rise to frequent debates of the most vehement character; they were decided, not as those at the Council of Constance had been, by the majority of the suffrages of nations, but by the majority of individual votes, as at the Council of Lateran -a proceeding which impressed an Italian rather than an International character on the conclusions of the Council, as the whole number of votes was 281, out of which 189 were Italians.

The English Church was not represented at this Council (c).

The representatives of the Spanish and the French Churches maintained, with great fervour, the Divine Right of Episcopacy, as emanating immediately from Our Blessed Lord and not immediately from the Pope (d), meaning that the fact that a Bishop was made and confirmed by the Pope was no more an argument against his deriving his authority from Our Lord, than the fact that the Cardinals elected the Pope was an argument that his power was derived only from them. These Churches, moreover, maintained the superior authority of the Church generally to the authority of the Pope, and appealed to the Councils of Basle and Constance, which the Italians rejected.

The French ambassador loudly demanded that the decisions of the Pope should be submitted to the Council, that the reforms of the Church in its Head and members, as had been promised at Basle and Constance, should be effected; and of these reforms the abolition of annates, and arrangements made for avoiding the necessity of sending for dispensations to Rome, were among the most necessary.

The King of France expressed his extreme dissatisfaction at the scanty measures of reform proposed, and many of the French bishops, and one of the ambassadors, withdrew from the Council: the latter having previously protested

(c) There appears, by the lists, to have been one English Bishop. (d) It was finally resolved to omit all notice of the institution of Bishops and of the authority of the Pope.

against certain propositions as contrary to the rights of the Crown and the liberties of the Gallican Church (e).

The Tridentine Council closed December 4, 1563; it was confirmed by a Bull of Pius IV., June 26, 1564. A perpetual Congregation of Cardinals (f) was instituted to advise the Pope as to the interpretation of its decrees, all commentaries on which were forbidden. Canonists (g) hold that the Pope may dispense tacitly, and without express declaration, with decrees of this Council, though he cannot, without express declaration, derogate from those of other councils. They found this opinion upon the words (Decr. 21, Sess. 25), "ut in his salva semper authoritas sedis Apostolicæ sit et esse intelligitur.”

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CCCXXXIII. The decrees of the Council were arranged under two principal divisions or heads :-(1) The decrees concerning the Discipline (de Reformatione), and (2) those concerning the Faith, set forth in canons (canones), which closed with an anathema upon all who held a different opinion. These decrees depended of course, for their civil and legal validity beyond the Roman See, upon their reception by the authorities of other countries.

The French Kings at first solemnly protested against it, as a private assembly of certain prelates, who had insulted the ambassadors and attacked the liberties of the throne and church of France.

The clergy of France were generally well affected to it, and often, but in vain, besought its legal promulgation (h). This promulgation was made by the Pope one of the conditions of Henry IV.'s reconciliation with Rome; but in vain did this popular monarch entreat the Parliament to consent to its publication, even with a general clause of reservation for the

(e) See, as to the Pope's power of excommunicating Kings, s. 22, c. 4. De Ref.

(f) "Trente," D. de Maillane, iii. 667. (g) Ibid. (h) De Concordantia Sacerdotii et Imperii sui de Libertatibus Ecclesiæ Gallicana, Petrus de Marca, Archiepiscopus Parisiensis (died 1662), 1. vii. c. 28, 3.

liberties of the Gallican Church. He was obliged to accept the answer of the illustrious De Thou (i), that the Parliament knew no precedent since the foundation of the monarchy for receiving a Council, without examining and reconsidering every article that it contained.

The Ordonnance of Blois (1579), however, incorporated into its text large portions of the Council of Trent, carefully avoiding to mention the source from whence they

came.

Generally speaking, it may be said, that by edicts, ordonnances, and usage, the principal decrees of the Council, as to matters of faith and discipline (j), have practically, though not formally, been introduced into France.

With respect to other European countries, the Tridentine Council was generally received by them.

