him for a time; and he died an exile; but he died as he had livedvirtuous, calm, unshaken, and happy. Henry died, reduced to the lowest degradation, abandoned by all and despised by all, even by his own sons, who had successfully carried on a civil war against him. Gregory was "the Hercules of the middle ages: he enchained monsters, crushed the hydra of feudalism, saved Europe from barbarism, and what is more beautiful still, he illustrated Christian society by his virtues."

An able Protestant writer appreciates his noble courage, as well as the lofty motives which animated it, in the following eloquent language: "Had Hildebrand's sick heart failed him then, it would not have been strange; but he looked at his crucifix, at the image of his forsaken, dying, and yet victorious Master, and grew strong; for that told him how little the final triumph of a moral truth can be judged of from immediate success or failure. And I, too,' he murmured to himself, in words which, a few weeks later, were the last upon his lips, ' And I, too, have loved justice and hated iniquity, and I die an exile.' The future was hidden to him; but he knew that God ruled, that the great thoughts, which by his struggles he had made familiar to man, rested not on his strength, but on an eternal basis; and that, though he was passing away, the Omnipotent remained as the world's ruler; he knew that he had sown the seed, and that God would give the harvest." We conclude with the last words of M. Voigt's history:

"It is difficult to bestow on him exaggerated eulogy: for he has laid everywhere the foundation of a solid glory. But every one should wish to render justice to whom justice is due; let no one cast a stone at one who is innocent: let every one respect and honor a man who has labored for his age, with views so grand and so generous. Let him who is conscious of having calumniated him, re-enter into his own conscience."

1 Abbe Jager, Introd. p. xcix.

2 North American Review, 1845.

IX. THE GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST.

ROME AND AVIGNON.*

66

-

The Reformers before the Reformation - Bonnechose and D'Aubignè compared - The former as an historian-Is he ingenuous or fair?-Inaccuracies- Scope of his work - The Schisin a fiery ordeal for the Church From which she came forth unscathed - Scandals to be expectedMorality of the Popes-Origin of the Schism - The papacy stooping to conquer "- Contest between Boniface VIII., and Philip the Fair - The death of Boniface, and election of his successor-Intrigues of Philip - The Popes reside at Avignon - Their policy- Return to RomeElection of Urban VI.- Defection of Cardinals-They set up Clement VII.-Who moves to Avignon - Political ambition of princes-The evil and the remedy come from France-University of Paris-Council of Pisa-And of Constance - Election of Martin V. - End of the Schism-Remarks - Triumph of the Church -Relation of the Pope to a general council - Reforming the Church "in its head and members"- The succession not interrupted-Two objections answered - Church emerged from the Schism stronger than ever-And so did the papacy.

WE suppose it was the shrewd Irish translator, or the enterprising American publishers, who prefixed to the title-page of the work of M. Bonnechose the additional sentence, "An introduction to 'D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation."" Whoever did it, it was a lucky idea, based on a proper appreciation of the qualities and relationship of the two publications. D'Aubignè and Bonnechose are evidently of a kindred spirit; they are a par nobile fratrum. Both are filled with a pious horror of Catholicity; both can find nothing good in the lives, character, or motives of Popes, cardinals, or bishops; both, we apprehend, are thoroughly imbued with the stern, unyielding, and gloomy spirit of Calvinism; and both have earnestly endeavored to infuse their own dark prejudices into the minds of others. Both write with great spirit and vigor; both have a sufficient smattering of learning to mislead the unlearned and unwary; both are violent and unscrupulous partisans. In fine, both are disingenuous, and both deal largely in sophistry and romance.

But we consider the "Introduction" a far more able, and, therefore, a far more dangerous production, than the work itself by the historian "of the great Reformation." D'Aubignè is a religious fanatic and an historical romancer; he wholly suppresses at least one half of the evidence properly belonging to his subject, and greatly perverts the other half. He labors to invest his heroes with the romantic interest which attaches to the personal history of the paladins of knight-errantry; he dragoons them into

*An Introduction to "D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation." The Reformers before the Reformation. The fifteenth century. John Huss and the Council of Constance. By Emile de Bonnechose, librarian of the king of France, author of Histoire de France," "Histoire Sacrée," &c. Translated from the French by Campbell McKenzie, B. A., Trinity College, Dublin, Complete in one volume, 8vo., pp. 199. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1844.

