barely escaped with his life, gave a detailed account of the disaster when he arrived at Rome.

As the Greek Emperor's attachment to the union had operated effectually in securing aid from the West, his victorious. conqueror, Mohammed II., did all in his power, consistent with his own interests, to oppose the union, and for the twofold purpose of carrying out this policy and conciliating the Christians, on the fourth day after the taking of Constantinople, had the monk Gennadius, who was hostile to the Florentine Decree, placed on the patriarchal throne. Gennadius, thus placed in the highest position in the Greek Church, won the confidence of the Sultan, and thereby secured many privileges and immunities for his fellow-Christians; but in his determined hostility to Rome he never changed. He withdrew, after some years, to the solitude of the cloister, where he died in 1464. His successors in the patriarchal of fice, Isidore II., Joseph II., and Symeon of Trebisond, were equally averse to any reconciliation with Rome, and the lastnamed convoked a synod at Constantinople in 1472, which denounced the Florentine Decree in harsh and uncompromising language.1

When information of the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches reached the Asiatic tribes, many of them entered into negotiations looking toward a return to Rome.2 Pope Eugene, in consequence of these overtures, caused the Council of Florence to remain in session after the departure of the Greeks, August 26, 1439.

In the interval, a permanent union was brought about, first, with the Maronites, and next with the Armenians (1440),

1 Concerning the apostasy from the union, rich materials relative to the more important details are to be found in the Τόμος καταλλαγῆς, published at Jassy (1692-1694), by Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and chiefly composed of the writings of those who opposed the union and of acts of synods held for the same purpose. Of this work, however, little is generally known. Cf. Gams, Möhler's Ch. Hist., Vol. II., p. 644, note 1, and Simonides, 'Opvodó§wv 'E22ývwv Vɛoλ, ypapai, London, 1865. (Fragments from the Correspondence of the Patriarch Gennadius).

2 Cf. Wilh. Tyr., lib. XXII., c. 8. Bonn Review, nro. 16, p. 232 sq., and nro. 17, p. 239 sq. †*Kunstmann, The Maronites and their Relation to the Latin Church (Tübg. Quart. Rev. 1845, nro. 1, p. 40–54).

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to whom Pope Eugene issued a comprehensive doctrinal decree, and permitted them the use of their own language in the liturgy. Their example was rapidly followed by the Jacobites and the Christians of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Chaldea. The Council was transferred (April 26, 1442), to the Lateran in Rome, where it gradually decreased in numbers, and finally terminated in 1445.

2

Amid the general defection of the Greek Church in its two great representative branches of Constantinople and Moscow, occasioned by the Florentine Decree, the accession of these isolated but not unimportant Asiatic churches, afforded some consolation, but was far from compensating for the loss sustained. Neither was the action of the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, who, in 1460, and on a subsequent occasion, declared in favor of union, of much significance, since their action was prompted by political rather than religious motives, inasmuch as they hoped, through the efforts of Pius II., to obtain their deliverance from the yoke of the Turks.3

1Cf. the Acts, in Harduin, T. IX., p. 1015–1018, and Labbei et Cossart. Conc., T. XIII., p. 1197 sq. The Decretum pro Armenis, also in Denzinger's Enchiridion symbolor. et definitionum. Cf. Hefele, Hist. of Counc., Vol. VI., p. 569 sq.

2 The Acts, in Labbei et Cossart. T. XIII., p. 1204 sq. Harduin, T. IX., p. 1021 sq. The Decretum pro Jacobitis, also in Denzinger, 1. c.; the Decretum pro Syris et pro Chaldaeis et Maronitis, in Labb. et Cossart. T. XIII., p. 1222 sq. Harduin, T. IX., p. 1041 sq.

3 Cf. Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, T. II., p. 770.

CHAPTER II

HERESIES AND HERETICAL SECTS.

§ 279. John Wickliffe (a. d. 1324–1384).

Writings of John Wicliff, Lond. 1836. Henricus de Knyghton (canon of Leicester and Wickliffe's contemporary), De eventibus Angliae usque ad a. 1395 (Twisden, Scriptor. histor. Angl., Lond. 1652 f.) — Thom. Walsingham (Benedictine of St. Alban's, about 1440), Hist. Anglica major. (Camdeni Scriptores rerum Anglicarum, Lond. 1574; Frcf. 1602 f.) The two principal works: Lewis, Hist. of the life and sufferings of J. Wicliff, Lond. (1720); Oxf. 1836. Rob. Vaughan, Life and opinions of John de Wycliffe, Lond. (1829) 1831, 2 T. Both these works have been written from an altogether Protestant point of view. Conf. also Ruever Gronemann, Diatribe in J. W. reformationis prodromi vitam, ingenium, scripta, Traj. 1837. Weber, Hist. of the non-Catholic churches and sects in Great Britain, Lps. 1845. The errors of Wickliffe are methodically exposed by Staudenmaier, in his Philosophy of Christianity, Vol. I., p. 667–682. Pluquet, Dict. des Hérésies, art. J. Wickliffe, Paris, 1847. Schwab, Gerson, p. 528-546. Wm. Shirley, Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri J. Wyclif (ed. 1858).

