By the Rev. J. P. Whitney, B.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History at King's College, London. 5s. net. "A book on the Reformation as a whole, not only in England, but in Europe, has long been needed…. This present volume fills, therefore, a real want, for in it the Reformation is treated as a whole…. The value of the book is quite out of proportion to its size, and its importance will be appreciated by all those whose duty or inclination calls to study the Reformation."— Guardian . "It is cert

Being an outline of the history of the church from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 By D. J. Medley, M.A. Professor of History in the University of Glasgow While there is a general agreement among the writers as to principles, the greatest freedom as to treatment is allowed to writers in this series. The volumes, for example, are not of the same length. Volume II, which deals with the formative period of the Church, is, not unnaturally, longer in proportion than the others. To Volume VI, which deals with

The late appearance of this volume of the series needs some explanation. Portions of the book have been written at intervals; but it is only the enforced idleness of a long convalescence after illness which has given me the requisite leisure to finish it. I have tried to avoid overloading my pages with details of political history; but in no period is it so easy to miss the whole lesson of events by an attempt to isolate the special influences which affected the organised society of the Church.

Previous to the eleventh century there had been quarrels between Emperor and Pope. Occasional Popes, such as Nicholas I (858-67), had asserted high prerogatives for the successor of St. Peter, but we have seen that the Church herself taught the co-ordinate and the mutual dependence of the ecclesiastical and secular powers. It was the circumstances of the tenth century which caused the Church to assume a less complacent attitude and, in her efforts to prevent her absorption by the State, to attem

[Sidenote: Gregory VII (1073-85).] The crowd which attended the funeral of Alexander II acclaimed Hildebrand as his successor. The Cardinals formally ratified the choice of the people and contrary to the wish of the German bishops the young King Henry acquiesced. [Sidenote: His rise to power.] The new Pope was born a Tuscan peasant and educated in the monastery of St. Mary's on the Aventine in Rome. His uncle was the Abbot, and the monastery was Roman lodging of the Abbot of Cluny. Hildebrand en

[Sidenote: A momentary peace.] It remained to be seen whether Gregory's failure implied Henry's success. The Emperor returned to Germany, where a strong desire for peace had grown up and was taking practical shape. In some dioceses the Truce of God was proclaimed, which, under heavy ecclesiastical penalties, forbade hostilities during certain days of the week and certain seasons of the year. Henry took up this idea, which as yet was too partial to be effective, and in 1085, in a Synod at Mainz u

[Sidenote: The work of the Church reformers.] The great movement in favour of Church reform, which had emanated from Cluny, had worked itself out along certain definite lines. It is important to ask how far it had succeeded in achieving its objects. We have seen that it was a movement of essentially monastic conception aimed at the purification of the secular clergy. And we have seen that the evil to be remedied had arisen from the imminent danger that the Church would be laicised and feudalised

[Sidenote: Secular canons.] So far, in speaking of the attempted purification of the Church in the eleventh century, we have dealt merely with the bishops and the parochial clergy. But a movement which emanated from the monasteries had a message also for those ecclesiastics who were gathered into corporate bodies, and whom we have learnt to distinguish respectively as canons and monks. Of these the canons were reckoned among the secular clergy; for although they were supposed to live a common li

[Sidenote: Honorius II.] Calixtus II died in December, 1124, and in a few months (May, 1125) Henry V followed him to the grave. The imperial party at Rome had disappeared, but, on the other hand, Calixtus had established only a truce between the Roman factions. The Frangipani and Pierleoni families each nominated a successor to him, but the former forcibly placed their candidate in the papal chair. The six years of the pontificate of Honorius II (1124-30) are unimportant. [Sidenote: Lothair II.]

