Continued from Part II. Popery A Moral Pestilence. Chapter VII. The Priest in the Place of God

CHAPTER VIII.
CORRUPTION OF THE PAPAL COURT

Horrible as our analysis of Popery has proved, we have not yet done. One more constituent in that moral pestilence remains to be noticed, viz., the corrupt lives of the papal court and priesthood. The conduct of men placed in elevated positions must be so much the more influential either for good or for evil. Hence the inspired exhortation to Titus, “In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works.” What then must have been the amount of evil inflicted upon mankind by Popery, when its dignitaries and its priests, for a period of a thousand years, have constituted, for the most part, patterns of wickedness—surpassing other classes of men only in their daring impiety and desperate flagitiousness!

In attempting to give some account of the corruption of the Romish Hierarchy, it will be proper to commence with the Popes and Cardinals. First, because they seem to have been foremost in the career of crime. Secondly, because it is the unanimous testimony, even of Popish writers who were contemporaries, that the example of the heads of the church was the principal cause of that notorious depravity of the clerical order which disgraced the whole of the Middle Ages.

From the time of Gregory the Great, who lived at the close of the sixth century, the Bishops of Rome appear to have been altogether ungodly men, destitute of the grace of God, devoted to the interests of the present world, and employing the wealth and power which belonged to their See only to gratify “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” As the principles of the papacy, however, developed themselves, the Popes became utterly abandoned, and the influence of their example, especially upon those nearest to them, was pernicious in the extreme.

The latter part of the ninth century produced several instances of wicked and violent pontiffs—the vice-deity of whom stands in strange contrast with their crimes. But it was not till the tenth century that the conduct of these pretended representatives of Christ became, at length, so desperately flagitious as to render them the common pests of society. The strong expressions employed by Mosheim are in no degree exaggerations when he says that “the history of the Roman Pontiffs, who lived in this century, is the history of 50 many monsters and not of men, and exhibits a horrible series of the most flagitious, tremendous, and complicated crimes.” The celebrated popish historian Cardinal Baronius, in his Annals, is compelled to acknowledge the monstrous wickedness of the Papal See. He describes the Popes of these times as men who were “monstrous and infamous in their lives, dissolute in their manners, and wicked and villainous in all things.”

From the year 914 to the year 963, the Papedom was in the hands of Theodora and Marozia, two abandoned women, who, rivaling each other in lewd licentiousness, deposed and installed the pretended Vicars of Christ at their pleasure.

“The influence of two sister prostitutes, Theodora and Marozia,” says Gibbon, “was founded on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman Mitre, and their reign may have suggested to the darker ages, the fable of a Female Pope. The bastard son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated in the chair of St. Peter; and it was at the age of nineteen years, that the second of these became the head of the Latin Church. His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion, and the nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges that were urged against him in a Roman Synod, and before Otho the Great. His open simony might be the consequence of distress—his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if true, could not possibly be serious; but we read with some surprise that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in public adultery with the matrons of Rome—that the Lateran palace was turned into a school for prostitution—and that his rapes of virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims from visiting the tomb of St. Peter, lest in the devout act they should be violated by his successor.”[1] (Gibb. p. 853)

This monster of iniquity was succeeded A.D. 963 by Leo VIII., upon whose death, three years afterwards, John XIV. was elevated to the papedom, but soon after deposed and placed in custody by the citizens of Rome. His successor, Benedict VI., was also imprisoned by Cardinal Boniface, and there strangled or starved to death. “I fear however,” says the popish historian Platina, “that Benedict’s deserts were equal to his reward.”

