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The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France. R. Knecht J.
Читать онлайн.Название The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France
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isbn 9780007393381
Автор произведения R. Knecht J.
Издательство HarperCollins
The disorderly state of the Gallican church was exemplified in Paris, where the chapter of Notre-Dame claimed exemption from all episcopal jurisdiction. When Tristan de Salazar, metropolitan archbishop of Sens, tried to assert his authority, he was violently attacked by the canons. As he left the cathedral on 2 February 1492, after celebrating mass in the king’s presence, two canons seized the processional cross. In the ensuing scuffle the cross was damaged, the archbishop butted in the stomach and his mitre torn to shreds. The incident prompted a lawsuit in the parlement which lasted thirteen years. In 1504 the archbishop’s right to officiate at Notre-Dame was recognized and the canons were ordered to restore the damaged cross.
The authority of the bishop of Paris, though less feeble than that of his metropolitan, was none the less weak. His jurisdiction was undermined by appeals to Rome or to the parlement and by the judicial activities of the cathedral chapter. His right to nominate to benefices in and around Paris was strictly limited. The chapter and most religious houses were exempt from his jurisdiction. In 1492 the canons refused to accept the king’s nominee, Jean de Rely, as bishop. They elected Gérard Gobaille, who was himself challenged by Jean Simon. As the two rivals fought over the episcopal revenues, their quarrel came before the parlement. When Gobaille died in September 1494 the pope, acting at the king’s request, confirmed Simon as bishop, but the chapter set about electing a new bishop. Only Simon’s willingness to stand as candidate averted a major confrontation between the crown and the chapter. Even after he had won, however, some canons refused to obey him.
There was also much disorder among the parish clergy of the diocese. Within Paris itself priests seemed more interested in their revenues than in the discharge of their spiritual duties. These they habitually unloaded on vicars whose disorderly conduct was a matter of continual concern to the bishop’s official. Rural parishes were even worse off. Their incumbents tended to reside in the capital, leaving indigent clergy to perform their duties. As yet there were no seminaries for the training of rural clergy. They picked up the rudiments of Christian dogma haphazardly while retaining the manners and tastes of their social background. The upper clergy despised them for their ignorance and uncouth ways.
Deficient as it was, the secular clergy was far superior to the regular one. Yet Paris and its suburbs had some of the wealthiest abbeys in the kingdom. During the Hundred Years War suburban monasteries and the rural estates of the great Parisian abbeys had been ravaged by passing armies. Though some had managed to repair their losses, many monasteries and convents in the countryside around Paris were ruinous and poverty-stricken. Even in Paris, except among the Cordeliers and Jacobins, the number of regular clergy had declined, and the monastic rule was no longer being generally observed. At Saint-Martin des Champs, a reform commission in 1501 noted that life in common had vanished: the monks owned property without regard for their rule. The same was true of Benedictine houses. There was disorder too among the Cordeliers and in 1502 the Jacobins claimed the right to seek refreshment outside the cloister. A similar state of affairs existed among the Carmelites and the Augustinians. Everywhere monks deserted the dormitory and refectory: each had his own room where he entertained friends. Apostolic poverty and the common ownership of goods were memories; everyone had his own purse. Monks roamed the streets mingling with boatmen and jugglers.
How far could the French crown be relied upon to assume responsibility for church reform in the absence of a serious papal initiative? King Charles VIII, unlike his father, was interested in reform. He sponsored the Synod of Sens (July – August 1485), which produced a comprehensive programme of reform covering worship, monastic discipline, fiscal abuses and disorder among the secular clergy, but a renewal of political troubles in France between 1485 and 1491 prevented that programme from being implemented. In November 1493 a reform commission met at Tours. It proposed a number of sensible practical remedies for the church’s ailments. Avoiding doctrine or worship, it concentrated on clerical discipline and the results were not insignificant. The French government sent the proposals to the pope with a demand that he should back the reform movement. In July 1494, Alexander VI empowered three abbots to visit and reform the Benedictine houses in France. Charles VIII’s interest in church reform could not be sustained once he had decided to invade Italy, yet the impetus he had provided was not lost: in many parts of France reformist activity continued till the end of the reign. Although no concerted action was taken by heads of the Gallican church, a number of bishops did reform their dioceses. At Langres, Chartres, Nantes and Troyes, they called synods and drew up or renewed episcopal statutes.