169

the ranks of saintship, whether they will or not; he entirely conceals their many gross and glaring vices, and invents incidents and anecdotes to exhibit their superior righteousness!

This is so notoriously true, that an able Protestant writer in the Southern Quarterly Review freely admits "the utter futility of the History of the great Reformation,' as a text book, or an authority." He adds, with what we take for withering sarcasm, that "D'Aubignè may do for the Sunday school," where piety, based on a holy hatred of Rome, is more appreciated than truth,-"but for the student, the scholar, the theologer, the polemic, he is utterly useless - nay, he is worse than useless — he is positively pernicious.”2

We think that the same verdict will be ultimately rendered by all intelligent men on the historical merits of M. Bonnechose, author of the book with the somewhat Hibernian title: "The Reformers before the Reformation." Yet this must be the work of time. M. Bonnechose is, as we have already intimated, a very different man from M. D'Aubignè. He at least has some pretensions to be an historian. He has evidently examined the original authorities; at least as many of them, as he deemed necessary to establish and illustrate his own favorite views of the subject which he undertook to handle. As a writer, he is grave, earnest, and often eloquent. His narrative is succinct and correct; and its interest is tolerably well sustained to the end. His statements and explanations of facts are ingenious and plausible; he is not, like D'Aubignè, glaringly inconsistent and absurd on almost every page. He even makes an occasional admission in favor of the Popes and of the Catholic Church, when the evidence is such that he cannot well help it: but even then he qualifies the admission; and you are almost tempted to believe that he makes it, as much with a view to appear impartial, and to lure on his readers to receive implicitly his other statements, as through a sincere love of truth.

In short, to refute him, a man must travel back to the record; he must minutely examine and thoroughly sift the original authorities; he must verify his references; must see whether he has given the true sense of the authors he quotes, whether he garbles passages, whether he omits portions of the testimony which would prove the contrary of what he asserts; in fine, he must see what authors he quotes, what is their weight and authority, what influences impelled them to write, and how far their testimony is to be relied on. Then another most important consideration must not be neglected does the historian quote the cotemporary authors who wrote on both sides, or does he confine himself almost entirely to writers on one side? If the former, then may he claim the palm of impartiality, provided he quote honestly and fully; if the latter, he is a thorough partisan, who needs watching, and whose word you may rely on only so far as, by your own researches, you may ascertain it to be founded in truth.

Now, we don't profess to have gone through all the patient labor, and

1 Only think of the burly friar, Martin Luther, the knight of the bottle, and the hero of the Black Eagle tavern of Wittemberg for fifteen years,- being a saint!

2 Art. VII. of No. xiii. Oct. 1844.

to have made all the researches just indicated. But we do claim to have done enough in the premises to satisfy our own minds, and to be able to convince impartial men, that M. Bonnechose is any thing but a safe or impartial historian. He quotes chiefly on one side only; and we distinctly charge him with garbling his own authors, in more instances than one. We have examined the originals, and we speak advisedly on the subject. We will, at present, indicate but two instances of this inexcusable disingenuousness. The first occurs on page 12, in the quotation from a work of Nicholas de Clemangis,' the secretary of Clement VII., the claimant of the papacy at Avignon; the other on page 50, in the translation of the well known safe conduct given by the emperor Sigismund to John Huss. In both cases, he gives the passages as continuous; and yet, what is your surprise at finding, on turning to the originals, that he has left out whole lines and phrases, materially affecting and even changing the sense! Can a man who does this be relied on as a safe guide?

But this is not all. Only think of a grave historian, in the nineteenth century, writing a book, too, which he wishes to be received as veracious history, of a librarian of the French king, who ought surely to have known better,- seriously and solemnly quoting as authority Fox,2 the notorious English martyrologist; the man who was convicted of having put down, in his canting book, the names of many martyred victims of papal cruelty, who, however, survived the publication of his work, and afterwards openly declared that they were not dead at all, but still living in spite of Fox's zeal against popery! Only think of his actually praising this same notorious Fox, and ranking him with the Bollandists!3

But again. M. Bonnechose is often as inaccurate in his statement of important facts, as he is unsafe in his authorities, and loose in his manner of quoting them, We can, at present, stop to furnish but one instance of this: many others will come up in the sequel. He flippantly tells us that, "in three months after his (Urban VI.,) elevation to the popedom, the very persons that had chosen him protested against his election."