The murderer of Benedict—after one intervening Pope—himself obtained the triple crown, and of him even Platina is compelled to make this acknowledgment: “Boniface the VII., whose surname and country are unknown, by wicked arts (malis artibus) obtained the popedom, and lost it in a similar manner.” Many of the honest citizens of Rome having conspired against him, he was glad to escape from the city, after having first robbed the church of St. Peter of all the precious jewels, rich utensils, and ornaments, which he carried to Constantinople, and there sold. Subsequently he returned to Rome, seized upon John XV., who had been created Pope during his absence, put out his eyes, and at length starved him to death in prison. “He lived but a short time after his return, and the citizens of Rome,” says Pineda, “dragged his dead body tyed by the feet through the streets to St. John Lateran, and there left it a prey to the dogs.” (Part 3. lib. 19. c. 15)

John XVI., the next Pope but one, made himself detestable by his gross selfishness and avarice. “He hated the clergy,” says Platina, “but was so prodigal to his kindred and friends, of all things both human and divine, without any respect to the service of God, or the honor and dignity of the Papal See.”

Gregory the Fifth, his successor, was obliged to flee soon after his election, upon which another Pope, named John, was elected in his place. John subsequently falling into the hands of his rival, his eyes were plucked out, and Gregory the Fifth resumed the triple crown.

Sylvester the Second, who succeeded—“by wicked means, usurped the Papal chair,” says Platina, and the opinion entertained of him by that historian may be inferred from what he afterwards says, “that he had wholly given himself to the Devil.” Baronius, too, calls him “a most perverse man, a traitor, a horrid blasphemer,” etc., and Cardinal Benno says, “that he ascended out of the bottomless pit, and having usurped the chair by the permission of God, was surprised by the divine judgment with sudden death.”

Such, according to the statements of their own historians, were the Popes of the tenth century; and we may well ask—How is it possible that the stupendous prerogatives of the papedom could have coexisted, in so many instances, with the foulest licentiousness and the most monstrous crimes?

The first half of the eleventh century beheld men of the same stamp still in possession of St. Peter’s chair. The papedom was in the hands of the Counts of Tuscany, who either bestowed it on their friends or sold it to strangers! Terrible schisms resulted. At length a boy of twelve years of age was exalted to the Papal See under the name of Benedict IX., and proved one of the vilest monsters the world had seen. “So base, so foul, so execrable was his life,” says a bishop and a pope, “that I shudder to relate it”; whilst another accuses him of “many adulteries, and of many murders perpetrated with his own hand.” (Bonizo, Bishop of Sutri)

It is true that some of the succeeding pontiffs presented some contrast to the above monsters of iniquity who have just passed under review, but for this change Europe was indebted to the interposition of the civil power. In the striking language of D’Aubigné:

“The Emperors of Germany, indignant at so many disorders, cleansed Rome with the sword. The Empire, exercising its rights of superiority, drew the triple crown out of the mire into which it had fallen, and saved the degraded papedom by giving it decent men for heads. Henry III. in 1046 deposed three Popes, and with his finger, adorned with the ring of the Roman Patricians, pointed out the bishop to whom the keys of the confession of St. Peter were to be remitted.”

Platina, the popish historian, relates, that Pope Benedict IX. “appeared to one after his death, in the form of a Bear, and with the tail of an Ass; saying, because I lived like a Beast, without either law or reason, therefore at the command of God and St. Peter, whose seat I have defiled, I resemble now a Beast rather than a man.”

The Popes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are marked by their boundless ambition, their grasping avarice, the tremendous wars which they instigated, and the bloody persecutions which they carried on—much more than by the gross immoralities and desperate flagitiousness of their predecessors. Speaking of the twelfth century, the learned Spanheim remarks:

“The Popes ought to have been ensamples to the flock; but they were men of Belial; and often, several rival Popes claimed obedience at one time. Schisms, violent agitations in the public mind, attended with assassinations, murders, poisonings, imprisonments, were very frequent at Rome. These competitors for the Apostolical See endeavoured to crush each other, like prize fighters, gladiators, or ancient chieftains, under the influence of deadly feud, and he who succeeded by trampling upon the neck of his adversary, always carried himself with pride, haughtiness, and tyranny… Other signs of an antichristian spirit are shewn in their establishing idolatry, in promoting, by example and practice, superstition, simony, exorcising of devils, and lastly, in exciting dreadful wars between sovereign princes, and spilling human blood.” (Spanheim, cent. XII.)

