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The influence of the Psalms among pioneers of the Reforma- tion-Wyclif, John Hus, Jerome of Prague; among mediaeval reformers-Savonarola; among Protestant leaders-Luther and Melancthon; among champions of the Papacy-the Emperor Charles V; among discoverers of New Worlds- Christopher Columbus; among men of the New Learning- Erasmus, Pico della Mirandola, Sir Thomas More; John Fisher; John Houghton; among leaders of the Catholic Reaction-Xavier, and St Teresa; among Protestant and Catholic Martyrs-Hooper, Ridley, and Southwell.
ON St Sylvester's day, 1384, John Wyclif lay dying at Lutterworth. The friars, so runs the story, crowded round him, urging him to confess the wrongs that he had done to their Order. But the indomitable old man caused his servant to raise him from the pillow, and, gathering all his remaining strength, exclaimed with a loud voice, " I shall not die, but live; and declare-the evil deeds of the Friars " (Ps. cxviii., verse 17).
Before Wyclif's day, devout men had assailed the corrup- tion of the Church, or disputed her doctrines of the Sacraments. Some had protested against the claims of the Papacy, or up- held the rights of national churches. Others had demanded the preaching of the true Gospel. Others had deplored the worldliness of the clergy, denounced the wealth of the Monastic Orders, or preached the blessings of poverty. But all had remained loyal to the Pope; none had looked beyond existing agencies for the reform of the Church and of society. Wyclif's attitude marks an advance so distinct as to proclaim a new epoch. He not only attacked practical abuses, but aimed at erecting an ecclesiastical fabric which should differ from the old in doctrine as well as in organization. In the last years of his life, he urged complete separation from the Papacy as Antichrist, established his <( Poor Priests," aspired to reform England by the translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue, and, in religion, politics, and society, insisted on the freedom of the human conscience from every restraint except Christ's written law. His importance as the centre of all pre-Reformation history was instinctively recognised. When the Bishop of Lincoln ordered his body to be exhumed
and burned, and its ashes thrown into the river Swift-or when Walsingham, the Chronicler, calls him, " that weapon of the Devil, that enemy of the Church, that sower of con- fusion among unlearned people, that idol of heresy, that mirror of hypocrisy, that father of schism, that son of hatred, that father of lies "-the one by his action, the other by his language, expresses his sense of the fact that Wyclif was not a reformer of the mediaeval monastic type, but had introduced a new era.
Wyclif's attitude was, in part, produced by changed circum- stances. Traditions of universal empire were obscured by the rise of separate nations, one in race, language, and religion;
the temporal claims of the Pope had increased as his spiritual hold on the world relaxed, and both became intolerable, when claimants of the papal throne excommunicated their opponents or doomed their rivals to eternal damnation. In part, it ex- pressed profound discontent with the corruptions of religious life, intensified by the horrors of the plague. Even the most vicious were terrified into paying that vicarious homage to virtue which demands from the clergy an elevated moral standard. In part, it resulted from political or social con- ditions. The English nation was at war with France; the Pope was the puppet of the French king, and papal tributes fed the French treasury with English money. The nobles desired to oust the clergy from public affairs, the commons to lighten their own burdens by taxing ecclesiastical property, the people to relieve their poverty by appropriating the wealth of the Church. But the peculiar position which Wyclif adopted was even more the effect of his own temperament. To his austere piety, logical intellect, unimaginative nature, the faith of the Middle Ages made but weak appeal. Blind to its beauties, he saw with exaggerated clearness only its deformities. He chafed against the fetters it imposed on his mental independence, and failed to appreciate its spiritual insight, mystical ardour, religious rapture, intense realisation of the mysteries of the unseen. When once a man of this temperament was startled into opposition by intellectual diffi- culties or moral shortcomings, he could not stop short at reform, but was irresistibly impelled towards revolution. He was the precursor, not of the Anglican reformer, but of the Puritan iconoclast.
Without Wyclif, there would have been no Hus and no Jerome of Prague. Both men were accused of sympathy with the English Reformer. At Prague, a portion of Wyclif's tomb was worshipped as a relic: numerous manuscripts of his writings exist in foreign libraries, especially at Vienna; and Hus's work on the Church (De Ecclesia) is derived, some- times verbally, from the English Reformer. Like Wyclif, both Hus and Jerome died repeating the words of a psalm.
