Academic Interests and Catholic Confessionalisation

Academic Interests and Catholic Confessionalisation

Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Editors

William J. Courtenay (Madison) Jürgen Miethke (Heidelberg) Frank Rexroth (Göttingen) Jacques Verger (Paris) Advisory Board

Jeremy Catto (Oxford) Daniel Hobbins (Columbus) Roberto Lambertini (Macerata) VOLUME 35

Titlepage 1. Frontispiece of Privilegia Academiae Lovaniensi (. . .) concessa, a printed book of privileges of the university of Louvain (1597) with the figures of Saint Peter and Saint Paul visualising the papal origins of the university’s most important privileges. [Catholic University of Louvain, Central Library]

Academic Interests and Catholic Confessionalisation The Louvain Privileges of Nomination to Ecclesiastical Benefices

By

Bruno Boute

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Boute, Bruno. Academic interests and Catholic confessionalisation : the Louvain privileges of nomination to ecclesiastical benefices / by Bruno Boute. p. cm. — (Education and society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance ; v. 35) Revision of the author’s thesis (doctoral)—University of Louvain. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18417-6 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Université de Louvain (1425–1797)—Administration—History. 2. Université de Louvain (1425-1797)— Finance—History. 3. Benefices, Ecclesiastical. I. Title. II. Series. LF4033.B68 2010 378.493’31—dc22 2010002835

ISSN 0926-6070 ISBN 978 9004 18417 6 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all right holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

To my Grandfather Wilfried Boute (1914–2006)

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ............................................................................ List of Illustrations ............................................................................ Prologue ..............................................................................................

xi xv xvii

PART ONE

The Weight of the World Chapter One The Appeal of Logic ............................................... 1.1. The sirens of Trent. Academic interests and Catholic reform ..................................................................................... 1.2. Society, and all that: The confessionalisation of academic interests ................................................................. 1.3. Achieving logic. Academic interests and Catholic confessionalisation ................................................................ Chapter Two The Dross of the Earth. Benefices and Academics in the Early Modern Period .................................... 2.1. The bishop’s men? Archbishop Matthias Hovius and his shepherds ......................................................................... 2.2. “Ce Chieff du monde ou concourrent tous les princes chrestiens”: Papal provisions for ecclesiastical benefices in the early modern period ................................................. 2.3. The ways of academia. Universities and benefices .......... 2.4. Pulling things together: Benefices, grants, and the fabric of academia ................................................................. Chapter Three The Jewels among Academic Privileges. The Louvain Privileges of Nomination to Ecclesiastical Benefices .......................................................................................... 3.1. “Pas une maille davantage”? Scholars in the pursuit of poverty .................................................................................... 3.2. “Le temps esclorra les occasions.” Poor scholars and nomination procedures ........................................................

3 4 34 43

63 65

85 109 125

133 139 155

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3.3. “Il a envie de la changer en simples bénéfices.” Poor scholars, miserly benefices? ....................................... 3.4. “Boèce a mis tant d’empeschemens.” Poor scholars and legal violence .......................................................................... 3.5. The litmus test of the market: Efficiency and necessity of the Louvain privileges of nomination ..........................

175 194 211

PART TWO

Assembling Academia Chapter Four Flashbacks: Performances of Academia 1588–98 ........................................................................................... 4.1. The pontiff, his cardinals, and the academics, 1588–98 ................................................................................... 4.2. “Veluti altare contra altare.” The battle of the schools, 1592–98 ................................................................................... Chapter Five The City of Grace. Academics at the Corte Di Roma 1598–1612 ........................................................... 5.1. “Quod nihilominus Lovanienses per favores Satagant.” Patrons, brokers and clients in the Rome of Clement VIII and Paul V .................................................... 5.2. Efficient grace. Grants, benefices and Augustine ............ 5.3. “Stilus Curiae, Je dis la longueur qu’il faut.” The machinery of abuse, 1600–05 and 1607–12 ..................... 5.4. The unbearable lightness of networks ............................... Chapter Six The Brabant University. Academics and Reform 1607–17 ........................................................................................... 6.1. The configuration of a context ........................................... 6.2. Academics and reform ......................................................... 6.3. Friends of friends. The abbot, the academic, and the court physician ...................................................................... 6.4. “Se bene sono dotti, sono nondimeno inesperti e di poca prudenza.” The 1617 affair ......................................... 6.5. The performativity of power ...............................................

221 222 268

313

316 349 407 422

431 435 445 462 474 482

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Chapter Seven Rondo Veneziano. Academics and the Papal Prince (1612–22) ................................................................ 7.1. “Si portano male questi Lovaniesi e troppo si usurpano, mentre vogliono anco in casa d’altri mettere leggi.” The diplomatisation of academic interests, 1612–14 .............. 7.2. “Sono insolentissimi quei Lovaniesi.” Confronting the papal prince, 1615–16 .......................................................... 7.3. Daughter of Rome—again. Academics and the Holy Father, 1616–22 .....................................................................

544

Epitaph ................................................................................................

585

Conclusions ........................................................................................ “Cum causa voluntaria sit, non necessaria” ............................. “Quia illud representant, quod venerari et adhorari opportet” ..................................................................................... “Imagines non respui” ..................................................................

595 595 609 615

Bibliography ........................................................................................ List of Names .....................................................................................

625 669

487

490 521

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In a book that considers knowledge the result of a coalition and its author an actor in a chain of many other actors, a word of gratitude is more than appropriate. It was a privilege to walk for many years with people such as Jacobus Jansonius, Jacobus Baius, Peter Lombard or Roberto Bellarmino, as well as with cunning nuncios, princely ambassadors, ambitious Jesuits and blasphemous heretics. Together, they introduced me to the fascinating world of Early Modern Catholicism. I could write this book in comfortable circumstances, thanks to the support of the Scientific Research Foundation-Flanders and the Research Unit Early Modern History at the Catholic University of Louvain, the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome, the Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz, the Dipartimento di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea of the Sapienza University in Rome, and the Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Kirchengeschichte at the Westfälische WilhelmsUniversität Münster. Over the years, I have been welcomed warmly by the staff of the Academia Belgica in Rome during my many research visits to the Eternal City. It is, indeed, above all people who provide for a stimulating intellectual environment. This book is a thoroughly reworked version of a doctoral dissertation that I defended at Louvain under the supervision of Jan Roegiers, to whom I owe my training as a historian and whose views have deeply influenced this book. I’m also gravely indebted to Hilde De Ridder-Symoens (Ghent), who has never ceased to enrich my work with her critical remarks, to support and to encourage me. In addition, I greatly benefitted from the comments of the other members of the jury, Eddy Put (Louvain), Helga Robinson-Hammerstein (Dublin), and Paul Trio (Louvain). At various stages, I could count on the critical eyes of colleagues and friends. Individual chapters or sections have been scrutinised by Maarten Van Dijck and Vincent Viaene (Louvain), Andreea Badea and Ursula Paintner (Münster), Arnout Mertens (Florence), and Günther Wassilowsky (Linz). Martin Stone (Louvain) heroically went through the entire manuscript before it was submitted, despite his many occupations as a researcher, a teacher, and a father. Jürgen Miethke (Heidelberg) reviewed my manuscript proposal, patiently commented on later versions, and wisely (but in

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vain) warned me not to step into the pitfalls of perfectionism. I am also grateful to Marcella Mulder of Brill Academic Publishers (Leiden), for her angelic patience and for the smooth cooperation, and Juleen Eichinger, whom I thank for the Augean job of turning my baroque writings into proper English. The list of other colleagues I wish to thank is inevitably incomplete, but I will give it a try anyway. Stefan Bauer (Fribourg and Rome), Jan Bleyen (Louvain), Paolo Broggio (Rome), Hans Cools (Louvain), Anuschka De Coster (Ghent), Luc Duerloo (Antwerp), Maria Teresa Fattori (Pisa), Simona Feci (Rome), Bertrand Forclaz (Fribourg), Wim François (Louvain), Willem Frijhoff (Amsterdam), Marian Füssel (Göttingen), Jason Harris (Cork), Jyri Hasecker (Münster), Marc Jacobs (Brussels), Alexander Koller (Rome), Diederik Lanoye (Louvain), Thomas O’Connor (Maynooth), Jan Papy, Gert Partoens and Toon Quaghebeur (Louvain), Wolfgang Reinhard (Freiburg-i.-Breisgau), Judith Schepers (Münster), Katelijne Schiltz (Munich), Violet Soen and Werner Thomas (Louvain), Moritz Trebeljahr (Münster), Elena Valeri (Rome), Steven Vanden Broecke (Ghent), David Van Reybrouck (Brussels), Agnès Vatican (Lille), Federica Veratelli (Ferrara and Lille), Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Rome), Wim Weymans (New York), and Julia Zunckel (Genoa and Münster) drew my attention to untapped sources, generously shared their research experience, their insights, or their data with me, and/or challenged my presumed wisdoms during formal and less formal discussions. I never could have learned to master the arcane art of managing enormous amounts of data without the help of Annelies Cousserier, Jeroen Nilis, and Fred Truyen (Louvain). The staff of the University Archives at Louvain, notably Guido Cloet, merits my special thanks for its excellent services and the pleasant atmosphere I could work in for several years. I am also indebted to Franz-Xaver Brandmayr, the Rector of the Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome, and Gerrit Vanden Bosch, the archivist of the Archdiocesan Archives at Mechlin, for their kind permission to use pictures of the treasures under their guard. I carry warm memories of the endless discussions with Johan Ickx, the archivist of the Penitenzieria Apostolica and of the Santa Maria dell’Anima, and of his and his lovely family’s hospitality during my frequent visits to the Tombs of the Apostles. This book would never have been without the sympathy and the support of friends, many of whom already figure in the list above. Here, I wish to mention especially Maarten Van Dijck, my brother in arms for over a decade, who has closely followed the coming into

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existence of this book from the start. Among those not belonging to historical tribes, I wish to thank especially David, Julie, Peter, Nurçin, Cathérine, Alessia, Riccardo, Gérard, and Durgi for their friendship and their encouragement. Just as much as to my friends, it is impossible to express my gratitude to my family in a few lines, but I hope to make up for it in other ways. My father provided me with the refreshing comments of the interested layman as he went through the entire manuscript, and could always be counted on for the more prosaic jobs that come with finishing a book. I also wish to thank my grandmother, my brothers, and Rudi and Gus for their caring and their unremitting support. And then, of course, there is Veerle, my loving life companion, who has patiently supported me during my endless travails and who had to share me with the ghosts of “my” clergymen for more than four years. That this book is also hers is an understatement. Antwerp, 14 September 2009

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Maps Map 1. Diocesan Reform in the Netherlands, 1559–1570 ......... Map 2. The Archducal Netherlands in 1609: beneficial regimes ............................................................................................

11 100

Figures Fig. 1.1. Patterns of attendance: graduation lists Arts and Theology 1572/85–1619/20 .......................................................... Fig. 2.1. Types of ecclesiastical benefices filled in by Matthias Hovius 1601–20 ............................................................................. Fig. 2.2. Frequency of Hovius’ interventions on a yearly basis per category 1601–19 .................................................................... Fig. 2.3. Papal provisions 1592–1644 (Per Obitum series): Orbis Terrarum ............................................................................. Fig. 2.4. Papal provisions 1592–1644 (Per Obitum Series): Habsburg Netherlands and Liège ............................................... Fig. 2.5. Papal provisions (sample): type of benefices ................ Fig. 2.6. Papal provisions (sample): geographical distribution ..................................................................................... Fig. 2.7. The collegiate university: Louvain staff members 1598–1621 ....................................................................................... Fig. 3.1. Share of Licentiati Artium (1598–1621) figuring in the libri nominationum ................................................................ Fig. 3.2. Share of Graduates in Divinity (STB) figuring in the libri nominationum ....................................................................... Fig. 3.3. Yearly registrations of nominations (1580–1640) ....... Fig. 3.4. Faculty nominations vs. university nominations ......... Fig. 3.5. Faculty and university nominations: outcomes ........... Fig. 3.6. Acceptations: geographical distribution (dioceses) 1580–97 ........................................................................................... Fig. 3.7. Acceptations: geographical distribution (dioceses) 1598–1621 .......................................................................................

31 69 77 92 104 105 107 130 141 142 157 158 174 177 177

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list of illustrations

Fig. 3.8. Acceptations: geographical distribution (dioceses) 1622–40 ........................................................................................... Fig. 3.9. Acceptations: types of benefices (entire population) ... Fig. 3.10. Acceptations: types of benefices (staff members) ...... Fig. 4.1. Graduations in Divinity: Regulars vs. Seculars ............

177 182 186 290

Plates Plate 2.1. Pedagogy of the Pig ........................................................ Plate 2.2. Van Dale College ............................................................. Plate 3.1. Bull Gregory XIII In Praecelsa ...................................... Plate 3.2. Nomination Letter ........................................................... Plate 3.3. Act of Insinuation ........................................................... Plate 3.4. Act of Acceptation and Procuration ............................ Plate 4.1. Frontispiece of Augustine’s Opera Omnia .................. Plate 4.2. Funerary bust Franciscus Oranus ................................. Plate 4.3. Promotion List of the Arts Faculty, 1593 ................... Plate 5.1. Portrait Peter Lombard from Waterford, Archbishop of Armagh ................................................................. Plate 5.2. Clement VIII: engraving from Serry’s Historia Congregationum ............................................................................. Plate 6.1. Hallae Lovanienses .......................................................... Plate 6.2. Portrait Jacobus Jansonius from Amsterdam, Regius Professor of Scripture ................................................................... Plate 7.1. The Archdukes Albert of Austria and Isabella Clara Eugenia: copperplate ..................................................................... Plate 8.1. Funerary busts Lambertus and Aegidius Ursinus De Vivariis ............................................................................................ Titlepage 1. Frontispiece Privilegia Academiae Lovaniensi . . . concessa ........................................................................................... Titlepage 2. Bulla Clement VII ....................................................... Titlepage 3. Fragment of a Portrait of Jacobus Jansonius .........

129 129 137 160 171 201 226 260 281 323 380 457 466 512 587

1 219

PROLOGUE

University histories often start with jubilees. This book will end with one. On 8 September 1626, in the beginning of the academic year, the University of Louvain celebrated its bicentenary anniversary. In the collegiate church of Saint Peter’s, weighty men in long, black gowns, in the presence of the archbishop of Mechlin and the abbots of Heylissem and Villers, broke into a solemn Te Deum to thank the Almighty for his unremitting protection over the age-old studium generale. Immediately after Mass, divine intervention in the academic enterprise was secured by means of a stately procession for the Holy Sacrament. God did not abandon his academics during the next two weeks of opulent meals and virtuous orations. While the university town provided for the scenery of other processions, friars of religious orders that could claim an equally long and venerable history conducted masses for the respective faculties and student bodies.1 Additional bridges between heaven and earth were built by the Supreme Pontiff, His Holiness Pope Urban VIII, who had granted plenary indulgences to the Louvain churches at the occasion of the jubilee. To add to all this lustre, which culminated in the final procession of the jubileum cross on 22 September, the Louvain Jesuits had adorned the front of their college with more than 50 emblems, one of which was a chronogram proclaiming the Alma Mater CoLUMen beLgII e CoeLo ConCessa UnIVersItas LoVanIensIs—the pillar of Belgium, sent from heaven.2 The learned men had reasons to appreciate this enviable position in heaven and on earth. Only a few decades ago, the university had nearly collapsed, at the nadir of a devastating civil war that had held Catholic and Protestant Europe in its spell. By 1626, the academics felt up to their task again to fulfil the role they ascribed to their venerable corporation: to be a bastion of orthodoxy on the Catholic frontier against the heretics and a seminary for Church and State.3 By referring time and again to

1 Programme of the celebrations in Recueil de documents concernants l’histoire de l’université de Louvain, KBR, Manuscrits, 22192 A, 112r. 2 Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 297. 3 Belgium, Flanders, and the Netherlands will be used as a common denominator for the area covering the contemporary French region Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the

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their role in society, Louvain academics had been able to safeguard their interests in this dark century, interests that were legally worded in intimidating papal bulls and in solemn princely charters. The privileges of nomination to ecclesiastical benefices wielded by the university and by the Faculty of Arts were considered to be the jewels of academic privilege. At first sight, these privileges seem to involve merely the financial aspects of the academic enterprise. Granted respectively in 1483 and 1513 by Pope Sixtus IV and Pope Leo X, such privileges were legal translations of academic claims to a protected niche in the clerical job market. Academic prerogatives in the field did not only provide learned corporations with a job agency avant-lalettre, however. The income derived from ecclesiastical offices was also used as a means to finance studies and teaching for university members who, by virtue of their privileges, were not bound by canonical residence. Considering this, a book about the privileges of nomination could have become a study on university financing that probably would cover a much longer period than the roughly three decades (1588/98– 1621/25) that will pass review in this book. The benefice system and the academic stakes in it have hardly been touched upon by historians of the early modern period, in sharp contrast with the prolific scholarship on the subject by medievalists. Moreover, university financing in general has only recently attracted due attention. Together, the international conference on Finanzierung von Universität und Wissenschaft vom Vergangenheit zum Gegenwart in 2001 and Ronald Sluijter’s case study of the administration and financing of the University of Leiden (1575–1812) provide enough insights to legitimise another in-depth investigation into this aspect of university history. However, most studies tend to treat financing as a matter only of accountancy.4 Economic structures are believed to support academic life financially, nothing less and nothing more. It is not much of an Benelux Countries, and swathes of territory situated on the western fringes of Germany. Flanders (Fiandra, Flandes) is a pars pro toto name borrowed from the region’s culturally, economically, and politically most advanced constituence in the 15th century: the medieval County of Flanders, including the French-speaking Stewardships of Lille, Douai, and Orchies. In the text, “Flanders” as a county will be used only in contrast with other provinces (e.g., Brabant, Namur). For a map of the South (Archducal, Habsburg) Netherlands, the Principality of Liège, and adjacent territories of the Dutch Republic (the United Provinces), see p. 100. 4 Cf. the various contributions to Schwinges, Finanzierung von Universität und Wissenschaft, and my conference report in Nieuwsbrief Universiteitsgeschiedenis. Sluijter, Tot ciraet, vermeerderinge ende heerlyckmaeckinge der universiteyt.

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exaggeration to argue that this approach can ignore academics completely, except for the fact that the enterprises under investigation happen to be universities. In contrast, the exclusively legal approach to the Louvain privileges of nomination over a relatively long period (1483– 1573) that I developed at the onset of this research5 put academics on the stage as institutional players on the benefice landscape alongside other groups but left unresolved the question of how, in return, benefices affected academics. In line with insights gained through recent studies that investigate the world of “Big Science”6 today, the goal of this book is to demonstrate that the financing of universities does not merely support an academic core-business but indeed permeates it; that interests that we would categorise routinely as “material” prove to be less prosaic than assumed at first glance. This is not to say that abstract social forces, embodied in hard material interests, shaped intellectual and religious life in Louvain colleges and auditories: On ne saurait se contenter d’inverser les termes (l’infrastructure devenant la “cause” des idées), en supposant inchangé entre eux, le type de relation qu’a établi la pensée libérale lorsqu’elle accordait aux doctrines la manuduction de l’histoire. Il faut plutôt récuser l’isolement [my italicisation] de ces termes, et donc la possibilité de ramener une corrélation à un rapport de cause à conséquence.7

Clio being “a good, somewhat careless girl, always prepared to follow the last prince who seduced her,”8 historians have often apprenticed themselves to the social sciences. Doing so, they replaced the religious bias of historical agents with a secular bias.9 But the concerns of 17thcentury theologians and contemporary social scientists are not necessarily those of the historians. The central argument of this book is that the privileges of nomination to ecclesiastical benefices were a constitutive element of the way in which the learned men at Louvain identified themselves and organised an environment in which their identity, role, and interests could flourish. Academics did not think of their privileges as the legal translation of particular interests. For without these privileges, academics

5

Boute, “‘Regnum,’ ‘Sacerdotium’ en ‘Studium’.” For an introduction to the phenomenon, read Galison, “The Many Faces of Big Science.” 7 De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, 84. 8 Lepetit, “De l’échelle en histoire,” 71. 9 Gregory, “The Other Confessional History.” 6

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argued, the university would inevitably perish, churches would be deprived of learned and pious shepherds, and the Catholic frontier against the heretics would collapse. These seemingly hyperbolic statements will probably raise some smiles among this book’s readers. Many contemporaries must have smiled too. Academic claims in the field were often under fire until both the learned corporations of yore and the traditional clerical job market disappeared in the turmoil of the French Revolution. Nor did the appropriation of a primary role in the remarkable revival of Catholicism in both the North and the South Netherlands, by means of which academics hoped to legitimise their privileges, go unchallenged in the period under investigation. Jesuits, bishops, dynasties, curialists, and many others claimed the glory for this laudable enterprise too. This constatation is central to the research question of this book. The role of academics in society was apparently anything but evident for the contemporaries themselves. The historian cannot make it evident either by looking for an overarching explanation (or a bunch of them) of a sociological or culturalist bent without jeopardising the historicity of the phenomena being researched. But if invisible hands that defy time and context are to be banned from the historian’s analytical toolkit, explaining collective action may seem an impossible task. It is not, however. The protagonists of this story (humble academics, voracious curialists, great princes, ambitious Jesuits, benign pontiffs, and blasphemous heretics) were not paralysed by the slippery quality of the realities they worked with, judging by the self-confidence that resonated in academic memoranda or in papal decrees. Seen from this perspective, the most basic question that arises is one of credibility. In order to understand a phenomenon such as privileges that granted access to a particular niche in the clerical job market, we must explore how academics themselves managed to make obvious and credible claims about their role in society that, to put it mildly, sound slightly exaggerated. This problem of credibility applies to the academics themselves, their interests being the object of continuous negotiations, or even outward conflict, within the university; and also to the highest authorities in the realm and in Christianity. International historiography has paid a great deal of attention to the relationship between academics and power in the early modern period. Driven by the need for solid religious unanimity and for the human resources necessary to support it, the European centres of power, ecclesiastical or secular, Catholic or Protestant, never lost their

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interest in the centres of learning. General surveys on the relationship between the university and the emerging dynastic state rightly demonstrate the repeated intervention of the ruler in “his” universities, which in turn supplied jurists, theologians, and church ministers in an increasingly national or regional environment.10 Browsing through modern literature, one often gets the impression that the academics themselves hardly enter the picture, however. As one of the field’s heavyweights, Willem Frijhoff, recently pointed out,11 the whole evolution from medieval clerici vagantes to 18th-century Nationalgelehrte remains largely a story of passive university men adapting themselves from sheer necessity to the whims of princely policy. It is a history of “victims of their own success” deploring their lost autonomy and wallowing in outdated ceremonies that celebrated a glorious medieval past. This fits well into the general picture of universities in the early modern period as obsolete institutions that were out of step with intellectual innovations, a picture applauded by historians of the 19th and 20th centuries. “Until [well into the 1980s] it was generally thought that universities were in a sclerotic, even comatose condition in the early modern period, and that ‘the real life’ which the early modernists wished to study was therefore located elsewhere.”12 It does not help that universities in the Age of Galileo were involved in religious changes that to date are too easily associated with religious fanaticism, coercion, and shrinking horizons.13 Catholic universities such as Louvain are often situated on the wrong-side of our mental map, the “rich Roman life” being considered a pre-modern residual in the face of “modern” Protestantism.14 This reading of the history of early modern universities mirrors remarkably well contemporary recipes for

10 A survey in Hammerstein, “Relations with Authority,” and Stichweh, Der frühmoderne Staat und die Europäische Universität. For the reform of the Law faculties in France, see Julia and Revel, “Les étudiants et leurs études dans la France moderne,” Verger et al., Histoire des Universités en France, 113–25. With respect to Belgian and Dutch universities, see Jacobs, “Geleerdheid in opdracht,” 41–64. 11 Cf. Frijhoff, “l’Université à l’Epoque Moderne.” 12 Robinson-Hammerstein, “Recent Research,” 9. 13 Cf. Kaufmann, Universität und Lutherische Konfessionalisierung, 15, and the literature mentioned there. 14 It is telling that anthropologists in the second half of the 20th century, when increasingly barred from access to the primitive tribes in former colonies, privileged Mediterranean Europe as their favourite hunting ground. Lecture by Peter Burke, “History and Anthropology,” University of Leuven, 15 March 2004.

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the organisation of academic life. As a matter of fact, the contrast with the benefits of contemporary academic freedom, peer review, and the impressive performance of natural sciences is so humiliating for early modern university men that it reeks of Whiggery. During the last decades, historians have been more nuanced. Scholarship in political history has turned social and cultural, and it reveals that state-building in early modern Europe was not achieved primarily by coercion. Power is not just about sticks, but involves carrots as well, soft power being wielded via networks of clients with wide ramifications. Seen from this perspective, the following chapters may be read as a plea to add a chapter on academics to the book Power Elites and State Building edited by Wolfgang Reinhard,15 as Louvain dons, in spite of their carefully cultivated reputation as poor and disinterested clerics, prove to be difficult to distinguish from other elites sponging on the growth of state power. Also, if universities were not the avant-garde of humanism and the scientific revolution, they more often than not did provide the social, institutional, and mental frameworks that made these shifts possible, and scientific paradigm shifts, in return, were often smoothly integrated into academic curricula.16 If the impact of early modern academic research publications is anything but impressive, it is because universities were considered teaching institutions, which had to secure civility, not research centres. Finally, religious change, defined as a process of confessionalisation and disciplining monitored by religious and secular authorities, is no longer seen as a step backward in the history of western civilisation, triggering an unintended process of modernisation in Catholic and in Protestant Europe.17 During the last decade, the breadth of intellectual life in Catholic Europe has been attracting due attention.18 This is good, but it is not good enough, for two reasons. First, this presentation of things is still blurred by “presentism.” Biases are both inevitable and functional in our attempts to get a grip on a chaotic past.19 This does not mean, however, that historians should not get

15

Reinhard, “Power Elites, State Servants, Ruling Classes.” Cf. The survey in Porter, “The Scientific Revolution.” 17 Reinhard, “Was ist Katholische Konfessionalisierung?”; see also idem, Glaube und Macht. 18 Cf. Romano, La Contreréforme mathématique. 19 Read, by contrast, Behan McCullagh, “Bias in Historical Description.” McCullagh, and most historians including the sceptics, use another concept of reality. The 16

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their priorities right. Accounts of the past cease to be historical if the past continues to be reduced to a reflection of the present. Early modern politics based on personal relations managed by a hierarchical, monodimensional dynastic state are contrasted with the contemporary modern state as a multipurpose organisation regulated by abstract concepts such as Public Interest. The recent rehabilitation of academics’ supposedly poor scientific record in the early modern period is, in most cases, just that: a rehabilitation without any real reassessment.20 And the concept of modernisation contrasts modern societies with traditional ones. Religion was a prime mover in the teleological march towards modernity, but this “modernity” was still “incomplete” in the early 17th century. “In the mirror of the other, we have been seduced primarily by the self.”21 Second, this entails that that academics are ultimately still reduced to the role of exponents of something bigger, that they were still passive agents undergoing soft or hard state power, intellectual constraints or habitus, and religious change. This book is about academics “in action” when negotiating their identity, their role, their interests; when, in other words, they were participating actively in the production of society, the public realm, and truth. The contention that “the field of tension between the pursuit of autonomy and tutelage is one of the features of the history of universities”22 must be questioned. Academics were not confronted with absolutism or with papal universalism; they were more than just clients, brokers, and patrons; and they did not passively undergo tendencies of confessionalisation that supposedly kept them from walking more promising intellectual paths. They were, on the contrary, actively involved in shaping their world. In order to do so, university men developed tactics and strategies that were surprisingly modern. This, however, does not necessarily imply that Louvain dons were modern. It may also suggest that we have never been modern.23

possibility of combining bias with the existence of a reality out there will be one of the central themes of this book. 20 “En appauvrissant ainsi notre vision de l’université, nous nous privons de la possibilité de découvrir la richesse du passé qui est et demeure toujours irréductible aux exigences du present.” Frijhoff, “L’Université à l’Epoque Moderne,” 16. 21 Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, 11. 22 Jacobs, “Geleerdheid in opdracht,” 41. 23 Read Latour, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes.

