Ignatius carries the "reign of the senses within the sphere of the soul." To the imaginative piety of the Middle Ages, that reveled in ecstacies and raptures, he gives a systematic form, a definite direction. The effect of a discipline like this, where reason gives up the throne to imagination, which is ever excited and at the same time enslaved, could not be otherwise than deleterious upon the moral nature. Yet there is a wide contrast between the Jesuitism of Loyola and the degenerate Jesuitism depicted in the "Provincial Letters." 1

The compact organization of the Society of Jesus, with its three grades of membership, included provisions for mutual oversight of such a character, that the General even, notwithstanding his well-nigh unlimited power, might be admonished, and, on adequate grounds, deposed from his station. The one comprehensive obligation to which the members were bound, was that of instant, unquestioning, unqualified obedience. To go where they were sent, if it were to a tribe of savages in the remotest part of the globe; to do what they were bidden, without delay and without a murmur, in a spirit of absolute self-surrender, "utque cadaver," was the primal duty. Such was the origin and general character of the Society which was destined to wield an incalculable influence in resuscitating Catholicism, as well as in weakening, and, in some quarters, annihilating the power of its adversaries.

The second of the great agencies of Catholic renovation was the Tridentine Council. For a long period, the

1 Martin, Hist. de France, viii. 205.

2 The history of the Council of Trent has been written by two authors of an opposite temper, Father Paul Sarpi, an enemy of the Papal power, and Pallavicini, its defender and apologist. Ranke has subjected these important works to a searching criticism and comparison, in the Appendix (§ ii.) of the History of the Popes. He says: "Both of them are complete partizans, and are deficient in the spirit of an historian, which seizes upon circumstances and objects in their full truth, and brings them distinctly to view. Sarpi had the power to do so, but his only aim was to attack; Pallavicini had infinitely less of the requisite talent, and his object was to defend his party at all hazards." Of Sarpi, Ranke

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

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project of a Council, which was a favorite one with the Reformers for some time, and which the Emperor insisted on, was repugnant in the highest degree to the wishes of the Popes. A general council was their dread. It was something, however, which it was more and more difficult to avoid. The spread of heresy, even in Italy, was one motive which made Paul III. willing to convoke such an assembly. The Council of Trent was formally opened in December, 1545. The great question was whether it should begin with the reform of the Papacy, or with definitions of dogma. In other words, what attitude should the Council take towards the Protestants? A conciliatory or antagonistic one? Caraffa was sustained in his policy by the Jesuits. The Papal influence predominated, and having defined the sources of knowledge of Revealed Religion in terms that left the authority of tradition unimpaired, with anathemas against the Protestant doctrine of the exclusive authority of the Scriptures, the Council proceeded to condemn the Protestant doctrine of Justification, disregarding the arguments of the evangelical Catholic party of Contarini, which was effectively represented in the debate. The success which Charles V. was gaining in the Smalcaldic war, emboldened the ruling party at Trent to assert the old dogmas without abatement or concession. The theory of gradual justification. and of merit was followed by an equally positive assertion of the old doctrine of the Sacraments. The history of the Council is inseparably connected with the relations of the Pope to Charles V. The fullness of the Emperor's triumph, so much beyond the desires of Paul III., led to the attempted transference of the Council to Bologna; and the jealousy that was felt on account of the

observes again: "The authorities are brought together with diligence, are well handled, and used with consummate talent: we cannot say that they are falsified, or that they are frequently or materially altered; but the whole work is colored with a tinge of decided enmity to the Papal power."

greatness of the power acquired by Charles at the end of the war, and on account of the Interim and the rest of his schemes of pacification, defeated the ends which the Emperor had hoped to accomplish. Not to pursue the subject into its details, the result of all of the negotiations and struggles of the Council was that the Papal power escaped without curtailment. Efforts to reduce the prerogatives of the Pope were ingeniously baffled. The Professio Fidei, or brief formula of subscription to the Tridentine Creed, contained a promise of obedience to the Pope. To this formulary all ecclesiastics and teachers are required to give their assent. The Roman Catechism was prepared and published under the direction of the Pope, by the authority of the Council; the Vulgate, which had been declared authoritative in controversies, was issued in an authorized edition, and a Breviary and a Missal put forth for universal use. The Council of Trent did a great work for the education of the clergy, the better organization of the whole hierarchical body, and the discipline of the Church. Its canons of reform regulated the duties of the secular and regular priesthood, inculcated the obligations of bishops, and introduced a new order and efficiency in the management of parishes.