On July 6th, 1415, the Council of Constance held its fifteenth general session in the cathedral. Sigismund, King of the Romans, presided; before his throne, nobles and princes of the empire bore the insignia of the imperial dignity; the car- dinals and prelates were assembled in their nations. After Mass had been said, John Hus, a pale, thin man, in mean attire, was brought into the presence of his judges, and placed on a small raised platform. In vain he protested that he had come to Constance under a safe conduct from Sigismund him- self. He was condemned as a heretic, and handed over to the secular arm for execution. The sentence was carried out without delay. On the road from Constance to Gottlieben the stake was prepared. When Hus reached the spot, wearing a paper cap of blasphemy, adorned with " three devils of wonderfully ugly shape," and inscribed with the word "Heresiarcha," he fell on his knees, and prayed, chanting Psalm xxxi. He died, choked by the flames, but repeating with " a merry and cheerful countenance," the words, " Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. xxxi., verse 6).
On the same spot, on May 30th, 1416, died Jerome of Prague. Tall, powerfully built, graceful of speech, one of the most brilliant laymen of the day, he had come to the Council to plead the cause of Hus. Panic-stricken at his friend's fate, he fled, only to be captured and brought back to Constance. His courage revived when escape was hopeless. An imprison- ment of six months did not induce him to acknowledge the justice of the sentence passed upon Hus. Like his friend, he perished at the stake, dwelling with his latest breath on the same words, " Into Thy hands I commend my spirit."
The Council of Constance healed the papal schism. But it accomplished little more. With its dissolution, and that of the Council of Basle, faded the hope of any complete or universal reform of the Church from within. It was a time, not of transition only, but also of sifting. Men like Luther, Erasmus, or Fisher, who were of one mind in condemning abuses, passed into opposite camps, impelled by the differences in their own temperaments. Vast efforts were indeed made for internal reform; but they were too narrow, too local, or too late. The pent-up stream fif intellectual life and classic culture had burst its barriers, shattering the old channels of thinking, believing, and acting, which centuries of habit had grooved. Fed from innumerable sources, the Protestant Reformation had swelled into a headlong torrent. In the sea of human faith and' thought, both currents met the flowing tide of the Catholic reaction. It was a time of fierce shock and collision. But among the " green pastures " of the Psalms, and beside their "waters of comfort," men, who, in all else, were at bitter strife, refresh their weariness, renew their aspirations, recover their strength and courage. From the
same pages, side by side, read mediasval reformers like Savonarola, heroes of the Protestant Reformation like Luther and Melancthon, imperial champions of the Papacy like Charles V., discoverers of new worlds like Christopher Columbus, lights of the new learning like Sir Thomas More, leaders of the Roman Catholic reaction like St. Teresa or St. Francis Xavier.
Savonarola (1452-98), the great Dominican preacher, who for five years held within the hollow of his hand the destinies of Florence, is one of the most fascinating figures in history. His worn face, as it is presented to us in the best-known of his portraits, is harsh and even ugly, yet full of concentrated force, both intellectual and moral. His blue-grey eyes burn like live coals under thick black eyebrows, and light up the yellow, wax-like complexion; his nose is long, and highly arched; his large mouth is quick to compress into resolve or to relax into a smile ; the projecting lower lip gives an air of pugnacity to the whole face ; his cheeks are hollowed by anxieties and abstinence; his low yet massive forehead is furrowed by the deep wrinkles of thought. His delicate transparent hands, with their long tapering fingers, tell the story of his enthusiastic, imaginative temperament.