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prologue

All of this calls for an in-depth analysis of academic policy and practices that can be managed only when researching a relatively short time span and, at this stage of research, one institution, although comparisons with the situation at other universities will be prolific. The period under investigation coincides more or less with the reign of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella (1596/98–1621/33), during which the South Netherlands, at that time officially ruled by sovereign princes, gradually recovered from civil war. The durable reintegration of the Habsburg dynasty in the political field of the Netherlands and the restoration of the old faith were the code-words of archducal rule. The revival of academic life at Louvain must be situated in this context. The university would go through a “Silver Age” in the first half of the 17th century that, to contemporary standards, was modest compared with its international standing before the Revolt. It nevertheless allowed academics to play a major role in the Catholic Netherlands; in Northern Catholicism as a whole, due to the foundation of colleges for the Irish and Dutch clergy; and in Christianity itself, through affiliation with a university of repute in doctrinal affairs. It is not my purpose to present this period as a turning point in which a medieval school of Christendom became an early modern institution of higher education in a confessionalised context. The re-emergence of the University of Louvain as the pillar of Belgium was the result of hard work in a process of trial and error, not of an ethereal Zeitgeist. A bird’s-eye view on the academic world is provided in the first part of this book, The Weight of the World. Much of the debris left by mainstream historiography in Church history will be collected in Chapter 1, “The Appeal of Logic,” which furnishes the reader with a vademecum to this book. It does not only provide the preliminaries to our story. Historiographical outlines on the history of Catholic renewal in the Low Countries and on the university’s role in it in the course of the 16th century are combined with an analysis of the methodological implications and the implicit understandings that underpin them. Two models will systematically be scrutinised: the so-called classical position, which in Belgian historiography was upgraded from the 1960s onwards with the help of the insights of Delumeau and Le Bras; and the paradigm of Confessionalisation. In this context, it will become more clear why the central research question of this book was privileged over other definitions of the problem. Academics did not have to reinvent the world all over again in the beginning of the 17th century. In order to spare themselves such a

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tiresome travail, and in order to keep their world predictable, they made considerable efforts to transfer their glorious past to an uncertain present. Meanwhile, the reader needs an introduction into the language in which academics worded their interests, which in this case was largely devised with the help of a legal and/or administrative discourse over ecclesiastical benefices. The first part of this book will provide the reader with an introduction into the benefice system in general and into the link between universities and the benefices in particular (chapter 2, “The Dross of the Earth”), as well as into the privileges of nomination (chapter 3, “The Jewels among Academic Privileges”). The benefice system has often been associated with abuse or dysfunctionality. Chapters 2 and 3 will not even make an attempt to nuance this view but will seek to get rid of it altogether by ditching the normative approaches that inform much of older (and not-so-old) scholarship. The first three chapters do not pretend to draw a general “context” that has to add to the reality (i.e., logic) of the phenomenon under investigation. True to their mission, they will add instead to the confusion and introduce a first conundrum: that the academics’ staunch attachment to their privileges of nomination cannot solely be accounted for by the need of university graduates to gain access to a highly volatile and fluctuating clerical job market. This constatation will lead to a series of alternative explanations that are addressed in the second part of this book, Assembling Academia. A long-lasting conflict that saw clerics competing with academic nominees for benefices in the neighbouring Principality of Liège will serve as the Leitmotiv of this part. The conflict was given a new dimension when, in 1598, the year of the cession of sovereignty over the Netherlands by Philip II to his daughter Isabella and her spouse Albert, a delegate of the university was sent to the Rome of Clement VIII in order to have the privileges of the university once and for all confirmed with apostolic authority. Some preliminaries are required, however, academics having been embroiled with Rome over benefices from 1588 onwards. Chapter 4 will furnish the reader with flashbacks into the decade between 1588 and 1597. This time interval provides us, moreover, with excellent opportunities to investigate identity politics deployed by academics, against their competitors for benefices but also in opposition to other groups that challenged the academics’ role in society. The “Roman Question” would involve not only princes and popes but also books, learned cardinals, curialists in search of benefices, and heavenly patrons who badly needed to be defended against

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erring Jesuit theologians blinded by hubris and private interests. In their Flemish province, the storm troopers of Catholicism would never manage to cover themselves with the honours and prerogatives of Academia. Jesuits will make their comeback in every single chapter. Chapter 4, “Flashbacks,” will unravel a specific conflict (1592–97) that sheds light on the formation of solid interest groups out of a loose conglomeration of scholars. Academic rituals were at the heart of the debates in this conflict. Exploring the performativity of ritual practices, chapter 4 will question received wisdom about rituals as symbolic practices and about the role of (academic) interests as a prime mover. It will reach conclusions that will, in return, inform the analysis of academic practices in general and the practice of privilege in particular in the following chapters. More work has to be done, however, because the ubiquitousness of social networks in early modern politics has lured many a historian into reifying them into a political system. The period 1598–1612 will be treated in Chapter 5, “The City of Grace. Academics at the Corte di Roma,” which focuses on the power of networks and the performativity of networking strategies in early modern decisionmaking. Because Grace and Piety also involved the hereafter, this chapter will inevitably delve into the theological debates of the day in Rome as well as in Belgium. In the archducal period, “reform” would become a versatile notion that offered, in the course of the visitation of the University of Louvain between 1607 and 1617, ample possibilities to strengthen the coalitions forged by the pédans descole with the realm of power. Chapter 6, “The Brabant University. Academics and Reform,” will build on the previous chapters in order to investigate a phenomenon that, especially in the context of the emergence of the dynastic state, has often been used all too readily by historians in search of explanations: power. The Visitatio of 1617 is generally considered in historiography as a milestone in the “relations between the university and the authorities,” because of its formal appearance as the first organic law on higher education in the South Netherlands issued by the state. By going backstage, however, this chapter reveals that the assemblage of power is much more complex than suggested by the tautological sleights of hand historians traditionally try to get away with. A major row between the Privy Council and the papal nuncio concerning the overlordship over the university, with the academics seemingly trapped in between the two parties, provides for a grand finale to this chapter.

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The apotheosis of chapter 6 paves the path for chapter 7. “Rondo Veneziano. Academics and the Papal Prince 1612–22” returns to the ongoing Roman Question about the privileges of nomination. This chapter portrays a typical constellation in which interests in the periphery collided with those of the Roman curia and its nominal head, the Supreme Pontiff. Rather than reifying such constellations into the causes of events, this chapter adopts the opposite viewpoint and investigates how such constellations were construed around specific stakes. The collapse of familiar explanatory schemes—rites as symbolic practices, micropolitical networks, power, and political constellations—does not necessarily lead to chaos, however. In this chapter, an arrangement that will satisfy even the most realist historians, despite all the confusion in the previous chapters, will emerge. Eventually, a clear configuration materialised in which academics became the obligatory passage point to Catholic and dynastic restoration in the Low Countries, and in which a clear cause (“Public Interest” and the grandezza of the Apostolic See) generated necessary and inevitable effects (the confirmation of the university’s privileges in 1616). In the course of the 1620s, we will leave the learned men of Louvain to their own devices again and will start to pull things together. “Talking benefices” implies talking about secular clerics; about Church Fathers, about grants, pastoral theologians, sacraments, and devotional practices; about efficient grace and heretics; about networks crossing the boundaries between poor scholars and powerful protectors in Brussels and Rome; about the fragile boundaries between Heaven and Earth; and about the fabric of Academia in its entirety. This book has been informed by developments in Science and Technology Studies. From the early 1980s onwards, scientific practice and technology, strongholds of modernity, were gradually submitted to anthropological scrutiny. If science can be defined in terms of collective action, the problem that is central to this research field, the relationship between knowledge and its context, provides for a workable diagnosis when transported into other research areas as well. This book draws heavily on the work of Bruno Latour, John Law, Michel Callon, and others, as well as on the epistemology and the historiographical travels of Michel De Certeau. The merger of Actor Network Theory and Certalian theoretical insights will prove to be highly instrumental in the carrying through of a programme in which early modern academics can become full-blown actors again who were capable of distilling a credible logic out of a chaotic world, and who could make that logic work.

PART ONE

The Weight of the World

Titlepage 2. Bulla or papal lead seal. The backside of the Bulla traditionally figures the name of the reigning Pope: Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici, 1523–34). [Catholic University of Louvain, University Archives]

CHAPTER ONE

THE APPEAL OF LOGIC

At the onset of this research, I wrote that “thanks to their societal position, academics had managed to pilot their medieval privileges, through the storm of Trent, into the early modern period,” when discussing the confirmation of the Louvain privileges of nomination by Pope Gregory XIII in 1573.1 There is, in spite of its candour, a lot in this assessment. It consists of a causal relationship; a range of factors that are being related to each other—society, academics, privileges, Trent—and a periodisation that determines the nature of these relations. Trent is believed to have caused a storm that demarcates early modern Catholicism from medieval Christianity. Academic privileges are introduced as an anachronism in a Tridentine Age, a residual of the Middle Ages that could nonetheless subsist due to political circumstances. Implicitly, this configuration rests on a strong opposition between religion and politics on the one hand, and on a concept of change in terms of diffusion on the other hand. In this diffusion model, the nature and the spread of religious change—identified by the popping up of new religious practices, cognitive systems, institutions, and so on and so forth throughout Europe and the world—are not problematic. Referring to the internal dynamics of the belief systems in question, in casu the Tridentine Spirit, will do. What has to be explained are the contingencies (social restraints or opportunities, mental frameworks, favourable or hostile political constellations, economic limits) that accelerate, deflect, distort, slow down, or undo the effects of religious renewal in specific circumstances, but that are fundamentally external to (religious) change and to the pervasive influence of Trent.2

1

Boute, “ ‘Regnum,’ ‘Sacerdotium’ en ‘Studium’,” 178. For a definition and a comparison with inertia in physics, read Latour, “The Powers of Association,” 266. 2

4

chapter one 1.1. The sirens of Trent. Academic interests and Catholic reform

The arrangements mentioned above constitute the operational premises underlying the so-called Classical Position in Church History.3 Its acclaimed father, the famous historian of the Council of Trent Hubert Jedin, linked in his essay “Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation?” two formerly partisan concepts with each other. While the older, pejorative notion of counter-reformation had to denominate the contingent reaction of the Church to the challenge of heresy, Catholic reform was endowed with more positive connotations, that is, “Die Selbstbesinnung der Kirche auf das katholische Lebensideal durch innere Erneuerung.”4 Authentic Catholic reform, which had to remedy the abuses of the medieval Church, and counter-reformation became something of an item when united in the papacy, Trent, and the Jesuit order. The following quotation is central to Jedin’s analysis: “In Trent it was established that the early modern Church would be a pastoral and missionary Church. This was a Revolution that can be considered as significant for the Catholic Church as the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo for the natural sciences.”5 Although historians can elaborate on the historical context (i.e., the threat of Protestantism) in which the Church rediscovered its essential mission, the fundamentals of this revolution are eventually beyond their grasp.6 A comparably structured message was conveyed, from a very different perspective, in the 1970s by the French historian Delumeau. Deeply inspired by the school of the Annales, he ditched the cliché of a corrupted Church whose abuses needed to be remedied as the ultimate cause of the Reform(ation). Instead, he introduced the symmetrical concept of Christianisation to describe religious change in both sides of the confessional divide, an evolution that can be traced back long before the rise of Protestantism but that intensified when, between the 16th and 18th centuries, superstition, ignorance about the fundamentals of Christendom, and basically pagan religious practices gradually

3

Read Chapter 2 of O’Malley, Trent and All That, 47–71. Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation?, 38. 5 Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation?, 59. 6 “Die Erneuerung der Kirche im Zeitalter des Konzils von Trient is . . . ein übernaturliches Geheimnis, dessen letzte Ursachen wir nicht vollständig zu durchdringen vermögen.” Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation?, 66. 4

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gave way to a more authentic Christianity both in Catholic and Protestant Europe.7 I have indulged in this short historiographical excursus for two reasons. First, the twin-concept Catholic Reform—counter-reformation combined with Delumeau’s insights have been moulding, to date, the bulk of Belgian historiography and remain influential elsewhere as well.8 A fair share of scholarship on the University of Louvain has to be situated in this tradition too. I have chosen to combine the following historiographical outlines with an impressionist introduction to Catholic renewal in the Low Countries from this perspective, even though this brings along the risk of doing some injustice to the works cited.9 Second, the examination of the concepts and the hermeneutical strategies deployed by historians in action is highly instructive. O’Malley pointed out in his inspiring essay on the renaming of Catholicism in the early modern era that students of the old faith are not particularly blessed, wrestling as they do with a wide range of labels which claim to characterise religious change and which inform, in return, their analysis. O’Malley’s own container concept—an early modern Catholicism sui generis—as well as Hsia’s related referent “Catholic renewal” indeed look good in titles for textbooks, general syntheses, or studies into the renaming of Catholicism.10 But they hardly satisfy in a book about academics and early modern Catholicism. That the classical position in Church history and the intellectual legacy of Delumeau continue to structure most of Belgian historiography on early modern Catholicism can easily be accounted for by applying the diffusion model to historiographical production itself and by defining, depending on one’s preferences, the context of scientific research either as an asset or as an obstacle. Jedin’s was a concept of Church history as a theological discipline, a subfield of religious

7

“Méconnaissance profonde de l’essentiel (my italicisation) du Christianisme, persistance parfois de cérémonies préchrétiennes et beaucoup plus souvent d’une mentalité paganisante: deux faces d’une même réalité intellectuelle et psychologique dans la France—et certainement dans l’Europe—du début de l’époque classique.” Delumeau, Le Christianisme entre Luther et Voltaire, 257. 8 A survey from a Jedinian point of view in Fühner, Die Kirchen- und die Antireformatorischen Politik, 40–42. 9 The reader may rightly suggest that I do little justice to Delumeau’s work by blending it with the Jedinian tradition. I am under the impression that this is exactly how most Belgian historians have read Delumeau, who proved to be highly absorbable by the classical position. 10 See also Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 7.

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sciences that was practiced, in the Germany of his days, behind the walls of theological faculties, and that had to integrate the history of the Church into a Heilsgeschichte.11 Most members of the small world of specialists in Belgium indeed used to dwell at the country’s Catholic universities. Faced with the dramatic downfall of traditional forms of mass Catholicism from the 1960s onwards, they found inspiration and reassurance in Delumeau’s work, while experiencing both hope and frustration in the wake of that other great reform council, Vatican II.12 Enter the socio-cultural reproduction of academic tribes via peer review, and the stability of the model is accounted for. For the tradition’s critics, all the elements seem to be present to indulge in what historians do best: deconstruction.13 1.1.1. “Que ceulx des Flandres se disoijent tant catholicques.” Catholic reform and counter-reformation in Belgium They should hold their horses, however, because the model works. Contemporaries such as the Jesuit Cornelius a Lapide could proclaim the Church of Mechlin in 1620 a paradigm for all churches of Christianity.14 This triumphalism reflected the spectacular revival of the Old Faith after the devastation of civil war. The cession of sovereignty over the Netherlands by Philip II to the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and to her spouse Albert15 was perceived by their contemporaries as a turning point in the misfortunes of the South, a prophesy that fulfilled itself, as things hardly could get worse. The armistice of 1607 with the Dutch rebels and the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–20) would constitute a key period in the economic and political recovery of the 11

O’Malley, Trent and All That, 58. “L’objet religieux (par exemple les prêtres, la pratique sacramentelle, la spiritualité) étant désormais traité en fonction d’une société (selon des critères communs à nous tous aujourd’hui, et non plus “religieux”), l’historien croyant ne peut plus que glisser subrepticement des convictions subjectives dans son étude scientifique. Ces motivations interviennent dans le choix de l’objet (relatif à un intérêt religieux) ou dans la finalité de l’étude (en fonction de préoccupations présentes, par exemple la déchristianisation et ses origines, la réalité du christianisme populaire, etc.).” De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, 173. 13 “Modern” deconstruction by “post-modern” historians in Daddow, “The Ideology of Apathy.” 14 Cited by Mols, “De seculiere clerus,” 372. 15 A lot of ink has already been spilled over the limits of archducal sovereignty in the wake of 19th-century nationalist historiography. An assessment blurred by “allnetherlandish” nostalgia in De Schepper, “Les archiducs et les institutions.” Refreshing insights in Valladares, “Decid adiòs a Flandes.” 12

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South Netherlands in the first half of the 17th century. But above all, the period of the Truce was a continuation of the Eighty Years’ War with other means. It had a serious impact on a religious and political culture fuelled by a mentality of confrontation with the Protestant North.16 Catholic restoration joined hands with an economic and political revanchism nurtured by urban elites that aimed at restoring the South’s traditionally dominant position in the Low Countries, a perspective that until the end of the 1620s was not unrealistic.17 The re-emerging high culture of the South was highly ideologised, and one of its most visible aspects was the vitalisation of the old faith that came with the broader Catholic reconquista in the Northern Rhine area and in Westphalia. Its lasting effects are echoed in Voltaire’s unflattering comments on the 18th-century Austrian Netherlands as “un vrai pays d’obédience, privé d’esprit, rempli de foi.” It is tempting to consider the “Rich Roman Life” of Belgian (and Dutch) Catholics until the 1960s just an exotic epilogue to this tradition of religious fervour. Visitors to the region from all over Europe did so in the 19th century, when revelling in or taking offence at the exuberant displays of baroque piety in a region “où le Pape est Pape comme il l’est dans aucune autre contrée de l’Europe.”18 It is not surprising, in this context, that the reign of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella was considered “la plus brillante que le catholicisme ait vécue en Belgique avant 1830” by Catholic historians19 and the triumph of superstitious and intolerant bigotry by their anti-clerical colleagues.20 Historians may fret over the question of whether or not the Archdukes’ sovereignty remained in limbo after the cession of 1598, but all agree that the new rulers’ personal impact in the renewal of religious life was considerable. Older literature on the Catholic side portrays the Archdukes as models of devotion and piety. Under their auspices, traditional forms of piety such as processions and pilgrimages

16

This implied identification with the Seventeen Provinces of yore, which were to be restored under Spanish overlordship. Read Andriessen, Jezuïeten en het samenhorigheidsbesef. 17 Outlines and literature in Israel, The Dutch Republic, 410–20. 18 The words of the Catholic leader Barthélémy Dumortier, in his letter (Tournai, 5 January 1865), to Cardinal Antonelli, as quoted in Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 11. This book not only provides an excellent study in international politics in the 19th century but also dedicates a lot of attention to the specificities of Catholic Revival in a comparative perspective. 19 De Moreau, Histoire de l’Eglise en Belgique, 5, 7. 20 Put, “Les Archiducs et la réforme catholique,” 255.

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were rekindled, via their personal participation or otherwise. Scholars have good reasons to ascribe the monastic revival in the cities and towns of the South to the Archdukes’ interventions with reluctant town magistrates who balked at footing the bill for all this religious fervour, or to their own financial support to new foundations.21 The installation of the nunciature of Flanders in 1596, when the prestige of the court of Brussels was beefed up by the presence of royal princes, visualised and guaranteed the cordial relationship between the Holy See and its obedient son and daughter in the Netherlands. This, as well as the Archdukes’ protectorship over Catholics in an overwhelmingly Protestant Northern Europe, made them, alongside Ernest of Bavaria and Sigismond of Poland, cornerstones of Roman missionary strategies in the North Sea area.22 Recent scholarship has abandoned classical eulogies by putting the limits to the Archdukes’ commitment to Catholic reform in the limelight. They flinched, for instance, from curbing the rights of patronage of nobles, abbeys, and chapters in favour of bishops who tried to enhance their control over the recruitment of the parish clergy; balked at shouldering unconditionally the jurisdictional claims of the episcopate against the age-old competences of secular tribunals in ecclesiastical affairs; and did not abolish the privileges and exemptions of recalcitrant collegiate chapters that tried to escape the bishops’ disciplinary control.23 Their financial support was ill-managed, inclined as they were to subsidise conspicuous projects of the religious orders rather than to remedy the material needs of the newly erected diocesan seminaries. In other words, “ils n’ont pas précipité des solutions structurelles aux problèmes essentielles de l’église,”24 shouldering as they did a Catholicism of a Mediterranean bent.25 Seen from this perspective, the Archdukes are to be applauded primarily for having recruited the real champions of Catholic reform after the Jedinian paradigm: the bishops.

21 Data in Pasture, La restauration religieuse; Elias, Kerk en Staat; De Moreau, Histoire de l’Eglise en Belgique, 5. 22 Cf. Arblaster, “The Archdukes and the Northern Counter Reformation.” 23 A survey of the recurrent conflicts between bishops and collegiate or cathedral chapters that refused to be reformed (and dishonoured) by such zelanti in Pasture, La réforme des chapitres séculiers. 24 Put, “Les archiducs et la réforme catholique,” 263. Compare Gaulard, “La politique religieuse des Archiducs.” 25 Lottin, Lille, 315.

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That historians attending the classical school were “biologised” by the activities of the Belgian episcopate in the first half of the 17th century, should not come as a surprise. Until the second half of the 16th century, the battle against heresy had largely been conducted by princely councils and by an embryonic Netherlandish inquisition.26 From the 1550s onwards, however, a configuration emerged in which the Tridentine, Borromean bishop could flourish. The Tridentine decrees had already been introduced in the Netherlands and the other constituencies of the global Spanish Monarchy by the end of the 1560s.27 Their implementation had been stalled by the civil war, but became, alongside an anti-Protestant paranoia that would persist until deep in the 18th century,28 a Leitmotiv of Catholic reform again immediately after the Reconciliation of the obedient provinces. Contrary to the situation in the other large, compact territories of the Empire, the originally state-led, pre-Tridentine institutional model of reform29 would, in the Netherlands, merge to a great extent with the RomanTridentine model.30 Bishops were elected not by cathedral chapters but by the prince and his Privy Council in Brussels, in line with the course of things in France and Spain.31 The prince’s competence in the field had been legally sanctioned in the 16th century, when members of the Privy Council had drafted a thorough reorganisation of the Belgian Church, the scale of which was unprecedented in Catholic Europe.32 The bull Super Universas of 1559 substituted the six-odd medieval dioceses of the Low Countries with three new ecclesiastical provinces more or less corresponding with the Habsburg Seventeen Provinces, bar the duchy of Luxemburg—Mechlin, Cambrai, and the ephemeral 26 A good guide for the institutions of the Habsburg Netherlands in Aerts, Les institutions du gouvernement central. Outlines in Goosens, Les inquisitions. 27 Details in Willocx, L’introduction. See also Ignasi Fernàndez, Felipe II y el clero secular. 28 Quaghebeur, De concursus in het aartsbisdom Mechelen, 86–88. 29 Outlines in Fühner, Die Kirchen- und die antireformatorische Religionspolitik. 30 Compare definitions and parameters in Ziegler, “Typen der Konfessionalisierung,” among which Jesuit involvement, Tridentine profile (Tridentinisch-Römischen Typ vs. Konservativ-Reichskirchlich-deutschen Typ), princely model versus episcopal model, the vicinity of other confessions in neighbouring states, and the politics of tolerance resulting from it, the geographical morphology of political entities. 31 Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne, 46–47. More on the procedures in Passchyn, Het episcopaat, 4–6; for the procedures in Rome, see Jadin, “Procès d’information.” 32 The seven new dioceses erected in Spain (Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne, 20) were inspired by the same zeal for religious “reform” displayed by the monarch but cannot be compared with the overall reorganisation of the dioceses in the Netherlands. Domínguez Ortiz, La sociedad española, 2, 18. On previous attempts to “nationalise” the ecclesiastical infrastructure, see Pasture, La restauration religieuse, 117.

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archdiocese of Utrecht. Each of these was constituted by five to seven relatively small suffragan dioceses that were designed for a thorough reshaping of religious life.33 The inflation of episcopal sees after the 1560s,34 the fact that none of them could call on significant temporal power, the official requirement of academic degrees in law or theology, the relatively poor remuneration of several episcopal mensae in the new dioceses,35 and a devastated infrastructure that had to be rebuilt from scratch36—all this apparently did not make the job very attractive for the high nobility at the end of the 16th century.37 Grands seigneurs, after a “democratic” interval during the reign of Philip II, were increasingly able to close the confessional gap with their university-trained competitors and gained gradually more ground during the reign of the Archdukes.38 But in the highly urbanised South Netherlands, where the position of the nobility was relatively weak, episcopal sees were, compared to France and, above all, the Empire, never a reserve of the nobility.39

33 Mechlin: Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, Mechlin, Roermond, ‘s Hertogenbosch, Ypres; Cambrai: Arras (the same circumscription as the medieval diocese), Cambrai, Namur, Saint-Omer, Tournai; Utrecht: Deventer, Groningen, Haarlem, Leeuwarden, Utrecht. Van Ysacker, “Bilancio storiografico.” Several attempts were made, in the period under investigation, to establish a new diocese in Luxemburg to compensate for the loss of princely patronage over the northern dioceses. “J’aij aussij refere a sa sainctete le pieulx desir de V.AA. serenissimes de faire eriger au district de la duche de Luxembourgh un nouveau evesche representent en icelle la perte de la metropolitaine d’Utrecq, et de 5 eglises suffragains . . . quoij entendu sa sainctete pesoit beaucoup les difficultez, signamment ij estant interessees un archevesque de Treves, et ung evesque le Liege, et daultre constel oultre Rheins les eglises de Mets et Verdun.” d’Ortembergh, archducal resident in Rome, to the Archdukes, Négociations de Rome, 1608, AGR, Audience, 443. Albert was no Philip, however. Compare Dandelet, Spanish Rome. 34 Cf. the sour comment of Cardinal Granvelle, himself a grand seigneur, back in the 1550s, in Postma, “Nieuw licht op een oude zaak.” The standard work is Dierickx, De oprichting der nieuwe bisdommen. 35 “Generalmente son povere le chiese predette levatane quella di Cambrai, ch’è di fondazione antichissima e nobilissima. Le chiese di Tornai, e d’Arras sono anch’esse dotate assai nobilmente per esser l’una, e l’altra parimente di fondatione molto antica.” Bentivoglio, nuncio of Flanders, to Borghese, Secretary of State, Relatione di Fiandra, 6 April 1613, ASV, Fondo Borghese, I, 269–272, 61r. Cf. Mols, “De seculiere clerus,” 369. 36 A case study of these efforts in Put, “Al de mannen van de aartsbisschop.” 37 The difficult circumstances in which Matthias Hovius, archbishop of Mechlin (1597–1620), was appointed are very instructive in this respect. Harline and Put, A Bishop’s Tale. 38 Cf. Deregnaucourt, “Diocèses et évêques.” “Dass der weitverzweigte Adel lange Zeit sich der Konfessionellen Abgrenzung entzog, ist ja bekannt.” Ziegler, “Typen der Konfessionalisierung,” 417. It remains unclear to which extent this assessment applies to the nobility of the Low Countries. 39 Cf. Reinhard, “Kirche als Mobilitätskanal.” The situation in France (Bergin, “Pour avoir un évêque à son souhait”) is less accentuated, but the old nobility remained

the appeal of logic 1559

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1570 Groningen Leeuwarden

Haarlem

Utrecht

Utrecht

R.

Middleburg Antwerp St. Ypres Omer

Tournai Liège Arras Cambrai

Den Bosch

Roermond L

Ghent

Bruges Thérouanne

Deventer

R. R.

Mechlin Tournai

Namur

Liège

Arras Cambrai

Map 1. Diocesan Reform in the Netherlands, 1559–1570 (L. = Liège; R. = Roermond)

Meanwhile, a series of bishops of more modest extraction, who could not invoke a noble pedigree to legitimise their position, had set the tone by transforming the previously aristocratic Church of the Netherlands into a Church of and for poor, learned, and pious men who drew largely on Trent and the Borromean model to frame their actions. In this context, it is not surprising to learn that historians and their students who dedicated several biographies to the Belgian episcopate in the early modern period were lured into creating an ideal-type that served as a yardstick against which the protagonists of their stories were measured. The 17th-century bishop in the Netherlands has to live up to a lot of expectations in historiography. Most of them did, in spite of deplorable circumstances dictated by financial, social, or political restraints. The dwindling of crypto-Protestantism, which remained a reality in the South Netherlands for another two generations after Reconciliation, is an important parameter for their successes, but not the only one.40 dominant until the emergence of an “episcopal nobility” framed by merit in the course of the 18th century. In Spain, the majority of mitres still was hauled in by the nobility, but commoners were not at all barred from the episcopal dignity. Domínguez Ortiz, La sociedad española, 2, 18. For the situation in Italy, see Greco, La Chiesa in Italia, 29 sqq. 40 Under the Archdukes, the point of gravity in the repression of heresy had shifted definitively to the bishops. De Brouwer, De kerkelijke rechtspraak, 93–118, and Goosens, Les inquisitions, 137–72. Despite the lukewarm support of the secular authorities

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In order to measure the distance between le préscrit and le vécu, historians have dedicated a lot of attention to Catholic reform on the field. This implied a reconstruction of the circumstances in which a diocesan infrastructure emerged in the centre and on the periphery of the dioceses.41 Trent being a text written by and for bishops in the first place, it offered many suitable instruments to organise and coordinate a Catholic offensive at all levels.42 Beyond the level of the dioceses, provincial councils of the archbishops and their respective suffragan bishops figure in many scholarly works as crucibles in the re-Catholisation of the South Netherlands until 1607, when the last assembly of this type was celebrated in Mechlin.43 The Third Council of Mechlin (1607) and the Second Council of Cambrai (1586) attracted the due attention of historians because they provided, among other things, a framework for the erection of diocesan seminaries (Mechlin) and a provincial college at the University of Douai (Cambrai) dedicated to the training of poor clerics44—and this, several decades before the Tridentine decree Cum Adolescentium Aetas was implemented in most other regions of Catholic Europe. Until the end of the 17th century, however, the diocesan seminaries remained rather modest institutions that did not necessarily host a theologicum, and if they did, it was only organised after 1620.45 The restraints on the bishop’s control over the nomination of decent pastors for his parishes, as well as the opportunities provided

to the execution of the anti-heresy placard of 1609, the bishop of Antwerp felt in the early 1630s that the immediate threat posed by heresy was over. 41 Cf. Put, “Al de mannen van de aartsbisschop,” on the difficult circumstances in which Matthias Hovius managed to mobilise human capital for the good cause. 42 Definitions and frames in Lefebvre and Pacaut, L’Epoque Moderne. 43 The Third Council of Mechlin, which was to be convoked in 1578, was suspended by the civil war and the expulsion of the Catholic clergy by Calvinist city councils. After 1607, these assemblies were replaced by informal episcopal congregations. Cf. De Moreau, Histoire de l’Eglise en Belgique, 5, 293. 44 For Cambrai, see Deregnaucourt, De Fénelon à la révolution; the diocesan seminaries of Mechelen, Ghent, and Bruges are the theme of Roegiers, De oprichting en de beginjaren, Laenen, Geschiedenis van het seminarie van Mechelen, and the diocesan syntheses edited by Cloet. 45 More promising or wealthier students still attended the theological schools of the university, with or without grants financed by their diocesan superiors. The bishop of Ghent, Triest, even abolished his diocesan seminary and sent his students to the university instead. Cf. Roegiers, De Oprichting en de beginjaren, 110–13. On the upgrading of the diocesan seminaries to institutions that had to compete with the theological faculties by the end of the 17th century, read Leplae, Betwistingen rond benoemingen.

