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FRATERNITAS TRIUM CORDIUM LIBRARY MODERN TIMES HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH III A. D. 1517-1914 HISTORICAL SERIES VOLUME III History of the Catholic Church III: Modern Times: A. D. 1517-1914 Herman Wedewer & Joseph McSorley 1918 Fraternitas Trium Cordium Library - Historical Series, Volume 3 Original: Wedewer, H. & McSorley, J. (1918). A Short History of the Catholic Church , 4th Edition. B. Herder Book Company. This 2019 e-edition is a work of the Fraternitas Trium Cordium. FRATERNITAS TRIUM CORDIUM https://triumcordium.com/ 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS. PERIOD I. (A. D. 1517-1789): FROM LUTHER’S REVOLT TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Chapter I. General View Chapter II. Protestantism Art. 1. Luther’s Outbreak Art. 2. Progress of Protestantism in Germany Art. 3. Switzerland Art. 4. France Art. 5. England Art. 6. Ireland Art. 7. Scotland Art. 8. The Netherlands Art. 9. Other Countries Art. 10. Summary Chapter III. The Catholic Church Art. 1. The Catholic Revival Art. 2. The Religious Orders Art. 3. The Jesuits Art. 4. Theology and Catholic Practice Chapter IV. Religious Discords Art. 1 The Thirty Years’ War 2 Art. 2. Theological Errors Art. 3. Eighteenth Century Philosophy Chapter V, Foreign Missions in Africa and Asia Art. 1. The New Movement Art. 2. Africa Art. 3. Asia Chapter VI. Foreign Missions in America Art. 1. The Norse Settlements Art. 2. The Portuguese Settlements Art. 3. The Spanish Settlements in Central and South America Art. 4. The Spanish Settlements in Mexico and the Southern United States Art. 5. The French Settlements Art. 6. The British Settlements PERIOD II. (A. D. 1789-1914): FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE ACCESION OF BENEDICT XV Chapter VII. The Papacy in the Nineteenth Century Chapter VIII. Europe Art. 1. General View Art. 2. Italy Art. 3. France Art. 4. Spain and Portugal Art. 5. Germany Art. 6. Switzerland and Luxembourg Art. 7. The Netherlands 3 Art. 8. Scandinavia Art. 9. Austria-Hungary Art. 1o. Russia and Poland Art. 11. The Balkans Art. 12. Great Britain Chapter IX. Oceania, Asia, and Africa Art. 1. Oceania Art. 2. Asia Art. 3. Africa Chapter X. Eastern Christian Churches Chapter XI. Spanish and British America Art. 1. South America Art. 2. Central America Art. 3. The West Indies Art. 4. Mexico Art. 5. British America Chapter XII. The United States Art. 1. Growth of the Church Art. 2. The Hierarchy Art. 3. Racial Elements Art. 4. Persecutions Conclusion 4 PERIOD I. FROM LUTHER’S REVOLT TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1517-1789): POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS DISTURBANCES. 5 CHAPTER I. GENERAL VIEW. §154. Tendencies of the Later Middle Ages . At the opening of the Middle Ages, the Church had begun her work among the savage warring hordes that were then destroying the old civilization; and, within a few centuries, she had transformed Europe into a group of Christian nations containing the promise of splendid moral and mental development. Toward the close of the Middle Ages, however, there appeared indications of an approaching storm; and now, at the beginning of the third epoch of Church history, the storm bursts in the form of the Protestant Revolt. Among all classes of the people there had spread a spirit of opposition to spiritual and temporal authority; secular princes resisted both Pope and Emperor; rulers encroached upon the old liberties of the people; covetous men sought to obtain possession of Church property for themselves. The art of printing, fruitful of so much good, produced also great evil, and familiarized the multitude with immoral writings and with satires upon authority and religion. The younger Humanists revived pagan ideas, and aroused an enthusiasm for false liberty. The discovery of new countries upset old social institutions, removed the restraints of custom, and fomented the passion for adventure and booty. Discontent, general restlessness, contempt of authority, scorn for the traditional science and the ancient faith, all foretold a coming revolution. §155. e Religious Crisis . The Church was weakened from within by dissensions among the dierent national elements. The Great Western Schism had developed antagonisms which dealt religion an almost fatal blow. Education, art, law, became first alien, and then hostile, to the Church. The whole world seemed ready to burst into flame, and Luther applied the torch. Only the divine vitality of the Church prevented her total destruction. Quickened by God’s power, however, she was enabled to win back healthy life in the Counter-Reformation. 