The ecclesiastical records of the fourteenth century exhibit the depravity of Popes and prelates in far darker colours than those of any previous age. The papal court at Avignon was distinguished by the most insatiable covetousness and the most foul licentiousness. We shall confine ourselves to the evidence of two contemporary writers who fully bear us out in these heavy accusations: St. Bridget and the celebrated Petrarch.

The former lived towards the close of this century, and was held for a prophetess by the church and canonized by the Pope. In her book of Celestial Revelations, she calls the Pope “the destroyer of souls, who scatters and tears the sheep of Christ.” She says he is “more abominable than the Jews, more cruel than Judas, more unjust than Pilate, more wicked and evil than Lucifer himself—that his throne shall be hurled into the abyss as a great millstone. That his Cardinals shall be cast into everlasting fire, and sulphur,” etc. She rebukes the bishops, prelates, and other clergy in similar language, and charges them with “having turned the commands of God into one, viz., Give us money,” i.e., that they had altogether subverted all true piety for the sake of gain. (Liber. I. cap. 41. apud Wolf. Tom. I.)

“Of the Pope,” says the prophetess, “Christ demands—‘What means that excessive pride, insatiable cupidity and luxury, which I abhor, and even a horrid whirlpool of the basest simony?’… The Pope who ought to cry ‘Come and ye shall find rest for your souls,’ exclaims, ‘Come and see me in pomp and grandeur above Solomon’s; Come to my Court and empty your purses, and ye shall find damnation for your souls!’ for thus he does speak by his example and conduct… Behold Rome is now a vortex of infernal Mammon, where the demon of all avarice dwells, selling the patrimony of Christ which he purchased with his Passion, who has told us that we should freely give because we have freely received. So that it is now put into a proverb, ‘the Roman Court seeks not the sheep without the wool.’ She regards those who give, she shuts the door against those who give nothing.” Afterwards speaking of the Pope, she says, “This is true justice, that the Pope who sits in the chair of Peter, and does the works of the devil, should resign the seat which he has dared to usurp and be a partaker of the punishment of the Devil.” (In Wolf. Lect. Mem. I. p. 670)

The most valuable testimony to the corruption of the Popes and Cardinals at this period is given by the celebrated Petrarch. In his twentieth Epistle, he styles the papal court “Babylon,” and “the Babylonish Whore, seated upon the waters, the Mother of all idolatries and fornications, with whom the princes and kings of the earth have committed fornication”; “the asylum of heresies and errors, etc., of whom the Holy Spirit prophesied in the Apocalypse”; and amply proves the truth of that proverb, “No greater evil can ever befall a man than being elected Pope.”

In another place he thus writes of Rome, the Holy City:

“Whatever anywhere you have read or heard of perfidy and fraud, whatever of cruelty and pride, whatever of uncleanness and unbridled lust; lastly, whatever of impiety and abandoned manners exists, or has existed in the whole world, from pole to pole, ALL THIS you may see here, collected into one mass and heaped up together!… I speak not,” says he, “of simony and selling the gifts of the Holy Spirit for money; I speak not of covetousness, the mother of that crime, and which is styled by the Apostle—Idolatry. I speak not of the contrivers of every lust, nor of the procurers who haunt the papal chambers. I speak not of that cruelty which is regardless of humanity… I hasten to things which are at once ridiculous and detestable, for who cannot be indignant, and yet amused, at those aged youths, with grey hair and flowing gowns, yet with lascivious minds, who prove the falsehood of the poet’s words:

The aged cardinals are as ardent and eager for carnal enjoyment, so great is that forgetfulness of their dignity and their strength, which has seized them; so great is their burning lust, and so madly do they rush into every kind of abomination—as if they gloried, not in the cross of Christ, but in gluttony and drunkenness, and that which follows—fornication and uncleanness. Thus do they bring back the flying female whom they have seized, and this seems the only advantage belonging to extreme old age, that they may commit those acts which young men dare not,” etc.

“I pass by the defilements, and rapes, and incests, and adulteries, which at present are mere games of papal lusts. I pass by the banishment of the husbands, not merely from their houses, but from their country, lest they should dare to complain; and what is the foulest of all disgraces—husbands compelled to receive back again their wives, after they have been violated and gotten with child by strangers, and after child-birth, again to restore them for the alternate lusts of the adulterers! All which things are known not to me only, but to every one else.”