Long had the hard-featured stripling pondered over the sin and misery of the world, praying, as he tells his father, in the words of the Psalm (cxliii., verse 8), " Shew Thou me the way that I should walk in, for I lift up my soul unto Thee." To escape the stifling atmosphere of wickedness with which he was surrounded, he fled to the cloister. Seven years later (1482), he was transferred from the Dominican convent of Bologna to that of San Marco at Florence, and began his career as preacher, reformer, and prophet. His indignation burned into flame as he watched the Church plundered by false friends, and saw spiritual death stealing over her pulseless form, like some quiet flowing tide. But his ideals were not those of a Wyclif or a Luther. He looked to a General Council to purify the vices of the Church: a rebel against an individual Pope, he was loyal to the Papacy: a stern re- prover of practice, he advocated no change in doctrine. Throughout the struggle that followed, the contrast between the personal characters of the opponents heightens the tragic interest. On one side stands Roderigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI., whose name has passed into a byword as a monster of iniquity ; on the other, Savonarola, whose pure enthusiasm, unsullied morality, and religious zeal, can neither be denied nor disputed.
On April 7th, 1498, occurred a crisis in Savonarola's fate. It was the Friday before Palm Sunday. A Franciscan friar had challenged him to prove the truth of his preaching by the ordeal of fire. The challenge was accepted by one of his
devoted adherents, Fra Domenico. Through the crowded streets of Florence passed the long procession of the Domini- cans from San Marco to the great square in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, where the ordeal was prepared. Their enthusiastic supporters heard the very buildings take up their chant, when the friars thundered forth the words of Psalm Ixviii., " Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered." All day the populace waited; but the challenger did not appear. The blind adoration of the fickle Florentines turned to fury. Savonarola's power was at an end. He was at the mercy of his enemies. On Palm Sunday, the gth of the month, he was dragged from San Marco and thrown into prison. There he suYered repeated tortures, inflicted in the hope of wringing from him the confession that his revelations of the future were impostures. To a man of his high-strung sensi- tive temperament the physical agony was intense, and to it were added the mental pain of desertion, the pang of lost confidence, the bodily weakness of frequent fasts. With subtle refinement of cruelty, his torturers, who had broken his left arm and crunched the shoulder-bone out of its socket, had left his right arm whole in order that he might sign his so- called confessions. He used it to write his meditations on the 5ist and the 3ist Psalms. The last was unfinished. Whether ink and paper were taken from the prisoner, or whether the arrival of the Papal Commissioners on May igth, and his execution on the 22nd, cut short his task, is uncertain. Only three verses were completed;
" Sorrow," he begins, "hath pitched her camp against me. She hath hemmed me in on every side. Her men of war are strong and many. She hath filled my heart with the shout of battle and the din of arms. Day and night she ceaseth not to strive with me. My friends have become my foes, and fight under her standard.
"Unhappy being that I am! who will free me from the hands of the ungodly ? Who will shield me ? Who will come to my succour ? Whither shall I flee ? How can I escape ? I know what I will do. I will turn to heavenly things, and they shall do battle with the things of the earth. Hope shall lead the forces of Heaven; Hope shall march against Sorrow, and overcome hen Hear what the prophet hath said: ' For Thou, Lord, art my hope; Thou hast set thine house of defence very high' (Ps. xci., verse 9). I will call unto the Lord, and He will hasten to come to me, and will not suffer me to be put to confusion. Lo ! he hath come already. ' Cry aloud,' He saith, ' Cry aloud always.' And what. Lord, shall I cry? ( Cry in full assurance, and with all thy heart.' In Thee, 0 Lord, have I put my trust; let me never be put to confusion; deliver me in Thy righteousness!
" Bowed at the feet of the Lord, my eyes bathed with tears,
I cried, * The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear; the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid ? Though a host of men were set against me, yet shall not my heart be afraid; and though there rose up war against me, yet will I put my trust in Him."
Here the Commentary, of which only the beginning and the end are given, closes abruptly. But in the peace which the Psalms brought him, Savonarola slept soundly on the night before his execution, and, as the morning light struggled through the bars of the prison, a Penitent of the Temple, watching at his side, saw a smile play over his face while he slept, as soft and gentle as the smile of a little child. With the strength which the Psalm gave him he met his death, in silence and with unflinching courage, on the open space before the Palazzo Vecchio. It is from the Psalms (Ps. 1L, verse 13), " Then shall I teach Thy ways unto the wicked;
and sinners shall be converted unto Thee," that the motto is taken for Michel Angelo's picture of Savonarola.