One of the loudest voices for reform in late fifteenth-century Paris was that of Olivier Maillard, a Franciscan friar, whose brutal frankness in the pulpit earned him enormous popularity. He poured scorn on unworthy priests and bewailed the decline of the church. Other champions of reform were Jean Raulin, principal of the collège de Navarre, Jean Quentin, penitentiary of Notre-Dame, and Jean Standonck. All three had come under the influence of Francis of Paola, an Italian hermit who had been invited to France in 1482 by Louis XI. He had founded in Italy a new order of friars, called Minims, who, in addition to the normal vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, promised to observe a perpetual Lent. In 1491, Charles VIII built a monastery for Francis at Montils-lès-Tours and another at Amboise. In the same year two Minims were allowed to set up a house in Paris. Francis was canonized in 1519, only twelve years after his death.
While preachers in Paris demanded reform, a slow movement of renewal was taking place in provincial monasteries. At Cluny in 1481, the abbot Jacques d’Amboise, brother of the cardinal, continued reforms that had been undertaken some twenty years earlier by his predecessor, Jean de Bourbon. Cluny’s example was followed by the nuns of Fontevrault where a reform programme initiated in 1458 by the abbess, Mary of Brittany, was continued by her successors and extended to other houses in 1475. In 1483, Charles VIII gave the convent of the Filles-Dieu in Paris to the abbess Anne d’Orléans, the sister of duke Louis. Benedictine reform also reached Marmoutier, near Tours, and Chezal-Benoist in Berry. Among the Cistercians a revival was also under way: in 1487, Innocent VIII commissioned Jean de Cirey, abbot of Cîteaux, to reform the order. He reorganized studies at the Cistercian college in Paris in August 1493, and laid down new rules for all the order’s houses at a general chapter in February 1494.
Reform among the mendicant orders was weaker. The Franciscans were bitterly divided between the Observants and Conventuals and the ferocity with which they fought each other in the courts seriously damaged their moral authority. Among the Dominicans reform was imported from the Low Countries. The Dutch Dominicans attached less importance to theological speculation than to mystical contemplation. In this respect they differed from the Jacobins, who adhered to the scholastic tradition. The missionary activities of the Dutch Dominicans tended to be excessively militant and consequently encountered stiff opposition.
In 1496, Standonck visited the canons regular of Windesheim, who practised the ideals of the Brethren of the Common Life. Following his visit, six brothers from Windesheim led by Jean Mombaer went to Château-Landon. They encountered resistance but, with the support of powerful patrons, they gained the upper hand, Mombaer becoming prior. In March 1497, Jean Simon, bishop of Paris, looked to Windesheim as he tried to reform the abbey of Saint-Victor. Writing to the general chapter of his order, Mombaer underlined the importance of the task in hand: ‘It is not simply a matter of reforming a once famous abbey,’ he said, ‘but eventually the entire Gallican church.’ In October, Windesheim sent seven brothers to Saint-Victor and two others visited the Augustinian house at Livry. Their rule gradually penetrated the French kingdom, although they suffered some serious setbacks under Louis XII: at Saint-Victor they made themselves so unpopular by their tactlessness that they had to leave.
Louis XII appreciated the urgent need to reform the French church. To bring this about he relied on Cardinal Georges d’Amboise, who, as papal legate, was empowered to visit religious houses, to depose and replace delinquent heads and to impose discipline on the monks. Although the reform programme of November 1493 had envisaged a