religious personalities, and to pray for men to speak to our generation as
well as they spoke to the generations in which they lived.
Moreover, the author has been actuated by no purpose to disparage
Christians who, in the alleged errors of Protestantism, find an insuperable
barrier to Christian fellowship. Where he has passed condemnatory judgments
on personalities, as on the popes of the last years of the 15th and the
earlier years of the 16th century, it is not because they occupied the
papal throne, but because they were personalities who in any walk of life
would call for the severest reprobation. The unity of the Christian faith
and the promotion of fellowship between Christians of all names and all
ages are considerations which should make us careful with pen or spoken
word lest we condemn, without properly taking into consideration that
interior devotion to Christ and His kingdom-which seems to be quite
compatible with divergencies in doctrinal statement or ceremonial habit.
On the pages of the volume, the author has expressed his indebtedness to
the works of the eminent mediaeval historians and investigators of the day,
Gregorovius, Pastor, Mandell Creighton, Lea, Ehrle, Denifle, Finke, Schwab,
Haller, Carl Mirbt, R. Mueller Kirsch, Loserth, Janssen, Valois, Burckhardt-
Geiger, Seebohm and others, Protestant and Roman Catholic, and some no more
among the living.
It is a pleasure to be able again to express his indebtedness to the Rev.
David E. Culley, his colleague in the Western Theological Seminary, whose
studies in mediaeval history and accurate scholarship have been given to
the volume in the reading of the manuscript, before it went to the printer,
and of the printed pages before they received their final form.
Above all, the author feels it to be a great privilege that he has been
able to realize the hope which Dr. Philip Schaff expressed in the last
years of his life, that his History of the Christian Church which, in four
volumes, had traversed the first ten centuries and, in the sixth and
seventh, set forth the progress of the German and Swiss Reformations, might
be carried through the fruitful period from 1050-1517.
David S. Schaff.
The Western Theological Seminary,
Pittsburg. ==============================
Introduction § 1. Introductory Survey.
The two centuries intervening between 1294 and 1517, between the accession
of Boniface VIII. and the nailing of Luther's Ninety-five Theses against
the church door in Wittenberg, mark the gradual transition from the Middle
Ages to modern times, from the universal acceptance of the papal theocracy
in Western Europe to the assertion of national independence, from the
supreme authority of the priesthood to the intellectual and spiritual
freedom of the individual. Old things are passing away; signs of a new
order increase. Institutions are seen to be breaking up. The scholastic
systems of theology lose their compulsive hold on men's minds, and even
become the subject of ridicule. The abuses of the earlier Middle Ages call
forth voices demanding reform on the basis of the Scriptures and the common
well-being of mankind. The inherent vital energies in the Church seek
expression in new forms of piety and charitable deed.
The power of the papacy, which had asserted infallibility of judgment and
dominion over all departments of human life, was undermined by the
mistakes, pretensions, and worldliness of the papacy itself, as exhibited
in the policy of Boniface VIII., the removal of the papal residence to
Avignon, and the disastrous schism which, for nearly half a century, gave
to Europe the spectacle of two, and at times three, popes reigning at the
same time and all professing to be the vicegerents of God on earth.
The free spirit of nationality awakened during the crusades grew strong and
successfully resisted the papal authority, first in France and then in
other parts of Europe. Princes asserted supreme authority over the citizens
within their dominions and insisted upon the obligations of churches to the
state. The leadership of Europe passed from Germany to France, with England
coming more and more into prominence.
The tractarian literature of the fourteenth century set forth the rights of
man and the principles of common law in opposition to the pretensions of
the papacy and the dogmatism of the scholastic systems. Lay writers made
themselves heard as pioneers of thought, and a practical outlook upon the
mission of the Church was cultivated. With unexampled audacity Dante
assailed the lives of popes, putting some of St. Peter's successors into
the lowest rooms of hell.
The Reformatory councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel turned Europe for
nearly fifty years, 1409-1450, into a platform of ecclesiastical and
religious discussion. Though they failed to provide a remedy for the
disorders prevailing in the Church, they set an example of free debate, and
gave the weight of their eminent constituency to the principle that not in
a select group of hierarchs does supreme authority in the Church rest, but
in the body of the Church.
The hopelessness of expecting any permanent reform from the papacy and the
hierarchy was demonstrated in the last years of the period, 1460-1517, when
ecclesiastical Rome offered a spectacle of moral corruption and spiritual
fall which has been compared to the corrupt age of the Roman Empire.
The religious unrest and the passion for a better state of affairs found
expression in Wyclif, Huss, and other leaders who, by their clear
apprehension of truth and readiness to stand by their public utterances,
even unto death, stood far above their own age and have shone in all the
ages since.
While coarse ambition and nepotism, a total perversion of the
ecclesiastical office and violation of the fundamental virtues of the
Christian life held rule in the highest place of Christendom, a pure stream
of piety was flowing in the Church of the North, and the mystics along the
Rhine and in the Lowlands were unconsciously fertilizing the soil from
which the Reformation was to spring forth.
The Renaissance, or the revival of classical culture, unshackled the minds
of men. The classical works of antiquity were once more, after the churchly
disparagement of a thousand years, held forth to admiration. The confines
of geography were extended by the discoveries of the continent in the West.
The invention of the art of printing, about 1440, forms an epoch in human
advancement, and made it possible for the products of human thought to be
circulated widely among the people, and thus to train the different nations
for the new age of religious enfranchisement about to come, and the
sovereignty of the intellect.
To this generation, which looks back over the last four centuries, the
discovery of America and the pathways to the Indies was one of the
remarkable events in history, a surprise and a prophecy. In 1453,
Constantinople easily passed into the hands of the Turk, and the Christian
empire of the East fell apart. In the far West the beginnings of a new
empire were made, just as the Middle Ages were drawing to a close.
At the same time, at the very close of the period, under the direction and
protection of the Church, an institution was being prosecuted which has
scarcely been equalled in the history of human cruelty, the Inquisition,-
now papal, now Spanish,-which punished heretics unto death in Spain and
witches in Germany.
Thus European society was shaking itself clear of long-established customs
and dogmas based upon the infallibility of the Church visible, and at the
same time it held fast to some of the most noxious beliefs and practices
the Church had allowed herself to accept and propagate. It had not the
original genius or the conviction to produce a new system of theology. The
great Schoolmen continued to rule doctrinal thought. It established no new
ecclesiastical institution of an abiding character like the canon law. It
exhibited no consuming passion such as went out in the preceding period in
the crusades and the activity of the Mendicant O