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by Trent to enhance his authority, were explored in a recent study on the irritatingly slow introduction of the concursus in the archdiocese of Mechlin.46 This study ties up with an old scholarly tradition in which the benefice system is a sitting target, curtailing, as it did, the bishops’ room to manoeuvre in order to recruit and appoint the diocesan clergy. Generally, however, historians are very appreciative of the successes of the episcopate in the course of the 17th century in the disciplining of an unruly bunch of clerics into spiritual and moral models for the flock. The standard rector of a parish in the 18th century appears more decently formed, better spiritually equipped (and proportionally duller) than his colourful predecessors of the 17th century, the result of a process of “clericalisation of the clergy” into a homogeneous group distinct from the laity in the Siècle des âmes. This was not only the result of better schooling and recruitment. Rectors of parishes were not left to their devices upon their entrance in the vineyard of the Lord. They were assisted and supervised in their tasks—the administration of the sacraments, the foundation and supervision of confraternities in their respective parishes, the teaching of the Catechism, the decoration of the church, and above all the setting of a moral example—by the deacons of Christianity, who from the beginning of the 17th century onwards functioned as the ears and the eyes of the bishop, as the “pivots de la restauration religieuse locale,” and as the spiritual guides of the rectors.47 Historians have at great length scrutinised the impressive source material assembled by the deacons of Christianity during visitations of parishes, a practice that was established early in Belgium.48 It is especially in this area that the influence of Delumeau and Le Bras (the founding father of the sociology of religions), can be detected. The interest in the church practice of the laity resonates in the many studies into the local realities of Catholic reform in the deaneries that, while still involving qualitative analysis, largely draw on quantitative data concerning mass attendance, attendance at dominical schools, and the observance of directives of the Church. The results of this research have not only informed the syntheses on the history of the

46 Cf. Quaghebeur, “Le concours diocésain,” and the more elaborate version of this article in idem, De concursus in het aartsbisdom Mechelen. 47 Pasture, La restauration religieuse, 122–23 and 204. 48 An inventory of sources and a complete bibliography in Cloet, Repertorium van dekanale visitatieverslagen.

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respective dioceses;49 they have also allowed detection of the different rhythms in the christianisation of, respectively, cities and countryside. In rural areas, phenomena linked with Catholic reform—disciplining of the clergy, dominical schools, confraternities, regular Sunday masses—could only be observed two decades or more after they had been introduced in the cities, that is, from the beginning of the Twelve Year’s Truce (1609–21) onwards.50 More recently, Le Bras’ sociological approach was also applied to studies into clerical populations inspired by international, mostly French, historiography.51 Prosopographical research has shed an interesting light on the largely urban and upper middle-class origins, the formation, and the career patterns of the pastors of the diocese of Ghent in the 17th century. It has revealed the relatively high proportion in 1700 of clerics, secular and regular, in the overall population of the diocese’s cities, as opposed to the situation in the countryside, where the infrastructure furnished by the benefice system was less prolific,52 and compared to the calculations for the archdiocese of Cambrai and for dioceses in France.53 These numbers cannot, of course, be extrapolated to the early 17th century, let alone to the decades preceding the Truce, but the clerical presence in a counter-reformatory bulwark such as Lille was already very substantial in 1600.54

49

Cloet, Het bisdom Brugge and Het bisdom Gent. His volume on the archdiocese of Mechlin is forthcoming. 50 Cf. Marinus, “Une Contre-Réforme à deux vitesses,” alongside other contributions to idem, La Christianisation des campagnes. 51 See, for instance, Tackett, “L’histoire sociale du clergé”; idem, Priest and Parish; Ferté, La vie réligieuse; Deregnaucourt, De Fénélon à la Révolution; Julia, “L’éducation des ecclésiastiques.” An impressive amount of scholarship exists for other countries as well: Sánchez González, “El clero rural”; Lazzaretti, “La figura del curato”; Comerford, “Italian Tridentine Seminars.” Other confessions: Barrie-Curien, “Clerical Recruitment,” and Van Rooden, “Van geestelijke stand naar beroepsgroep.” 52 Cf. Vanden Broecke, Rekrutering en carrièrepatroon. These proportions are higher than in France but correspond well with the data on Spain. The kingdom of Castile boasted one (secular or regular) cleric for every 89 inhabitants in 1591, 63 in 1768, and 73 in 1797. Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne, 25. 53 In the cities of Ghent, Oudenaarde, and Dendermonde, the clergy constituted respectively 12 per cent, 21 per cent, and even 23 per cent of the active population, while numbers in the countryside seldomly exceeded c.1 per cent (of the overall population). Vanden Broecke, Rekrutering en carrièrepatroon, 29–30. The high level of urbanisation in the core-area of the Southern Netherlands (Flanders and Brabant) should, of course, be taken into account. Compare with the 1 ecclesiastic for 60 to 74 inhabitants in the less urbanised archdiocese of Cambrai by 1716 (cities and countryside); which corresponds with the triplicate of 1 ecclesiastic for 215 inhabitants in France. Deregnaucourt, De Fénélon à la révolution, 62. 54 Lottin estimates that c.350 secular clerics lived in Lille in 1600 alongside 400

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Other groups that are considered more peripheral to Catholic reform remain underrepresented in scholarship. The deafening silence in recent literature on the rich world of the collegiate chapters in the early modern period is striking. Compared to “la France des 600 chapitres” and the 120 collegiate and 60 cathedral chapters in Spain,55 the Habsburg Netherlands and the neighbouring prince-bishopric of Liège proved to be a particularly fertile soil for canons, hosting respectively 78 and c.40 collegiate chapters, alongside the 12 cathedral chapters of the ecclesiastical provinces of Cambrai and Mechlin and the prestigious chapter attached to the cathedral of Saint-Lambert of Liège, the largest body of its kind in the Holy Roman Empire.56 L’on se prend à rêver devant cette plethora de chanoines et de bénéficiers alors qu’au début du XVIIe siècle, les évêchés des Pays-Bas souffraient, durement, du manqué de prêtres: on peut être étonné, à juste titre, que l’on n’ait pas songé, en ce moment, à supprimer les chapitres collégiaux pour utiliser les chanoines et les chapelains dans le ministère paroissial.57

This assessment sums up nicely why historians agreed, until recently, that religious renewal has to be sought elsewhere: in the daily struggle of bishops, deacons of Christianity, and pastors, to christianise the flock. In this enterprise, the venerable colleges of canons figure quasi exclusively as troublemakers who challenged, with reference to medieval privileges and exemptions, the authority of Tridentine bishops.58 Jedin’s image of a monolithic Tridentine Church of popes, bishops, new religious orders, and parish priests59 was substantially altered from within in another important research area. This has to be situated on the crossroads of Catholic reform, of theology, of the history of education, and last but not least of Church-State relations—another hobby-horse of Belgian Church historians that is deeply rooted in the confessional struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries.60 Alongside Borromean bishops and vigilant priests, Jesuits were, when compared

regulars, out of a population of c.32.000 (1 ecclesiastic for 50 inhabitants). Lottin, Lille, 85 and 117. 55 Loupès, Chapitres et chanoines; Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne, 21. 56 A list of the collegiate chapters in Pasture, Les chapitres séculiers, 23–69. 57 Pasture, La réforme des chapitres séculiers, 5. Cf. idem, La restauration réligieuse, 210. See also Put, “Les archiducs et la réforme catholique,” 263, and idem, “Matthias Hovius,” 132–33. 58 Cf. Mols, “De seculiere clerus,” 381–82. 59 Cf. O’Malley, Trent and All That, 69–71. 60 The standard work here is Elias, Kerk en staat.

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with their effectives in the order’s other provinces, indeed omnipresent in the Habsburg Netherlands, where they enjoyed substantial princely support.61 Antwerp was second only to Rome as a Jesuit hub in early modern Europe, and by 1643 the Provincia Flandro-Belgica hosted the densest network of Jesuit houses on the continent.62 In the highly urbanised South Netherlands, the “monastic invasion” of new and old orders in the beginning of the 17th century63 capitalised upon an educational offensive shouldered by princes and staunchly Catholic urban elites who considered education as the answer to the seeds of heresy: ignorance and lack of discipline. In a surprisingly short period, an educational network materialised that was largely dominated by the Jesuits and the Augustinians, and that simultaneously provided the infrastructure for the orders’ impressive pastoral activities.64 The papacy, for its part, was represented by the nunciature of Flanders, which also co-ordinated the missionary activities of Jesuits and secular clerics in the Holland Mission, and which was recently labelled by historians as a “reform nunciature.”65

61 In 1600, only four Jesuit provinces (Castilia, Portugal, Rome, and Toledo) out of 23 counted more members than the Belgian province (UAL, Ghent (not registered), 449). After Poncelet’s dated and rather parochial Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, the history of the “Jesuit Low Countries” still awaits a thorough reassessment. But the order’s exceptional and unprecedented expansion (Put and Wijnants, Les jésuites) in Belgium speaks for itself: In 1588, the order counted 157 members; in 1600, 482 of them (or c.6 per cent of the c.8500 Jesuits scattered around the globe) manned 16 colleges (UAL, Ghent (not registered), 449). In 1611, the Belgian Province counted 959 Jesuits and was split in 1612 into a Provincia Flandro-Belgica (801 members in 1626) and a Provincia Gallo-Belgica (773 members in 1626), the first of which reached its peak with 867 members in 1643. Labbeke, De recrutering, 198–200, and De Moreau, Histoire de l’Eglise en Belgique, 5, 373. In 1640, the Jesuits had 43 residences in the Belgian provinces. Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 415. 62 Cf. Put and Wijnants, Les jésuites, 23. 63 Monographs on Catholic reform in the cities offer telling examples of a monastic tide that, after having been supported by local as well as central elites, gradually met with increasing opposition. See Lottin, Lille, and Marinus, De Contrareformatie te Antwerpen. 64 In the period in between 1585 and 1633, 64 colleges for the humanities were founded, most of them in the period of the Truce when intermediary and smaller towns sought to imitate the educational policies of the big cities. With respect to the total number of colleges, Jesuits took the lead (32), followed by the Augustinians (21), the Recollects (12), the Oratorians (7), and other orders (Dominicans, Premonstratensians, Carmelites). Cf. Leyder, “L’éclosion scolaire.” On the strong position of the Augustinians in Belgium, read Neveu, “Pour une histoire de l’augustinianisme,” 180. 65 Scholarship on the nunciature of Flanders deals with the papal nuncios as protagonists in the history of Jansenism and/or can be situated in historiography on the

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This does not imply, however, that Catholic reform was the enterprise of a unified, solid block after a Jedinian recipe.66 In fact, different models of Catholic reform co-existed, collided with each other, and threatened to undermine the entire Tridentine enterprise. Alongside the backstage stories of fierce competition between Jesuits, Augustinians, other orders and the secular clergy in the field of secondary education,67 the history of Jansenism, which in its early stages was a quasi exclusively Franco-Belgian affair, figures as an anything but edifying case in point in recent Belgian historiography. Ceyssens and his students have gradually uncovered the fields of tensions and the stakes behind the conflicts over divine Grace and Free Will, dogmatic debates that gradually extended to the field of moral theology, pastoral and sacramental practices, and ecclesiology.68 In the Jansenist controversies of the second half of the 17th century, divisions within the Catholic front that had been festering since Trent were brought to the surface.69 Within the classical tradition, this constatation leads inevitably to the question of whether or not Jansenism was an impediment to Catholic reform. Ceyssens’ assessment that anti-Jansenism was anterior to Jansenism, and that Jansenism was not a movement but a phantom created by its opponents,70 has become a commonplace in recent literature, much of which is underpinned by a strong dichotomy between pure religion (or knowledge) and society (or power). The offensive launched by the Jesuits in 1640 against the Augustinus of Cornelius Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, did not address the only question that the historians attending Ceyssens’ school have deemed pertinent: the question relationship between Church and State. A reassessment in Wauters, “Een labiel evenwicht.” The introductions to the editions and regests of the nunciature’s correspondence with the Secretariat of State in the series Analecta Vaticano-Belgica contain a lot of primary data on the Flemish nuncios and, from 1633 onwards, internuncios. A state of the art under the pontificate of Paul V (1605–21) in Boute, “‘Que ceulx de Flandres se disoijent tant Catholicques’.” A framework in Giordano, “Aspetti di politica ecclesiastica e riforma religiosa.” 66 Roegiers, “Jansenisme en katholieke hervorming,” 50. 67 Leyder, “L’Eclosion scolaire,” 1032 sqq. 68 In the 18th century, Jansenism would become an international phenomenon. A crystal-clear anatomy of the different phases in the history of Jansenism in Roegiers, “Van Unigenitus (1713) tot Mirari Vos (1832).” 69 Roegiers, “Jansenisme en katholieke hervorming,” 47. 70 Cf. Ceyssens, “Que penser finalement de l’histoire du Jansénisme et de l’antijansénisme?”

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of whether or not the former Louvain divine had interpreted correctly the Doctor of Grace. The goal of the Jesuit offensive was to discredit Augustinianism itself, and to substitute this age-old Christian tradition and corresponding pastoral models, which accentuated the importance of divine Grace for salvation, by Molinism, a more optimistic Christian anthropology that focused on Free Will and that had only narrowly escaped, due to political circumstances, condemnation in the Roman congregations de auxiliis divinae gratiae (1598–1607).71 Jesuit agitation against competing theological schools gained momentum when it was recuperated by curialists seeking to stage the Supreme Pontiffs as the ultimate initiators of religious renewal standing above the Council of Trent and the bishops. In contrast, proto- and early Jansenism has been connoted by French and Belgian historians with the development of a théologie de l’épiscopat, heralded by Trent and embodied by the (Belgian) episcopate in the first half of the 17th century.72 This ecclesiological tradition ascribed a central role in Church reform to the Borromean bishop, with the Apostolic See of Rome figuring as a primus inter pares, nothing less, but nothing more. Because of the opposition of (a minority of ) Belgian bishops against the first Roman condemnations, and because the soi-disant jansénistes tried to involve the secular authorities,73 “Jansenism” eventually became a versatile cover behind which to pick fresh fights over the implications of papal primacy or to renegotiate the feeble boundaries between Church and State in the Low Countries, in France, and, from the 18th century onwards, in other areas of Catholic Europe. These premises allow for an unequivocal answer to the inevitable question of whether “Jansenism” was an impediment to religious renewal or, in the opposite case, whether Roman interventions and Jesuit mobilisation had jeopardised Catholic reform.74 This problem has been tackled by the contrasting of the remarkable successes on the field ascribed to the Belgian episcopate, and the reportedly poor Tridentine record of a papacy that placed itself above the Council’s 71

The basics in Stella, “Augustinisme et orthodoxie,” 170–72. See p. 375–90. This attempt to make Jansenists or their predecessors toe the bishops’ line is not evident. “Dans leur très grande majorité, les évêques des Pays-Bas catholiques furent antijansénistes . . . la pluspart s’inscrivaient résolument dans la stratégie et l’ecclésiologie romaines et hispano-tridentines dont les jésuites étaient les plus actifs soutiens.” Deregnaucourt, “Diocèses et évêques,” 239. 73 More on this in Willaert, “Le placet royal.” 74 This is the central question addressed in Roegiers, “Jansenisme en katholieke hervorming.” 72

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sacrosanct decrees, an image that matches Paolo Prodi’s Machiavellian picture of papal centralisation in Central Italy.75 The nepotism and the political interests of a “baroque” papacy from the late 16th century onwards, the topos of the court (of Rome) as a locus of luxury and power that inevitably was hostile to religious interests,76 the anything but unconditional support of the Apostolic See to bishops trying to reform collegiate chapters or its refusal to shoulder them in their battle against the regular orders, the missionary activities of which escaped the bishops’ control77—all this feeds the conclusion that Jansenism was a highly fluid denominator for “post-tridentine reform movements within the Catholic Church that considered the implementation of the Council of Trent as a starting point for Catholic Reform rather than as its end,”78 but that were thwarted by Jesuit intrigues, Roman lust for power, and the political interests of ruling classes.79 Ceyssens and his students have convincingly exposed the rawness and the brutal force of 17th-century anti-Jansenist agitation,80 which, seen from their perspective, discredited typically Northern, more internalised forms of religious life and favoured the introduction of a Catholicism of a Mediterranean, Jesuit bent.81 But whether one takes into consideration the shadiness that accompanies the human condition in the history of anti-Jansenism and Jansenism, or explores instead the successes over omnipresent heretics in North and South, the actions undertaken by zealous bishops and vigilant pastors, the accentuated application of Tridentine decrees, the highly visible piety of the Habsburg princes, the spectacular monastic revival and the activities of new religious orders, the baroque piety of the populace—all this

75 Prodi’s sovrano pontefice risks being read as a scientific elaboration of Paolo Sarpi’s thesis, that reform had stalled at the curia, and that therefore the papacy was unable to lead reform movements elsewhere in Europe. A more inclusive assessment of the religious policy of the Holy See in Wright, The Early Modern Papacy. 76 “Cesare Mozzarelli . . . did much to rescue the court as an interpretative concept for use by religious historians from the tendency to identify it (at best) as merely ceremonial and cultural or (at worst) with irrationality, waste and luxury.” Ditchfield, “In Search of Local Knowledge,” 267. 77 These have been touched upon mostly in monographs that focus on the activities of one bishop or on Catholic reform on the field. For instance, Lottin, Lille; Marinus, De Contrareformatie te Antwerpen; Thijs, Van geuzenstad tot katholiek bolwerk. 78 Quaghebeur, De concursus in het aartsbisdom Mechelen, 76. 79 Roegiers, “Jansenisme en katholieke hervorming,” 61. Cf. Lamberigts, “Het jansenisme als poging tot katholieke hervorming.” For “Mediterranean Catholicism,” see Lottin, Lille, 315. 80 Cf. the evaluation by Wicks, “Doctrine and Theology,” 244. 81 For this contemporary distinction, see Hurtubise, “Jansénisme ou Jansénismes.”

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contributed to the coherent image of a revitalised Church in which historians of the classical tradition could and can mirror themselves. 1.1.2. The pillar of Belgium: Academic interests and Catholic reform It is in this context that a fair share of recent scholarship on the old University of Louvain, and more specifically the historiography concerning its theological faculty, has to be situated. Before his promotion to the episcopal see of Ypres in 1636, Cornelius Jansenius, the involuntary father of Jansenism, had completed a promising career at the Brabant university as Regius Professor of Scripture and a regent of the Theological Faculty.82 It is not surprising to learn, then, that the Roman congregation of the Holy Office compiled, from the early 1640s onwards, dozens of volumes on the doctrine professed by the Louvain divines.83 “C’est à Louvain que naquit et se développa, avant de se répandre à travers l’Europe entière, le conflit du jansénisme et de l’antijansénisme.”84 As a consequence, the history of Jansenism has largely been informed (or deformed) by scholarship on the Louvain Faculty of Theology.85 In analogy to the general outlines of the history of Jansenism, historians have good reasons to situate the antecedents of Louvain’s involvement in the previous decades. The attack of the Jesuits on the Augustinus is readily associated with the recurrent clashes in the archducal period between the university and the Society. The Louvain college was the town’s only religious house never to be incorporated into the university.86 The exclusion of the Jesuits from the public educational field in Louvain, in the centre of their most flourishing province beyond the Alps, was unique in Europe. Yet, Jansenius’ bickering with the Scholastics of the Society of Jesus was also about method, and it should be situated in the evolving ways

82

Biographical data in Orcibal, Correspondance de Jansénius. No other university figures that prominently in the inventories of the holdings of the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Boute, “Undigested Past,” 271–76. 84 Ceyssens, “Les débuts,” 369. 85 “Le dossier doit être reconsidéré attentivement en prenant la juste mesure du jansénisme lors des querelles les plus décisives et celle de l’attitude des prélats en exercice, mesures trop souvent prises au travers de polémiques qui ne concernaient que des sphères assez étroites et des querelles universitaires, tant à Douai qu’à Louvain, qui constituent autant de prismes déformants.” Deregnaucourt, “Diocèses et évêques,” 239. 86 A recent synthesis in Quaghebeur, “l’écho européen.” 83

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in which the Louvain theologians perceived themselves and their craft in the 16th century.87 Historians tend to contrast the university’s international radiation in the 16th century with its mediocre antecedents in the 15th century. Founded in 1425, in the context of the second wave of university foundations in the Empire, the young studium generale had all the characteristics of a Magisteruniversität after the Parisian model, borrowing its institutional framework from its older sister institutions at Cologne, Vienna, and Leipzig.88 Its institutional morphology was completed in 1432, when Pope Eugenius IV gave his fiat for the organisation of a Faculty of Divinity. During the centuries to come, Louvain would remain a typical five-faculty university consisting of one faculty whose function would become more and more propaedeutic—the Venerable Faculty of Arts—together with the four higher faculties of Theology, Canon Law, Civil Law, and Medicine.89 The Faculty of Arts was the only one to develop in a way similar to the Oxford model, its role being reduced to the organisation of central examinations and graduation ceremonies for students who had been trained and housed at the faculty’s four pedagogies. The young institution, located in the most densely populated and urbanised area of Europe, quickly eclipsed the neighbouring University of Cologne and became one of the biggest universities in the Empire. But horizons widened considerably in the first decades of the 16th century, when the Brabant university became a hub of humanist learning that was a host to Erasmus and his brainchild, the Collegium Trilingue.90 Student attendance reached its highest levels in the history of the Old University. Erasmus euphorically suggested that 3,000 of them roamed the Louvain streets and auditories. In the first half of the 16th century, the Brabant university was second only to Paris and the Italian universities as an attraction pole for foreign students.91 87 Read the highly instructive article by Guelluy, “L’évolution des méthodes théologiques.” 88 As opposed to the “student universities” in Italy. On the foundation bull of Pope Martin V, read Van Mingroot, Sapientiae Immarcessibilis. On the local initiatives, cf. Nelissen, De stichtingsbul. 89 On the morphology of medieval universities, read Gieysztor, “Management and Resources.” 90 On the Collegium Trilingue, read De Jongh, History of the Foundation. 91 Details in Van Buyten, “De Leuvense universiteitsmatrikels.” Numbers of foreign students at Louvain, which in the period between 1527 and 1569 totalled 8.4 per cent (from 4.5 per cent in the previous decades), in De Ridder-Symoens, “Internationalismus versus Nationalismus,” 398. See also Dumoulin and Duchene, “Europeanisme.”

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Several other eye-catching events are signalled by historians to account for this internationalisation. The university’s overlord, Archduke Charles of Austria, took possession of his Spanish kingdoms in the very year that the Collegium Trilingue was founded. He dragged along a wide range of high officials and humanists from the Netherlands who often entertained excellent contacts with the academics at Louvain.92 Christianity would not only be headed by its protector Charles V, the successor to the Roman emperors of yore, but also by another acquaintance of the academics, Hadrian of Utrecht, a former Louvain divine who, after a booming career in the service of the emperor, was elevated to the chair of Saint Peter in 1522.93 The many lettered men who, in the wake of the papa Fiammingo, rushed to Rome in order to serve their pontiff and their clienteles in the North joined the university’s networks in the Eternal City. The Supreme Pontiff himself generously confirmed the new but heavily contested nomination privileges of his former colleagues at Louvain,94 privileges which Erasmus himself had advocated a few years before in a letter to Pope Leo X with reference to the orthodoxy of the university.95 Indeed, a few years before the Louvain Faculty of Theology, in tandem with its Cologne counterpart, had covered itself with the glory of being the first institution of Christianity to condemn the theses of Martin Luther.96 Humanism, heresy and doctrine, universal monarchy, and papal privileges that were under threat lured academics at Louvain continuously into a universalistic field of action from the early 1500s onwards. The “Catholic cause” merged with the policies of the Habsburg overlords of the Netherlands, Charles V and Philip II.97 The Habsburgs’ vivid interest in their fille bien amez has attracted a lot of attention in scholarship, translated as it was, among others, into the endowment of four new chairs in theology, three in law, and one in medicine.98 In the Faculty of Theology, the installation of royal chairs for 92 On the cultural and economic circuits of the Flemish diaspora in the 16th and 17th centuries, read Stols, De Spaanse Brabanders, Brulez, Marchands flamands à Venise, and Baetens, De nazomer van Antwerpens welvaart. 93 More on the circumstances in which Hadrian was elected in Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 35. 94 Cf. Boute, “Humanists in the Corridors of Power.” 95 Ed. Allen, Opus Epistolarum, 5, 527, cited in Boute, “Humanists in the Corridors of Power,” 9. 96 See De Jongh, L’ancienne Faculté de Théologie, 148–268, and Blockx, De veroordeling van Maarten Luther. 97 Cf. Frijhoff, “Universiteit en religie.” 98 Roegiers, “Was de oude universiteit Leuven een rijksuniversiteit?” 550.

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Scripture,99 Lombard’s Sententiae, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, and the Catechism did not merely complete the 15th-century infrastructure and make Louvain, in numerical terms, the best-staffed university of the Empire;100 it also turned the old study programme upside down, adjusted it to its confessionalising environment, and drew a clear line between those who taught and those who did not, while renegotiating the hierarchies within the faculty’s teaching staff as well. The faculty’s five ordinary professors continued to comment on the books of Scripture or a treatise of their choice, each during six weeks of the year,101 but after 1560 the role of the bachelors, who until then had been charged with the lion’s share of lecturing as a part of their training, was reduced to rigidly orchestrated performances in the traditional disputationes under the strict supervision of their masters. The latter’s corporative visibility was enhanced by the introduction of oral examinations by the faculty’s commission as a requirement for graduation, alongside the traditional presentation of hopefuls by their respective masters, the regents of the faculty. Teaching had become the monopoly of a handful of professors whose orthodoxy was, in the eyes of the circuits of power in Brussels, more guaranteed; an assessment that was not challenged by the academics—if they had not suggested it themselves. Except for the Professor of Catechism, the professores regii or extraordinarii (in the period under investigation: the archducal professors) would teach daily, thus carrying most of the faculty’s renewed study programme on their shoulders.102 This evolution culminated in the Visitatio of 1617, which stipulated that regular attendance at the three archducal lectures was a prerequisite for students aspiring to degrees in Divinity.103 Guelluy has convincingly argued in the early 1940s that this evolution reflected the way in which the Louvain theologians had redefined

99 Trent’s Sessio V of 16 June 1546 did not extend its stipulations on the organisation of teaching of Scripture to universities (Laplanche, “L’enseignement de l’Ecriture Sainte,” 372), but Louvain’s chair of Scripture was installed in the same year. 100 Compare Kaufman, Universität und Lutherische Konfessionalisierung. 101 On the medieval study programme, read De Jongh, L’ancienne Faculté de Théologie, 72. 102 Guelluy, “L’évolution des méthodes théologiques,” 47. This argument had already been very successful in the attempts of the Louvain academics to block the foundation of a university in Tournai in the 1520s. See Boute, “Uitspraak van de Grote Raad.” 103 The ordinary chairs, and the content of the materials to be taught, were not even mentioned. OPB, 330–331. Already by the end of the 16th century, exam questions were statutorily drawn from the Summa and Scripture. Guelluy, “L’évolution des méthodes théologiques,” 47.

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their tasks in the universal Christianitas in the course of the heroic 16th century. Louvain controversialists such as Latomus, Driedo, and Tapper104 argued, in an answer to the humanist challenge, that Scripture was not to be approached with philological methods in the first place, as the language in which it was written did not, from their point of view, affect its doctrinal content. Its intrinsic message had to be clarified by the theology of the schools with the help of methods developed in the course of the previous centuries—that is, the scholastic heritage. Hence the importance theologians attached to a propaedeutic philosophical formation focusing on Aristotelian logic and physics, a cognitive integration which was reinforced by the flow of human resources from the teaching staff of the Arts faculty to the Sacra Facultas, especially from the 16th century onwards.105 Against the Protestant battlecry Sola Scriptura, they held that, in order to grasp the significance of Scripture, one had to be pious, and piety implied accepting the guidance of the infallible Church.106 In order to defend one of the auctoritates theologicae constituting the infallible apostolic Church of Rome, the Louvain controversialists became avid readers of the Fathers. The rediscovery of Christian antiquity by humanists, and its recuperation by the Protestants who tried to mine the assertions of the Roman pontiffs with the help of a primitivist philosophy of history, forced Catholic apologetics to reclaim their heritage. Generally speaking, controversialists tended to set the authority of the Fathers (who had to provide for continuity between the contemporary Church and its apostolic predecessor) and Scripture (which was believed to furnish sound proof for Peter’s primacy) on virtually the same level.107 The Louvain attitude towards the Fathers in general and the appropriation of Saint Augustine by the Lutherans in particular108 merits particular attention.109 Many controversialists developed a dual strategy towards the bishop of Hippo, first stating that “Augustinus

104 On their theology, especially in relation to Augustinism, see the contributions of Vercruysse, “Die Stellung Augustins,” Gielis, “L’augustinisme anti-érasmien,” and Schrama, “Ruard Tapper”. 105 Roegiers, “Professorencarrières,” and De Jongh, L’ancienne Faculté de Théologie. 106 Guelluy, “L’évolution des méthodes théologiques,” 62; on the notion of “pietas,” see Reinhard, “Papa Pius.” 107 Keen, “The Fathers in the Counter-Reformation,” 712. 108 The anti-Pelagian Augustine, not the “historical” Augustine. Leland Saak, “The Reception of Augustine in the later Middle Ages,” 368. 109 “If one had to name a single indisputable point of agreement in the diverse uses and explorations given to the Church Fathers by the theologians of the Roman obedience in the 17th century, that would certainly be the conviction that they were by

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solus” did not monopolise Christian tradition, and putting this into practice; and second, upholding a reference policy that highlighted the other Greek and Latin Fathers.110 At Louvain, however, Augustine was the common ground of the diverging theological constructions developed by the controversialists, who applied Scholastic methods to their reading of the Fathers and Scripture in order to confront the heretics, and their epigones in the later 16th and the early 17th century, who did not necessarily do so.111 Alongside the theology of the schools, marked by a high degree of abstraction and systematisation, positive theology evolved in the later 16th century into a science as well and developed a more psychological, interpretative approach to Scripture and the Fathers that aimed at engineering an authentic and concrete spirituality and religiosity. In the case of Michael Baius, Regius Professor of Scripture, president of the Pope’s College founded by Hadrian VI, and inquisitor-general of the Netherlands, this concern entailed the developing of a Christian anthropology that explored the modalities of conversion and of the working of divine Grace. His exercise in religious psychology drawing on Saint Augustine escalated, in the views of his colleagues at Louvain and in Spain, into a rejection of the scholastic heritage, which eventually led to the condemnation by Rome of 63 theses ascribed to Baius.112 This did not imply, however, that “positive theology,” as Driedo and Latomus had defined it, was stigmatised,113 nor was the humanistic heritage, institutionalised in the Collegium Trilingue from 1517 onwards, repudiated as such. As a matter of fact, the methods of text edition developed by the humanists would become powerful devices to advance the cause of their main point of reference, Augustine. The Louvain edition of Augustine’s Opera Omnia of 1577 was the result of teamwork to which several professors (some of whom had actively backed Baius’ condemnation a few years before) and dozens of students had contributed. The Louvain edition would remain the most authoritative edition of

right the fathers’ champions and heirs against the heretics who scorned them.” Quantin, “The Fathers in xviith Century Roman Catholic Theology,” 951. 110 On the Jesuits as avid readers of the Church Fathers, cf. Bertrand, “The Society of Jesus and the Church Fathers.” On the link between Greek patristics and Molinism, cf. the comment by Quantin, “The Fathers in xviith Century Roman Catholic Theology,” 975. 111 Guelluy, “L’évolution des méthodes théologiques,” 126. 112 An up to date bibliography on Baius in Soen, Geen pardon zonder paus. 113 See Delville, “Jansénius de Gand.”

