2. The Characteristics and Controversies of Re-
vived Catholicism.
The intellectual advances of
Catholicism, its successful missionary
work in Europe
and elsewhere, and the victories of the Habsburg sup-
porters of the papacy in the early stages
of the Thirty
Years' War, brought about a fine feeling of exultation
in Rome when the new basilica of St. Peter's had been
completed there, and
was consecrated in 1626. This
“greatest architectural wonder of
the world” still re-
mained the real
center of artistic activity in Rome
which, under Urban VIII (1623-44) and
his two suc-
cessors, was turned into a
baroque city. The sculptor
and architect, Lorenzo Bernini, and the painter,
Pietro
da Cortona, had a great part in this; and the new
style—which came to be associated with the Jesuits—
imprinted its character on the city more strongly than
any previous style
had done. It was dynamic and sought
dramatic effects, loading churches with
ornament and
gilding, colored sculptures and sensuous curves. It
spread from Rome to Spain, Portugal, Austria, Catholic
Germany, and Poland;
though its influence seems to
have been smaller in France. This whole form
of art
still seems to convey to us something of the exuberant
spirit
of the Counter-Reformation. Here, therefore,
Christianity, entangling
itself once again with the
world, presents pictures and scenic displays
quite
different from the religious landscape of England and
Holland.
In France there emerged in the seventeenth century
a “Catholic
Renaissance” which helped to enhance the
role of that country in the history of religion and of
Europe
in general. The intellectual strength of the
movement is illustrated by the
fact that the clergy
moved over so naturally to the leadership of the
state
itself in peace and war. From 1624 to 1642 Cardinal
Richelieu
was the effective ruler, and he surrounded
himself with priests and
monks—a cardinal becoming
a general, while an archbishop was
made admiral—the
most intimate counsellor, especially in
diplomatic
matters, being the famous Father Joseph. The new
spirit
showed itself in charitable foundations, attempts
at reform and Christian
missions to the native peoples
of French Canada; and the beneficent work of
Vincent
de Paul was perhaps the most characteristic feature
of the
revival. Also there began, amongst the congre-
gation of St. Maur, that scholarly work which was to
bring so
much distinction to the Benedictines in the
seventeenth century.
Richelieu himself illustrates the way in which France,
through her special
problems and special position, was
mediating the passage to a new order of
things in
Europe. In spite of his severities in desperate times,
he
was a pious man and he gave the politique policy
a
turn which made it more admissible for the Christian.
He destroyed the
military establishment by means of
which the turbulent Huguenots had
secured their posi-
tion within France; but he
continued the religious
toleration which this party had been enjoying
since
1598, and he seems to have been sincere in his hope
that this
example of generosity would be conducive
to their ultimate voluntary
conversion. In respect of
foreign policy, he judged that France would be
eclipsed
for an indefinite period if Spain were not checked; so
he
gave priority to the policy of war against the
Habsburgs, though, again, he
seems to have been sin-
cere in his
determination to see that this should do
as little harm as possible to the
cause of Catholicism.
In both these cases his formulas more carefully pin-
pointed the valid role of force and
discriminated be-
tween the objectives of
foreign policy, imposing at
home and abroad the idea of warfare for limited
ends.
It was a stage in the formation of a different kind of
international order and in the transition by means of
which even earnest
Christians could find their way out
of the Wars of Religion. It was to end
in the virtual
abstraction of religion from the game of power-politics.
If the Western Church had come to a tragic cleavage
at the Reformation,
however, and if the Calvinism of
the Dutch had later been brought to a
serious crisis
by the emergence of Arminianism, it is interesting to
note that the seventeenth century saw great conflicts
within the revived
Catholicism—conflicts, moreover,
on patterns already
familiar—and that the chief arena
for these should have been
France. Firstly there came
to the forefront again that assertive spirit of nationality
which had been refractory to the papacy before the
close of the Middle
Ages, and which had then been
a factor in the Reformation itself.
“Gallicanism” was
medieval in origin, and it stressed
the national charac-
ter of the French
Church—stressed the authority of
the French bishops as something
more than a mere
delegation from Rome. The movement also had its
internal constitutional aspect, and regarded the French
king as holding his
temporal authority direct from God,
and therefore as not amenable to the
pope in his exer-
cise of it. In a sense, the
king was the protector of
the French bishops against the pope, but they
were
his subjects and if they gained ground from Rome, he
himself
stood out more clearly as their leader and chief.