Now, if this means, as the sequel would seem to imply, that, after three months, the cardinals proceeded to a new election, it is wholly unfounded in fact. Urban VI., was elected at Rome on the 8th day of April, 1378; and Clement VII. was chosen at Fondi on the 20th of September of the same year, making the interval between the two elections five months and

1 He does not tell us even from what work of Clemangis or Clamengis he quotes. Nor does he furnish any marginal reference. The passage is found entire in Hardt-Council. Constant., C. 42, p. 46 of tom, i, part II1, in a work ascribed to Clemangis, entitled, De corrupto Ecclesiæ Statu; and, at a later period, De Ruina Ecclesiæ. The work was, in all probability, not written by Clemaugis at all, but about a century after his death, either by Bishop John de Chlem of Poland, or by another John de Chiemsee in Bavaria. The first edition of it appeared in Landshut in Bavaria, in 1524. This consideration upsets the whole authority of the book as a cotemporary history; and yet our author breathes not a syllable of all this. He could garble the book, but could not find space to tell his readers that its authenticity is, at best, very questionable.

2 P. 193. Note. He depends on Fox for the articles of John Huss condemned in the council of Constance! Why not quote them at once from the acts of the council? Was Fox a cotemporary historian? On turning to the acts of the council, it will be perceived that Fox has cruelly misled him, both as to the order and the meaning of the propositions condemned.

3 Preface, p. 1.

4 Historical Introduction, p. 11.

twelve days. If the assertion about the three months mean only to mark the time of departure of the cardinals from Rome to Anagni, (not Agnani, as he writes it), it is still wrong. The proclamation of the cardinals assembled at Anagni, containing the protest alluded to, is dated August 9, 1378, four months and one day after the election of Urban VI. Nor let us be told that this is a very trifling fault, and that, in animadverting on it, we are hypercritical. The precise time intervening between the two elections is very important, in settling the relative claims to the papacy of the two aspirants; and surely a grave historian, who pretends to write a veridical history, should have been more exact.

These are a few, out of the many reasons, which have led us to the conclusion that M. Bonnechose is not a safe historian, and that his assertions need some confirmation other than his own bare word. But the chief fault we have to find with him, is his glaring partiality, and his open hostility to the creed and persons of those who figure most conspicuously in his history. He evidently gloats over the evils and disorders attending the great papal Schism; he has no sympathies to bestow upon a suffering and agonized Church, torn by schism within, and fiercely assailed by heresy from without the sufferings of John Huss, of Jerome of Prague, and of the Hussites, seem to have engrossed all his sympathies, and to have exhausted his whole stock of humanity. In a word, he exhibits all the shades, with scarcely any of the lights of the picture. This is the greatest defect of the book.

We wish from our heart it had been otherwise. We are heartily tired of seeing history, which should be the noble and fearless witness of the truth, prostituted to the vile purposes of sectarian strife, and engaged in a grand conspiracy against the truth. We wish M. Bonnechose had approached his subject with a mind free from undue prejudice, and determined to ascertain and to publish the truth at all hazards. We wish he had been true, even to the purpose he conceived in undertaking his work, as he declares it in the preface:1

"This work, in a historical point of view, is intended to make known and appreciated the great religious movement which took place a century before the reformation in Europe. It embraces a period of seventy years, which elapsed from the beginning of the GREAT SCHISM of the WEST in 1378, to the end of the war of the Hussites, towards the middle of the following century. The principal doctrines which divided Europe during that memorable period are exposed to view in it; and the illustrious men who originated and defended them are carefully depicted."

The plan of the author thus embraced the history of the Great Schismı, and of the rise and progress of the Hussites. It was perhaps the most disastrous period in Church History. Never, since the days of the apostles, had so many evils beset the Church at the same time, and threatened her very existence. More than once before, her peace had been disturbed by schism; but there never had been a schism so appalling, of so long continuance, and so seemingly incurable, as that which rent her

1 Page 7.