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Saint Augustine in the Catholic world before the appearance of the Maurists on the scene.114 Scholastic theology, which as a body of doctrine offered the advantage of a systematisation of Catholic orthodoxy and as a dialectic and deductive method could be instrumentalised in controversies with the heretics, continued to occupy the lion’s share of an aspiring divine’s study programme, the more so after the conversion of the royal chair of the Sententiae into a second one of the Summa in the middle of the 1590s, but the science of the doctor angelicus was, in return, informed by the new theologia positiva exposing the wisdom of the Doctor of Grace.115 A more practical orientation of Thomism was sanctioned in the Visitatio of 1617, a comprehensive normative text of academic life, which stipulated that sterile speculation had to be avoided in the courses and that students should be equipped for the refutation of the heretics and for their labour in the vineyard of the Lord.116 Augustinianism and Thomism would indeed remain the obligatory passage points in the domestic doctrine of the Louvain theological faculty for centuries to come,117 an alliance that was visualised, by the end of the 18th century, in the faculty’s chapel by an altarpiece that represents the bishop of Hippo interpreting the Scripture while the doctor angelicus comments on this reading. In 1586, the faculty would stress once more its Augustino-Thomistic engagement when drafting the so-called doctrina Lovaniensis, a declaration of doctrine that would offer a reference frame for the next two centuries.118 This link was often fortified by the co-optation of one or two friars of the Dominican and/ or the Augustinian order, mostly the regents of the respective convents in Louvain, among the eight regents of the faculty—which does not 114

Cf. Ceyssens, “ Le ‘Saint Augustin’ du 17e siècle.” Quantin, “The Fathers in xviith Century Roman Catholic Theology,” 968. In the second decade of the 17th century, the syllabi produced by Joannes Wiggers, Regius Professor in Thomism from 1614 onwards, were informed by a deep concern about morality and pastoral practice that relegated the Aquinate’s intellectual approach to the background. Marcus-Leus, Joannes Wiggers Diestensis, 109. Cf. the strict division and juxtaposition both in function and method of scholastic and positive theology in Wigger’s work, Guelluy, “L’évolution des méthodes théologiques,” 110–11. 116 See p. 431–486. 117 “A Louvain, l’augustinisme énergiquement défendu par la fameuse Censura Lovaniensis prononcée contre Lessius en 1587, imprégna tout l’enseignement dispensé à la faculté de Théologie au XVIIe siècle.” Neveu, “Pour une histoire de l’augustinisme,” 177. “A desire to return to the Fathers ignoring the Scholastics, who were now regarded with suspicion, came to be affirmed especially in France and in the Spanish Netherlands.” Quantin, “The Fathers in xviith Century Roman Catholic Theology,” 955. 118 Roegiers, “Leuven en Rome,” 68. 115

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imply, however, that friars were allowed to teach, at least not in the capacity of official faculty professors.119 As elsewhere in the Empire, regular clerics had to clear more and more of the field for their secular counterparts in the later Middle Ages. In contrast to the evolution in all German and many other European universities, however, the secular clergy at the University of Louvain did not have to clear in turn the field for the Jesuits after the second half of the 16th century.120 Until the 1580s, the relationship with the Jesuit college, founded in 1542 as one of the first institutions of the minima societas in Northern Europe, had been good; the Jesuits had benefitted from the support of Louvain academics (including Baius, who became an icon of antiJesuitism afterwards) in the admission procedures before the States of Brabant.121 Bellarmino, a convinced Augustinianist, would establish during his seven-year stay in the Brabant city durable contacts with the Louvain secular clerics, and he may even have taught publicly with the faculty’s approval.122 Many of Louvain’s 16th-century theologians—Tapper, Driedo, Latomus, Molanus, Lensaeus, and Stapleton, to name a few—would deeply influence Jesuit theology and political thought all over the globe.123 The Louvain recipes worked, judging by the impressive performance of the divines. The secular clerics of the Sacra Facultas became the face of the university in the course of the 16th century. They performed as imperial (or papal?) inquisitors in the Netherlands,124 drew up, on the demand of Charles V, a list of the articles of faith as well as several indexes that would inform the first Roman Index in the 1560s,125 were active in the various phases of the Council of Trent,126 promoted the

119 This evolution can already be observed in the beginning of the 16th century. In the 15th century, several regulars (including, alongside Augustinians and Dominicans, Carmelites, Franciscans and Carthusians) constituted c.35 per cent of the teachers coming and going in between 1425 and 1525. Hamers, Het professorenkorps, 28; see also De Jongh, L’ancienne Faculté de Théologie. 120 See Krammer, Bildungswesen; Hengst, Jesuiten an Universitäten; a status questionis in Müller, “The Jesuitenssystem.” 121 Ceyssens, “Bellarmin et Louvain,” 182. 122 Biersack, “Bellarmin und die ‘Causa Baii’,” 169. 123 Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 120–21. 124 On this “Netherlandish” inquisition, see Goosens, Les inquisitions. 125 Cf. Martinez De Bujanda, Index de l’université de Louvain. See also Van Eijl, “Louvain’s Faculty of Theology,” and Fühner, Die Kirchen- und die antireformatorische Religionspolitik, 303–12. 126 Some data in De Ram, Mémoire.

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publication of its decrees.127 They assisted Arias Montano in the edition of his famous polyglot Bible, a project under the high protection of Philip II, whose patronage the academics avidly sought—and got.128 In the course of the 1570s, Philip sanctioned the Louvain allegation that an academic formation (under the guidance of secular clerics) was the most apt preparation for zealous, Tridentine pastors by founding King’s College, also designated as the seminarium bonorum pastorum. Their ability to interest their environment for the services they claimed to provide confirmed the Louvain theologians in their beliefs and, more precisely, in the conviction that they had a hold on Truth. Ses statuts nous la montrent consciente de sa dignité, jalouse de ses privilèges . . . un coup d’oeil sur l’organisation de l’une des corporations universitaires qui détenaient, à la fin du moyen âge, le monopole de la pensée catholique, aide à comprendre que les théologiens du xvie siècle aient parfois pu croire qu’ils avaient sur la vérité des “droits de propriétaire.”129

Meanwhile, and in close correspondence with this warm relation between the prince and “his university,” academics in Louvain seem to have strengthened, sometime in the course of the 16th century, their ties with the rising nobility of state in the princely councils, graduated robins, who were supposed to be more appreciative of the academic profession than of the old nobility of the sword. This link, as well as the high profile of the Louvain Faculty of Theology, strengthened the image of the university as seminarium ecclesiae et reipublicae, a notion which would remain central to the framing of academic interests later as well. The matter calls for further investigation, but this accommodation of interests between the power elites and academic circuits in Louvain in the course of the 16th century provided university men with ample tools to put forward their views on the management of the realm and of the sacred. For our purposes, the role of academic circuits in the diocesan reforms of 1559–61 is particularly interesting. Indeed, through their contacts with the Privy Council, Louvain academics managed in the 1550s to translate their view on the Church as a church for poor, pious, and learned men into a project for diocesan reform that served the interests of the prince and Catholic religion, and they actively intervened to design the new Belgian church accor-

127 More on this in Willocx, L’introduction. The academics’ attitude to Trent was more ambiguous, for various reasons (cf. p. 168). 128 See Lanoye, “Benito Arias Montano and the University of Louvain.” 129 Guelluy, “L’Evolution des méthodes théologiques,” 35.

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dingly. In an area where university graduates encountered few institutional obstacles in the hunt for benefices, the academics managed to draw the episcopal sees of the Netherlands, formerly the reserve of the high nobility, into their sights as well.130 Simultaneously, nine canonships were reserved in every cathedral chapter for graduated clerics who were to perform as the closest collaborators (and guardians of truth in their quality of episcopal inquisitors and book censors) of the new Tridentine bishops.131 That this Church was designed not only by themselves but also for themselves is illustrated by the fact that one-third of the freshly appointed bishops after 1559 previously had occupied a chair at Louvain and often had combined teaching with activities as inquisitor.132 Limits were imposed on the Louvain ambitions, however. The attempts of Ruardus Tapper, professor in theology c.1550, to transfer the management of the prince’s pool of benefices—the equivalent of the feuille des bénéfices in France—from the councils in Brussels to the Faculty of Theology in Louvain, in order to guarantee (and redefine) the moral and scientific quality of the appointed pastors, failed.133 Second, the initial plan to install the see of one of the two or three ecclesiastical provinces in Louvain itself, and consequently to merge academic and archdiocesan circuits, had to be abandoned as well, when the choice eventually fell on Mechlin.134 Last but not least, the same spirit of Catholic reform which had benefited the academics in Louvain for decades annihilated one of their major claims, the claim to a monopoly on the dispensing of higher education and academic degrees in the Netherlands. In 1559, not only was Super Universas eventually sealed in the papal chancery in Rome but also a new university was founded, after the Louvain model, in the Flemish and Francophone city of Douai,135 and this in spite of fierce opposition from the old Brabant Alma Mater—or, rather, from a few central figures in the Louvain market of academic patronage: many graduates from Louvain could now make, without these circuits, an academic career in the new university and probably were not inclined to complain. From then onwards, Louvainists would have to share their 130

Cf. Postma, “Nieuw licht op een oude zaak.” Dierickx, De oprichting der nieuwe bisdommen, 97. 132 Passchyn, Het episkopaat, 116–17. 133 Only the roll of benefices charged with pastoral care was concerned, which was split of from the general rôle des bénéfices. Van Peteghem, “Les rôles des bénéfices.” 134 Postma, “Nieuw licht op een oude zaak.” 135 On Douai, read Dehon, L’université de Douai dans la tourmente. 131

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claims with their competitors in Flanders. The secular clerics at the faculties of Arts and theology in the Flemish university shared a lot of views with their colleagues in Brabant, by whom they had, at least initially, often been educated and whose adherence to the AugustinoThomistic tradition they embraced. Douaisiens were consequently susceptible of defining their interests in the same way, which enhanced competition and co-operation alike. In the first quarter of the 17th century, academics at Louvain did not forget to stress in their memorandums sent to Brussels that the fate of the university was inextricably linked to the dynasty’s and that of Catholic religion—and vice versa. The crisis of the dynasty in the Netherlands engendered the deepest crisis in the history of the Old University of Louvain, the nadir of which should be situated in between 1579 and 1585, because of the civil war, the resulting devastation of the university’s hinterland resources, the plague, and, according to the learned men themselves, above all because of the university’s and the city’s unremittingly loyalist stance.136 The academics’ attempts to become a symbol of resistance against the heretic rebels (and thus a test-case for the dynasty’s patronage) were, with the benefit of hindsight, successful. The Habsburgs and the power elites of the Netherlands quickly involved the institutions of higher learning in their policy as soon as a relative pacification of the South Netherlands created a favourable environment to do so. Thanks to this exchange, the academics in Louvain (and Dole and Douai) managed to maintain their monopoly on higher education and on the dispensing of academic degrees, thus limiting the diversification and proliferation of higher education observed elsewhere.137 Louvain could continue to claim the role of the only bulwark of orthodoxy and the supplier of the region’s clerical elite. Princes and popes would continue to see to the observation of its cherished privileges, after the example set by Pope Gregory XIII and Philip II back in 1573. 136

A survey in Lanoye and Vandermeersch, “The University of Louvain.” By contrast, universities in North were founded by the Provincial States and, as a consequence, faced considerable competition from other institutions. Cf. Sluijter, Tot cieraet. The many colleges that were founded in the first decades of the 17th century posed no threat, as those which were erected with academic purposes were forcibly located in the two university cities and its personnel was integrated into academic circuits. Contrary to the situation in France the distinction between diocesan seminaries and the Faculty’s public auditories was not blurred. In France, Jesuit competition and, in the 18th century, diocesan seminaries turned most of the regional theological faculties into mere dispensors of academic degrees. Cf. Julia and Revel, Les universités européennes, 192–197. 137

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250

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STBBibl.

1620

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Fig. 1.1. Patterns of attendance: graduation lists Arts and Theology 1572/85–1619/20

Fig. 1.1 lists the numbers of students graduating as Licenciati Artium after two years of training in Logic and Physics in the faculty’s pedagogies; and those obtaining the degree of Sacre Theologie Baccalaureus Biblicus after three to four years of studies in Divinity.138 Estimating overall numbers of attendance remains a highly speculative enterprise. However, graduation numbers in Theology as much as those in the Arts do correspond with total collapse and revival of academic life from the 1580s to the 1620s.139

138 About 70 per cent of the Biblici obtained the degree of Baccalaureus Formatus after the so-called “quinquiennium.” Only a small minority aspired to the Licentia or the Doctorate. 139 Promotion lists in Acta Facultatis Artium, RAL, OUL, 713–715 and Catalogus (. . .), RAL, OUL, 505. Estimating attendance in absolute numbers with the help of graduation lists is, in the absence of immatriculation registers for the period under investigation, a slippery enterprise because at least half of the students did not bother taking degrees: in 1597, the proportion of Licentiati Artium against the overall student population attending the pedagogies was 1:7 (based on Jesuit statistics; cf. p. 140); a yearly harvest of three or four dozen bachelors in divinity approximately

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This brings us back to our point of departure. Academics at Louvain had good reasons to consider themselves as the vanguard of Tridentine Catholic reform. Nonetheless, they stuck to the corporate organisation of their university, a privileged body that escaped episcopal control and that, as a consequence, does not fit well in the Tridentine picture. Medieval privileges of jurisdiction and, above all, the privileges of nomination for ecclesiastical benefices curbed the room for manoeuvre of the archbishop of Mechlin and the other bishops of the Habsburg Netherlands to recruit, to discipline, and to reform the clergy of their dioceses. From the point of view of the classical position in Church history, any book on the privileges of nomination wielded by the University of Louvain and the Faculty of Arts should consequently explore this contradiction between Tridentine zeal and a “stubborn” attachment to medieval privileges.140 Within the classical position, an in-depth investigation into the privileges of nomination should, first, apply the insights of Le Bras, by involving prosopographical research into academic benefice-holders that allow for a comparison with overall patterns that can be discovered in clerical populations. Second, this comparison should lead to a nuanced answer to the question of whether or not the privileges of nomination were instrumental, or an obstacle, to Catholic reform in general and the care of souls in particular. The privileges of nomination may have improved the quality of pastoral care by the end of the 15th century and in the 16th, when no other decent centres of formation for the pastoral clergy were around;141 they should be granted the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of the 17th century, when a dire need for spiritually and intellectually equipped shepherds induced the bishop of Antwerp to call for an amendment of the university’s privileges forcing academic nominees to apply for rectorships instead of canonships or altars.142 But gradually the abuses committed by represented a population of 300 to 400 students pursuing the “septennium,” the sevenyear study programme offered by the Sacra Facultas. 140 This approach resonates, for instance, in the outrage that “il est frappant de voir comment ces institutions tinrent, surtout pendant le 18e siècle, à leurs privilèges.” Quaghebeur, “Le concours diocésain,” 888. 141 Cf. Leplae, Betwistingen rond benoemingen, 41–42. 142 “Non foret forte inconsultum privilegium nominationis . . . pro tempore aliquo quoad prebendas suspendere (etsi non respectu professorum), isto enim privilegio contra bonum publicum iamdiu abutuntur . . . pauci ad pastoratus potissimum rurales se applicant, quod tum facerent, cum ita ad prebendas aspirare non possent.” Status Dioecesis Antverpiensis, 1608, ASV, Congreg. Concil., Relat. Dioec., 59A, 49v.

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Louvain nominees, the flawed selection procedures of the academic nomination boards, and the deficiencies of an academic formation for pastoral care would stick out like a sore thumb against meritocratic selection procedures introduced by the episcopal concursus; against the alternatives offered by diocesan seminaries; and, if not against the Council’s not always unequivocal decrees, against the Tridentine spirit itself. If, in the best of worlds, they did not systematically jeopardise Catholic reform, the privileges of nomination had definitely become obsolete in the course of the 17th century and above all in the 18th. Academics are, after all, no match for a Borromean episcopate.143 A third argument, then, is expected to elucidate the political and social constellations that allowed academics to preserve their increasingly embarrassing expediencies nonetheless. I have chosen not to drink this cup of sorrow. The reasons why I will not carry through Le Bras’ prosopographical program to its full extent, and why the economic or legal aspects of the Louvain privileges of nomination are not at the centre of my concern, are a matter of choice. Clerical populations, the functioning and conjunctures of the clerical job market, university financing, or the evolution of legal concepts are research topics that will have to be touched upon in the analysis, but they deserve closer investigation elsewhere. At this stage of research, any attempt to explore the financial impact would only get bogged down in sheer casuistry due to the lack of systematic and reliable source material. This is a book about academics and benefices in the first place. By contrast, the reason why I will not address the question of the expedience of academic privileges for Catholic reform (and why I consequently can stick to a much more restricted chronological framework) is not arbitrary at all. It is threefold: 1) such a definition of a problem is, in its present definition, irrelevant, as the privileges of nomination did exist until the end of the 18th century, and the (political) question of whether they should not have is, therefore, obsolete; 2) it is insoluble by historical method, which by definition should aim at the production of slippery, historical realities, not at the articulation of timeless normative standards; and 3) a shrouded, nuanced writing style that has to render the resulting evaluations more palpable will not change that.

143 On the privileges as a job agency for Jansenists, see Leplae, Betwistingen rond benoemingen, 21.

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chapter one 1.2. Society, and all that: The confessionalisation of academic interests

A blend of Jedinian reflexes and the insights, themes, and methodological innovations borrowed from Delumeau, Le Bras, and other tycoons of French historiography has provided for a powerful model of Catholic renewal in the Low Countries and elsewhere. But the model’s weaknesses have become manifest too in the course of the last decades. Recent research into late medieval and renaissance religiosity “has challenged the received wisdom that just because parishes were not functioning according to a post-Tridentine model the Catholic population was not having its spiritual needs met. It has made it incontestably clear that Christians of the 15th and 16th century looked to many sources besides the parish for their spiritual well-being—and it is not easy to prove that they were in every case less well served than they were after Trent.”144 The squeals about the ignorance of the flock or the savagery of rural populations reflect the intellectual and “scholarised” attitudes nurtured by ecclesiastical and civil elites of the time (or by contemporary historians) rather than the intrinsic quality of “popular” religious experience.145 Delumeau’s concept of christianisation reveals more about his own normative understandings of Christianity than about the supposedly pagan mentality of medieval Christians.146 The cocktail of abusive practices, frivolous conduct, absenteeism, and deficient ministry on behalf of the parish clergy is becoming more and

144 O’Malley, Trent and All That, 66. Interesting perspectives on the enduring influence of the “medieval” confraternities, which remained dominant throughout the early modern period, in Von Mallinckrodt, “Reichweite und Grenzen des Konfessionalisierungs-Paradigmas.” The assessment that the populace itself was calling for reform in contemporary sources (cf. Quaghebeur, De concursus in het aartsbisdom Mechelen, 42) needs to be investigated. On the function of il popolo and gli eretici in appropriation strategies deployed by clerical elites (in casu Roman diplomats), read Boute, “Que ceulx de Flandres se disoijent tant catholicques.” 145 “Je me demande si ‘l’explication’ qui, au cours du XVIIe, tend à interpréter ces résistances comme la conséquence d’ignorance n’est pas l’indice de la fonction qu’a progressivement reçue cette “reconquista” par le savoir.” De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, 161. 146 An example of expert values in Church history: “Le résultat, en tout cas, fut une prédication qui parlait plus de la Passion du Sauveur que de sa Résurrection, du pêché que du pardon, du Juge que du Père, de l’enfer que du paradis. Il y avait là une veritable déviation (my italicisation) par rapport à l’affirmation de Saint Paul selon laquelle là où le pêché s’est multipié, la grâce a surabondé (Rom. 5:20).” Delumeau, La peur en occident, 627.

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more problematic as the evident cause of reform in general and Catholic reform in the early modern period in particular.147 In analogy to Delumeau’s notion of ignorance, abuse is not a historical concept that describes directly the ills of the Church but, rather, reflects its worn institutional reflexes when defining the challenges it faced and when trying to remedy them in a legitimate way.148 This is not to say that “all was well, actually”—many contemporaries would have begged to differ—but their terminology calls for investigation, not reification. Many commonplaces currently used by historians are informed by the way in which modern, emancipated Catholics have been looking back, since Vatican II, on the history of that other reform Council and its aftermath.149 The Aggiornamento has fuelled the persisting dichotomy between religion (which is considered an essentially personal experience)150 and external forces such as power and society, a binary scheme that tends to exempt an inner core of religion and the dynamics of religious change from historical scrutiny.151 It should not come as a surprise to learn that classical Church historians152 to date have bequeathed the same fate to phenomena that do not fit in the picture as the one reserved by 17th-century Catholics for their Protestant opponents: they are smoked out as obstacles to the spirit of Trent that are to be attributed to ignorance or human pettiness. In such a scenario, academics capitalising on political circumstances to safeguard their financial and social interests risk becoming sitting targets

147

Numbers on absenteism in Absil, “L’absentéisme du clergé paroissial,” 18–23. See also Bijsterveld, Laverend tussen Kerk en Wereld, 283, and, for a comparative perspective, Swanson, “Universities, Graduates and Benefices.” The obligation of absentee shepherds to install a deservitor to administer sacraments was generally observed in the later Middle Ages. On the toleration of the rector’s vices by his parishioners in rural communities, read Bijsterveld, “Du cliché à un image plus nuancé,” 233. 148 The arguments used in the reform councils of the later Middle Ages and at Trent should be understood as the slogans, functional clichés, and legitimate commonplaces deployed by reformers who turned to tested narratives in order to articulate both diagnosis and remedy. Stump, The Reforms of the Council of Constance, 177. 149 Zardin, “Controriforma,” 300; Ditchfield, “In Search of Local Knowledge.” 150 Cloet, “L’Eglise et son influence,” 62. 151 The “social turn” in religious history has not fundamentally changed this. “La mise en réserve d’un noyau dur intouchable, associée à la relative résistance du catholicisme à l’analyse scientifique de sa réalité, introduit une distinction entre objects sociologisables et objets non sociologisables.” Piette, La réligion de près, 23. Cf., in analogy, traditional intellectual history. “It is not the spread of accurate facts about nature that has to be explained, but only its slowing down or its distortion caused by backward minds, countries or cultures.” Latour, “The Powers of Association,” 267. 152 A good introduction in Johnson, “Religion,” 140–44.

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of judicious but judgemental historians, and their privileges become just another example of the shadiness of “Real Existing Catholicism.” This assessment is not new. From the 1970s onwards, historians have challenged the insularity of classical Church history. Their approach differs radically from the classical tradition in that its predilection for some informants over others (e.g., bishops vs. unruly canons or superstitious parishioners) was abandoned. Seen from this perspective, the question of whether or not this or that phenomenon favoured Catholic reform became outdated.153 In Belgium, the radical contextualisation of religious beliefs and practices has been achieved in studies investigating, say, the dynastic interests involved in the display of archducal piety,154 while overall Catholic reform in urban environments was unmasked in the course of the 1980s and the early 1990s as part of a civilisation offensive monitored by urban elites that had to mould—via charity, dominical schools, and parish attendance—an unruly proletariat into an amenable workforce.155 One of the most influential and systematic attempts to raise the profile of Church history as a historical science instead of as an ecclesiastical discipline was made in the early 1980s by the German historians Wolfgang Reinhard, a Catholic, and Heinz Schilling, a Protestant, the founding fathers of the famous Konfessionalisierungs paradigm.156 Confessionalisation should be conceived as “einen gesellschaftsgeschichtlich fundamentalen Wandlungsvorgang, der kirchlich-religiöse und mentalitätsmässigkulturelle Veränderungen ebenso einschliesst wie staatlich-politische und soziale.”157 The concept offers some indisputable advantages. First, it has converged with concepts central to social and cultural history—social disciplining and modernisation—being the process in which religion profoundly transformed patterns of behaviour.158 This

153 “Erstens trat . . . im Zuge der Reflexion über die historische Bedingtheit historiographischen Arbeitens die theologische Wahrheitsfrage erstmal in den Hintergrund.” Ehrenpreis and Lotz-Heumann, Reformation und konfessionelles Zeitalter, 10. 154 Cf. Duerloo, “Pietas Albertina,” idem, “Archducal Piety,” and Bérenger, “Pietas Austriaca.” 155 Cf. Thijs, Van geuzenstad tot katholiek bolwerk; see also Marinus, De Contrareformatie te Antwerpen, and articles by Soly on urban festivities and social relations in Antwerp. 156 A context and general outlines in O’Malley, Trent and All That, 109–17. 157 Schilling, “Die Konfessionalisierung von Kirche, Staat und Gesellschaft,” 4. 158 A historiographical context in Schilling, “Disziplinierung oder ‘Selbstregulierung” der Untertanen?’ 676–77.

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process paved the way for modernity, being conceived as the interiorisation of abstract values and ditto behavioural codes that are presumed characteristic to modern societies.159 Second, it lifts the artificial distinction between Catholic reform and counter-reformation, as well as the asymmetrical approach to Protestant reformation and Catholic reform. The schools of Reinhard and Schilling have highlighted the parallels and analogies in causes, processes, and effects of religious change in Catholicism, Protestantism, and Calvinism instead of joining the long and venerable tradition of bashing the old Church as a hub of reactionary immobility.160 During the following decades, Reinhard articulated and refined, first, the causes of confessionalisation; second, its manifestation in policy and in institutional innovations; third, its intended effects; and fourth, its more fundamental and unintended long-term consequences.161 The paradigm Konfessionalisierung has benefitted from the many criticisms it has provoked, such as the underlying assumption of ubiquitousness; the structuralist-functionalist bent of the model; its teleological flavour; its top-down, etatist approach to religion; its inherent inclination to privilege parallelism over the specificity of the distinct confessions; and its focus on the big picture that renders it difficult to apply to the Alltagsgeschichte.162 In the course of two decades,

159 On the modernity of Trent, read the contributions to Prodi and Reinhard, Il Concilio di Trento e il Moderno. 160 Already by the end of the 1970s, Reinhard had given the Weberian thesis its coup de grâce. Cf. Reinhard, “Gegenreformation als Modernisierung,” 226–52. 161 Respectively: 1) religious innovation and competition between different churches; 2) the sorting out of and control over orthodoxy; an accentuated educational policy; the marginalisation of dissidents and the appeal to distinctive rites and rhetorical devices; adaptation in the old Church; the introduction of specific educational institutions; and the upgrading or introduction of institutions charged with the socio-religious repression of deviance; 3) correct confessional behaviour/discipline; 4) the growth of state power; modernisation; possibly secularization. Reinhard, “Was ist Katholische Konfessionalisierung,” 426–27. 162 An introduction in Ehrenpreis and Lotz-Heumann, Reformation und konfessionelles Zeitalter, 67–71. See also Johnson, “Religion,” 150–51. With respect to the assumption of ubiquitousness, see Grochowina, “Grenzen der Konfessionalisierung.” The problem of the specificity of different confessions has been stressed by Kaufmann, “Einleitung,” 13–14. This argument is often linked with the classical concern about the intrinsic contents of religious beliefs. Ziegler, “Typen der Konfessionalisierung,” 417. A postmodern, ambivalent attitude towards the modernisation process, which triggered both democracy and totalitarianism, does not diminish the modernist and therefore teleological bent of the model itself; cf. the synthesis on modernization as a concept in historical narrative in Walker, “Modernization.” The characteristics of Modernization

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the model has been enriched with new insights,163 among others from the new cultural history.164 With respect to confessionalisation “from below,” Reinhard made it perfectly clear in the middle of the 1990s that, in analogy to the history of state formation, religious change was not merely a matter of blunt coercion, if we take into consideration the Catholic Church’s absorption capacity for popular religion.165 Schilling, for his part, has pleaded recurrently for a complementary approach that combines impulses to confessionalisation from the top as well as from below. Against the claim of fundamentalist micro-historians, that efficient causalities and historical realities are to be situated on a micro-historical level,166 he postulated the reality of long-term processes and the need to get a grip on fundamental changes, while convincingly demonstrating that many of the valid criticisms against the process of disciplining itself had been responded to by a methodological and thematic differentiation of research.167 This absorption capacity of the model makes it flexible enough to integrate the ever

theory are: the distinction between traditional and modern; teleology, i.e., the assumption that all significant data should contribute to, or deflect, the path to modernity; functionalism; the assumption of social coherence (in contrast to Marxism); a stress on elite studies; and negative or positive moral judgement. Confessionalisation from the top to the base more reflects the appropriation strategies and the self-image of the political and religious establishment (which provides the bulk of sources) than is does aptly describe the subtle negotiation process between popular and high religious culture. Cf. Boute, “Que ceulx de Flandres se disoijent tant catholicques”; remedies in Frijhoff, Embodied Belief. 163 Cf. Brady, “Confessionalization—The Career of a Concept.” 164 For instance, cf. Burschel, “Das Eigene und das Fremde.” The generalisation to religious history is mine. 165 “Immerhin steht fest, dass die Katholiken mit der herkömmlichen Volksreligion glimpflicher umgingen als vor allem die Reformierten.” Reinhard, “Was ist Katholische Konfessionalisierung,” 447. This assessment was translated, more or less at the same moment in the middle of the 1990s, in a methodological differentiation adopted by Reinhard in Power Elites and State Building, where different levels of observation were introduced. Reinhard, “Power Elites, State Servants, Ruling Classes,” 5–16. 166 Cf. the discussion of the relativist versus the fundamentalist stance in micro-storia, and the similar contributions in the book Jeux d’échelles. Revel, “Présentation,” 13. 167 “Angesichts dieser methodischen und sachlichen Modifizierung und Differenzierung sowie der seit langem vollzogenen Internationalisierung der Disziplinierungsforschung läuft die erwähnte Fundamentalkritik weitgehend ins Leere.” Schilling, “Disziplinierung oder Selbstregulierung der Untertanen,” 680–82, and idem, “Confessionalisation: Historical and Scholarly Perspectives.” In both articles, he reviews a few works that uncontestably belong to the confessionalisation school but that nevertheless integrate the insights of new cultural history (ibidem, 676) that resonates, for instance, in Burschel’s plea for a linguistic turn in the study of diplomatical correspondence of the Holy See. Burschel, “Das Eigene und das Fremde.”

