CHAPTER XXXII THE COUNTER REFORMATION The success of the Reformation was not suffered to pass unchallenged by the great Church whose very existence was imperilled by it. The broken forces were rallied and during the period through which the Council of Trent held its sittings, 1542-1563, "the Church of Rome having lost a large part of Europe not only ceased to lose but actually regained nearly half of what she had lost." A vigorous effort was made to re-establish Rome as the centre of European culture. The Vatican press was set up, and the Index of forbidden books-the Index Expurgatoribus was sanctioned and applied. As early as 1501 the papacy had instructed the Universities of Köln, Mainz, Trier, and Magdeburg, to issue none but licensed books. In 1515 the Lateran Council approved the papal declaration that all books printed in Rome must be expressly approved by the Master of the Palace. After 1543 the Inquisition in Rome undertook the work of censorship. Lists of prohibited books were drawn up by many civil authorities outside the States of the Church, and in 1559 the first papal Index was drafted. "Its very severity prevented its success." It was considered by a Commission appointed by the Council of Trent under whose direction the new Index was issued in 1564. A Congregation of the Index was established in 1571. Various revisions were undertaken until 1596. when the Index Expurgatoribus was sanctioned by a papal bull. Critics of this censorship of literature were not lacking. AONIUS PALEARIUS, 1500-1570, who is known by a philosophical poem on The Immortality of the Soul, and by a work on The Benefit of Christ Crucified for Christians, pleaded in vain for liberty. The German Jesuit PETER CANISIUS, 1521-1597, pointed out that the people must have books, and that the Church ought to supply them. But the work of the Index was very thoroughly done. Italian scholarship was slain so far as Italy was concerned, and that of Spain and Portugal was also destroyed.1 The Council of Trent laid the dogmatic and disciplinary basis of the Counter Reformation. The story of the work of the Council belongs to ecclesiastical history and to the history of doctrine, but the contemporary records of the great assembly must be mentioned here. PIETRO SARPI, 1552-1623, who surnamed himself Paolo, began his literary life by republishing some of the tracts of GERSON. When the ecclesiastical liberties of his native Venice were threatened by papal aggression he wrote The Reply of a Doctor of Theology, in which "he laid down principles which struck at the very root of the Pope's authority in secular things." He continued his literary defence of the spiritual freedom of the republic of Venice in Considerations upon the Censures, and in A Treatise of the Interdict. The quarrel was composed in 1607 and SARPI returned to his cloister where he wrote A History of the Inquisition in Venice, 1615, and also his chief literary work The History of the Council of Trent, 1619, which became the text-book of Protestantism on the subject. Hallam says that his Treatise on Benefices is "a model in its way . . . it can never be read without delight and admiration of the author's skill."2 A rival and apologetic History of the Council of Trent, 1656-57, was prepared by PIETRO SFORZA PALLAVICINO, 1 T. M. Lindsay, History of the Reformation, Vol. II., pp. 603-605. 2 Literature of Europe, Vol. II., p. 384. 1607-1667. A similar work had been attempted by TERENZIO ALCIATI, and PALLAVICINO continued his unfinished task with the aid of many sources which were not accessible to SARPI. His criticisms of SARPI's work however make little or no difference to the substance of the anti-papal story. CHARLES BORROMEO, 1538-1584, connects the Roman Church of the Renaissance with that of the Counter Reformation. As Archbishop of Milan he edited The Vatican Nights, a series of memoirs of learned academicians whose company he cultivated. His only original works are Homilies, Discourses such as his Instructions for Pastors, Sermons and Letters. He holds his place in literary history as the editor of The Roman Catechism which was drawn up by the Council of Trent under his superintendence. Although hindered by the operations of the Index, CAESAR BARONIUS, 1538-1607, wrote an enormous work entitled Ecclesiastical Annals, 1588-1593, to offset the influence of the protestant Magdeburg Centuries. He is the first modern Church historian. He surpassed the Centuriators by the mass of his collection of sources for which he had access to material hitherto unused for scientific history. He tried to prove that the Church of Rome was an unbroken unity that had kept itself pure. His vast work, "shapeless and destitute of every trace of eloquence" though it is, transferred "to the Catholic party the preponderance in the field of learning which ever since Erasmus had been on the side of the innovators." He kept his work free from theological bias, but he cited "apocryphal or disputable documents as of equal value with those that were authentic." BARONIUS carried his Annals down to the end of the twelfth century; it was brought down to 1566 by RAINALDUS during 16461663. ISAAC CASAUBON, 1559-1614, the last of the great scholars of the sixteenth century, settled in England in 1610 by invitation of King James I. There he consumed the four years until his death "in the defence of his royal patron against the Jesuits, and in writing Animadversions on the Annals of Baronius; works ill suited to his peculiar talent." His criticisms however were not unjust. In one of his letters he says: Nevertheless Baronius is better than Bellarmine, a man skilled in artifices, sophistries, lies, and fit for nothing else. The rule of this man is not the sacred Scriptures but the lust of the pope who stands like God in the earth; he lies as wickedly as he does frequently. Again, he wrote that he could by certain reasons demonstrate all BELLARMINE'S positions false; but when he came to the chapter on the Sacraments: I can most certainly prove that those of our writers who have attempted to show that the Fathers hold our views have egregiously wasted their time and been blind in broad daylight (Epistle 1043). The epic of the Counter Reformation was written by TORQUATO TASSO, 1554-1595, a young Italian poet who won attention at the age of eighteen as the most promising poet of his day. His pastoral drama, Aminta, "of exquisite lyrical charm," was published in 1573, and in 1574 he issued his Jerusalem Delivered, "a very great poem, the greatest of all the artificial epics after the Aeneid and Paradise Lost." The subject is the First Crusade with Godfrey as the hero and the adventures of three lovely pagan women to provide the element of affectionate sentiment. Tasso "thought, and with justice, that he had written a truly religious poem and he now found the ecclesiastical reaction demanding that it should be adapted to the reading of monks and nuns." Mental unsettlement led to years of misery, restraint, and ill-health, but during his imprisonment as a madman, 15791586, he wrote many Dialogues on philosophical and ethical subjects. After his release he wrote a dull poem entitled Mount Olivet, 1588. In 1592 he revised and ruined the Jerusalem which he now renamed Jerusalem Conquered; he also prepared The Seven Days, "a dreary amplification of the first chapter of Genesis" in Italian blank verse, "chiefly remarkable for its evident influence upon the style and versification of Milton." The Jerusalem Delivered has been translated by Edward Fairfax: The sacred Armies and the godly Knight That the Great Sepulcher of Christ did free His soldiers wilde, to braules and mutines prest, O heavenly Muse that not with fading baies If fictions light I mix with truth divine, And fill these lines with other praise than thine. The greatest of the Dutch poets and one of the greatest religious poets of the Counter Reformation was JOOST VAN DER VONDEL, 1587-1679. His earlier poems and plays show that Biblical dramas had displaced the mediæval Moralities, and all his work is instinct with the spirit of devotion to God and the Fatherland. An attack upon Prince Maurice and the preachers made under the thin disguise of a classical tragedy, Palamedes, 1618, brought him within the power of the law; having gained freedom he won popularity by writing a series of satires against the Calvinists. The best of these satires are popular songs such as The Beggars' Vesper for Sick Folks' |