Savonarola was in no sense of the word a Protestant. But his commentaries on Pss. xxxi. and li. were published by Luther, with a preface, in 1523. With Wyclif and his im- mediate followers neither Luther nor Melancthon was in full sympathy. The first censured the English Reformer for his sacramental views, the second thought him mad on the subject of Church property. Yet the same text from the Psalms, which Wyclif adapted on his deathbed, was inscribed on the walls of Luther's study, " I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord " (Ps. cxviii., verse 17), and both the German Reformers died (Luther, February i8th, 1546;
Melancthon, April igth, 1560) committing their souls to God in the same words of the Psalm which Hus and Jerome of Prague had repeated with their latest breath, "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit " (Ps. xxxi., verse 6).
Luther's love of the Psalms might be fully illustrated by the lectures on them with which he began his public career, as a teacher, at Wittenberg (1512), by his Commentaries on the Seven Penitential Psalms (1517), by his hymns, by his life and conversation. He clung to his "old and ragged " Psalter as a tried and trusty friend. With an exposition of Ps. cxviii. he busied himself in his solitude at Coburg. " This," he says, in the dedication of his translation, "is my psalm, my chosen psalm. I love them all; I love all Holy Scripture, which is my consolation and my life. But this psalm is nearest my heart, and I have a familiar right to call it mine. It has saved me from many a pressing danger, from which nor emperor, nor kings, nor sages nor saints could have saved me. It is my friend; dearer to me than all the honours and power of the earth."
Mention has been already made of Luther's love for
Psalm
iv., and his wish to hear sung in his last moments the sooth- ing words, " I will lay me down in peace, and take my rest" (Psalm iv., verse 9). Another of his favourites was Psalm ex. " The noth," he says, " is very fine. It describes the kingdom and priesthood of Jesus Christ, and declares Him to be the King of all things and the intercessor for all men; to Whom all things have been remitted by His Father, and Who has compassion on us all. 'Tis a noble psalm; if I were well, I would endeavour to make a commentary upon it." Another favourite was Psalm ii., and his remarks upon it bring out salient features in the character of a man whose very words were " half-battles": " The 2nd Psalm is one of the best psalms. I love that psalm with all my heart. It strikes and flashes valiantly among kings, princes, counsellors, judges, etc. If what this psalm says be true, then are the allegations and aims of the papists stark lies and folly. If I were our Lord God, and had committed the government to my son, as He to His Son, and these vile people were as disobedient as now they be, I would knock the world in pieces."
But if his comment on Psalm ii. illustrates the violence of Luther's character, his use of Psalm xlvi. exemplifies his magnificent courage and suggests the source from which it sprang. There were moments when even he felt something akin to despair, and he asked with the Psalmist, " Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul ? " In such hours he would say to Melancthon, " Come, Philip, let us sing the 46th Psalm," and the two friends sang it in Luther's version, " Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott." The version is characteristic of the man. It has his heartiness, his sincere piety, his joyful confidence, his simplicity and strength, his impetuosity and ruggedness. Harmony, delicacy, spiritual tenderness, are not there. But the words of his hymn breathe the same undaunted spirit which flamed out in answer to the warning of his friends, " Were there as many devils in Worms as there are rool- tiles, I would on." They also reveal the secret of the con^ fidence which inspired his memorable words before the Council: "I cannot and will not retract anything. It is neither wise nor right to do aught against conscience. Here stand I; I cannot otherwise. God help me. Amen."
From Carlyle's rugged translation of 'Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott," the first and the last of the four stanzas of Luther's version of Psalm xlvi. are quoted :
" A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon;
He'll help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now o'ertaken. The ancient Prince of Hell Hath risen with purpose fell;
Strong mail of Craft and Power He weareth in this hour, On earth is not his fellow.
<( God's Word, for all their craft and force,
One moment will not linger, But, spite of Hell, shall have its course,
'Tis written by his finger. And though they take our life, Goods, honour, children, wife, Yet is their profit small;
These things shall vanish all, The City of God remaineth."