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growing flow of new insights produced by an increasingly prolific historiographical industry.168 In this context, the question of whether or not the privileges of nomination were a functional, neutral, or dysfunctional element in the confessionalisation of the academic field seems to impose itself.169 An academic job agency avant-la-lettre may have contributed only marginally to the confessionalisation of Church hierarchy, and it did not enhance the clericalisation of Academia or the scholarisation of the clergy, in a highly urbanised clerical job market that was already characterised by a relative openness at all levels for university alumni and their old-boys’ networks. This suggests that rallying around academic privileges was the product of a pre-confessional diapason academics were reluctant to abandon and that privileges were little more than a symbolic compensation of their loss of autonomy and of the status inconsistency academic elites suffered in the face of competition by bishops, Jesuits, and other storm troopers in this overcrowded bulwark of the Faith. This definition of the problem demonstrates, however, that the confessionalisation paradigm is not radically different from the classical position. Qualifications such as “functional” or “dysfunctional” are central to the notion of any overarching process such as confessionalisation, but prove to be all but the secularised equivalents of “good” and “bad” in the classical narrative. The socio-cultural approach to religious history is marred by the same flaws, for three reasons. First, the paradigm claims to avoid the loopholes of the classical preoccupation about the truth or about intrinsic religious values by ignoring it, at least in theory. In practice, however, it does not.170 Some room for self-determination may be left for 17th-century academics in 168 “Angesichts der Verlagerung des historiographischen Interesses hin zur Mikrohistorie, Alltagsgeschichte und neuen Kulturgeschichte ist zu erwarten, dass die Konfessionalisierungsforschung in Zukunft auf die Frage nach der Bedeutung und Wirksamkeit staatlicher Konfessionalisierungsmassnahmen für die Lebesnwelt des ‘Volkes’ richten wird.” Ehrenpreis and Lotz-Heumann, Reformation und konfessionelles Zeitalter, 71. Cf. the classical tradition, which, inspired by a quick dechristianisation process after the 1960s, indeed delved into the question of whether or not Catholic reform had conquered the hearts and minds of the faithful. 169 Cf., for instance, Reinhard’s assessment of “nepotism” as dysfunctional two centuries before it actually disappeared, in Reinhard, “Nepotismus. Der Funktionswandel.” 170 “La question demeure pourtant, meme si elle ne peut être tranchée par la substitution d’une idéologie récente (marxiste) à une autre, plus ancienne (théologique).” De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, 163.

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more recent historiography at the micro- and, to a lesser extent, at the meso-level, but the fundamental macro-historical processes construed by historians, the new guardians of truth, are believed to remain fundamentally beyond their grasp—otherwise they would not be unqualified, fundamental processes anymore but “merely” constructs of the contemporaries themselves.171 This assumption introduces a new asymmetry: that the historian’s model of reality should not be mistaken for the reality of the model is a theoretical problem, not an operational one; while the explanatory schemes fielded by historical agents are apriori dismissed.172 Second, both schools put their models to work in a very similar manner, i.e., by modelling practices observed in the sources into epiphenomena of a general trend, or by marginalising them as residuals of a pre-confessional or a pagan/medieval, past. Most of the historian’s practices are so self-evident that they disappear from sight, bar a highly formalised account of the methodology applied in the introduction to each book. As a consequence, the overarching process that has pain-stakingly been distilled from the sources seems to spread more or less on its own account, without any intervention by the historian.173 171 This is not to say that historical actors do not express themselves on the larger evolutions in which they were involved; but their role is reduced to that of mere informants, their constructions being necessarily contingent, qualified, rhetorical, normative, and, therefore, definitely less true than the models detained by experts. The God who was made present at Louvain in the ritual performances of the learned men is not untouchable any more; he is a projection of something else. “Ce que peut faire l’anthropologue avec les divinités africaines et le panthéon hindou, parraît si impossible avec le Dieu Chrétien.” Piette, La réligion de près, 13. 172 Cf. the analysis of the reaction to the downfall of positivism in historical sciences in De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, 79–82. It is only put into practice with respect to competing traditions in religious history that have to be marginalised as irrelevant or superseded, a fate bequeathed to historians challenging the thesis of parallellism and equivalence. Cf., for instance, Burschel’s rather blunt repudiation of criticism from the traditional side. Only the qualifications ventilated by micro-historians need to be taken seriously, apparently. Burschel, “Einführung,” 57. Deconstruction post-factum is a common scientific practice. Read Latour, La science en action, 360–72. For the formalities in historiography, see De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, 148–53. 173 This deletion can be strategic or tactical. Historians, like all scientists, tend to delete the messiness of their practices and the process of trial and error in order to make unqualified statements about the past. Also, uncontroversial research strategies become tacit tactics that are not worth mentioning, and concepts that once may have been revolutionary evolve into implicit understandings—but nonetheless continue informing the phenomena that are being uncovered. What remains is a performance of rigid methodology in the introductions to scholarly works. Law, After Method, 36. This introduction subscribes to this general rule.

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“We live in a world where, as Marx forcefully argued, a product’s glamour relies on the invisibility of its unglamorous (but often clamorous) production.”174 Third, in this diffusion model deployed by both schools, the basic explanatory schemes are tautological. Multiple and diverging practices—forms of social interaction, the spread of new devotions, or the obedience displayed by subjects towards an absolutist prince—become the result of an explanans that, in fact, is merely a generic term (respectively Society, confessionalisation/Catholic Reform, and Power) for the practices observed in the sources. What needs to be explained becomes an explanation itself, for the sake of explanation.175 This is not to say that both approaches—the classical position and Confessionalisation—do not work. They do, as a prolific and inspiring scholarly performance demonstrates.176 But the underlying concerns informing them need to be revised for the purposes of a book that wishes to present early modern academics as full-blown actors who are capable of making their own history. In both approaches, it is assumed that there is a logic out there that makes past phenomena more or less coherent and that can be wrought out of the sources, provided one applies the right method. But this quest for unqualified

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Highmore, Michel De Certeau, 3. Because of these procedural similarities, the confessionalisation paradigm may well be related to Catholic reform in the same way as 18th-century enlightened ethics is related to the religious normative systems of yore: it has relegated the contents and the vocabulary of classical accounts on religious change to the realm of private and contingent beliefs but took over their formal arrangements, the grammar, and the procedures that shaped them in order to establish a new body of social laws that, contrary to Christianity, “does not offer any hope of redemption.” Cf. Latour’s evaluation of the assumption that underlying structures out there can account for the durability of phenomena in here. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 67. Interesting perspectives on the relationship between the Enlightenment and religion in the chapter on “la formalité des pratiques” in De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, 178–240. See also Gregory, “The Other Confessional History.” 176 Cf. new insights in the anthropology of science, where Nature eventually becomes the metaphysical spokeswoman of scientists. Read Latour, La science en action. The articulation of internal contradictions and inconsistencies does not aim at mining the credibility of the confessionalisation paradigm or the classical approach, resulting as it does from a different reading of the sources, not from the sources themselves (cf. Burke, “The Art of Re-Interpretation”). It seeks to question, while recognising the considerable debts towards the vast amount of inspiring scholarship assembled by historians of both schools, implicit understandings underlying both models by turning the theoretical problem of the relationship between the reality of the model and the model of reality into a discussion about concerns again. 175

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statements about a past that is believed to be ultimately coherent and definable tends to obscure that, when browsing through academic memorandums, correspondence, minutes of academic councils, royal charters, and papal bulls, the historian trying to make sense of the past is confronted with a wide range of actors doing just that: making sense of their world and their role in it. It is in this juncture that the problematic assumptions underpinning the processual approach shared by the classical school and the confessionalisation paradigm meet: because no reality whatsoever can be granted to the grand schemes early modern academics claimed to be at work, an external, but not less metaphysical deus ex machina— the innate urge to reform or to discipline; an academic “culture” or a matrix of perception—needs to be introduced in order to make something happen at all; and to make it happen in a more or less coherent way, so that convincing statements about the causes, the effects, and the properties of religious and political change in the early modern period can be articulated. Coherence, whatever its rhetorical strength, comes with a price, however: the fundamentals themselves are barely historical anymore, and early modern academics figure as hitch-hikers on the tide of history. Many problems can be resolved if the counterproductive assumptions in the previous paragraphs are simply inverted. Instead of claiming that the past is definable and coherent in principle but that flawed methodology and bias render it elusive in practice, the way to go is to assume that, although historical realities are elusive in principle, in practice coherence could be achieved by historical actors themselves, and that it is possible to produce workable accounts of this work-in-progress.177 This option, inspired by De Certeau’s later

177 This rules out two other options that, in my opinion, pave the path again for scepticism and postmodern relativism: first, history as a science auxiliaire. A good review in Weymans, “Michel De Certeau and the Limits of Historical Interpretation.” See also Burke, “The Art of Re-Interpretation,” and, of course, De Certeau himself: “De la sorte, l’histoire devient une auxiliaire . . . non pas qu’elle soit au service de l’économie, mais la relation qu’elle entretient avec diverses sciences lui permet d’exercer par rapport à chacune d’elles une fonction critique nécessaire, et lui suggère aussi le propos d’articuler ensemble les limites ainsi mises en évidence.” De Certeau, L’écriture, 113. With respect to the history of religion, cf. ibidem, 177. The other option, proposed by Peter Burke, is a “perspectivism” of sorts that may highlight the multiplicity of perspectives and the multifacetedness of historical events, but that does not explain how, in spite of these differences, collective action could be organised. Cf. Behan Mccullagh, “Bias,” 54 and 58; Burke, “Ouverture.”

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works on the formalisation of practice and on the demonic invasion of 17th-century France, affirms that “history is never sure”178 but turns this drawback into an opportunity.179 In the previous paragraphs, the operations of historians in action have been pulled out of the bottom drawer. It has become clear that their concerns and questions are not fundamentally different from those cultivated by the historical actors they are researching: both tried to instil some logic on a chaotic and unpredictable world. The assumption that the models unleashed by contemporary historians on the sources should be privileged over the images cherished by early modern academics must be ditched. Instead, a methodological and conceptual framework must be developed in which agents too can be nudged into action again. There is no need to panic. Chaos will not erupt; action will not become the reserve again of high-minded grand strategists who turned clear intentions into great deeds amidst forgotten masses without a voice; farmers will continue to plough; and law and order will eventually rule. The system will continue to work—but now academics themselves will do the job for us by making it work.180 If we go back to the moment where they could be observed in action, in correspondence, memorandums, or in minutes of university and faculty councils, they were doing exactly that, before dark forces from another world overwhelmed them.

1.3. Achieving logic. Academic interests and Catholic confessionalisation It has been pointed out in the Prologue that the central research question of this book is one about credibility. How on earth could academics believe that without their privileges, the university, let alone Catholicism in the Low Countries in its entirety, would inevitably collapse, and how did they convince popes and princes of their exorbitant claims? It has become clear in the previous paragraphs that,

178 De Certeau, La possession de Loudun, 9–18. “Simple and clear descriptions don’t work if what they are describing is not itself very coherent.” Law, After Method, 2. 179 A very interesting discussion on the past as a metonymy instead of as a representation, in Runia, “Presence.” 180 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 36.

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first, this question matters as much as other questions historians struggle with; and, second, that the dominant historical narratives are ill-equipped when it comes to answering this basic question. While academics claim that their privileges were central to Catholic reform, today’s omniscient experts would affirm that really, they were not, and if they were, that the learned men would have been wrong anyway, being unable to understand, let alone to shape, the larger schemes they were involved in. The remedy to this problem does not consist in ditching these larger schemes as such, but should get rid, for a start, of the inherent model of change as diffusion that turns them into explanatory and/or processual behemoths. It is this model that has paved the path for the mise-en-scène of overarching trends, structures, meta-narratives, and the like in the first place, and that inevitably raises unproductive questions about the functionality or the marginality of at first sight “medieval” academic privileges that had, in the introduction to this chapter, endured a Tridentine storm thanks to the Realpolitik of popes and princes. An alternative model of displacement in time and space of new religious phenomena is available. In the late 1990s, appropriation was advocated by Willem Frijhoff and Simon Ditchfield as an analysis tool for a history from below of religions and of religious renewal respectively in the Low Countries and in Italy.181 A convenient synonym of appropriation is the less familiar concept of translation, both the geographical and the linguistic connotations of which are a boon in a book in which social, geographical, and religious distances must be overcome. This concept is not only less prone to negative connotations; it also holds the procedures and modalities of appropriation in the limelight, which makes translation a more versatile concept in a research that focuses on credibility. In this translation model, agents

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Cf. Frijhoff, “Toeëigening,” and Ditchfield, “In Search of Local Knowledge.” Appropriation, in this context, should not be considered as an illegitimate, “political” recuperation or distortion of religious practices and beliefs, nor should history from below be mistaken for an inversion of power relations or the introduction of an “interaction” between groups the hierarchical relations of which go, otherwise, unquestioned. It seeks to introduce the Actor Perspective without imposing classifications and models “from above”; nothing more, but nothing less. See Jacobs, “Actornetwerk.”

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who previously were reduced to lame ducks manipulated by the invisible hands of Society, Power, or the Tridentine Spirit, will swing into action again, the spread in time and space of state power, religious beliefs, or social practices being the result of displacements undertaken by chains of actors.182 This implies that religious renewal, social interaction, or state formation are constituted in action: when no one is there picking up pastoral directives, royal orders, or new devotional practices, transmissions abruptly come to a halt; the chain or the group of stake-holders does not materialise; there is neither power nor reform nor confessionalisation. The alignment of actors with each of these phenomena or, in the opposite case, their indifference or resistance to them, need to be explained instead of being explained away by generic terms such as Catholic reform, confessionalisation, or contingent social or cultural obstacles. Second, the invisible hands (power, the urge to reform) that, in the diffusion model, gave the phenomenon its initial impetus and its momentum cannot account for any trend (the growth of state power, reform) anymore. New incentives are to be found continuously in order to keep it moving. This implies that the first actor in the chain is not a-priori more important than the others, and that the attribution of the initiative to one of them by the contemporaries is a secondary strategy that calls for an explanation.183 Third, actors should not be considered mere recipients (or obstacles) but stakeholders who appropriate and transform the devotional model, the political programme, or the behavioural codes that are being translated into their own concerns184—otherwise they would not even have bothered

182 As a consequence, one should not confound the translation model for change with the so-called transfer studies in cultural history. A survey in Werner and Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison,” 36–37. 183 This implies that social, political, economic, or symbolic capital dry up immediately as sources of energy that are always available somewhere to explain anything. Cf. Latour, “The Powers of Association.” If, say, the power of the prince is to work, it needs additional devices to be transported from one situation or locale to another (legal devices, references to precedents integrating specific situations into a universal logic, objects such as state portraits, regalia, royal seals on princely ordonnances; dynastic affiliality, institutional or non-institutional power brokers, institutions, and so on and so forth). 184 “It is not enough for a cultural practice to be transmitted for it to have a meaning; it still needs to be assimilated, appropriated, encoded.” Frijhoff, Embodied Belief, 53.

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to participate in the displacement of the phenomenon in question in the first place.185 The logic “out there” that determines the contingent activities of agents in concrete situations is substituted by a multitude of actors wondering how to act as one in different circumstances, and with respect to shifting stakes. What matters for the historian is not the dark force that holds society together.186 The question should be how the socio-religious order was being held together, and at what cost. The hermeneutic and methodological consequences of this shift from a model of diffusion to a model of translation and the challenges it brings for historical research are far-reaching. 1.3.1. Lost in Translation? Uncertainty, collective action, and Catholic confessionalisation All this raises the question of what a history of religious renewal informed by a model of translation might look like. Three criteria need to be met: it should be an open-ended account that makes ample room for the uncertainties and concerns of historical actors; it has to focus on their practical means to overcome this uncertainty; and it needs to highlight the costs at which the solutions found could be transported, if necessary, to other places and other situations. “So rather than asking the question: ‘why has the (Tridentine) Church won?’ perhaps we should be seeking to understand why so many people chose to inhabit and adapt its cultural forms to their own social and spiritual needs.”187 Uncertainty, inhabiting, and adaptation are key-words in Michel De Certeau’s tentative survey of the history of early modern Catholicism in his essay la formalité des pratiques.188 De Certeau’s major accomplishment rests in the link he made between the shift of attention in

185 This is the bottom-line argument in Latour, “The Powers of Association.” Orders that are being executed, devotional practices that meet response, or widely received behavioral codes are therefore never a copy of the original, even though actors will claim the opposite when trying to impose logic on their activities. 186 This question is inextricably linked with the diffusion model, and its answer is rather predictable: society, power, or truth all over again. 187 Ditchfield, “In Search of Local Knowledge,” 296. 188 Cf. “La formalité des pratiques,” in L’écriture de l’histoire, 178–241. More in De Certeau, Le fable mystique, and idem, L’invention du quotidien, both of which were published in the first half of the 1980s.

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early modern religion towards disciplined behaviour, correct practice, and spiritual or theological method on the one hand; and the troubled relationship between socio-religious practice and orthodoxy on the other. As a consequence, he addresses the hobby-horses of both the classical tradition and the socio-cultural approach. Reinhard stages the purification of doctrine as one of the most visible (and unproblematic) exponents of a comprehensive confessionalisation process from the top;189 classical historians either engage in a sociology of religions that deems theological debates out of its range, or struggle with theological concerns that are irreconcilable with historical ones. By contrast, De Certeau introduces the reader in a siècle des âmes that, despite the performances of unity and self-confidence of a triumphant Catholic Church, was marked by a deep sense of cognitive uncertainty and theological imprecision even within the inner circles of the clergy. His is the story of a sublime failure to reach a viable consensus in many pressing doctrinal problems ranging from the primacy of Peter’s chair over divine Grace and Justification to the Immaculate Conception. For historians of the classical position, there are always enough dreadful political circumstances or providence around to account for divisions within the Church, or for the ambivalence of pontiffs who have to be categorised as santi or as politicanti anyway.190 In a translation model, unity is something that has to be achieved time and again by chains of actors. These apparently did not manage to find a workable and lasting consensus about an increasingly opaque socio-religious system. Large provinces of the faith were already privatised in practice long before enlightened philosophes strove to dismiss religion in principle to the realm of private convictions and local custom. Was religion “lost in translation” already in the early modern period? One wonders how the powerful building of the Apostolic Church of Rome in the 17th century did not crumble under the weight

189

Reinhard, “Was ist Katholische Konfessionalisierung?” 426–27. Notions from Vincent Viaene, “A Pope’s Dilemma. Temporal Power and Moral Authority in the History of the Modern Vatican,” at the International Conference World Views and Wordly Wisdom. Interchanges between World Views, Ideology and Strategy 1750–2000, Louvain, 16–18 November 2006. 190

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of an age-old doctrinal heterogeneity—let alone under the multitude of religious practices—that became even more apparent exactly when orthodoxy was to be systematised in the battle against the heretics; how it nonetheless could articulate, survive, and even contain the recurrent surges of indifferentism, atheism, libertinism, and the relativism of loathed politiques;191—and above all, how it could present itself as a monolithic, exclusive bulwark of orthodoxy towards both the pious and the heretics, to the extent that contemporary historians have been lured into treating the old Church as such.192 Enter religious practice and the gradual transformation of the faithful into practising Catholics. While the faith itself, as a commonly shared reference frame, became, under the pressure of confessional and intra-confessional antagonism, in many respects uncertain and unpronounceable in the public realm, practices increasingly became a substitute193 for orthodoxy rather than mere signs of it. Gestures that had at least the advantage of being observable, recognisable, and controllable amidst all this confusion over society and truth were formalised into procedures that rendered present their intangible and absent doctrinal referent.194 “Le geste l’emporte sur le contenu. Il devient le signe le plus sûr. A la fois, il pose et il ‘dit’ la croyance comme conduite.”195 This shift to a primacy of action was not entirely external to the re-definition, at Louvain and elsewhere, of the theologian’s trade as a practical science that had to be freed from idle speculation and to theologians’ growing preoccupation about the right methods that accounted both for truth and salvation. The formalisation of theological practices did not only result in distinctions between several theological subdisciplines, but culminated in the highly formalised administrative and legal procedures that were applied, for instance, by the Roman congregations of the Index and of the Holy Office.196 It is in this context that one should situate the redefinition of the theologians’ role from teachers of the

191 De Certeau, La possession de Loudun. Articulating deviance is entangled with the formatting of identity. Cf. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society. 192 A definition of the problem in Hersche, “Klassizistischer Katholizismus.” 193 Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation, 208–55. 194 Compare De Certeau’s comments on the formalisation of practice by sociologists reducing them to statistical units and to meaningful objects, in De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, 1, xl. 195 De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, 205. 196 Cf. the higher degree of formalisation in Roman censorship compared with university censors. Neveu, “Censures romaines.”

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Church in the Middle Ages over councillors of ecclesiastical jurisdiction holders in the early modern period to the “witnesses of tradition” at the Second Vatican Council.197 In this scenario, the focus on the homogeneity and the purification of religious practices (such as, for instance, the Romanisation of Eucharistic liturgy) was not an exponent of a process of social disciplining, but was intertwined with it, both enterprises aiming at reassembling the lost mystic body of society. This normalisation and standardisation of practices does not only resonate in the statistics of Le Bras and other contemporary sociologists of religions, but also in the status dioecesis dispatched to Rome in the 17th century by the Belgian episcopate or in the triumphant litterae annuae of the Jesuits enumerating the thousands of confessions and sacred hosts administered to the faithful. The stress on good practice did not only regard the flock, but also the Society’s shepherds themselves. The Ignatian Spiritual Exercises are not a theological treatise, but a methodological guide to be practised.198 Attempts to establish a more pure faith by withdrawing from the world199 would lead, in the course of the 17th and the 18th centuries, to the emergence of many “churchlets” within the Church, spiritual congregations of various hue and feathers that mainly distinguished themselves, or were identified, with specific religious acts, even though they often identified with controversial bits of the Church’s heterogeneous intellectual legacy as well.200 None of this was inevitable in the beginning of the 17th century, the period on which this book focuses; nor was the privatisation of the faith and religious practices altogether by the philosophes a logical consequence of evolutions within early modern religiosity itself. But distinctive practices that appropriated not only the heretics but also erring competitors within the Church as negative benchmarks were already in vogue long before they were structured by the duality of Jansenism and anti-Jansenism—especially in a bastion of the faith overcrowded with storm-troopers of Catholic reform.

197

Cf. Minnich, “The Changing Status of the Theologians,” and Grès-Gayer, “The Magisterium of the Faculty of Theology.” 198 Quattrone, “Accounting for God,” 657. 199 On the link between Jansenism, patristics, and a pessimistic view on the early modern Church, read Neveu, “Pour une histoire de l’augustinianisme.” 200 De Certeau, Le lieu de l’autre, 181–86.

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This calls for a thorough redefinition of the concept of confessionalisation. It remains a valid concept, because of its symmetrical approach to different confessions; its anti-“Weberian” connotations; its semantic link with identity, interests, and policy; and because it is not Catholic reform or counter-reformation. All this does not make confessionalisation a prime cause of social, cultural, and religious change or a transcendental process, however, nor will it be an overarching concept in this book. It has to remain, contrariwise, a generic term for an open list of either procedures or effects. With respect to procedures, confessionalisation refers in this scenario to widespread practices of distinction in a socio-religious sphere that consisted in appropriating heretics, other groups within the Church, or both, as a negative benchmark.201 By contrast, confessionalisation as an effect is either a synoptic snapshot made by the historian of the contingent and pluriform outcomes of negotiations over roles, interests, and identities in a religious context; or a mise-en-scène of confessional unity operated by full-blown actors; whether in (descriptions of ) Processions of the Holy Sacrament or in the dry status animarum. In line with the insights provided by the so-called performative turn, confessionalisation is, in both cases, a performance, generating as it does the phenomenon it seeks to describe. 1.3.2. The Art of Performance: Drama, achievement, or both? Methodological outlines Is this “performative turn,” after the social, linguistic, cultural, and ethical turns, really the answer to the melting down of icebergs such as Society, Power, or Truth? It depends on whether one adopts a narrow or a broad definition of performance. The narrow definition was adopted by Peter Burke in a review article on the thematic and methodological opportunities of what he calls the dramaturgical model. “Instead of drawing analogies between society and the theatre, the new approach dissolves the boundaries between them.”202 Burke situates the recent success of this model in the rise of postmodernity, as the “diffuse sense of fragility or fluidity of reality” that seeks to free agency from social determinism or even social constraints. Actors should be

201 202

Compare Roegiers, “Jansenisme en katholieke hervorming,” 45. Burke, “Performing History,” 41.

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allowed some room to exploit the system and its loopholes, and to pick different registers of speech or action according to the situation. The author proposes to re-christen the dramaturgical model as “occasionalism,” the basic point of which is that “on different occasions (moments, locales) or in different situations (in the presence of different people) the same person behaves in different ways”—an assessment that will prove helpful when following academics in the multi-tiered religious, political, and intellectual environments in which they were entangled.203 The co-existence of multiple registers and occasions are central to Burke’s proposal, which is rightly centred on remedying the danger of overextending the concept of performance posed by a postmodern reaction “that denies the cultural or institutional constraints on effective performances.” His solution, however, remains firmly embedded in the Euro-American assumptions that have proved to be counterproductive in the previous paragraphs. Burke’s main source of inspiration is Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice.204 This tycoon of French sociology has become something of an obligatory passage point in much of recent historiography. The complete absence of references to his work in the prologue of this book is conspicuous, the more so since Bourdieu has shed his light on the relationship between Homo Academicus and the realms of power as well as on the structure of the religious field.205 The emergence, maturing, or erosion of a scholarly habitus206 in an evolving academic field,207 which maintained the fiction of its autonomy from the political field via the image of a privileged ivory tower populated by unworldly pedants, might account for the success of university dons in defending their interests in some areas as well as their failure to do so in 203

Burke, “Performing History,” 36. An introduction in Bourdieu, Practical Reason. 205 Boudieu, Homo Academicus. An application in Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur. Bourdieu, “Génèse et structure du champs religieux.” 206 “Regulated Improvision” in Burke’s review. Habitus is to be conceived as a necessity sublimated into a virtue. It produces strategies that are objectively adapted to an objective situation. Social practices are guided by a “practical reason” rather than by rational calculation. The conditions of rational calculation are never met in practice, because information is scarce, practical choices are required, and alternatives remain vague. Habitus explains why people do “the right thing” more frequently than the laws of probability suggest. Cf. Bourdieu, Opstellen, 64–67. 207 Fields (Burke’s “occasions”) are to be understood as social microcosms (read: arenas of social conflict) that are defined by the resources and interests that are at stake, that have a specific logic and (false) necessity, and that therefore are related with the habitus of the field. See, for instance, Bourdieu, Practical Reason, 138. 204

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others. It does not, however, for the simple reason that habitus, a set of “field-specific dispositions” that inform the strategies of actors, is just another generic term for (standardised) practices that is turned into a tautological principle of these practices,208 based on the assumption that there has to be something out there that determines the apparent durability and the coherence of behavioural registers in specific social environments.209 What has to be explained from the historian’s point of view is, in analogy to Catholic reform or confessionalisation, once more transformed into an explanation that turns the multiple activities of actors into a passivity of victims who are unable to unmask, because of their docte ignorance,210 the brutal forces that determine them.211 This disqualifies Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and Burke’s occasionalism, as a conceptual framework in a research that aims at nudging early modern academics into action again and that has defined the problem of credibility as an obligatory passage point in order to do so.212

208 A good analysis of the tautological character of habitus in Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu, 74–84. In Burke’s line of approach, performative practices will succeed only if the habitus is adapted to the field in which it has to operate; which implies that again the effect—the success of a performance thanks to social recognition in this or that specific environment—is the format and the condition for its supposed regulating principles. The structuralist empires of yore are replaced by occasionalist baronnies that are smaller but not less despotic. Nonetheless, even this flexibility of Bourdieu’s model is limited. Cf. Jacobs, “Actornetwerk.” 209 Read the sweeping criticism of Bourdieu’s theory of practice in De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, 82–96. 210 “L’explication que les agents peuvent fournir de leur pratique, au prix d’un retour quasi-théorique sur leur pratique, dissimule, à leurs yeux même, la vérité de leur maîtrise pratique comme docte ignorance, c’est à dire come mode de connaissance pratique n’enfermant pas la connaissance de ses propres principes . . . Il s’ensuit que cette docte ignorance ne peut donner lieu qu’à un discours de trompeur trompé, ignorant et la vérité objective de sa maîtrise pratique comme ignorance de sa propre vérité et le véritable principe de la connaissance qu’elle enferme.” Bourdieu, Esquisse, 202. 211 In the opposite case, it is not a regulating principle anymore, and actors, horresco referens, would start regulating their habitus themselves while actively organising the occasions (fields) they were engaged in. Actors are never more than flawed informants, “des trompeurs trompés.” 212 Bourdieu is a textbook case of a sociologist who is “playing God” by imposing his constructions on social actors and by treating their legitimations as sheer discourse hiding “objective” social relations. As for his article “Génèse et structure du champ religieux,” I share the assessment by Viaene who criticises the French sociologist’s methods by stating that “Bourdieu, shrouding a quite unsophisticated marxism in a typically French cloud of words, considers self-delusion to be the very essence of religion.” Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 16 n. 20.