Also the Gallican cause
was assisted by the fact that,
since the Council of Constance, the king had
more than
once settled the position of the French church in sepa-
rate agreements with the papacy. It had
come to be
easy to see that church as a national affair, to be
conducted for the most part by French bishops under
the French king; and
even the idea of a national
ecclesiastical council had been used as a
possible
weapon against the pope. The Spanish Church had
already
acquired a remarkable independence, and the
French became the chief
mouthpiece of the nationalist
program, though a parallel form of protest
against
Rome distinguished the Venetians, particularly at the
beginning of the seventeenth century.
From the fifteenth century, the French enemies of
the Gallican principles
were beginning to be known
as “Ultramontanes,” and,
after the Counter-Reforma-
tion, it
was the Jesuits who distinguished themselves
in this capacity. In the
period of the “Catholic Renais-
sance” the propaganda campaign involved an interest-
ing development of
politico-ecclesiastical thought; but
Gallicanism rose to a new height when,
firstly the
monarchy came to its climax under Louis XIV, a king
who
received continual incense from a great part of
the clergy, and, secondly
when the movement became
associated with the famous name of Bossuet, who
tried
to hold it within reasonable limits. A “Declaration
of
the French Clergy” in 1682 asserted the principles:
that
the king's temporal sovereignty was independent
of the pope; that even in
matters of faith the papacy
needed the concurrence of the bishops; that a
General
Council was superior to the pope; and that the ancient
Gallican liberties (e.g., the exclusion of papal bulls and
briefs that had
not received the consent of the king)
were to be regarded as sacrosanct.
The result was a
violent conflict with the papacy at a time when Louis
XIV was beset by other serious difficulties, and the
Declaration was
formally withdrawn. Its tenets con-
tinued to
prevail in France, however, and Gallicanism
was still to play a great part in the country, as well
as
setting an example for nationalistic aspirations else-
where.
The posthumous publication in 1640 of Augustinus
by
Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) was to have tremen-
dous and far-reaching effects for a long period in
France and
neighboring countries. The work tried to
show that Saint Augustine's
teaching conflicted with
that of the seventeenth century (and particularly
that
of the Jesuits); and by stressing the helplessness of man
it
moved to predestinarian ideas, though an admixture
of Catholic doctrine
still distinguished it from Calvin-
ism. The
cause was taken up by theologians at the
Sorbonne, and then by important
scholars as well as
the nuns of Port-Royal-des-Champs. When five propo-
sitions were condemned by Pope
Innocent X in 1653,
the French leader of the movement agreed that the
propositions were heretical and that the Church had
the authority to
condemn them; but he denied that
they were contained in Jansen's Augustinus and
claimed that this was a historical
point on which the
pope's ruling was not authoritative.
The whole controversy flared up again at the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century, when a number of
theologians at
the Sorbonne claimed that absolution
need not be refused to a priest who
maintained this
distinction between questions of doctrine and
questions
of fact. Pope Clement XI denounced this thesis in 1705
and,
as he had the support of Louis XIV, the campaign
against Jansenism was a
powerful one, culminating in
the bull Unigenitus
which in 1713 condemned 101
propositions. Jansenism, which had spread
widely
amongst the people and the lower clergy, was sup-
ported at times by the Sorbonne and the Parlement
of Paris, and for some years the Archbishop of
Paris
refused to submit to the bull Unigenitus. The
persecu-
tion aroused great passions and
led to an enlargement
of the area of the controversy, its victims
appealing,
for example, for a General Council of the Church.
Under
desperate pressures the movement tended to
change character, claimed to
produce miracles, and
had convulsionist manifestations. It turned into
a
broader kind of opposition to Church and monarchy
in the eighteenth
century and achieved at times an
almost revolutionary atmosphere.
At the same time a great number of French Jan-
senists fled to Holland where a permanent schismatic
organization was established in Utrecht. The move-
ment spread to North Italy and the system which it
established
at Pistoia was condemned by Pope Pius VI
in 1794. The
“Jansenism” which was supposed to influ-
ence the ecclesiastical policy of the French
Revolution
had departed far from the original movement, and
involved
Gallican ideas and democratic claims in re-
spect of the rights of the lower clergy. It has been
suggested that “Jansenism” in North Italy in
the nine-
teenth century became transmuted
into a kind of secu-
lar religion.