[Sidenote: Secular Studies.] Mediaeval learning, whether sacred or secular, was founded upon authority. The Scholasticus, who took the place of the ancient Grammaticus, was not an investigator, but merely an interpreter. On the one side the books of the sacred Scriptures as interpreted by the Fathers were the rule of faith; on the other side as the guide of reason stood the works of the Philosopher, as Aristotle was called in the Middle Ages. But until the thirteenth century few of his works wer

[Sidenote: Hadrian IV.] Hadrian IV is interesting to us as the only Englishman who has ever sat upon the throne of St. Peter. As Nicholas Brakespeare he had led the life of a wandering scholar, chiefly in France. He entered the house of Canons Regular of St. Rufus near Avignon, and when Abbot of this monastery attracted the attention of Eugenius III, who made him Cardinal Bishop of Albano, and employed him as papal legate in freeing the Church in Scandinavia from its dependence on the Bishops in

[Sidenote: The new Pope.] Celestine III died less than four months after the Emperor Henry VI, and the centre of interest immediately shifted from the Empire to the Papacy. For, in their desire to shut out the Roman clergy and people from any share in the election, the Cardinals made haste to find a successor. As it happened, the object of their choice was also the favourite of the Roman people. Lothair of Segni was the youngest of the Cardinals, being only thirty-seven years of age. He was spru

[Sidenote: The basis of papal claims.] The interest of the period with which we are dealing is largely concerned with the attempted definition of the relations between Church and State. The peculiar form of mediaeval thought resolved this into a struggle of the papal power to make itself supreme over all temporal rulers. But scarcely less important or interesting is the concomitant effort of the Papacy to gather up into itself the whole immediate authority of the Church. This effort was very mat

[Sidenote: Number of the Sacraments.] It was during the period covered by this volume that some of the most characteristic doctrines of the Roman Church were developed. In this development the whole sacramental system of the Church comes under consideration. The word "sacramentum" in the sense of a holy mark or sign ( sacrum signum ) was used with a very wide meaning as denoting anything "by which under the cover of corporeal things the divine wisdom secretly works salvation." Hugh of St. Victor

[Sidenote: Cause of heresy.] It was not until the thirteenth century that the Church had to face that spirit of scepticism or anti-religious feeling which is the chief bug-bear of modern Christianity. Her elaborate organisation and the gradual development of her own dogmatic position enabled her to deal with individual writers of a speculative turn like Berengar or Abailard. Nor were these in any sense anti-Christian. But they were the inciters to heresy; and a real danger to the Church lay in t

[Sidenote: Need for new kinds of Orders.] At the Lateran Council in 1215 Innocent III issued a decree which practically forbade the foundation of new monastic Orders. The increase of such Orders in the name of religious reform had not always tended to the promotion of orthodoxy. Moreover, the monastic ideal was the spiritual perfection of the individual, to be gained by separation from the world; but the growth of large urban populations with the accompanying disease and misery called for a new

[Sidenote: Hungary and Poland.] From the time of Otto I it was the policy of the German Kings to Germanise and Christianise the nations on their eastern border, as a preparatory step to including them in the Empire. Otto had exacted homage from the rulers of Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia, but under his successors they broke away; and although, meanwhile, Christianity was accepted by the rulers in all three countries, Hungary and Poland both established their independence politically of the German

[Sidenote: Honorius III (1216-27) and the Crusade.] The bull of summons to the Lateran Council of 1215 mentions as the two great desires of the Pope's heart the recovery of the Holy Land and the reformation of the Church Universal; and it is made clear that the various measures of reform to be placed before the General Council are intended to bring Christian princes and peoples, both clergy and laity, into the frame of mind for sending aid to Palestine. Moreover, at the Council it was agreed tha

[Sidenote: Urban IV (1261-4).] The date of Alexander's death marks the beginning of a new episode in the history of the mediæval Papacy. His successor, Urban IV, was a Frenchman. With more vigour than his predecessor he pursued the policy of the destruction of the Hohenstaufen. Since the English prince had proved a useless tool and no more money could be wrung from the English people, he obtained the renunciation of the claims of Edmund to the Sicilian crown and turned to his native country for

[Sidenote: The Eastern Church.] A history of the Church Universal must needs take some notice of those Christian communities which never acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. Chief among these stands the Church of the Eastern Empire where the Patriarch of Constantinople strove to make himself at least the equal of the Bishop of Rome. This mutual jealousy of the old and the new Rome was only one of the causes of quarrel between them, a quarrel which was fanned from time to time by the appeal of a d