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Again, there is a lot in names. Strip performance a priori of its performativity by reducing it to a “dramaturgical dimension,” and one has to resort, indeed, to invisible hands in order to account for the striking efficacy of all this role-playing. Burke turns his back without further comments on the meaning attached to the concept by music critics, psychologists of learning, and by economists “who attempt to measure the performance of certain industries” and by “the engineers who test the performance of ships, cars or aircraft.”213 If, by contrast, the meaning of performance is kept as open as possible, it may simultaneously refer to theatrical display as well as to achievement and its verification. In this scenario, historical actors themselves will do the job for historians by determining whether or not a phenomenon is a dramatic performance, an artefact, or a solid matter of fact that needs to be acted upon at once. Not only should we recognise that early modern academics recurred to performative practices in order to do so, but the performativity of their practices should not a priori be excluded (or taken for granted) either. Seen from this perspective, fluidity, fragility, and confusion become assets to build on, rather than pitfalls in a logical and coherent world that need to be filled as quickly as possible by habitus or field. All this calls for a full-fledged performative concept of Society, Power, and Truth, in which actors are allowed to overcome the uncertainties about what binds them and in which society, power, and truth “in action” are the result or an achievement, rather than a cause, of associations negotiated on the spot, in specific circumstances, around specific programmes, and with the help of practical means. This insight was first developed in another research field that, in analogy to religious history, inevitably has to tackle the problem of credibility as well: Science and Technology Studies (STS).214 In order to find a way out of an entrenched internalism-externalism debate in science studies,215

213

Burke, “Performing History,” 38. A good introduction into this research field and the many approaches to the topic is furnished by Vinck, Sociologie des sciences. 215 Many of the problems discussed in the previous paragraphs have surfaced in the context of the internalism-externalism debate between traditional history or sociology of ideas (respectively the classical position in Church history and Le Bras’ sociology of religions), which claims that only careers and structures of science can be accounted for while the inner core of science (respectively the Tridentine Spirit) speaks for itself, and the hard programme that seeks to develop a full-fledged sociology of knowledge 214

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Callon, Latour, and others chose to adopt a symmetrical agnosticism towards the models developed by sociologists as well as those professed by scientists, and they tried to nudge the scientists into action by exploring how they managed to turn their models of reality into the reality of the model.216 In his famous article on the domestication of scallops at Saint-Brieuc in France, Callon gave a convincing account of the successes and failures of scientists in rallying fishermen and scallops around their project, which in turn made them an obligatory passage point for both. The author explores the articulation of a problematisation by the scientists that could be translated (or so they hoped) into the interests ascribed to all the potential partners involved; the attempts to enrol them as stakeholders (interessment/enrollment); and their (eventually vain) attempts to lock their partners into a durable coalition (mobilisation) in which the experts of nature would have become indispensable.217 These concepts, or synonyms of them, will bounce back recurrently in the next chapters, which deal with the successes and failures of academics faced with the task of becoming indispensable themselves. Because of this focus on actors operating in chains or networks of other actors, this new approach was baptised Actor Network Theory or, not coincidentally, sociology of translation.218

(respectively the classical confessionalisation school and, for instance, Bourdieu on religion), in which society (or a more hybrid structure) has to speak for itself. 216 STS may have proven to be the Waterloo of critical sociology, which claims that there is an ultimate “social explanation” for every branch of human activity, including the hard facts of science. In contrast to peasants in the Bearn, say, or early modern academics, rocket scientists had the means to shout back. In the wake of the so-called “science wars” between sociologists and scientists, some sociologists stuck to the critical programme nonetheless. Other sociologists decided to withdraw behind the frontiers marked by Merton and to stick to studying the “structures of science” (financing, career patterns, symbolic representation) rather than the core of science itself. Bourdieu is an example of this position (cf. Bourdieu, Science de la science, and idem, Homo Academicus). His works account for the stability of academic or scientific elites and their socio-cultural reproduction, but do not attempt to explain the stability (or fragility) of scientific models and/or practices. A minority, however, decided that critical sociology had just met its nemesis, and that if its assumptions did not work for scientists, neither do they work with respect to muted Bearn peasants or pédans descolle in the 17th century. Cf. “The Fortunate Wreckage of Sociology of Science,” in Latour, Reassembling the Social, 93–99. 217 Callon, “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation.” 218 It is not a coincidence that Frijhoff, who also advocated a more “active” history of academics, also suggested that “pertinent terms used in recent theory include ‘actor network’ used when collective actions are analyzed historically, and ‘appropriation’ used when the actions of a historical subject are considered as determinants of the identity of the group.” Frijhoff, Embodied Belief, 24.

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Good synonyms for “Actor Network” are configuration or interpretive community.219 Seen from this perspective, Society becomes a chain of actors bundling energies with the help of a wide range of devices. This does not imply that such a chain of actors cannot take a rigid, Euro-American form that seems to defy time and context. As a matter of fact, the crystallisation of hard realities and constraints will occur regularly throughout the next chapters. But when it does, it calls, from the historian’s point of view, for an explanation, not reification. Most of the methodological tools to do so have already been touched upon implicitly or explicitly in the previous paragraphs. They all more or less derive from the symmetrical agnosticism towards contemporary models as well as towards the models of reality articulated by actors that is characteristic for Actor Network Theory.220 Only in this manner it is possible to explore whether these models worked, for whom, and how they were put to practice. For reasons of clarity, these methodological rules, which will be the touchstone for the next chapters, will be pulled together in this section.221 The most basic rule consists in keeping the social as flat as possible. This entails accepting that constellations, groups, position-holders, or “fields” are not a given but are continuously being formatted, mobilised, and dismantled. It is in moments of uncertainty and negotiation—in the many conflicts that will be analysed in the following chapters—that university men were forced to reflect on their role in society while simultaneously modelling the academic order into an interesting partner for potential allies within and without the university, and in which they sought to configure an environment in which their interests could flourish. Power structures, hierarchies, and interest groups will emerge, but now the attention will shift to the question of how they were devised, stabilised, and displaced in time and

219 Cf. Fish, Is There a Text in This Class, which addresses the same problems from the point of view of literary criticism. An interpretive community involved in the act of creative meaning-making is not to be mistaken for a social entity. It is a conglomerate of texts, readership, legitimate reading methods, and a wide range of other (f)actors. The meaning of a text is therefore not fixed. 220 The central text on symmetrical agnosticism is Latour, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, which challenges the asymmetry in research respectively into allegedly premodern and modern phenomena. 221 Most of these have been drawn from Latour’s textbook on Actor Network Theory, Reassembling the Social.

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space.222 Keeping the surface flat also implies getting rid of a-priori dichotomies between the centre as the source of religious or political change and a reluctant periphery, or between “power” or “society” and “religion.”223 If such dichotomies emerge (and they will, as already mentioned in the Prologue), it should be because of the work of actors, not of constellations.224 In analogy, actors may become grand figures carrying through proportionally grand schemes—a fate bequeathed, for instance, to popes, princes, and other powers that be. Yet, it becomes crucial to understand how and why they were nudged into action as great princes or benign pontiffs by other actors. Actors are mediators, not grand initiators or docile vehicles. This entails that a good historical account tries to multiply the actors involved rather than reducing them to a single, ahistoric regulator. At first sight, this may seem a recipe for chaos, but it is not. In theory, actors can reinvent the world all over again at every occasion; in practice, they seldom do so and try to avoid the tremendous costs in terms of time, financial resources, infrastructure, and tested alliances, not to mention the cost of credibility itself, that such adventures would bring along.225 In order to keep the world more or less predictable, a

222 The notion of accumulation does not rhyme well with the methodological principle of keeping the landscape as flat as possible in order to let actors bring in contrasts, reliefs, and asymmetries themselves. Concepts such as social, political, or symbolic capital or, for that matter, other structures cannot be used as explanatory principles, begging as they do for an explanation on how they were practically accumulated on the spot. On capital and the conversion of different forms of capital (here: symbolic and economic capital ), read Bourdieu, Esquisse, passim. 223 This is the central argument in Ditchfield, “In Search of Local Knowledge.” 224 As a consequence, this methodological survey is not a plea for a micro-historical approach in which fundamental causes and effects are to be sought on a microhistorical level, for the simple reason that the production of this distinction between macro- and microhistory needs to be explained. Cf. the historiographical survey of “microhistory” in Revel, “Micro-analyse et construction du social.” The “local” and the “global” will emerge in the course of the negotiations, and shifting hierarchies or causal relations between them will materialise now and then in the second part of this book, but their appearance on the scene calls, again, for an explanation, not reification. On this argument in particular, read Latour, Reassembling the Social, 173–218. 225 Laboratories are, again, a good example. As long as they are performing, nobody will wish to see them dismantled and the expensive laboratory tools dismissed as sheer artefacts. Compare Law, After Method, 19 sqq. The success of a scientific model, for instance, is determined not by either truth or society—that would be tantamount to tautology—but by the flexibility and the strength of the network supporting it. Scientific models tend to be maintained and fortified—until new stakes cannot be absorbed anymore, participants start to withdraw from the network and the model unravels.

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lot of actors that are not considered as such in mainstream humanities (hence the need to introduce invisible hands) were configured to stabilise volatile human interactions, to entrench social asymmetries, to reproduce painstakingly engineered matters of fact.226 To put it differently: objects, an open list of all non-human actors, have agency too.227 In most cases, objects—institutions, for instance, or worn rituals, but also other devices—seem to function in a more or less automatic, unproblematical way compared to traditional, more vocal social actors (groups, networks, position-holders, and so on and so forth). This is exactly what they are designed for: they are to perform as shortcuts that spare other actors the burdensome task of reinventing the world all over again. It is the basic point of this book: ecclesiastical benefices (which will turn out to be rather odd objects) made a difference in the volatile fabric of Academia. Because academic privileges were continuously under threat, conflicts over benefices become opportunities to study the formatting of groups but also to trace, in the process, the agency of benefices as mediators of these groups. 1.3.3. Traces The scope is endless: following the trails of “academics in action” via the traces they left in the sources. In a research that focuses on the world according to the academics, academic sources constitute the core of the materials used. Despite inevitable losses, the source material produced by the Old University of Louvain is abundant. It is distributed over three funds, preserved in two archival depositories. Two of these funds have found, from the 1980s onwards, a shelter in

On this subject, read the article by David van Reybrouck,‘Boule’s Error,” esp. 162–164 which revisits the “error” of Neanderthal primitivity from the point of view of ANT. 226 “Latour and Woolgar talk of reification, but perhaps the notion of routinisation better draws attention to what is most important . . . but if machines and skills and statements can be turned into packages, then so long as everything works (this is always uncertain) there is no longer any need to individually assemble all the elements that make up the package, and deal with all the complexities.” Law, After Method, 33. 227 For instance, scallops refusing or accepting to enter the schemes of scientists by attaching themselves to the latters’ domestication nets prove to develop activities that can be compared to the election of trade union representatives by the fishermen. Read Callon, “Some Elements.” An in-depth development of this argument in Latour, Politiques de la nature.

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the university archives of Louvain (UAL). The fund Old University of Louvain (UAL, OUL) hosts, among others, the collection of charters and a list of miscellaneous documents, mostly related to the theology faculty, that until recently were kept in the archives of the diocesan seminary of Ghent (UAL, Ghent). The documentary backbone is constituted by the vast Old University of Louvain list preserved in the State Archives at Louvain (RAL, OUL), and more specifically by the minutes of academic councils, the Acta Universitatis and of the faculties of Arts and Divinity. Boards were designed to build consensuses, not to deploy uncertainties, rifts between academic factions, or negotiations between dons in the corridors of the Louvain auditoria and colleges. This entails that many of the actors popping up in these minutes (faculties, institutions, or officials) are often presented as unproblematic, monolithic agents, an assessment that is, of course, valid for all the official or semi-official documents of the learned corporations (correspondence, legal treatises, memorandums sent to local, regional, and ecclesiastical authorities and tribunals) registered in the minutes or elsewhere. Yet, it is largely sufficient to pick up the trails of meaningmaking where they can be traced back, and minutes offer an excellent opportunity to do so in a more or less systematic way. This entails that shorthands such as, say, “confessionalisation,” “the university,” or “social resources” will be used recurrently in order to keep the text readable. It is up to the reader to judge whether my request not to read explanatory principles into such shorthands is just an excellent bit of sophism or not. This applies also to the prosopographical data in this book, which have been drawn from administrative (graduation lists in the beadles’ registers or in the Acta Venerandae Facultatis Artium, the books of nominations, attestations in the Acta of the university or the respective faculties, lists of accession to academic councils in the list RAL, OUL) or literary sources (academic biographies). Statistics are to be read as descriptions, not as implicit or explicit explanations that seek to introduce an effect of realism. They are not about concrete data but are about standardised practices that have already been modelled by historical actors before being crammed in graphs and tables. Therefore, they are not to be privileged over qualifications of academics on their practices. They rather aim at translating their qualifications into terms familiar to historians and, above all, will offer many opportunities to shed a light on how academics themselves organised their world.

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Quantitative data concerning practices in the clerical job market were provided by sources produced by ecclesiastical administrations in Belgium (Archivum Archiepiscopatus Mechliniensis, A.A.M.) and in Rome (ASV, Dataria Ap. and Camera Ap.). A wealth of materials putting academic consensus building into perspective can be found in other archives. First, there are the documents listed in the archives of the abbey of Park (Archivum Abbatiae Parcensis, A.A.Pa.) near Louvain, whose abbot was, between 1607 and 1617, princely and apostolic visitator of the university. This documentation furnishes us with many fragments of negotiations that never made it to the minutes. The abbot was also princely visitator of the University of Douai from 1616 onwards. This allows us to uncover negotiations and policymaking in other universities. The archives of the city of Louvain (SAL, Oud Archief), and more specifically the minutes of the city council, are not less instructive than those of the abbey of Park. It is also in these funds that documents accumulated by the States of Brabant, in which the university town had a seat as one of the four capitals of the duchy, can be retrieved. Both the States and the city were important mediators in academic policy in the second half of the period under investigation. They provide, among other things, backstage information concerning the visitation. In the general archives in Brussels (AGR), the lists Conseil Privé, Régime Espagnol (AGR, Conseil Privé) and of the Council of State (in AGR, Papiers de l’Etat et de l’Audience) contain an amalgam of documents and dispatches of the supreme administrative councils of the Netherlands, on the universities of Louvain, Dole, and Douai, but these have proved to be of secondary importance.228 The vast container series of the Papiers de l’Etat et de l’Audience in the AGR (AGR, Audience) contains many treasures. The Secretariat of State was the passage point for the masses of documents submitted by individuals and institutions of the Netherlands to the Privy Council, 228

The archives of the Privy Council at Liège (Archives de l’Etat de Liège, AEL, Conseil Privé) were heavily damaged during the last World War. The available fragments are instructive because of the lack of information on the recurrent conflicts between Louvain prebend hunters and Liège “nationals,” although they do allow establishment of a general context in which the borders between the South Netherlands and Liège proved to be highly permeable. Regests of the minutes of the Cathedral Chapter of Liège, which also seated for the clergy in the Liège States and the members of which also figured as members of the Privy Council of Liège, confirm these findings.

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the Council of State, and the court, but it contains a lot of other materials as well. Somehow, the correspondence of Andrea Trevigi, the Archdukes’ physician and an important mediator for the academics in Brussels as well as in Rome, ended up in this fund. The list also contains the correspondence of the Archdukes’ secretaries of state with the archducal resident in Rome (Négotiations de Rome, AGR, Audience), who will prove to be a pivot in archducal policies concerning the universities of Louvain, Dole, and Douai. At one juncture, these letters will take over the role of chronological backbone, in the absence of detailed information in the minutes of academic councils. University men had the tedious habit of appointing special committees charged with the Negotium Romanum. Needless to say, this affects the quality and the quantity of the information provided by academic institutions. Roman archives have similar flaws. The dispatches of the nunciatures of Flanders and Cologne to the Vatican Secretary of State229 could be examined in a more or less systematical way.230 But because academics did everything to avoid the routine of the curia when trying to push through a confirmation of their privileges, special committees of cardinals in Rome were charged with the negotium Romanum, and many documents probably never found their way to the archives of the Holy See.231 An interesting example is provided by the archives of the papal families themselves. The Archivio Segreto Vaticano was indeed founded by Paul V in 1605, but pontiffs continued to incorporate part of the massive number of documents accumulated during their pontificates in private archives, the papacy being embedded in a “sistema di famiglie.” As for the Fondo Borghese (Aldobrandini and Borghese) in the Vatican Archives and the Fondo Barberini (Borghese and Barberini) in the Vatican Library, the inventories drawn up by Pasture—though

229 Fragments of correspondence are scattered throughout the archives of other offices, the congregations (the Holy Office, for instance), or the tribunals. The archives of the nunciature in Brussels are lost. Muret, “La disparition.” 230 These funds have been made accessible via editions and, except for Bentivoglio’s nunciature (1607–15), regests edited by the Bibliothèque de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome, as well as by German scholarship on the Cologne nunciature. They provide, together with the series Relationes diocesium that was gathered by the Congregation of the Council, ample materials to frame Roman perceptions and policy. 231 The archives of the Consistory, the Armadi, and of the Congregation of the Council were scrutinied as well.

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whether these are complete is a moot point232—indeed refer sporadically to materials concerning the “Roman Question.” Other archival institutions in Rome that need to be mentioned here are the Archivum Romanum Societatis Jesu (ARSI), the correspondence in the funds Flandro-Belgica, Gallo-Belgica, and the miscellanea in the Fondo Gesuitico, Collegia, as well as the Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (ACDF). Theology is never far away when benefices enter the picture. 1.3.4. The litmus test of description The body of sources that will inform the analysis is conventional. To an extent, this will also apply to the narrative in this book, which is above all descriptive. This notion has become a curse recently, and therefore demands qualification. The reader can expect a descriptive account that strives neither for exhaustiveness (several fields of academic policy will only briefly be heeded) nor for a “detached” reproduction of the mere facts. It does not wish to prove this or that party right or wrong, with or without nuances, nor does it envisage establishing the reliability of one source or informant over another.233 Value judgements, character assassinations, and attacks on credibility will be abundant, but they are those developed by the actors involved, and the reader is gently asked to relate unflattering qualifications such as “blasphemous heretics,” “plotting Jesuits,” or other colourful descriptions to them, not to the author’s opinion. Avoiding critique also implies keeping aloof from the normalising, synoptical gaze that merely introduces other biases under a different, scientific guise. The task of description consists in deploying academics as full-blown actors/mediators of the chains in which they were involved. As a consequence, few grand concepts will be used. The criteria and concerns this book has to respond to are situated elsewhere. If, in the conclusions, the academic field emerges as a coherent and predictable environment that furnishes the reader with a logical explanation of the many aspects of academic policy that

232 Pasture, Inventaire de la Bibliothèque Barberini . . . au point de vue de l’histoire des Pays-Bas, and idem, “Inventaire du Fonds Borghese.” Both inventories are incomplete, however. 233 “But what if historians didn’t care about which version of events was true?” Keynote paper “Telling more,” 12, by Luise White at the workshop Not Telling: Secrecy, Lies and History.

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will be heeded, or that is immediately applicable to other fields that were not discussed, it has failed. By contrast, if the world according to the academics turns out to be a fluid and fragile world that needed continuously to be devised, structured, ordered, and stabilised at great costs and by all means, but that nonetheless somehow worked, then it has succeeded.

CHAPTER TWO

THE DROSS OF THE EARTH. BENEFICES AND ACADEMICS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

In contemporary canon law, the concept of “benefice” has gradually lost ground to the term “ecclesiastical office.” The Codex Iuris Canonici of 1917 still contained 80 canons regulating the benefice system; by 1983, only one of them had survived.1 For centuries, however, beneficium had been widely used as a synonym for officium. Yet, canonists would insist that the former concept referred only to the economic aspect of the latter, i.e., its remuneration derived from Church property or from tithes. Beneficium non datur nisi propter officium: a benefice was only conferred in exchange for the fulfilment of the pastoral or other religious tasks to which it was perpetually attached.2 This ageold bond would evaporate in the turmoil of the French Revolution. Much Church property was confiscated and the principalities of the Church were gradually secularised; ecclesiastical tithes were abolished; and new financial constructions footed the bill of the diocesan clergy.3 The vast monastic and canonical worlds, hotbeds of privilege and exemption, were decimated, being constructed, as they were, around a religiosity that was now considered less useful. Throughout the 19th century, a configuration emerged in which the Church gradually streamlined itself into a universal nation state of popes, bishops, parish priests, and the Catholic masses.4 In this context, the notion of benefice disappeared gradually, being entangled with the administration

1

Gaudemet, “Préface,” in Bégou-Davia, L’interventionisme bénéficial, 3. “Im unterschied zu dem lehnrechtlichen Benefizium war das kirchliche Benefizium die Ausstattung einer Funktion, eines Aufgabenbereiches, und nicht die Ausstattung des Benefiziaten.” Kerff, “Altare und Ecclesia,” 851–52. 3 Carrion Piñero distinguishes, in addition to the historical one, five “new” benefice systems. “L’aspetto patrimoniale-economico,” 442–45. 4 Raedts, “De Kerk als natiestaat,” 153. General features in Coppa, The Modern Papacy. On Belgian Catholicism and its “Romanisation” in an international context, see Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See. 2

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of a patrimony that had largely been swept away and with an idleness that could no longer be reconciled with “public utility.”5 The notion that clerics had to be remunerated for their services stemmed from the 4th century, when the Church gradually emerged from the apostolic days as a major land owner, a dispenser of public services,6 and an attractive bait for equestrian and senatorial elites that distinctively despised the lowly crafts that had remunerated their “apostolic” predecessors and the rural clergy.7 As a consequence, the crystallisation of the clergy as a distinct group from the laity, in tandem with the ritualisation and hierarchisation that came with the transformation of an outlawed sect into a public church,8 was constituted in daily practice, as the shepherds increasingly withdrew from the flock’s prosaic activities. Creating distance between clergy and laity would remain a time-tested remedy for many of the Church’s ills in the future. The benefice system that would emerge sometime between the 10th and the 12th centuries was designed to do just that.9 In the wake of Gregorian Reform, a sophisticated legal system was developed that sought to prevent the feudalisation of ecclesiastical office and property in the early Middle Ages. Afterwards, beneficial law would continue to pass the test as a flexible, universal language ordering a large part of the Church’s infrastructure while providing for concepts and tools to define and to settle conflicts over the distribution of resources.10

5 Interesting perspectives, from a structuralist viewpoint, in Colagiovanni, “L’aspetto storico-sociologico,” 393–418. The notion of idleness resonates, for instance, in the already cited article by Put, “Matthias Hovius.” 6 Mollat, “Bénéfices ecclésiastiques.” Already in the 3rd century, churches in episcopal cities sometimes had large domains at their disposal for charitable purpose. Landau, “Kirchengut,” 563. Patrimonial expansion in the 4th and 5th centuries enabled the churches to maintain their buildings or to provide for new ones; and to take over from the state the old grain distributions now redubbed as Christian charity. A third portion of Church property was used to meet the needs of clerics, first in urban centres and gradually, but much later, in the countryside as well. 7 “Ma ben presto la Chiesa, uscita dal periodo di latenza e di persecuzione, riconosciuta come una delle tante persone giuridiche prima, privilegiata poi al di sopra delle altre persone giuridiche nell’ambito dello stato e poi messa alla pari dello stato e quindi, per l’aspetto spirituale, sopra di questo, affrontò ben diversamente il problema del sostentamento del suo clero; intervenendo la novità giuridica precedente, la consistenza patrimoniale propria poi, e l’assetto economico feudale infine.” Colagiovanni, “L’aspetto storico-sociologico,” 404–06. 8 Bell, Ritual, 216. 9 Different chronologies are discussed in Kerff, “Altare und Ecclesia,” 852–55. 10 A good analysis of the legal technicalities is to be found in Mollat, “Bénéfices ecclésiastiques.”

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The longevity of the benefice system was not determined by its innate resistance to change. Such an explanation is not only normative, suggesting, as it does, that it should have changed, but is also tautological. When assessing its remarkable resilience, the question that begs an answer is why so many clerics and laymen alike could inhabit the “benefice system” more or less comfortably in distant circumstances, periods, and areas. In this overview, the metaphor of a clerical job market will be used in order to shift attention from a seemingly inert system to a wide range of contingent practices deployed by multiple stakeholders, while on the other hand the limits to this sleight-of-hand will become apparent as we proceed. In order to do so, benefices will be visited in situ: in places where they were the object of administrative practices. In the next three sections, the reader will be guided through episcopal palaces with their diocesan administrations; through buzzing Roman offices where thousands of bulls regarding benefices were sealed each year; and through the corridors of colleges and austere university halls. Interestingly, universities appeared on the stage exactly when the benefice system came into existence, and both reached institutional maturity more or less in the same period. Universities and benefices were deeply entangled with each other from the start, an ecology that will come to life in the last sections of this chapter.

2.1. The bishop’s men? Archbishop Matthias Hovius and his shepherds The first site that can serve as an excellent observatory of the benefice system in action is the register left by Matthias Hovius, archbishop of Mechlin from 1596 until his passing in 1620. Of late, he has become a well-known persona in Belgian historiography.11 The canon of Saint Romuald’s in Mechlin, who in the early 1580s had to hide in a closet from marauding Calvinists, would become a pivot in the reconstruction labour that awaited all Belgian bishops.12 For the daily maintenance of the neglected vineyard entrusted to him, Hovius kept a register of his

11 12

Cf. Harline and Put, A Bishop’s Tale. See, for instance, Put, “Al de mannen van de aartsbisschop.”

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collations (advowsons of benefices).13 For many reasons, the catalogus collationum is a poor source for reconstruction of the dynamics of the clerical job market in the first decades of the 17th century. Paradoxically, however, its shortcomings will make for an excellent introduction to the conundrums of the early modern clerical job market. The register contains, for a start, a (much longer) list of ordinands than was drawn up separately from the catalogue of appointments to office. Tonsure and/or different levels of sacred orders were required for office,14 but the administrative separation in Hovius’ register between appointments to office and ordinations embodies the fact that sacred orders were not administered by the bishop in order to fill in recent vacancies.15 As a result, a more or less identifiable supply of tonsured and/or ordained clerics of different educational and social backgrounds had to cope with fluctuations in the supply of available benefices.16 Roughly, historians have observed a saturation of this market in the 18th century, when a surplus of clerics outpaced 13 Cathalogus eorum quibus ab illustrissimo ac reverendissimo domino archiepiscopo Mechliniensi collati fuerunt pastoratus, beneficia, deservitoriae etcetera, 1600–1620, A.A.M., Hovius, 11, 100r–124v. 14 The priesthood was the final stage for only part of the clergy. In the diocese of Ghent, 28.04 per cent of the tonsurati eventually became priests in the beginning of the 17th century; a proportion that rose to about half of the clerical population c.1700. The average of 35.8 per cent is comparable to numbers for French dioceses. Vanden Broecke, “Seculiere geestelijken,” 199. 15 This administrative division was closely entangled with other legal and financial practices. As they tended to be perpetually attached both in legal theory and in administrative practice to the ecclesiastical offices they remunerated, benefices could not be part of the episcopal mensa or treasury, and ordination by the bishop therefore did not necessarily give access to office. Canonists with episcopalist sympathies, such as Z.B. Van Espen, would claim, in the 18th century, that benefices were separated from the bishop’s financial resources in the course of the early Middle Ages. This may have been the case for a restricted number of benefices, but his statement probably aimed at bolstering the view that bishops should be in control of all ecclesiastical benefices in their dioceses (as they allegedly were in the ancient Church) rather than historical reality. Cf. Van Espen, Jus Ecclesiasticum Universum, Pars 2da, tit. xviii, cap.i. An introduction in the early history of the chapters in Belgium in Meijns, Aken of Jeruzalem? 16 There are, of course, the studies on clerical careers in France and the already cited isolated studies into the parish clergy of the diocese of Ghent (Steven Vanden Broecke, “Seculiere geestelijken,” and idem, Rekrutering), a few unpublished licenciate theses about the clergy of the diocese of Antwerp and Liège in the 18th century, or the canons of this or that collegial or cathedral chapter, but the clerical job market as such has never been studied, either with respect to the South Netherlands or in other Catholic areas.

