History of the English People, Volume IVGreen, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume IV
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
It was this movement, this rally of Catholicism, which now placed its
representative on the Papal throne. At the moment when Luther was first
opening his attack on the Papacy Giovanni Caraffa had laid down his
sees of Chieti and Brindisi to found the order of Theatines in a little
house on the Pincian Hill. His aim was the reformation of the clergy,
but the impulse which he gave told on the growing fervour of the
Catholic world, and its issue was seen in the institution of the
Capuchins and the Jesuits. Created Cardinal by Paul the Third, he found
himself face to face with the more liberal theologians who were longing
for a reconciliation between Lutheranism and the Papacy, such as
Contarini and Pole, but his violent orthodoxy foiled their efforts in
the conference at Ratisbon, and prevailed on the Pope to trust to the
sterner methods of the Inquisition. As Caraffa wielded its powers, the
Inquisition spread terror throughout Italy. At due intervals groups of
heretics were burned before the Dominican Church at Rome; scholars like
Peter Martyr were driven over sea; and the publication of an index of
prohibited books gave a death-blow to Italian literature. On the verge
of eighty the stern Inquisitor became Pope as Paul the Fourth. His
conception of the Papal power was as high as that of Hildebrand or
Innocent the Third, and he flung contemptuously aside the system of
compromise which his predecessor had been brought to adopt by the
caution of the Emperor. "Charles," he said, was a "favourer of
heretics," and he laid to his charge the prosperity of Lutheranism in
the Empire. That England should make terms for its return to obedience
galled his pride, while his fanaticism would hear of no surrender of the
property of the Church. Philip, who had wrested the concession from
Julius the Third, had no influence over a Pope who hoped to drive the
Spaniards from Italy, and Pole was suspected by Paul of a leaning to
heresy.
[Sidenote: England and the Papacy.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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