The Creed of Trent was definite and intelligible in its denial of the distinguishing points of Protestantism; but on the questions in dispute between Augustinian and semi-Pelagian parties in the Church, it was indefinite and studiously ambiguous. But the Council, both by its doctrinal formulas and its reformatory canons, contributed very much to the consolidation of the Church in a compact body. It was no longer necessary to seek for the standard of orthodoxy in the various and conflicting writings of fathers and schoolmen, or in the multiplied declarations of the Popes. Such a standard was now presented in a condensed form and with direct reference to the antagonistic doctrines of the time.

But there was another agency of a different character, which was set in motion for the purpose of eradicating heresy. This was the Inquisition. It was reorganized in Italy on the recommendation of Caraffa; he was placed at the head of it; and in 1555, the prime author and the stern chief of this tribunal became Pope under the name of Paul IV. The Inquisition was an institution which had its origin in the early days of the thirteenth century, for the extirpation of the Albigensian heresy. It is a court, the peculiarity of which lies in the fact that it is expressly constituted for the detection and punishment of heretics, and supersedes, wholly or in part, in the discharge of this function, the bishops or ordinary authorities of the Church. It is thus an extraordinary tribunal, with its own rules and methods of proceeding, its own modes of eliciting evidence. The Spanish Inquisition, in its peculiar form, was set up under Ferdinand and Isabella, in the first instance for the purpose of discovering and punishing the converts from Judaism who returned to their former creed. The atrocities of which it was guilty under Torquemada make a dark and bloody page of Spanish history. It grew into an institution coex

1 Llorente, Hist. Critique de l' Inquisition d' Espagne (1817-18). Llorente was Secretary of the Inquisition, and having had the best opportunities for the investigation of its history, spent several years in the preparation of his work. The French translation of Pellier was made under the author's eye. Llorente was a liberal priest, in sympathy with the aims of the French Revolution, and a supporter of the Bonaparte rule in Spain. He believed the Inquisition to be "vicious in its principle, in its constitution, and in its laws" (Pref., p. x.), and he had no special reverence for the Popes. Yet at the time of the composition of this work, his relation to the Catholic Church was not, as it afterwards became, antagonistic. The work of Llorente has been unfavorably criticised by Roman Catholic writers, especially by Hefele, Der Cardinal Ximenes, etc. (2d ed., 1851), p. 241 seq. Hefele insists, in the first place, that the Spanish Inquisition was predominantly an instrument of the government, and that the Popes endeavored to check the severities of the Holy Office; and, secondly, that the charges of cruelty brought against the Inquisition have been greatly exaggerated. Hefele's principal point is Llorente's alleged miscalculation of the number of victims of the Inquisition. It is to be observed that most of his animadversions upon Llorente, Hefele is obliged to sustain by information which Llorente himself furnishes. Hefele considers that Prescott has erred in some particulars, through

tensive with the kingdom, with an extremely tyrannical and cruel system of administration; and was so interwoven with the civil government, after the humbling of the nobles and the destruction of liberty in the cities, that the despotic rule of Charles V. and of Philip II. could hardly have been maintained without it. It was an engine for stifling sedition as well as heresy. Hence it was defended by the Spanish sovereigns against objections and complaints of the Popes. The Inquisition, in the form which it assumed in Italy, under the auspices of Caraffa, differed from the corresponding institution in Spain, in some respects, but it resembled the latter in superseding the ordinary tribunals for the exercise of discipline, and was founded on the same general principles. Six cardinals were made inquisitors general, with power to constitute inferior tribunals, and with authority, on both sides of the Alps, to incarcerate and try all suspected persons of whatever rank or order. The terrible machinery of this court was at once set in motion in the States of the Church, and although resistance was offered in Venice and in other parts of Italy, the Inquisition gradually extended its sway over the whole peninsula. The result was that the open profession of Protestantism was instantly suppressed. In 1542, prior to the formal establishment of the Holy Office, Ochino and Peter Martyr, unwilling longer to conceal their adhesion to the Protestant faith, and being no longer safe in Italy, had left their country and found refuge with the Protestants north of the Alps. Equal amazement was occasioned when, in 1548, Vergerio, bishop of Capo d'Istria, a man of distinction, who had been employed in important embassies the influence of Llorente. Prescott's account of the Inquisition is in his History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, 1. ch. vii. Hefele has much to say of the disposition of the Jews to make proselytes, which he considers a palliation of the course taken by the Inquisition. But the vast number of insincere Jewish converts to Christianity, who furnished business to the Inquisition, proves that the "proselyten-macherei" was not so much on the side of the Jews.