the Council.

For no words could say more plainly that the ruinous condition of the whole Church, the dominant profligacy, the applause with which the neglected and dissatisfied people, in utter perplexity about their clergy and their Church, universally hailed every new doctrine or scheme of Church-government, was ultimately due to the Italian prelacy, concentrated in the Curia, and thence appointed over the dioceses.1 They said that all which they suffered at the hands of the heretics was only a just retribution on their vices and crimes, their bestowal of Church offices on the unworthy, and the like.

§ XXX.-The Council of Trent, and its Results. The very first speech made at the opening of the Council by Bishop Coriolano Martorano, of San Marco,

1 See Admonit. ad Synodum. 1546, in Le Plat, Monum. Coll. i. 40. "Horum malorum magnâ ex parte nos causa sumus. Quod lapsam morum disciplinam et abusus complectitur, hic nihil attinet diu investigare, quinam tantorum malorum auctores fuerint, cum præter nos ipsos ne nominare quidem ullum alium auctorem possimus." Cf. Girolamo Muzzio's Lettre catoliche (Venez. 1571), p. 27, written in 1557, on the "abominazione introdotta nella Chiesa." The bishops, themselves bad and incompetent, "danno la cura dell' anima alla feccia degli uomini." Guicciardini describes in his Ricordi how a bishopric was bought at Rome for a fixed sum, and this was the usual provision for the younger son of an aristocratic family. His relative, Rinieri Guicciardini, a bastard, but richly beneficed, bought the See of Cortona of the Pope for 4000 ducats, and with it a dispensation for retaining his benefices.- Opere, x. 59.

created astonishment.1

The picture he drew of the

Italian cardinals and bishops, their bloodthirsty cruelty, their avarice, their pride, and the devastation they had wrought of the Church, was perfectly shocking. An unknown writer, who has described this first sitting in a letter to a friend, thinks Luther himself never spoke more severely. What he then heard at Trent gave him the notion that the Council would not indeed accept Protestant doctrine, but would assail the Papal tyranny more energetically even than the Lutherans. How utterly was he deceived in his ignorance of the Italian prelacy! But what was then said in Trent left no doubt that the general absence of the Italian bishops from their dioceses, most of which had never even seen their chief pastor, must be regarded as fortunate, strongly as the Roman compilers of the memorial of 1538, designed for Paul III., insisted on this state of things being intolerable.3 There is a letter extant of the famous Antonio Flaminio, of 1545, referring to the beginnings

1 See Le Plat, i. 20 ff.

2 Fortgesetzte Sammlung von Theol. Sachen. 1747, p. 335.

3 "Omnes fere pastores recesserunt a suis gregibus, commissi sunt omnes fere mercenariis" (ed. 1671), p. 114. It was just the same sixty years later, in spite of the pretended reformation of Trent. Bellarmine says, in his memorial to Clement VIII., "Video in Ecclesiis Italiæ desolationem tantam quanta ante multos annos fortasse non fuit ut jam neque divini juris neque humani residentia esse videatur.”—Baron. Ep. et Opusc. (Romæ, 1770), iii. 9.

of the Council while in process of formation. What, he asked, will a Council, composed of such monstrous bishops, do for the Church? There is nothing episco

pal about them except their long robe. He knew of but one worthy bishop in Italy, who was now dead, Giberto of Verona, but nothing was to be hoped from the existing body, who had become bishops through royal favour, through solicitation, through purchase in Rome, through criminal arts, or after long years spent in the Curia. If any improvement was to be effected, they must all be deposed.1

The appearance of some French and Spaniards at Trent was enough at once to convert the Italian bishops into a herd of slavish sycophants of Rome, acting simply at the beck of the legates. They quietly let themselves be described as wretched, unprincipled hirelings, rude and ignorant men, without a murmur or contradiction interrupting the speaker. An Italian even ventured to saywhat would not have been endured from a Cismontanethat all the evils and abuses of the Church came from the Church of Rome.2 But when they had to testify their

1 See Quatro Lettere di Gasparo Contarini (Firenze, 1558). Cardinal Quirini ascribes this letter to Flaminio.

2 Thus, e.g., Antonio Pucci, afterwards Cardinal Archbishop of Albano, at the Lateran Synod, called "Rome or Babylon, ejusque incolas pastores, qui

devotion to the Curia, they rivalled each other in their fervid zeal. "The Italian bishops," says Pallavicini,

knew of no other aim than the upholding of the Apostolic See and its greatness. They thought that in working for its interests they showed themselves at once good Italians and good Christians." When, on one occasion, a foreign bishop mentioned an historical fact which would not fit in with the Papal system, the storm broke out. Vosmediano, Bishop of Cadiz, had observed that formerly metropolitans used to ordain the bishops of their provinces by virtue of their own authority. Cardinal Simonetta promptly contradicted him, and then the Italian bishops raised a wild cry, and put him down by stamping and scraping with their feet. They cried out that this accursed wretch must not speak; he should at once be brought to trial. That was the Conciliar freedom of speech at Trent!

2

In Italy, where matters did not come, as elsewhere, to an open breach of communion, and where the great mass of the lower orders remained Catholic, the betterminded were seized with a despondency bordering on quotidie per universum terrarum orbem animarum saluti præficiuntur, tantorum causam errorum."--Conc. (ed Labbé), xiv. 240.

1 "Non tendevono al altro oggetto che al sostentamento ed alla grandezza della Sede Apostolica."— Storia del Conc. di Trento, v. 425 (ed. Milan, 1844). 2 Psalmæi, Coll. Actor., in Le Plat, vii. ii. 92.

despair. In their speeches and writings about the time of the opening of the Tridentine Council, they spoke of the decay of all religion, the last agony, or the actual burial of the Church, which the bishops were to be present at. They call the Church a corpse in process of corruption, or a house on fire, and almost reduced to ashes. So spoke Lorenzo Giustiniani, Patriarch of Venice, the Cardinals Ægidius of Viterbo, and Antonio Pucci, and several of the bishops at Trent. That was the impression made on them by the state of things in Italy, where the nation seemed to be divided between unbelief and rude superstition, whereas the nations north of the Alps were still, on the whole, believing, though deeply shaken in their allegiance to the Church, which presented itself to them as a tyrannical mistress, and so terribly disfigured and distorted that it could hardly be recognised. Socinianism was a national product of Italy; in Germany and England it found no place.

In Germany, and generally on this side the Alps, it was long before men grasped the idea of the breach of Church communion becoming permanent. The general feeling was still so far Church-like, that a really free Council, independent of Papal control, was confidently looked to for at once purifying and uniting the Church,