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the number of jobs and the average time in between ordination and benefice-holding lengthened considerably.17 Although canon law stipulated that candidates for pastoral offices had to be at least 25 years old,18 by the end of the 18th century, fresh parish rectors tended to be in their mid- or late thirties.19 In the beginning of the 17th century, the balance between clerics and benefices may have been slightly less unequal but was nonetheless considered unsatisfactory: both were, to the despair of bishops and others, scarce. Three decades of continuing unrest had gravely disturbed traditional formation and recruitment channels, such as the universities; new ones, such as diocesan seminaries, were still under construction. A devastated countryside struggled to support the pre-war clerical infrastructure. In this context, it may be significant that the number of graduates in Hovius’ manual had doubled in the second decade, after graduations in theology and philosophy at Louvain had picked up between 1590 and 1610. The profile of the applicants in Hovius’ manual provides for another parameter. Holders of benefices were ideally secular clerics—an association that will be significant in the following chapters of this book. Yet, in the absence of secular priests, Hovius had to rely on 30 to 35 regulars (c.8 per cent of the appointed individuals)20 for 16.5 per cent of the parishes in the Catalogus.21

17 In 18th-century Spain, for instance, one out of three clerics did not dispose of a benefice. Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne, 25. In the archdiocese of Mechlin, in the concursus (comparative exam) of 1784, 1785, and 1786 respectively, 88, 77, and 70 participants competed with each other for 17, 13, and 9 vacant rectorships. Quaghebeur, De concursus, 60. In the diocese of Ghent, the normalisation of the clerical job market in the 17th century went hand in hand with a stabilisation of clerical careers from c.20 years in the parishes (either as pastor or as vice-pastor) to 25 or even 30 years for young priests serving as vice-pastors. Vanden Broecke, “Seculiere geestelijken,” 206. 18 Van Espen, Jus Ecclesiasticum Universum, Pars 2da, tit. xix, cap. i, § vii. 19 Quaghebeur, “Le concours diocésain,” 853–54. 20 Benefices for regular clerics did exist, the income of an abbey or other dignitaries in monastic communities often being separated from the religious community’s general treasury, but they were considered to be a category separate from the beneficia secularia that were to be manned by the secular clergy. On beneficia regularia (as opposed to beneficia secularia), see Mollat, “Bénéfices ecclésiastiques en Occident.” Full appointments to rectorships (18) are underrepresented in comparison with the temporary ones (38) entrusted to regulars. 21 In the first decade, nearly one of every four pastoral offices filled by Hovius was passed on to a regular cleric from nearby or distant abbeys, while in the second decade their share of benefices diminished to nearly 10 per cent.

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In total, the Catalogus Collationum registers 518 entries over the two decades in between 1600 and 1620, involving more or less 400 individuals and c.220 parishes in Hovius’ vast diocese of 439 parishes.22 Close to 30 appointments took place in neighbouring dioceses.23 The average of 20 to 25 vacancies filled each year by Hovius corresponds more or less with the total numbers of advowsons of rectorships in the archdiocese in between 1600 and 1620.24 But if one turns to benefices rather than to the 260-odd locations of parishes in the Catalogus collationum,25 the picture changes significantly. Out of the c.500 entries for the years 1601–19,26 only c.340 entries (rectorships and deserviturae)27 are related to the recruitment of shepherds for c.200 parishes within and outside the diocese of Mechlin. Another 158 entries listed the advowson of other benefices situated in various chapels and churches.28 Several conclusions leap to the eye in Fig. 2.1. First, canonships barely figure in Hovius’ register, although the diocese hosted, alongside the metropolitan chapter of Saint Romuald’s, 12 collegiate chapters attached to the oldest or most prestigious churches mostly situated in the diocese’s cities and towns29 and employed, in theory, between

22 Nearly 40 geographical circumscriptions out of 518 entries could not be identified. The neighbouring dioceses of Antwerp, Ghent, and Namur counted only c.150 parishes. Tihon, Dictionnaire des paroisses. Only the archdiocese of Cambray hosted a number of parishes similar to the one of Mechlin. Cf. Deregnaucourt, De Fénélon à la Révolution. 23 More than half of these were situated in the diocese of Namur, while benefices in Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent each passed the review more than once. The dioceses of Roermond and Den Bosch are last on the list. 24 Quaghebeur, De concursus, 99. In the much smaller diocese of Ghent (c.170 parishes), about 11–14 fresh pastors or vice-pastors entered the vineyard of the Lord on a yearly basis. Vanden Broecke, “Seculiere geestelijken,” 202. The Mechlin calculations exclude vice-pastors, the benefice attached to the rectorship being the reserve of the pastor. 25 Add the c.40 entries where the parish hosting the benefice in question was not mentioned or unidentifiable. 26 Bar the benefices that were granted in 1600 and in 1620, which were not fully listed in the catalogus. 27 Respectively, benefices destined for pastors and ad-interim assignments during the vacancy of a rectorship. 28 In total, 147 distinct benefices were registered in the catalogus collationum, which were situated in c.100 different locations, alongside those locations that could not be identified. 29 A standard work remains Schieffer, Die Entstehung von Domkapiteln. Case studies in Meijns, Aken of Jeruzalem?, and Bijsterveld, “De oorsprong van de oudste

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134 Canonships Rectorships Deserviturae Altars Others 24 4

Fig. 2.1. Types of ecclesiastical benefices filled in by Matthias Hovius 1601–20

150 and 200 canons.30 The proud colleges of canons were, despite their poor reputation in historiography, involved in many activities that went beyond adding lustre to the cult in their home church, duties that included, among others, the management of the other (urban) parishes and religious institutions in their immediate environment.31 They acted as big employers for dozens of chaplains and other secular clerics. Religious infrastructure, in addition to being much more developed in urban centres, may have remained more intact in the relative safety of towns and cities than in the countryside, just like clerical populations themselves.32 In this context, it is significant that the recruitment of the urban clergy, including the shepherds of these populous parishes, largely bypassed the diocesan authorities.33

kapittels.” On the development of the parochial system, see Lagré et al., Histoire des curés, 15–38. 30 Pasture, Les chapitres séculiers, 68. 31 Cf. the activities of the cathedral chapter in Ghent in Cloet, Het bisdom Gent, 129–35; Marinus, De contrareformatie te Antwerpen, 103–24; a standard work remains Loupès, Chapitres et chanoines. 32 Cf. p. 14. 33 Only c.30 entries concern benefices situated in towns, while the corresponding rectorships in larger agglomerations did not pass the review at all. At this stage of research, it is impossible to calculate the total number of “simple” benefices (beneficia simplicia), altars and sextonships that were, alongside rectorships and canonships, attached to the parish, collegial, and cathedral churches of the archdiocese of Mechlin; but their number must have been considerable in a highly urbanised area: even in the countryside, many parish churches hosted a few altars and other benefices.

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With respect to the offices that Hovius did dispose of, second, more than half of the appointments involving pastoral duties cannot be considered full appointments at all. The 174 deserviturae (for c.120 parishes without a shepherd) listed from 1601 to 1620 were temporary assignments that eased the spiritual needs of the flock after the death (or promotion) of their shepherd. Legitimate occupants of benefices, by contrast, had to be shielded from arbitrary intrusions by feudal warlords, and therefore they could not be removed from office. This permanence of office had remained satisfactory even after feudal warlords had become a distant memory, accommodating as it did the interests of the clergy with the spiritual needs this clergy ascribed to the flock. In the early 17th century, the distinction between temporary deservitores and full-blown rectors may often have been academic, in the absence of sufficient endowment; eligible candidates; or both.34 More practically, one wonders whether the appointment of deservitores implied much recruitment, let alone a recruitment policy, in the beginning of the 17th century. While they would become a bone of contention between bishops and other collators in the 18th century, deserviturae were probably not at the forefront of a Borromean offensive in Hovius’ days.35 If only the full appointments to rectorships in the catalogus collationum are considered, Hovius in fact only disposed of c.one-third (31 per cent) of the averagely 25 to 30 parishes that changed occupants yearly in between 1601 and 1619.36 Historians familiar with the benefice system will not be surprised. In the 11th century, Gregorian reformers had attempted to canalise lay influence in church affairs by stipulating that sacred offices had to be distinguished from other jobs by the specifi-

34 In the archdiocese of Mechlin, de facto permanent deserviturae in particularly poor parishes only disappeared after the first quarter of the 18th century. Quaghebeur, De concursus, 50. 35 In 1613, Deservitores tended to be rectors of neighbouring parishes, not fresh trainees from the seminary or vice-pastors the careers of whom needed a nudge from a supporting bishop. See, for instance, the enumeration of deservitores in the diocesan report of 1613 in Registra rescriptionum, A.A.M., Mechliniensia, 157. 36 Only in 1601–1605, the archbishop disposed of 40 per cent of the 90 rectorships receiving a new occupant; afterwards, only 28 to 32 per cent of nominations to rectorships were registered in the catalogus collationum. In total, c.520 rectorships changed occupants between 1601 and 1620. Quaghebeur, De concursus, 169. In the absence of figures for canonships or altars, it is impossible to calculate Hovius’ niche in the entire clerical job market.

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city of the procedures leading to their advowson:37 Churchmen always had to rubber-stamp, via a formal canonical investiture and instalment procedures, the appointment of other churchmen at some stage of the procedures. But canon law did not abolish the long-established rights of founders of benefices and their families as such.38 A considerable proportion of canonships and altars were still at the bestowal, under the supervision of the Church, of lay patrons. Research into the so-called Patronatsbistümer and other benefices under lay patronage in Spain and Italy reveals that the foundation of so-called private benefices in the early modern period was still a religious investment that enhanced the family’s links with the Hereafter; a safe economic investment, as the benefice in question fell henceforward under the protection of the Church;39 and a social investment that allowed a family to launch the clerical careers of offspring or clients.40 In the South Netherlands, the largest pool of benefices was managed by the prince (the king of Spain or, in the period under investigation, the archduke),41 in his position as successor to the counts of Flanders, the dukes of Brabant, etc., who had founded many chapters and churches for a blend of religious, dynastic, and geopolitical reasons—assets that 37 The claim that ecclesiastical patrimony in general and benefices in particular had to be treated differently from lay property (see above) was not an isolated one. Clerical office holders too were to be distinguished by “different” appointment procedures. Cf. Mollat, “Bénéfices ecclésiastiques.” 38 Refreshing insights on Gregorian reform in Bijsterveld, “Conflict and Compromise,” which portrays Gregorian reform as the outcome of negotiations rather than a victory of the clergy over lay usurpations. 39 Not all altars were benefices. See Pro Ruiz, “Las capellanìas: familia, iglesia y propiedad,” and with respect to the chaplains of guilds, Laenen, Histoire de l’église métropolitaine, 239. 40 They allowed their holders to be pickier, while less wealthy clerics were more inclined to go after the first vacancy that occurred, even if that involved a time-consuming and flat career in the parishes. In Italy, such benefices were also a gateway for nobles to a career at the curia. A very interesting introduction in Weber, Familienkanonikate und Patronatsbistümer. See also Sieglerschmidt, Territorialstaat und Kirchenregiment. The Low Countries hosted a series of noble chapters for women; read Koch, De kloosterpoort als sluitpost?. With respect to rural benefices, read Bijsterveld, “Les jeux d’influence et le patronage local,” 345–63. 41 Based on Pasture, “Les chapitres séculiers.” Pasture did not mention the collators and patrons of 32 chapters; 3 of them could be recuperated by Bijsterveld, “Les jeux d’influence,” 360. In Holland and Zealand, before the rebellion, half of the canons and one-third of the parish priests were appointed by the prince. Jongkees, Staat en Kerk, 23–41 and 270–98. At least half of the collegiate chapters in the archdiocese of Mechlin were partially or entirely manned by the duke of Brabant (i.e., the prince), the duke of Aarschot, and other feudal lords up to the archducal period. Read Pasture, Les chapitres séculiers, 48–49.

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were also used to foot the bill for the expanding group of state officials in the later Middle Ages.42 The “rolls of benefices” drawn up by Brussels and Madrid bureaucrats43 established a ranking order among the candidates for canonships in at least 15 chapters as well as for the dozens of altars and the rectorships at his bestowal in his respective duchies, lordships, and counties.44 Under the reign of the Archdukes, the roll of benefices was managed by the ecclesiastical councillor in the Council of State: Matthias Hovius, who, in his function of archbishop, was in close contact with the members of the Collateral Councils.45 The share of clerics involved in the temporal administration of the realm had fallen sharply in the 16th century, but benefices bestowed by the prince were still assets that could be used to recreate and stabilise power elites.46 The rigid boundaries between temporal and spiritual administration proved to be highly permeable for networks in which the bureaucrats and lawyers of officialdom, evolving into a nobility of state itself, merged with the new noblesse d’Eglise of self-styled poor, learned, and pious men who were often recruited from among their own offspring, friends, or clients.47

42 Case studies show clearly the impact of the swelling circuits around the dynasty on the benefice system. In the collegiate chapter of Saint Michael and Saint Gudula in Brussels, for instance, 80 per cent of the “major canons” between 1430 and 1559 who are known to have performed functions outside their church did so in the immediate surroundings of the prince or in his central councils. Only 37 per cent of the same group adopted additional functions within Church hierarchy. Van Hofstraeten, Beloond voor bewezen diensten, 163–70. Features in Houssiau, “Contrôleurs ou controlés,” 249–54. A case study in Damen, “Serviteurs professionnels et profiteurs loyaux” on the hommes d’église in the council and chancery of Holland and Zeeland under the Burgundians. 43 Concerning the increasing grasp of the Brussels officialdom on the distribution of benefices, see Van Peteghem, “Les rôles des bénéfices ecclésiastiques à la collation princière,” esp. 234–38. Compare the royal feuille des bénéfices in France in McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth Century France. 44 Cf., for instance, the Rolle des benefices de Patronaige envoye dez Madrid par lordinaire en sorty le 24 de juing 1589 pour le Conseil Privé, AGR, Conseil Privé, Régistres, 735. This document should be understood as a waiting list for benefices that would become vacant in the future. 45 Pasture, La réforme des chapitres séculiers. 46 Houssiau, “Contrôleurs ou contrôlés”; on the members of the Collateral Councils in the Netherlands in the period under investigation, see De Schepper, De Kollaterale Raden in de Katholieke Nederlanden. 47 In the period under investigation, the careers of Jean X. Richardot and Charles Maes, who respectively ascended to the episcopal thrones of Arras and Ghent in 1603 and 1610 and who both were related to successive presidents of the Privy Council, are telling examples. Cf. Vanhoutte, “Van robins tot très grands nobles.”

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Presentations of rectors by lay patrons, by contrast, were rare in the archdiocese of Mechlin. Few rectorships (4.8 per cent) in Hovius’ Vineyard came under the regime of the jus patronatus laicale.48 In the course of the 11th and 12th centuries, many parishes had been “restituted” by pious and repenting lay lords to the Church hierarchy, which may partially explain why the Eigenkirchenwesen, the circuit of “private rectorships” attached to feudal property,49 was a relatively marginal phenomenon in early modern Belgium.50 The juridical quality in which Hovius intervened was mentioned in c.45 per cent of the 518 entries in the catalogus collationum, but fewer than 10 per cent of these entries explicitly concerned nominations by patrons rubberstamped by the bishop.51 Surprisingly, these 10 per cent concerned presentations of candidates by clergymen (including, in more than half of the cases, the archbishop himself ) instead of by lay patrons. Clerics or religious communities could be adorned with the prerogatives that came with lay patronage as well, in their quality of individual or institutional inheritors of feudal property.52 In Hovius’ catalogus, however, the line between benefices under lay patronage and those coming under the regular canon law system was blurred. This calls for qualification. Canon law had never unambiguously privileged the bishop, the holder of ordinary jurisdiction, as the only ordinary collator of the benefices in his diocese. Many other ecclesiastics or ecclesiastical institutions—abbots, dignitaries of collegiate or

48

Quaghebeur, De concursus, 47. In the 17th century, only 0.6 per cent or 4 rectorships out of 657 in the archdiocese of Cambrai came under the system of lay patronage. Deregnaucourt, De Fénélon à la revolution, 304. In the diocese of Ghent, figures were comparably low (Vanden Broecke, Recrutering en carrièrepatroon, 127). 49 Cf. Kerff, “Altare und Ecclesia,” 858. 50 In some dioceses, for instance those of Arras and Cambrai, more than half of the parishes changed sides and were entrusted to ecclesiastical institutions. Lagré et al., Histoire des curés, 63. 51 Only a quarter of these involved rectorships. That is, fewer than 1 per cent of the total number of collations of rectorships in the period under investigation (numbers calculated by Quaghebeur) can be identified as the result of a presentation of a candidate by a patron. 52 This seems to have been the case for the few presentationes by third parties in the catalogus. Actually, only two patrons performed as such, i.e., the personae personatus of respectively the collegiate church of Saint Peter’s at Anderlecht and the collegiate church of St.-Pieters-Leeuw. “Personatus” were benefices that “clericalised” some of the prerogatives held by lay patrons in their private churches. Some of these prerogatives were ceremonial, while others involved the recruitment of the church’s personnel.

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cathedral churches, chapters, or even rectors—claimed to make full appointments in their own right.53 A catalogue of the benefices at the bestowal of the archbishop of Mechlin (the catalogus beneficiorum, to be distinguished from the catalogus collationum) is highly revealing in this context: an archbishop, Hovius had only 12 rectorships (or 2.7 per cent of the 439 rectorships in his diocese) and 34 other benefices (mostly altars and sextonships) at his advowson.54 In his home base, c.45 per cent of rectorships came formally under the collation rights of abbeys; chapters of the cathedral and of the collegiate churches were entitled to cater for another 25 per cent.55 If the archbishop eventually could call 50 rectorships (11 per cent) his own out of 439, it was because the abbey of Affligem, including its advowsons, had been incorporated into the newly erected episcopal mensa of the diocese of Mechlin.56 Because Hovius had inherited the portfolio of an abbot, most of these benefices were situated in the countryside. Add 13 rectorships and 23 other benefices in neighbouring dioceses that Hovius could dispose of, and the archbishop was in charge of the human resources for 161 rectorships, altars, and sextonships. These numbers may look low to

53 In fact, 63 abbots, 30 abbesses, 56 chapters, 88 rectors, 22 provosts, 5 deacons, 4 priors/prioresses, and 20-odd other dignitaries of various hue and feathers had full rights of collation over benefices in the Habsburg Netherlands. Index beneficiorum . . . quae nominationis juri sunt subjecta, UAL, Ghent (1958-1959), 24. The interests of bishops (and contemporary historians) in treating the other brokers in the clerical job market as mere patrons may have been many, but in this book they will be labelled as full collators alongside the bishops. I have chosen to stick to the concept of “ordinary collator” as it was defined by the 18th-century canonist Van Espen, Ius Universum Ecclesiasticum, tit. xxi, cap i. I. In beneficial law (as opposed to, for instance, jurisdictional matters), ordinarius did not necessarily apply to bishops. First, we will see that academics treated all ecclesiastical patrons as full collators (for good interests); second, the distinction will prove useful in explaining why some benefices (those of the canonical system) were affected by papal reservations or academic nominations and others (those coming under lay patronage) were not. 54 Catalogus beneficiorum quae jure ordinario spectant ad collationem illustrissimi domini archiepiscopi, in A.A.M., Mechliniensia, 74, 201r. Major niche holders such as the abbot of Saint-Hubert in the Ardennes could boast appointment rights to c.80 parishes and 11 canonships. Index beneficiorum, UAL, Ghent (1958-1959), 24. 55 In fact, 10 per cent of rectorships were at the advowson of other dignitaries such as deacons or provosts. Cf. the situation in the archdiocese of Cambrai, where abbeys and metropolitan or collegiate chapters were the ordinary collators of, respectively, 63.01 per cent and 29.68 per cent of rectorships. Deregnaucourt, De Fénelon à la Révolution, 304. 56 Catalogus Beneficiorum (. . .) A.A.M., Mechliniensia, 74, 203r. It is in this capacity that Hovius was occasionally referred to in the catalogus collationum as an ecclesiastical patron.

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modern eyes, but they are not.57 To the despair of historians attending the classical school, the deeply entrenched lock on the clerical job market, which in earlier centuries had been held by religious communities and institutions and had led to the establishment of a dense network of parishes and chapels in the Low Countries, had not been touched by the Fathers of Trent. And yet the number of entries in Hovius’ administration (c.30 per cent of nominations to rectorships, with respect to c.180, or 40 per cent, of the diocese’s parishes) greatly exceeds the limited collation rights of the archbishop cum abbot. Only 110 to 120 collations involved benefices from his own portfolio.58 A bishop, in his capacity as diocesan overlord, had apparently many more strings to his bow than other collators. The diocesan concursus or comparative exam is one of the best-known instruments provided by the Council of Trent that turned the position of bishop into an obligatory passage point to a career in the (more attractive) parishes. But that would not have been reflected in the catalogus, ordinary collators remaining formally in charge. Besides, the concursus was still a marginal phenomenon in Hovius’ days.59 Nevertheless, half of the entries in Hovius’ catalogus collationum do not belong to either category of entries discussed so far, i.e., deserviturae and benefices out of Hovius’ own portfolio. In 70 per cent of this “ghost category” of c.250 entries, a legal framework for Hovius’ intervention was provided: the vast majority (c.90 per cent) concerned benefices in the diocese (jure devoluto) or in the ecclesiastical province (jure metropolitano), whose advowson had devolved to the archbishop, in his quality of diocesan and provincial supervisor, after the ordinary collator or the patron had failed to come up in a timely fashion (i.e., within six months) with a suitable candidate. In the period under investigation, benefices of this kind must have been

57

The archbishop of Cambrai was the ordinary collator of 5.78 per cent of the 657 parishes in his diocese (Deregnaucourt, De Fénélon à la revolution); in the diocese of Ghent, the bishop had more extended prerogatives as the ordinary collator of 25 per cent of the parishes (Vanden Broecke, “Seculiere geestelijken”). Data on canonships, altars, and other benefices than those charged with the care of souls are lacking. 58 I.e., 30–35 nominations in his quality of archbishop, and c.80 nominations in his capacity as abbot of Affligem. Proportions range from one-quarter (26 per cent) in the period 1601–05 to one-fifth (17–19 per cent) in the other five-year intervals. There are a dozen dubious cases that do not figure on the catalogus beneficiorum but that are mentioned as belonging to the archbishop’s pool of benefices in the catalogus collationum. 59 Compare the numbers in Quaghebeur, De concursus, 169.

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particularly numerous, as many offices, especially rural ones, had been deserted at the nadir of the civil war and had never been occupied again. The c.80 rectorships and just as many altars, sextonships, and other benefices that thus fell in Hovius’ lap60 account for the bulk of his collations. This does not mean, however, that the archbishop had only a temporary lead over other ordinary collators. Collations of rectorships jure devoluto continue to figure, albeit less frequently, in the lists of collations by Hovius’ successor, Archbishop Jacobus Boonen (1621–55), between 1630 and 1649.61 Finding shepherds within six months for poorly endowed parishes remained a burdensome task that easily devolved to the bishop.62 Diocesan seminaries—the one at Mechlin hosted c.80 students in 1620—may have stabilised the bishops’ quantitative lead over other collators as brokers for an increasingly scholarised clerical job market even after the clerical infrastructure had recovered.63 These were reservoirs of aspiring clerics of more modest origins who could not afford to study at the university, could not draw on any old-boys’ network, and could be prodded more easily into accepting less attractive rectorships.64 Hovius’ progress in finding suitable shepherds for “his own” rural parishes was spectacular in comparison with general figures.65 The frequency of Hovius’ interventions in the clerical job market in Fig. 2.2 is difficult to interpret, representing just a fragment of the

60

When extrapollated (48 per cent jure devoluto; 16 per cent jure ordinario, patronatus, or otherwise; and 34 per cent unknown) to the 117 entries without a reference to a legal ground, c.60 benefices have to be added to this list. 61 Their number had fallen 25 per cent with respect to the collations jure devoluto reported as such by Hovius, and even 50 per cent if only devolutions within the diocese are taken into consideration. Interestingly, a larger proportion of rectorships devolved to the archbishop Boonen jure metropolitano. Devolutions constituted c.10 per cent of the total number of appointments to rectorships by then, down from 16 to 17 per cent in Hovius’ days. Cf. the numbers in Quaeghebeur, De concursus, 169. 62 Cloet, Het bisdom Gent, 149. 63 Registrum actorum (. . .) archiepiscopi Mechliniensis, 16 February 1620, A.A.M., Mechliniensia, 10, 137v. 64 The proportion of rectorships (quantified by Quaghebeur, De concursus, 167) that came under the archbishop’s ordinary collation rights, but that nonetheless were granted jure devoluto because they had been vacant for a long time, is much smaller (slightly less than 10 per cent, or 5 out of 54) than the average of 16 to 17 per cent. 65 In the first decade, Hovius appointed c.100 deservitores while c.80 of them figure in the entries for the second decade; with respect to his own rectorships, however, 80 per cent of the 25 deserviturae are to be situated in the first half of the period under investigation.

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45 40 35

Others

30

Canonships

25

Altars

20

Rectorships

15

Deserviturae

10 5

16 19

16 17

16 15

16 13

16 11

16 09

16 07

16 05

16 03

16 01

0

Fig. 2.2. Frequency of Hovius’ interventions on a yearly basis per category 1601–19

activity on this market.66 Moreover, Hovius’ collations involved only specific types of benefices, i.e., rural rectorships, altars, and other small benefices. The deserviturae or the number of benefices granted jure devoluto provide a flawed yardstick for the normalisation of the clerical job market as well. Previous paragraphs have intimated that very different realities could hide behind the same formal acts—which was, after all, the point of setting up a uniform legal system for the management of ecclesiastical offices and property throughout Christianity. But while advowsons of rectorships are more or less equally distributed over the two decades, two-thirds of the steadily growing numbers of predominantly rural altars and sextonships were registered in between 1610 and 1620, with roughly 40 per cent receiving a new occupant in the latter five years. The figures in Hovius’ register confirm the received wisdom that the clerical infrastructure in the countryside was catching up with urban centres. On top of that, the late arrival of altars on the scene suggests that this type of benefices, in particular the segment with which Hovius dealt, was more vulnerable than other benefices.67 First, they tended to be more poorly endowed, and the sources of their income may have been different from those

66 The fluctuations of the advowsons of rectorships in Hovius’ catalogus collationum do not necessarily match the general trend. Compare Quaghebeur, De concursus, 169. 67 They were not institutionally protected by bishops, who had to ensure that all parishes had a shepherd or a deservitor; their potential holders were not members of venerable colleges who could throw their weight around.

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generated by rectorships.68 Second, they may have been “forgotten” more easily by religious institutions and church magnates69 as much as by potential applicants, who may not have been interested in claiming them (and risking endless litigation) until well into the 17th century,70 and/or who just lacked good channels of information about the vacancies that had occurred. Gathering information about vacancies was a matter of concern even in universities, where large numbers of clerical hopefuls accumulated wisdom about the state of the clerical job market in the university’s hinterland. Altars remained, after all, more prone to long vacancies than other benefices, devolving as they continued to do in large numbers to Boonen in between 1630 and 1649.71 Different types of benefices behaved differently in an allegedly normalising clerical job market.72 Enter a few other oddities. Some of the bishop’s appointments to office were just approvals of transactions set up by clerics themselves, even though the formal initiative continued to be attributed to Hovius. 68 Rectors may have coped more easily with difficult times via the casualia, the fees paid by their parishioners for the performance of specific religious tasks and sacraments. The casualia may have constituted in many parishes a large, if not the largest, part of the real income of a benefice charged with the care of souls. Cf. Marinus, De contrareformatie te Antwerpen, 133–37. In the diocese of Ghent, many parish rectors had traded their (volatile) share of the tithes for a portio congrua, a more or less stable salary paid by the local collector of the tithes, a nearby abbey, or a chapter of canons. Cf. Vanden Broecke, “Seculiere geestelijken.” 69 Not filling a vacancy of an altar or a smaller benefice could benefit the collator, who in many cases was also in charge of levying the tithes (or other sources of income) from which the benefice’s income was derived. Such a de facto incorporation of the benefice’s income into the patrimony of, say, a chapter or an abbey could spare it tiresome bureaucratic procedures at the Roman curia, where the formal incorporation of benefices required money, support, and an angelic patience. Many letters illustrating the tiresome travails of the archducal residents to obtain incorporations in Négociations de Rome, 1601–1623. AGR, Audience, 438–459. 70 Several echoes of contestations of such de facto incorporations by clerics rediscovering “lost” benefices in the entries of the Dataria Apostolica, 1590–1644, ASV, Dataria Ap., Per Obitum, 1–42. Cf., for instance, the advowson of an altar that had become vacant “per dismembrationem, quia officialis Mechliniensis declaravit illa indolate unitam cure de Zichem,” 18 November 1617, Catalogus, A.A.M., Hovius, 11, 119r. Among canons, a recruitment stop was a widespread practice in harsh times; cf. Pasture, Les chapitres séculiers. See also p. 255–59. 71 Close to 130 altars were registered as bestowed by the bishop jure devoluto in between 1630 and 1649, c.100 of which were situated within the diocese. 72 Research should establish: 1) whether the provisory observation, that greater numbers of altars re-appearing on “the market” engender an equal or superior number of devolutions, can be ascribed to the law of diminishing marginal returns; 2) whether altars suffered more from devaluation than other benefices; and 3) to what extent they attracted clerical migrants from other dioceses in comparison to other benefices.