Once more, in his tenth Epistle, being then at the Pope’s court at Avignon, he says:

“Whoever would truly behold it, let him come hither and view that hell, which poets of old did but fancy. For here is wanting no horror of imprisonment, no error of palpable darkness, no fatal urns shuffling together the lots and destinies of men: and to conclude, no imperious Minos, no tearing Minotaurus, nor lascivious portraits of damned Venus, are here rare and scarce. All hope of safety lies in gold, the cruel king of the imperial regions is appeased with gold. The prodigious monsters that attend him are subdued with gold. For gold, the web of human salvation is woven, only for gold are the hard thresholds of this gate shewn; for gold the bars are broken; with gold the grizzly Porter’s mouth is stopt; for gold, Heaven is opened—and what needs many words, Christ himself is sold for gold!…

There the hope of a future state is some empty fable, and all that is revealed of hell, mere fabulous reports. The resurrection of the body, and the end of the world, and Christ coming to judgment, all old women’s tales. Truth is there madness, and abstinence clownishness, chastity a disgrace… and the more foul one’s life is, the more illustrious is it considered—the more wicked, the more glorious!”

Further testimonies to the monstrous wickedness of the Papal See at this period, though many are at hand, would be altogether needless. We proceed to remark, therefore, that the lapse of another century did nothing towards cleansing this Augean stable of its accumulated filth. On the contrary, the degree of papal depravity exhibited in the fifteenth century far exceeds anything that had been previously witnessed. So notorious, in fact, were the excesses and crimes of the court of Rome at this time that all our ecclesiastical historians, popish and Protestant, agree in representing papal guilt as having then attained its utmost limits.

One of our most temperate writers thus speaks of the cardinals and the popes of the century which preceded the Reformation:

“Another circumstance that strikes us in the consideration of this period is—the utter debasement to which the Sacred College (i.e., of Cardinals) finally descended. The influence which the most wicked Pope invariably acquired in consistory, may be ascribed to the less direct operation of his power and patronage. But the secrets of the conclave, which have been transmitted by the contemporary writers, abound with particulars of intrigue and undisguised perfidy, and unblushing venality. Such was the mutual consciousness with which the Pope and his senate assembled to govern the Church of Christ! such the councils from which edicts were issued for the suppression of simony and the correction of the morals of the clergy! Again, it was now become almost the practice of the conclave to bind the future Pope by a solemn obligation, intended to influence the nature of his government. The Cardinal while on the point of being elected, voluntarily took this oath in common with his colleagues, and immediately after his election, he confirmed it. In a similar manner restrictions were at that time, not uncommonly imposed, by the elective body, or the Emperor of Germany, and the king of Poland, and they were found effectual. But at Rome, the result was so far otherwise, that among the many who undertook such engagements, there seems not to have been one which faithfully observed what he had sworn—first as Cardinal, next as Pope. This distinction so shameful to the Court of Rome, confirms the charges of SUPER-EMINENT IMMORALITY which have been brought against it; it proceeds, however, from the singular principles of the papal hierarchy.

In the first place, the Pope who enjoyed power unlimited, over the obligations of others, might reasonably claim the right to dispense with his own. In the next, he had the means of influencing those who might release him from his engagements or connive at his contempt of them, such as the crown did not possess, either in Germany or Poland. The immense extent of his patronage, his authority, even the property and persons of the Cardinals, and his prerogative of creating others, gave him irresistible instruments both of seduction and terror. He exercised them unsparingly: and the result was, that among the various crimes of the Vatican, that which became as it were PECULIARLY PONTIFICAL, WAS PERJURY!”

“While the crimes of the Vatican,” proceeds our author, “were indeed so various, as to embrace almost every denomination of ungodliness; there was not one among the Popes of this period, who made even the slightest pretension to piety: scarcely one by whom decency, as well as morality, was not grossly outraged. Indeed, when we consider the enormity of the scandals permitted, and perpetrated by Popes and Cardinals, during the latter years, it seems a matter of wonder, that the whole Christian world did not rouse itself as by an earthquake and destroy them.” (Waddington, Hist. of Ch. ch. xxvii.)