It was rejected by the Catholic and Episcopalian Churches of Greece, Russia, Egypt, England, Ireland, and Scotland, and, of course, by the Protestant and Non-Episcopalian Churches of Germany and the North, and by the civil Governments of all these countries.

CCCXXXIV. The religious wars which broke out at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and were extinguished by the Treaty of Westphalia, must be mentioned in connexion with this subject of the Papal relations with independent kingdoms. Disgust at the practical abrogation of the Reforming Councils of Basle and Constance determined large bodies of religious persons to break off all connexion with the Roman See. Not merely the relation flowing from the acknowledgment of the Pope as the visible Head of the Church upon earth, but the lesser and more reasonable relation flowing from the acknowledgment due by comity, and a regard to ecclesiastical order, to the Patriarch of Western Christendom, were, in the hour of indignation and despair, forcibly snapped asunder by the

(i) Thuanus, 1. vii. Memoirs preceding his History.
(j) Lequeux, iv. 394,

Protestants of Switzerland, France, and Germany. The Germans protested in 1529 against the decrees of the Diet of Spires which forbad any change in religious matters until a General Council could be holden. They subsequently refused to submit to the decrees of a Council held in Italy, which they thought, not without reason, would be, in fact, the voice of the Italian, rather than the Universal Church. They presented their confession of faith at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530.

The profound treachery and great ability of the Elector Maurice united the Protestant Princes of the Empire (k) against Charles V. In 1552 the Treaty of Passau was made, and in 1555 the Diet of Augsburg was held, by which the liberty of exercising a religion unconnected with the Pope became part of the law regulating the mutual relations of independent States; though thirty years of a desolating warfare, which cannot, even now, be read without a shudder, were to be endured by Germany and Holland, before this principle was firmly incorporated into the Public Law of Europe by the memorable Treaty of Westphalia, signed at Münster and at Osnabrück in 1648 (1).

During this corrupt period, the minds of men upon all questions of civil and religious liberty were much affected by the circumstances and character of their time. Private ambition and avarice often wore successfully the mask of religious zeal. True ideas of liberty and religion were mixed with specious falsehoods, which sprung from pride of intellect and licentious passion. The consequences, as the subsequent pages of history are unfolded, may be traced in bloody characters in the crimes which stained the religious revolutions of many countries, and in the controversies which still agitate the world.

(k) He concluded, at the same time, a secret treaty with Henry II. of France.

(1) De Pactis et Privilegiis circa Religionem. Moser. (Franckfort, 1738, ss. 19, 20, 29.)

Savigny, R. R. ii.

CCCXXXV. A new era of International Law opens from the date of this treaty, and especially with respect to the immediate subject of these chapters.

The treaty was signed-not an insignificant fact-without the intervention or ratification of the Pope, who protested in vain against those articles of it which confirmed the secularisation of ecclesiastical property, as his successor was destined to do upon the same ground, and with the same effect, against the last Treaty of Vienna.

The relations of the nations of the whole earth-for Christianity had passed the limits of Europe, and planted itself in a new world-were now both greatly and permanently changed towards Rome. Her claims in theory were the same. The Pope was still the Vicar of Christ upon earth, the sole fountain of the Episcopate, the infallible Judge of all matters appertaining to religion; and if the logical consequences of supreme temporal as well as spiritual power were not put forward, they were not abandoned, and, indeed, had been remarkably exercised, at no very distant period, in dividing the newly discovered regions of the world between the two independent States of Spain and Portugal, and were, as will be seen, as late as the year 1773, asserted in all their plenitude.

But the actual state of the world as confronted with these claims was this:-An Episcopal Church in Great Britain, deriving its Catholic doctrine and order from the early Fathers and Councils of the Undivided Church.

A Church in France, which claimed as resolutely as that in Great Britain the Divine Right of the independent Episcopate, and denied the power of the Pope to dispense with the customs of the national, or the canons of the visible General Church, though it acknowledged the Headship and the Patriarchate of the Successor of St. Peter.

Protestant Churches in Germany repudiating Papacy, and, as connected with it, Episcopacy.

The Churches under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, who charged Rome with being the original and continuing