The Diet of Worms (January, 1521), by which Luther was condemned and placed under the ban of the empire, was opened by Charles V., the champion of the Pope against the Protestants. Yet, in love of the Psalms, emperor and reformer were not divided. Charles presented Marot with 200 gold doubloons for his metrical version of thirty psalms, and asked him to translate his own special favourite. Psalm cxviii.' His delight in the Psalter increased in later life, especially in the period of ill-health which ended his long rule (1550-6), when he sang them with his friend, William von Male. During those years his cherished plan of abdication took definite shape.
In November, 1556, Charles crossed the pass of Puerto- nuevo and descended into the valley of the Vera in Estra- madura, where he intended to pass the closing years of his life. The beetling crags at the topmost crest of the Sierra closed, as it were, the gates of the world behind him; " 'Tis the last pass," he said, " that I shall ever go through." The Jeromite Convent of Yuste was the scene of the emperor's retirement. He entered it on February 3rd, 1557, bringing with him two illuminated Psalters, and the commentary of Tomas de Puertocarrero on the Psalm, In te. Do/nine, speravi. From the windows of his cabinet he looked over a cluster of rounded knolls, clad in walnut and chestnut, varied with the massive foliage of the fig, and the feathery sprays of the almond. Here he lived transacting business of the State, punctilious in his devotions, delighting in the music of the choir, giving to his garden or his pets much of the leisure which he enjoyed. In September, 1558, he lay on his death- bed. Portents heralded his approaching end. The bell of Vililla in Arragon, which, ringing of itself, had foretold the death of Ferdinand the Catholic, and the sack of Rome by the army of Bourbon, sent out its mysterious warnings over the
1 Bovet (Histoire du Psautier, p. 6, note 3) thinks the Psalm was cxviii. It might, however, have been Psalm cvii.
plains of the Ebro. A comet blazed in the sky during his illness, and disappeared on the day of his death. A lily bud, which had remained a bud all the summer, burst into bloom on September 20, as a token, it was believed, of the whiteness of the departing spirit, and as a pledge of its reception into the mansions of bliss. On Monday, the igth, he had received the longer or ecclesiastical form of extreme unction, which con- sisted in the recitation of the seven Penitential Psalms, and litany, and several portions of Scripture. Throughout the 2oth of September, passages were read aloud to him by his confessor, from the Bible, but especially from the Psalms, his favourite being Psalm xc., " Lord, Thou hast been our refuge." On the same evening he received the Sacrament, at his urgent request. "It may not," he said, "be necessary; but it is good company on so long a journey." In spite of extreme weakness, he followed all the responses, and repeated with the utmost fervour the whole verse, " Into Thy hands I com- mend my spirit: for Thou hast redeemed me, 0 Lord, Thou God of Truth " (Ps. xxxi., verse 6). On St Matthew's day (September 2ist), at two o'clock the next morning, the Emperor Charles V. was dead.
To men of Luther's temper, leaders of the New Learning were cowardly palterers with truth. He denounced Erasmus as " a very Caiaphas," and whenever he prayed, prayed " for a curse upon Erasmus " ; to him also Sir Thomas More (1478- 1535) appeared " a cruel tyrant." Yet here again the Psalms were common ground.
Many of the Renaissance scholars, in their eagerness to conquer the new worlds of thought and knowledge which opened out before them, doubtless relaxed, lost, or abandoned their earlier faith. It was not so with Christopher Columbus, the man of action. The young Genoese wool-comber, who discovered the New World of America, was essentially a man of the Middle Ages, and died clad in the habit of St Francis. His imaginative, enthusiastic mind was imbued with the firm conviction that, in devoting all his energies to his great idea, he was the chosen instrument for the fulfilment of a Divine design. The impulse to the work of the greatest maritime genius of the century was essentially religious. His habitual signature was an invocation to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, placed above his own name of Christopher, or the Christ- bearer. In the constancy of his faith at least, if in no other respect, his death was worthy of his life and work. In a wretched hired lodging at Valladolid, dressed in the Franciscan habit, fortified by the rites of the Church, he died on the eve of Ascension Day, May 2oth, 1506, repeating, like John Hus, or Luther, or More, or like Tasso, who sang the swan-song of Italian chivalry, the familiar words, " Into Thy hands I commend my spirit."