The allusion of the learned author, when speaking of the crimes of the Popes and Cardinals of the latter years of the fifteenth century, is doubtless to the times of Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., and Alexander VI., who occupied the papal chair from A.D. 1471 to 1503. The following brief sketch of their lives, in the worst particulars of which both Popish and Protestant historians agree, is taken from that writer and Ranke:

“Sixtus IV. (a Franciscan monk) commenced an unusually long pontificate of thirteen years by professing the policy and affecting the designs of Pius II…. but his boiling zeal presently evaporated; his clamours were silenced by the first repulse; he appeared to resign his darling prospects, and subside into the ordinary channel of papal misgovernment, without a sigh or struggle…

“The nepotism of no former pontiff had been indulged with so scandalous a sacrifice of the interests of the church as that of Sixtus IV. One of his nephews, Leonardo della Novena, he married to a natural daughter of Ferdinand of Naples; and on this occasion he abandoned to that monarch some estates and fiefs which his predecessor had spared no toil to acquire and retain. Another, named Julian, the same who was afterwards Julius II., was enriched with several ecclesiastical benefices. For a third, named Jerome Riario, the principality of Imola was purchased from the resources of the apostolical treasury. But it was on Pietro Riario, the youngest, that the profusion of his fondness was principally lavished. Without talents, without virtues, from a simple Franciscan monk, Pietro was immediately elevated to the dignity of Cardinal. He was made titular Patriarch of Constantinople. He was raised to the archiepiscopal see of Florence. He received besides, two other archbishoprics, and a multitude of inferior benefices. In the meantime his splendid prodigality, the pride of his attendants, his equipage, and his sumptuousness, kept pace with the abundance of his resources, and he expended on the pomp of a single ceremony, or the festivities of a single night, sums which exceeded the revenues of kings.”

“No one descended more deeply into superstition than Sixtus IV. At present, we shall only mention the singular venality introduced into his government by the creation of certain new offices which he publicly sold, and which he created for the purpose of selling. This was a new scandal in the history of the Vatican; and when the same pontiff raised to the dignity of Cardinal a youth named Jacopo di Parma, his own valet, he may seem to have offered the last insult to his court and his church. The deeper outrage which was now continually cast upon the religion of Christ has almost ceased to be a matter of mention with us, because the name of Christ was now seldom appealed to, except in support of some monstrous ecclesiastical pretension; and the rulers of the apostolical church had for some time learned to dispense, both in their morals and their administrations, even with the semblance of holiness, even with a decorous affectation of religious motives.”

Sixtus IV. was not deficient as a political character in quickness and sagacity, and even grandeur of conception. But his character (as Sismondi has well observed) corrupted his talents, and stained his noblest projects with perfidy and falsehood. As he could discern no distinction between virtue and crime, he employed the basest means to attain the best ends, and dishonoured his own designs by the instruments with which he chose to accomplish them. His private life has not escaped the suspicion of the foulest enormities—it cannot, at least, pretend to the praise of piety or innocence.

“Sixtus IV. died in 1484, and the election of his successor was attended by some circumstances more scandalous than any which had yet polluted the recesses of the conclave. Julian della Rovera, Cardinal of St. Peter ad Vincula, had undertaken the negotiations requisite, and the price of every vote was already arranged, when the college proceeded to invoke the Holy Spirit. The terms are expressly specified by a contemporary writer;[2] they were faithfully observed by the successful candidate, and they might be ascertained from the various castles and benefices which he immediately bestowed on his supporters. John Baptist Cybo, a native of Genoa, was the individual thus elevated to the throne of the church, and he assumed the name of Innocent VIII.”