6 §156. Eects of Protestantism. As time went on and Protestantism developed the logical consequences of its destructive principles, religious conditions became appalling. The rejection of ecclesiastical authority led step by step to indierentism, scepticism, and neo-paganism, The civil power favored an absolutism which fettered religion fatally. Expelled from the schools, the Church became helpless to train new generations in the way of faith and virtue. But the rulers who discredited the authority of religion were the first to suer; for the revolutionary tendency which they had fostered against the Church crushed their own dynasties. Wonderfully enough, amid the universal process of dissolution, the Church began to revive again; and, in the latter part of this period, she again strikingly manifested the indefectibility which had been assured her in the promise of Christ: I am with thee all days, even to the consummation of the world. Map IV. Central Europe in the 16th Century 7 CHAPTER II. PROTESTANTISM. ARTICLE I. LUTHER’S OUTBREAK. §157. Luther’s Youth. In 1483, Martin Luther, the son of a poor miner, was born at Eisleben, in Saxony. Against his father’s wish, he entered the novitiate of the Augustinians at Erfurt, in 1505, impelled to take this step by his morbid fears, rather than by spontaneous inclination. After a brief novitiate, he was ordained priest in 1507, and the next year was made a professor of philosophy in the new university of Wittenberg. He went to Rome in 1510, became a doctor of theology in 1512, and then returning to Wittenberg, began to teach Sacred Scripture, making a special study of the epistles of St. Paul. Driven nearly to madness by his excessive scrupulosity, he was for a while tempted to despair. Then, suering a reaction, he went to the other extreme and took refuge in the thought that all striving after holiness is worse than useless by reason of original sin, and that Christ demands of us nothing but faith alone. These false doctrines, drawn from his misinterpretation of certain passages of St. Paul’s, were plainly armed by Luther as early as 1516, and even at that time attracted unfavorable criticism. In the same year, he publicly defended the thesis that the human will without grace is not free but enslaved. In 1520, he gave clear expression to the logical conclusion of his system in the words: “A Christian who believes cannot, even if he should so wish, lose his soul by any sin however great; since no sin except unbelief can damn him.”1 §158. Luther and Tetzel. Pope Julius II (1503-1513) had begun the building of the new church of Saint Peter in 1506; and in 1517, Leo X (1513-1512) granted an indulgence 1 There had been other instances of inaccurate teaching and of public opposition to the authority of the Church before the outbreak of Luther. John of Wessel, professor of Holy Scripture at Erfurt, ridiculed indulgences, the veneration of the Saints, fasting, Tradition, and especially Church authority. 8 on the usual conditions of contrition and confession to all persons contributing to this undertaking. The Dominican John Tetzel was commissioned to publish the indulgence and came for this purpose to the little town of Jüterbog, near Wittenberg. There was a long-standing hostility between the strictly scholastic Dominicans and the more humanistic Augustinians; and when the people of Wittenberg began to flock to Tetzel’s sermons, Luther and his friends undertook to discredit Tetzel and his mission. On All Hallow’s Eve, 1517, Luther axed ninety-five theses to the door of the university church of Wittenberg, denying that indulgences are of any avail to the souls in purgatory, and contradicting many other received teachings of the Church. Immediately, there was widespread excitement and Luther became the center of a theological storm. The language of the ninety-five theses would indicate that Luther misinterpreted the nature of indulgences. Be that as it may, he was somewhat alarmed at the violence of the discussion he had raised and sent letters of explanation to the Archbishop of Mainz and the Bishop of Brandenburg. But not even in these letters did he make clear his attitude with regard to indulgences.2 The Protestant Plank says that Luther’s zeal against the abuse of indulgences was very plainly due to his wish to spoil the market for them in his own neighborhood. The outbreak was not really due to the tone of Tetzel’s preaching.3 Nor was it due to the depravity of the Church. Rather, it was forced by the logic of events, beginning with Luther’s statement in 1516 of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, without need of confession, contrition, indulgence, or good works. Having long denied the Church’s teaching in his heart, Luther, after his public stand in the ninety-five theses, was 2 He writes: “Seeing that many people of Wittenberg were running after indulgences to Jüterbog and Zerbst and seeing that, as surely as I have been redeemed by my Lord Christ, I did not know what an indulgence might be, nor did anybody else, I began gently to preach that it would be better to do the surer things than to seek to gain an indulgence.” 3 As Luther himself admitted, later on, when he wrote to console Tetzel during the latter’s illness: “He should not blame himself, for the aair did not begin on his account.” 9 forced further and further in his opposition by the logical connection of Catholic Doctrines.4 ARTICLE II.