The opposition which the sectaries had offered to the Church during the preceding epoch, assumed a more marked and determined character in the present. This was espe

cially noticeable in the case of John Wickliffe, who seems to have been the representative of every false principle of philosophy and every erroneous doctrine of theology current during this age throughout the Church of the West.

He was born at Wickliffe on the Tees, in Yorkshire, A. D. 1324, and at the age of sixteen was sent to Oxford, where he studied Aristotelian philosophy, scholastic theology, and laws, under Thomas Bradwardine. He possessed an extensive knowledge of Holy Scripture, was a skillful dialectician, and an astute and subtle reasoner. While still a youth he is said to have predicted the approaching downfall of the Church, in the apocalyptic language of the abbot Joachim de Floris. Wickliffe became more bold as time went on, and when, in 1350, Edward III., King of England, attempted by act of Parliament to set aside the right of suzerainty conferred by

John Lackland on Pope Innocent III., he wrote a dissertation, the object of which was to prove that the tribute hitherto paid to Rome by the English nation, was entirely without sanction of law. He moreover preached a sermon, in which he styled the Pope "Antichrist, the arrogant and worldly priest of Rome, and the accursed extortioner."

Wickliffe, in 1360, entered with acrimonious bitterness upon the controversy which the University of Oxford was carrying on against the Mendicant Orders, in the course of which he said, that to enter an Order of begging friars, and to forego all hope of Heaven, were acts of equivalent import.

The zeal which he had exhibited in resisting the claims of the Pope to the right of tribute from the English nation, gained him the favor of the crown, and in the year 1372, he took the degree of Doctor of Theology, and obtained a professorship of Divinity at the University of Oxford.

His name stood second among the royal commissioners sent to Bruges, in 1374, to confer with the papal legates on the questions then in dispute between the Court of Rome and Edward III., King of England. Here he became intimate with John of Ghent, son of Edward, whom he found to entertain feelings quite as hostile as his own toward the Church. While on this mission he was fully informed of the disordered state of affairs at the Papal Court of Avignon, and on his return to England, lost no time in putting his information to the best account. He proceeded at once to attack the Pope, and was not over nice in his choice of epithets or sparing in the use of invective.

Courtenay, Bishop of London, by order of Gregory XI., summoned him to appear before a synod held at St. Paul's, to answer to nineteen articles drawn up against him, charging him with holding heretical opinions. But this examination came to nothing. John of Ghent, and Lord Percy, Earl Marshal, appeared at the synod in support of Wickliffe, to overawe by their presence any who might be bold or conscientious enough to take action against him. Though their conduct to Courtenay was rude and insolent, this prelate behaved toward them with mildness and dignity, but their acts

at length became so offensive that the populace set upon them with tumultuous violence and forced them to consult for their safety in flight. This put an end to the synod and left things just where they were at starting. These proceedings, though no good came of them, served to embitter the mind of Wickliffe, and it was not till this time that his character as an heresiarch became open and decided.

He maintained that the judgment of the Church is not a necessary condition to certitude in matters of faith, and that every individual Christian is, by the grace of Christ, absolutely certain of the truth of what he believes; that Holy Scripture, of which private judgment is the only legitimate and adequate interpreter, is at once the only source and rule of faith; that there is no such thing as transubstantiation in the Holy Eucharist; and that the papacy and episcopacy are not of divine institution.

He also asserted that any bishop or priest who had fallen into mortal sin could not validly administer the sacraments; that auricular confession is a meaningless and empty ceremony, inasmuch as interior sorrow is quite sufficient for the forgiveness of sins; that if the Pope should chance to be an immoral man, he would thereby pass under the dominion of Satan, and cease to have any authority over the faithful; that the clergy, who possess of the goods of this world are living in direct violation of Holy Writ; that even kings and princes once they have fallen into grievous sin, should straightway abdicate their authority, as it is absolutely necessary that one, who would hold power, should be in the state of grace.1

The teaching of Wickliffe, besides favoring the doctrine of unqualified predestination, led, when pursued to its limits, to the complete overthrow of the great principles of both civil and ecclesiastical polity, because, from his point of view, morality and legality were convertible terms, the former being a condition of the latter.

1 He arrived at this conclusion by basing theological doctrine on the practices of feudalism. He argued that forfeiture is universally admitted to be the just punishment of treason, and that, since every mortal sin is treason against God, the offender should be punished by forfeiting whatever he holds of him. But, as authority comes from God, this should also be forfeited. (TR.)