“If Sixtus IV. had wasted the resources of the church upon his profligate nephews, Innocent introduced a still more revolting race of dependents in the persons of his illegitimate offspring. Seven children, the fruit of various amours, were publicly recognized by the Vicar of Christ, and became for the most part pensioners on the ecclesiastical treasury. This was yet a new scandal for the apostolical church! Again, if Sixtus IV. was bold and unprincipled, Innocent was at least destitute of any positive virtue; and the extreme weakness which distinguished him was, in his circumstances, little less pernicious than wickedness. With power so vast and arbitrary in a court so utterly depraved, the personal excesses of a vigorous character might have been less hurtful to the church than the unrestrained license of so many masters. Fewer crimes would, perhaps, have been perpetrated had the pontiff resolved to be the only criminal. But with all his weakness, Innocent was animated by a spirit of avarice, which attracted observation even in that age of the Popedom. And he performed at least one memorable exploit, as it were, in the design to surpass his predecessor, by a still bolder insult on the Sacred College; he placed among its members a boy, thirteen years old, the brother-in-law of his own bastard. But the court of Rome did not present the dignity, it was sunk even below the sense of its own infamy.”

“In the downward progress of pontifical impurity, from Paul II. we descend to Sixtus IV.; from Sixtus to Innocent VIII.; from Innocent to Alexander VI.; and here at length we are arrested by the utmost limits which have been assigned to papal and to human depravity. The ecclesiastical records of fifteen centuries contain no name so loathsome, no crimes so foul as his; and while the voice of every impartial writer is loud in execration, he is, in one respect, singularly consigned to infamy, since not one among the zealous annalists of the Roman church has breathed a whisper in his praise.” (Wad. Hist. of Ch. ubi sup.)

The following sketch of this monster is from Ranke:—

“Alexander had, all his days, known no other principle of conduct than to enjoy the world, to live in luxury, and to satisfy his lust and ambition. It seemed to him arriving at the summit of bliss when he was at last invested with the highest spiritual dignity. Old as he was, this feeling seemed daily to impart to him fresh youth. No irksome thought was allowed, for one night, to trouble his repose. His only thought was how to compass his own advantages, and heap pomp and honours on his sons: never did he seriously devote himself to any other purpose.”

“This was the sole principle at the bottom of all his political alliances which had so great an influence on the affairs of the world: how a pope was disposed to marry his children, endow and enrich them, was a weighty consideration in determining all the political relations of Europe.”

“Caesar Borgia, Alexander’s son, trod in the footsteps of Riario. He began at the self-same point, and his very first movement was to drive Riario’s widow from Imola and Forli. He held on his course with daring contempt of consequences, and what the other had but attempted or but begun, he carried out to the end…”

“And thus Alexander saw his warmest wish fulfilled, the barons of the land annihilated, and his house in train to found a great hereditary principality in Italy. But he soon had to feel practically of what the aroused passions are capable. Caesar would not brook the participation of his power with any relation or favourite. He had caused his brother, who stood in his way, to be murdered and thrown into the river. He had his brother-in-law assailed on the very steps of the palace. His wife and his sister nursed the wounded man; the latter dressed his food with her own hands for fear of poison: the pope had a guard set on his house to protect his son-in-law from his son. Caesar mocked at all these precautions, saying, ‘What has failed at noon may easily be done in the evening.’ When the prince was now convalescent, he burst into his chamber, turned out the wife and the sister, called in his bravo, and had his unfortunate brother-in-law strangled. For as to his father, on whose life and station he only looked as means towards his own aggrandisement, he had not a thought of treating him in other respects with the least consideration. He slew Alexander’s favourite Peroto beneath the pontifical mantle, as the victim clung close to his patron: the blood spurted in the pope’s face.”

“For a time Caesar had Rome and the ecclesiastical states in his power. He was a man of surpassing beauty; so strong, that in the bull-fight he would strike off the bull’s head at a single blow; liberal-handed, not without traits of magnanimity; voluptuous, bloody: how did Rome tremble at his name! Caesar needed gold and had enemies—every night the corpses of the murdered men were found in the streets. Every man held his breath; for there was none who might not fear that his own turn would come next. Those whom violence could not reach, were taken off by poison.”

“There was but one spot on the earth where such deeds were possible: that spot alone, where unlimited temporal power and the highest spiritual authority were united in the same individual. This spot Caesar occupied. Even monstrosity has its perfection. Many sons and nephews of the popes have attempted similar things, but none ever carried them to such a pitch. Caesar was a virtuoso in crime.”

“Was it not, from the very first, one of the most essential tendencies of Christianity to render such violence impossible? And Christianity itself, and the position of the supreme head of the Church were to serve to call it forth.”

“In truth it needed not then that a Luther should by and by arise to denounce in such deeds the direct opposite of Christianity. The cry arose at the very time that the pope was preparing the way of antichrist, that his care was devoted to the fulfilment of the satanic, not of the heavenly kingdom.”

“We will not follow in detail the particulars of Alexander’s history. He once purposed, as is but too notorious, to take off one of the richest cardinals by poison: but the latter succeeded by bribes, promises, and entreaties in gaining over the pope’s chief cook; the confection which had been prepared for the cardinal was set before the pope, and he died himself of the poison he had intended for another. After his death a far different result arose out of his schemes from that he had contemplated.” (Hist. of the Popes)

Such was the character of the popes and court of Rome up to the period of the Reformation. The next century presented little change, except in outward appearance. In the language of an intelligent writer:

“It may well perplex a moralist to discuss whether Rome was better towards the close of the sixteenth, than at the end of the fifteenth century. Red-handed crime, and bold-faced libertinism were driven out of the priestly order, at the latter period. Decorum of conduct was requisite even for a cardinal or a pope; none were too high to feel public opinion. Dignity and seriousness were universal; and wickedness paid to virtue the tribute of hypocrisy. But ambition and avarice were as active as ever; dissimulation had changed its form, not its nature, nor its ends; cruelty might find its vent under the garb of religious zeal; all freedom of inquiry was stopped by the inquisition, and the Romish kingdom appeared to be banded for ever in implacable hatred, and war against the Protestant powers.”

We have thus attempted to exhibit the character of the papal court from the ninth to the seventeenth century, and it will probably be admitted, by all who are open to conviction, that during the greater part of this period, of nearly a thousand years, the Vicars of Christ—the heads of the visible Church—have constituted a moral pestilence, spreading wickedness and vice over the whole Western world.

In the foregoing account of papal corruption, we have not exhibited all the enormities of the court of Rome. We have chiefly confined ourselves to such as were of a palpable character—openly visible to the eyes of the world. Our object has been to set forth the pestilential character of the papal court. We have not dwelt, as we might have done, upon the gross extortion, the insatiable avarice, the boundless ambition which for many centuries characterized the popes of Rome, and still less have we said of the fearful persecutions, the relentless and unparalleled cruelty of the papacy, and the bloody wars and rebellions which it instigated in the kingdoms of Europe during the noonday of its power. These have been sufficiently treated by abler pens. There is, however, no question that the description given by a celebrated living writer is to the letter true:

“A court the most sumptuous, and the most voluptuous in Europe, avarice, arrogance, and the lust of power reaching a pitch of which the world had before seen no examples, a tyranny less amenable to humanity, and more terrible than that of the Caesars, and a settled course of policy, shameless, perfidious, and horridly sanguinary—such in its best age, and when it could do all its pleasure, was the Romish Court and power.” (Ancient Christ. i. 426)

The modern apologists of Rome have not scrupled to affirm that “Among 250 Popes that have now borne the charge, there are not above ten or twelve against which the most malicious adversaries can find occasion of spitting their venom.” (Gother’s Papist Misrepresented, &c. p. 73) In the previous pages of this work, if we mistake not, the popes of Rome have—not ten or twelve of them, but for whole centuries—been convicted of the most daring impiety, flagitious immorality, and gross licentiousness; and that upon the testimony of their own accredited historians.

The language of a still later and more accomplished champion of the papacy—Charles Butler, Esq.—is yet more mild: “It is not denied,” says this writer, “that a few in the long list, were stained with vice.” But in the words of his renowned opponent, we may well ask this gentleman:

“A few Sir, and stained only, in what part of their characters is the white spot to be found? Were you thinking when this delicate phraseology was penned, of those who flourished under favour of Theodora and Marozia? Of those who contended for the chair of St. Peter, during the long schism, when their actions were noted by each other? Or of their successors who lived in the broader daylight of the fifteenth century? Sir, there have been so many of them so bad, that the boldest and best armed advocates of your cause, conscious of what Muratori calls the brutte conteguenza, have been fain to deduce an argument from their very crimes that the Papacy is of divine appointment.” (Southey’s Vind. Eccles. Angl. p. 387)

Dr. Milner, it is true, affirms that even the popes “who disgraced their holy station, by their personal vices, always fulfilled their public duties to the church, by maintaining the apostolical doctrine, moral as well as speculative, the apostolical orders, and the apostolical mission.” (End of Controversy, p. 154) But how a pope who “disgraced his holy station, by personal vices, could yet always fulfil his public duties to the church,” simple people who think that one important part of that public duty which a bishop owes to his church is to “be an example to the flock, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim. iv. 12) will be at a loss to imagine! This mystery—it appears to us—none but the learned doctor himself can explain.

And how indelible and foul is the disgrace with which the Romish Church is covered by the awful wickedness of its acknowledged heads! Were they mere private persons who had thus disgraced the Christian name, it would be an eternal reproach to any church that recognized them as members. But for men who assumed the prerogatives of Deity—who styled themselves the Vicars of Christ and vicegerents of Heaven, and thus “sat in the Temple of God, shewing themselves that they were God”—for such persons as these to wallow in the filth of impurity, to constitute the most complete patterns of depravity which our world has witnessed, and to darken whole centuries of history by their vices and their crimes—surely this is a disgrace so foul that no worse ever could befall the papal or any other body, and in the revelation of this wickedness we see the accomplishment of the prophecy: “I WILL CAST ABOMINABLE FILTH UPON THEE.”

The Consequences of Papal Depravity

But there is another light in which papal depravity requires to be viewed. It is not merely the foul infamy, the everlasting reproach, which is thus heaped upon the Church of Rome—but the tremendous consequences of their crimes upon all around. And here, again, it is the lofty station which they filled that immensely aggravates the pernicious influence of their example. Had they been mere private individuals, their wickedness would have been immeasurably less contagious. But the daring impiety, the flagitious immorality of the Johns, the Innocents, and the Borgias, were recommended to mankind by all the weight of their vice-deity; and the results of such examples were proportionately injurious.

“The scandalous examples and crimes of the court of Rome,” says Machiavelli, “are the cause why Italy has lost every principle of piety and all religious sentiment. We Italians are chiefly indebted to the church and the priests for our having become a set of profane scoundrels.” (D’Aub. Vol. I.)

Who can estimate then the amount of evil produced throughout Europe and through Europe over the whole world by the crimes of the court of Rome? What human mind can conceive the results of such exalted wickedness, first upon bishops and priests, then, by means of them, upon the people; and that during whole centuries in which, with some exceptions, they made the name of pope to stink throughout Christendom? and especially at that era, when, as we have seen, they reached the limits, the utmost limits of papal and of human depravity. (Waddington quoted above)

Surely, here, if anywhere, is the prophecy of the Revelation accomplished—“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth to slay with THE PESTILENCE!

Footnotes

[1] Lateranense palatium… prostibulum meretricum. Testis omnium gentium præterquam Romanorum, absentia mulierum, quæ sanctorum apostolorum limina orandi gratiâ timent visere cum nonnullas ante dies paucos hunc audirent conjugatas virgines vi oppressisse. (The Lateran Palace… is a brothel for harlots. All nations—save for the Romans themselves—can bear witness to this, as evidenced by the absence of women, who now fear to visit the thresholds of the holy apostles for the sake of prayer, having heard that, only a few days ago, this man used force to violate married women and virgins.) (Luitprand Hist. l. vi. ch. 6. p. 471)

[2] The letter of Guid. Vespucci to Lorenzo de Medici on this subject is given entire by Roscoe, App. 44.

(To be continued.)