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The mere existence of transactions such as resignations in favour of another cleric, or the permutation (mutual resignation) of benefices between two clerics, sheds an interesting light on the multifaceted concerns informing the dynamics of the clerical job market. Many activities relating to the clerical job market were justified with reference to equity, a notion that had been borrowed from the right of ownership in Roman law. Equity could bridge the gap between benefice law and aspects of that right of ownership that were simply too useful to abandon,73 even though lay property law (i.e., the feudal system) continued to function in canon law as a negative benchmark well into the 18th century.74 Holding a benefice legitimately implied not being disturbed in its peaceful possession (possessio pacifica) and in the performance of the religious tasks coming with it by feudal lords; by arbitrary measures of church magnates; or by competitors who had not laid claim to the benefice in question within an interval of one year and one day after the one’s official installation (missio in possessionem) by local church authorities.75 This conceptual and practical hybridism between officeholding and ownership had considerable advantages. On the one hand, benefices that remunerated sacred offices could continue to be different from more sordid, worldly occupations attached to bluntly venal offices. Any transaction involving ecclesiastical offices reeked automatically of simony.76 Transactions could cease to be mere transactions, however, if they were sanctioned (and if additional dispensations for illegitimacy, affinity, youth, belated ordainments, the accumulation of benefices, or other vices had been granted) by fresh appointments formally initiated by the ultimate watchdogs of the Church’s interests, the bishop or the pope.77 Thus it became possible to integrate benefices in 73 The notion of equity had become a strong catalyst for Justification in much of medieval jurisprudence and legislation, including beneficial law. Barraclough, Papal Provisions, 71–90. 74 Van Espen still fulminated against ceremonies of investiture or oaths of allegiance that were branded as harmful residuals from a feudal era, incompatible with the logic of beneficial law. Van Espen, Ius Universum Ecclesiasticum, Pars 2da, tit. xxv, cap. vii. On their origins, read Kerff, “Altare und Ecclesia,” 856. 75 The so-called missio in possessionem or legal installation was, indeed, often carried through by a third party, for instance the archdeacons in the diocese of Liège, or, if a new canon was to be installed, by the chapter in question. The Missio tended to be accompanied by solemnities (for instance, the designation of the new canon’s stall in the choir). 76 Durand de Maillane, Dictionnaire de droit canonique et bénéficial, 5, 214. 77 As a matter of fact, the trade of openly venal offices at the Roman curia, 90 per cent of which were just honorific titles that covered rents sold by the papacy in order

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other collectives, such as the family, clienteles, networks broad and small—78 which in turn would live with, and perpetuate, the rigidities of the benefice system for eight centuries. The most spectacular examples are, of course, the Sekundogenituren caved out of the territorial principalities of the Reichskirche by the Catholic princely dynasties of the Empire, who turned, via coadjutoria with right of succession sanctioned by the pope and otherwise, elective ecclesiastical monarchies into de facto hereditary lands.79 Comparable strategies were deployed by the families of the imperial nobility, which sought to secure canonships in the German Domstifte electing the German prince-bishops.80 Benefices that did not bring about an institutional voice in politics (i.e., the benefices that interest us here) formatted and stabilised power elites as well: due to the permanence of office, they cushioned their holders, who were protected by canon law from deprivation of the benefices accumulated during the heyday of their family’s or faction’s influence, from shocks on the volatile market of political patronage. In Rome, one of the functions of nepotism consisted, from the second part of the 16th century onwards, in preparing the inevitable degradation of the family after the pontiff ’s death, the cardinal-nephew being in charge of the accumulation of benefices that could remain for decades in the family or in the nipote’s

to finance papal bureaucracy, was registered with the help of exactly the same terminology (i.e., per resignationem in favorem) as was used in transactions with respect to benefices. See, for instance, the Vatican list ASV, Dataria Ap., Consensus. On the venality of offices at the curia, read Reinhard, Papstfinanz und Nepotismus. See also Poncet, “Les traces documentaires.” 78 The concept of “broad networks” in which kin and clientèle merge—the dominant form of networks in the higher and later Middle Ages—is often opposed to “small networks” framed by merit, from which kinship ties as legitimate bonds are excluded (the dominant form of networks from the 18th century onwards). “The narrow core of ecclesisastical clientelism seems to have been relatively stable through the centuries.” Lind, “Great Friends and Small Friends,” 128. 79 The cluster of prince-bishoprics and abbeys centred on Cologne and Liège, for instance, remained a Bavarian Sekundogenitur in the northwestern part of the Empire from the late 16th century onwards Cf. Reinhardt, “Kontinuität und Diskontinuïtät,” and a comparative study of Habsburg and the Wittelsbach Sekundogenituren in idem, “Die hochadeligen Dynastien in der Reichskirche.” 80 In this context, ecclesiastical benefices could give them an institutional voice in politics, and that broadened their hold on spiritual and temporal offices in the respective ecclesiastical principalities. Cf. Duhamelle, L’héritage collectif, which explores the world of the “noblesse d’Eglise”—a reference to Bourdieu’s Noblesse d’Etat—in the 17th and 18th centuries. The imperial nobility was immediately subjected to the emperor, and its own territories escaped, as a consequence, the control of the German princes.

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faction in the Sacred College.81 Transactions in the clerical job market (and nepotism, for that matter) were by no means a reserve of the high nobility. In the 17th century, c.90 per cent of the canons of the cathedral of Langres had obtained their benefices through resignation or permutation, often from elderly family members who, in return, were shielded from financial need during old age by pensions or smaller benefices.82 In the case study by Chatellier into the benefice system in early modern Alsace, benefices could become a structuring and/or stabilising factor with broad social and economic ramifications at the level of the Church’s “middle and lower classes” as well: in the world of canons of the collegiate churches, rectors of rural parishes, and chaplains; the world in which Hovius struggled to provide the flock with decent shepherds.83 Regional differences probably were considerable as clerics had to adjust their strategies to “best practice” on the spot. Any assessment should envisage a differentiation of the types of benefices involved as well. In the 17th-century diocese of Ghent, an average of 13 per cent of rectorships changed occupants via resignations or permutations. The number of rectorships handed over via resignation in the diocese of Mechlin in the first two decades (let alone of altars and canonships) has not been calculated.84 The four entries with respect to canonships concerned their resignation by one cleric in favour of another; the creation of a pension on a benefice in favour of a third party; or both. Nearly half of the c.50 entries out of 340 collations (deserviturae excluded) mentioning the circumstances of the benefice’s vacancy concern offices that were resigned by their holder in favour of another cleric or that were being exchanged between them, transactions that

81 See the section on “The Church of Rome” in Lind, “Great Friends, Small Friends,” 125–29, and Visceglia, “Fazioni e lotta politica.” 82 Viard, “Les chanoines de Langres,” 90. The sections Ordinarius and Extraordinarius Galliarum in ASV, Dataria Ap., Expedit., 1–5, which lists the acts processed by the homonymous offices of the Dataria Apostolica, bear testimony to the quantitative importance of this phenomenon in France. 83 In most studies, a proportion of c.30 per cent up to half of the benefices were passed on via permutation or resignation. See, for instance, Bijsterveld, Laverend tussen kerk en wereld, Deregnaucourt, De Fénélon à la Révolution, and Chatellier, “Société et bénéfices ecclésiastiques.” 84 Among 23 entries in Hovius’ catalogus that were explicitly mentioned as a resignation, 11 involve rectorships, while permutations were only observed in the exchange of canonships with other benefices.

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were duly rubber-stamped by the bishop.85 Quaghebeur observes only significant numbers of permutations in which rectorships were involved from the 1620s onwards (5 per cent to 10 per cent), while an upward trend can be observed in the second half of the 17th century.86 It may be significant that in Boonen’s days, permutations involving rectorships—which had been absent in Hovius’ catalogus—outnumbered simple resignations with pensions,87 and that the number of permutations of canonships even quintupled.88 This may agree with the general wisdom shared by historians that gradually more financially viable benefices were held by a larger supply of clerics (and the multiplication of relations between them)89 who were more inclined to cling 85 Part of the c.80 entries with respect to benefices that were neither at Hovius’ bestowal nor explicitly mentioned as granted jure devoluto may have been resignations, but is difficult to extrapolate from such a small amount of data while coping with the lack of accuracy with which Hovius’ collations were often registered and defined. Although other grounds for the vacancy of a benefice granted jure devoluto are mentioned recurrently, the combination of per resignationem and jure devoluto is nonexistent in Hovius’ Catalogus, for obvious reasons: a resignatio in favorem or a permutation implies the presence of a successor. In Boonen’s registers, for instance, a strict administrative division is carried through in the indices between benefices granted jure devoluto et metropolitano, on the one hand, and jure ordinario, on the other, which includes the advowson of the benefices coming under the rights of the archbishop of Mechlin as an ordinary collator, but also the resignations and permutations. 86 Eventually, proportions of permutations would become considerably higher, the average for the entire 17th century being close to 10 per cent of benefices changing hands via a permutation. Calculation based on Quaghebeur, De concursus, 169. 87 In Hovius’ catalogus collationum, 36 rectorships changed hands via a resignation (8) or a permutation (28), while only six resignations of rectorships could be identified. 88 Permutations of canonships quintupled in Boonen’s index, totalling 20 out of 30 advowsons of canonships, but no resignations were registered. Four other canonships in the cathedrals of Bruges and Ypres, as well as in the collegiate church of Diest in the diocese of Mechlin, devolved to Boonen’s advowsons Jure devoluto and jure metropolitano, while five other advowsons with respect to canonships in the metropolitan chapter of Saint Romuald’s at Mechlin were, surprisingly, registered as collations jure ordinario—although the bishop could only dispose of them as a member of the college of graduated canons; cf. Laenen, Histoire de l’église métropolitaine, 251. 89 The rise of resignations and permutations may well have been the result of many factors at work rather than of a single cause that is constituted by the (perception of the) situation of the clerical job market. For instance, the improved supply of clerics multiplied the relations between them, while more frameworks of collective action (family, clientele, friendship) that had been less prominent in the research population in between 1600 and 1620 could culminate in higher proportions of transactions between clerics. This hypothesis needs to be verified, however, as it assumes that the growing number of permutations is representative for a higher number of transactions in general. In the 18th century, parish priests did not engage in such transactions more frequently than did their 17th-century colleagues, despite growing competition.

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to their benefices and therefore tried to keep them more often in their circuits via permutations and resignations (canonships and altars); or who could/did not abandon their benefices at all and built a stable, rather flat career in the parishes (rectorships). This impression is confirmed if one considers Hovius’ appointments to benefices as an ordinary collator (i.e., on par with chapters, abbots, prelates, etc.). These are surprisingly rare for a portfolio of c.160 benefices. Of the 110 to 120 entries concerning benefices from his own portfolio, only c.75 advowsons (of c.65 benefices)90 belong to that category.91 By contrast, his successor Boonen could use his prerogatives as an ordinary collator much more frequently between 1630 and 1649, during which period close to 60 collations (resignations and permutations excluded) were registered for c.50 out of the 63 rectorships at the archbishop’s disposal: proportions of 12 per cent (of appointments to rectorships in the diocese) and 11 per cent (of the total number of rectorships),92 which reflected roughly the archbishop’s institutional niche in the clerical job market. Altars out of the archbishop’s portfolio changed hands more frequently as well, but continued to be underrepresented compared to rectorships among both Hovius’ and Boonen’s appointments as ordinary collators.93 While these numbers seem to confirm a general normalisation of the clerical job market in the countryside, their portfolio being composed by rural benefices, they also 90 Close to 60 per cent (43 entries) of Hovius’ advowsons concern 33 rectorships; alongside c.three dozens of entries with respect to c.30 altars and sextonships (two thirds of which are to be situated in the second decade), and two other benefices (one archidiaconatus and one personatus). Typically, rectorships (which constitute only close to one-third of Hovius’ portfolio of benefices) are overrepresented, especially in the first decade (c.two-thirds of entries), compared to other benefices, while personatus are grossly underrepresented. 91 Deserviturae, collations jure devoluto, or resignations with respect to benefices out of his own portfolio would have been registered elsewhere if Hovius had not been both an ordinary collator ànd a bishop. This estimate may well be too optimistic. Figures may well have been lower—c.55 to 60 advowsons depending on whether or not one adopts an “optimistic” extrapolation (with or without extrapolation of devolutions)—because many records do not mention the circumstances of the vacancy of the benefice nor the legal ground of Hovius’ intervention. Half of the resignations concern liberae resignationes. 92 Hovius, in contrast, effected respectively 8 per cent of the total number of nominations to rectorships in the archdiocese of Mechlin with respect to 7 per cent of the diocese’s parishes. Compare Quaghebeur, De concursus, 169. 93 I.e., 40 collations of c.30 altars. This is an approximate number, as no distinction was made in Boonen’s index of c.70 entries under the heading jure ordinario between full collations in their own right, and resignations/permutations of benefices out of other collators’ benefice pools.

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match well with another (tentative) observation: under Hovius, individual rectorships tended to switch occupants more often than altars, a relationship that apparently was reversed in Boonen’s days.94 The metaphor of the market has proved to be a powerful device to introduce the reader into a vast range of activities rather than into a seemingly inert benefice system. It has its limits however, as this market never functioned smoothly or automatically. Other factors, such as compelling legal concepts, collectives such as family and clienteles, diocesan seminaries, efficient or distorted channels of intelligence that had to cover greater or smaller distances, strong pastoral norms, and religious concerns inevitably bounce back as soon as the historian seeks to reduce the benefice system to the logic of supply and demand. The concept of “normalisation” that is central to this and the next sections is a hybrid of institutional and religious concerns now enriched with economic and social connotations. This caveat applies to a definition of the clerical job market as a market of patronage too. The formal registrations in the catalogus collationum invariably portray Hovius as the initiator of every single appointment to office. Bishops and Roman diplomats indeed agreed that the advowson of benefices was a boost to one’s autorità. Were all the applicants in Hovius’ register, or in the entries in which Hovius performed as an ordinary collator, “the bishops’ men,” then? Bishops, nuncios, and candidates for office often defined and structured their mutual relations in these terms. But historians should abstain from reifying such hierarchical models into a pyramid of patronage. Formal appointments to benefices registered in the catalogus were part of shady negotiations in which many actors could intervene, and whose outcome remained in limbo until the new benefice-holder had beaten or accommodated potential competitors who held other legal claims to the benefice; until he had been safely inducted by the competent Church officials (who could refuse or postpone to do so) and had reached an agreement with tax collectors or with the local collectors of the tithes. Benefice law provided for a grammar for nego-

94 Benefices that had been virtually absent from Hovius’ registers now surface in Boonen’s, with c.50 advowsons of canonships and capitulary dignities in the metropolitan Church of Saint Romuald’s and in the Province’s other cathedral and collegiate chapters. Ten references in Boonen’s Index Collationum refer to personatus granted jure devoluto, benefices that had been absent (except for one single entry) in Hovius’ catalogus collationum.

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tiations in the clerical job market, nothing less, but nothing more. As a consequence, not all clerics mentioned in the catalogus collationum considered themselves unambiguously “the bishop’s men’; nor could Hovius’ support be taken for granted if his candidates’ claims were challenged in tribunal by competitors.95 In the period under investigation, it remains a moot point whether Belgian bishops struggling to find shepherds for lesser parishes could develop grand nomination policies and similar clienteles. The conclusion that Hovius’ stakes in his appointments are anything but evident applies also to other institutional niche holders in the clerical job market in this book who do not come under the category of ordinary collators or diocesan supervisors. One entry in the catalogus collationum shows Hovius conferring a benefice as a commissioner of the Supreme Pontiff. If it is impossible to establish the numbers of presentations by lay lords, resignations, permutations, and dispensations with the help of diocesan registers, it is in part because many laymen (including the Archdukes themselves and many members of their entourage) and clerics appealed directly to the Roman curia to have their beneficial practices sanctioned. It was the papacy and its tribunals that had given major incentives to the development of a universally applicable grammar of negotiation and conflict in the clerical job market in the first place. In order to understand what benefices are, it is therefore necessary to turn to another site where they were managed in incomparably great numbers: the Eternal City.

2.2. “Ce Chieff du monde ou concourrent tous les princes chrestiens”: Papal provisions for ecclesiastical benefices in the early modern period In the previous section, local and regional church magnates came into review. The offices that figure in the catalogus collationum (rectorships, sextonships, altars, and occasionally a canonship) were attached to local churches and were embedded in a local sphere of action:

95 This may explain the inaccuracy that marks many entries in the catalogus collationum. In more than one case, ordinary collators just bided their time and waited for one of the candidates to emerge victorious through either litigation or by means of a settlement that bought off, via a pension or otherwise, competing claims to the benefice in question.

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chapels, parishes, collegiate and cathedral churches. It was, after all, the local realities of the early medieval Church that had been buoyed up by Gregorian reformers against harmful lay intrusions. The notion of “local churches” gained substance, however, in contrast to sites that increasingly performed as political, administrative, and religious centres. The circuits that carved out these centres from a periphery were major stakeholders in the development of universally valid legal concepts and jurisprudential and administrative practices, but they risked being excluded from remuneration of the new legal entities they had crafted, the bulk of economic resources being the reserve of local offices.96 In this context, the rigid notion of benefices being granted to residing clerics exclusively in exchange for the performance of the religious functions perpetually attached to them was not abandoned, but it did become very flexible. It has been hinted before that medieval princes used the benefices that came under their legal patronage to reward the ecclesiastics who manned their chanceries. Officials of busy diocesan tribunals and administrations, for their part, could rely on the canonical benefice system in the High Middle Ages as well as in Hovius’ time, when the bishop’s men assisted him in the management of his diocese.97 The papal system of provisions for ecclesiastical benefices, which provided curialists and others charged with the management of universal Christendom with a niche in the clerical job market alongside local and regional church magnates, has attracted a lot of attention from medievalists. As Gregorian reform merged with the “first Roman centralisation,” papal appointments to benefices all over Christendom became one of the most visible manifestations of the primacy of Peter’s chair. Few research areas have been marred to the same extent by the classical opposition, and the inherent hierarchy, between an intrusive or a progressive centre and an oppressed or retrograde periphery, inscription devices that were already used by medieval and early modern observers with an axe to grind.98 In line with recent insights

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See Wolter, “The Officium in Medieval Ecclesiastical Law.” Cf. Put, “Al de mannen van de aartsbisschop.” 98 More or less the same, stereotypical complaints (slogans, clichés, highly formalised and therefore legitimate translations of discontent) were heard all over Europe: papal providees were unsuitable clerics because they were ignorant, because they had “purchased” their benefices in Rome, or because they were foreigners and non-nobles. As a consequence, pastoral care in the parishes and the divine cult in the chapters were neglected, the orthodox faith waned, and the rights of the ordinary collators 97

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in the historiography on the relationship between Rome and its Italian periphery,99 the line between centre and periphery was continuously blurred, however. 2.2.1. The fabric of centre and periphery and the rise of papal universalism In fact, Rome could only perform as a centre as long as there was a periphery instrumentalising the curia as such. With respect to higher, elective offices, appeals to a reinvigorated papacy rather than to the immediate superior for confirmation had to canonise the outcome of complicated and conflict-laden election procedures that would have ended up before the Sacra Romana Rota anyway.100 This practice gradually became obligatory after the benefices in question had been subjected to papal reservations in the 14th century.101 It remained so when in many regions elections of bishops and abbots by cathedral chapters or religious communities were, in the course of the later Middle Ages, substituted by princely nominations.102 Papal bureaucracy was increasingly involved in nomination procedures for collative benefices were violated. For an anatomy of the discussions and arguments at the Council of Konstanz, see Stump, The Reforms of the Council of Constance, 177. 19th- and 20thcentury historians have largely recycled this discourse, which matched marvellously with their implicit understandings, and considered papal provisions in the 14th century to be one of the major causes leading inevitably to Protestant reform in the 16th century. A textbook case with respect to the Low Countries can be found in Fierens, “Ons prebendenwezen.” An analogous teleological approach was developed by Barraclough, who adopted an opposite position: he contrasted the “modernity” of papal rule through its “impersonal, bureaucratical procedures” and the “meritocratic spirit” of papal legislation in the Chancery rules with the favouritism rampant in ordinary circuits. Barraclough, Papal Provisions, esp. 50–65 ,as well as the arguments in Lynch, The Medieval Church, 178, and Paravicino Bagliani, “La suprématie pontificale,” 613. 99 Cf. the survey in Ditchfield, “In Search of Local Knowledge.” 100 The confirmation of elections or appointments to so-called “consistorial benefices” was a common practice. In the 13th century, almost every election to an abbey or a bishopric ended in contestation and litigation; by consequence, popes eventually chose most bishops and many abbots and abbesses. Lynch, The Medieval Church, 176. The adjective “consistorial” refers to the body of the pope and the cardinals gathered “in consistorio” to decide, among others, on such matters. In the period under investigation, the Congregation of the Consistory dealt almost exclusively with the processing of files of elected or appointed bishops, abbots, and other dignitaries queuing up for confirmation. 101 Cf. Meyer, “Bischofswahl und päpstliche Provisionen,” 131. 102 As was the case in Spain, France (Bergin, “Pour avoir un évêque à son souhait”), and the Netherlands in the early modern period. With respect to the Low Countries, see Jadin, “Procès d’information,” Dierickx, De oprichting der nieuwe bisdommen, and

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(canonships, rectorships, altars, and the like) as well. Novae provisiones or confirmations sanctioning appointment procedures in local churches also remained a common practice in the 17th century, especially in regions that were marked by a high level of competition and litigation.103 The offices at Rome (or Avignon) did not just rubber-stamp troublesome collations by ordinary collators (or presentations by lay patrons), however. The bishops of Rome had recommended deserving clerics from the 11th century onwards to local Church officials who otherwise might have failed to recognize this wandering talent. With the growth of the number of clerics who turned to Rome in order to secure benefices, the corresponding expansion of the papal curia and of the households of the cardinals, and the articulation of the Plenitudo Potestatis of the Supreme Pontiffs, these recommendations gradually acquired a binding character. From the 13th century onwards, they were accompanied by reservations, some of which were integrated in the Corpus Iuris Canonici, of individual benefices or specific categories of them, for appointment by the Apostolic See.104 Analogous to Hovius’ collations, however, holding a papal provision did not entail automatically being admitted to the possession of a benefice. Medievalists have gone to great lengths to underline how, in accordance with the inflation of papal provisions in the later Middle Ages, a devaluation of their individual efficacy can be observed, with many papal provisions failing to deliver the desired results and with litigation soaring.

Gorissen, “De invoering van het vorstelijk benoemingsrecht.” The situation in Germany is more variable, read Tewes, Die römische Kurie, 114–15. 103 With respect to the medieval dioceses in the Low Countries, see Baix, La Chambre Apostolique, cxxxv. In the five-years periods 1606–10 (1607 missing), 1616–25 (1617–18 missing), 1636–40 (1638 missing) in the pontificates of Paul V, Gregory XV, and Urban VIII, about 10 per cent of 1394 provisions in the provinces of Mechlin and Cambrai and in the diocese of Liège were novae provisiones (70 per cent of which involved benefices in the diocese of Liège) with respect to other papal provisions or ordinary collations, but the bulls Perinde valere or reformationes need to be taken into consideration as well. ASV, Dataria Ap., Per Obitum, 1–42. 104 In the middle of the 13th century, a first general reservation of all benefices whose holders died at the curia was issued in the form of a decree in order to secure this “patrimony.” The reservation Licet Ecclesiarum (27 August 1265) codified an old custom endangered by the increasing presence of procurators of ordinary collators at the curia. Linden, Der Tod des Benefiziaten in Rom, 41–61. On the legal elaboration of general and specific reservations, see Hinschius, System III, 123; Durand de Maillane, Dictionaire VI, 147. See also Schwarz, “Römische Kurie und Pfründenmarkt,” 132–33. Other reservations would follow and were, until the beginning of the 14th century, incorporated into the Corpus Iuris Canonici. Barraclough, Papal provisions, 9–11.

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Like other administrative and legal bodies that went “out of court,”105 the offices of the Apostolic Chancery, the Reverenda Camera Apostolica,106 and, from the 16th century onwards, the Dataria Apostolica took over part of the initiative from the pope and his petitioners, processing as they did on a routine basis the thousands of requests from all over Catholic Christendom. The many officials who intervened in the long journey from a formal supplication submitted by a wintered sollicitator causarum to a papal bull did so by aligning themselves with the administrative framework set out in the papal chancery rules (Regulae Cancellariae). This body of papal decrees addressed general and specific reservations of benefices; the prerogatives for curialists, familiares of the pope or the cardinals, and university graduates; and procedures for the verification, approval, and enactment of petitions.107 Just as curialists did not cut themselves out of Roman court life altogether, however, they participated in regionally and locally operating circuits. Recent research by Tewes into papal provisions in the second half of the 15th century has made it incontestably clear that most providees privileged their own home base to secure benefices for themselves or their circuits in Rome and in the periphery. Local support and intelligence, as well as leverage over collectors of the tithes, provided curialists with as much access to benefices as other clerics had. Few responded to the typical image of the Roman “benefice hunter”108 evoked by Erasmus in his Colloquia Familiaria: individuals obtaining more than one papal provision were rare. This assessment is also valid with respect to the 17th century. 105 Cf. Molas Ribalta, “The Impact of Central Institutions.” Papal administration was exceptional in this sense, that bureaucracy was never formally separated from the Apostolic Palace. Cf. the rolls of the Apostolic Palace under Clement VIII, for the years 1592–97, in BAV, Manoscritti Chigiani, 1794, 109–45, and see Visceglia, “Denominare e classificare,” 159–95. 106 On the gradual erosion of the Chancery as the central administrative body of the Curia Romana, in favour of the Reverenda Camera Apostolica in the 15th century, read Frenz, Die Kanzlei der Päpste. 107 They were adapted and issued in the beginning of each pontificate. An edition of these Chancery rules in Von Ottenthal, Regulae Cancellariae Apostolicae. A contemporary guide to the bureaucratic practice of the Dataria Apostolica in the 17th century in Amydenius, Tractatus de officio et iurisdictione Datarii et de stylo datariae. 108 Tewes, Die römische Kurie, passim. Petitioners, after all, had to produce all the necessary information about the benefices they coveted themselves, had to anticipate local customs or potential legal obstacles to their papal provision, and had to assure that clauses were inserted that would overcome any possible restrcitions set by these local laws. See for instance Frenz, Die Kanzlei der Päpste.

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A sample of c.900 papal providees petitioning the pope and his bureaucracy for c.1,400 provisions with respect to benefices situated in the Catholic Low Countries in between 1605 and 1640 reveals that the typical papal providee was either a diocesan cleric or a native of the region,109 in spite of the persistent complaints aired by critics of the papal system of provisions in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period that the alleged abuses of Rome were committed by greedy foreigners. On the level of the dioceses, diocesan clerics represented anywhere from 38 per cent (1606–10) to 43 per cent (1616–20) to 45 per cent (1636–40) of papal providees in the provinces of Cambrai and Mechlin, and 91 to 96 per cent in the diocese of Liège. Presence in Rome was registered for 21 per cent of providees, two-thirds of whom (12.5 per cent of the overall population) either identified themselves as curialists, students at the Collegium Germanicum, or familiares of cardinals, or reported several years of residence.110 It was not just curialists who made Rome the West’s major centre of patronage. Was Rome all that? Qualifications are in order. Even though it is difficult to calculate the exact number of papal provisions,111 case studies for the Middle Ages reveal that, despite the standardised character of the recriminations against papal intrusions all over Europe, Rome had always performed as the administrative centre of Christianity more for some regions than for others, incentives to seek Roman bulls vary-

109 With respect to benefices in the provinces of Mechlin and Cambrai and the diocese of Liège, only 2 per cent (21 of 906 providees) involve clerics from dioceses outside the Low Countries, among whom were one Italian, a few English Catholics on the run, and two Spaniards who were nominated by the king of Spain to benefices at his presentation as a lay patron. ASV, Dataria Ap., Per Obitum, 1–42. The sample (gaps in the series between brackets) is drawn from the volumes for 1606–10 (1607), 1616–25 (1617–18), and 1636–40 (1638). 110 This is a minimum, because the registrations in the series ASV, Dataria Ap., Per Obitum do not always contain all the information the historian seeks. Alongside the 70 individuals who were identified at least once as “presens in curia” (most of whom were probably temporary visitors sticking around for a while at the occasion of a pilgrimage), 71 others identified themselves as clerics who had stayed at the curia for more than one year (which may also include references to several decades), office-holders (curialists and chaplains of Roman churches: 23 individuals), a dozen familiares, and a negligible number (4) of students (or alumni who may have left the Eternal City in the meantime) at the Roman Collegium Germanicum run by the Jesuits. 111 The Belgian school of criticism has shown that it is impossible to set up exact figures for papal provisions. Baix, “De la valeur historique des actes pontificaux.” According to Barraclough, we should think of papal provisions in the Middle Ages in terms of thousands and ten thousands every year. Cf. Barraclough, Papal Provisions, viii. Curves in Meyer, Arme Kleriker auf Pfründensuche.

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ing greatly in accordance with local circumstances, best practice, and perceptions.112 Seen from this perspective, the trail-blazing studies in the field by Meyer, Schwarz, Hesse, and others in the 1980s and the early 1990s, which portray a disruption of local circuits in Germany by papal providees before and a reprovincialisation of the German ecclesiastical landscape after the Conciliarist crisis, cannot be extrapolated without considering other areas even within the Holy Roman Empire.113 Tewes’ research has revealed sharp contrasts between Italy, the Empire, France, and the Iberian Peninsula—which were host to c.90 per cent of the on-average 2,500 to 5,500 bulls issued by the Cancellaria Apostolica annually under the pontificates of Calixt III (1455–58), Innocent VIII (1484–92), and Leo X (1513–21)—and the rest of Christendom.114 In this Roman backyard, however, significant regional differences also can be observed among these four geographical entities, the relative weight of which shifted significantly over time from one area to another, and also within them.115 The Burgundian sphere of influence alone hauled in c.12 per cent of all chancery bulls under Calixt III, with important regional contrasts between Cambrai or Liège on the one hand and Flanders on the other. These qualifications notwithstanding, however, the received wisdom that the system of papal provisions was in decline in tandem with the demise of papal theocracy after 1400 needs to be revisited: overall

112 In the German cathedral chapters, the few papal provisi for canonships belonged to the same (noble) environment as other applicants. Bishops and abbots in the dioceses of Franken were appointed by the pope, but only after intense negotiations “in the periphery.” Frömming, “Päpstliche Provisionen am Bamberger Domkapittel,” 269–70; Borchardt, “Die römische Kurie und die Pfründenbesetzung”; Barraclough, Papal Provisions, 32, on the situation in the Rhineland; and Fouquet, Das Speyerer Domkapitel, 154–61. 113 Cf. Hesse, “Artisten im Stift,” Meyer, “Spätmittelalterliches Benefizialrecht,” idem, Zurich und Rom, and Schwarz, “Römische Kurie und Pfründenmarkt.” 114 Enter, moreover, the c.1,000–1,100 bulls issued yearly by the Camera (at least under the pontificates of Innocent and Leo), which mainly concern France, Italy, and Spain. Tewes lists 6951 registrations in the registers of the Reverenda Camera Apostolica (ASV, Reg. Vat., 698–715, 991–1010, and 1176–92) in a six-year sample constituted by the two first years of the pontificate of Innocent VIII, and by the first and last biennium of the pontificate of Leo X; access to the registers for the pontificate of Calixt III is not facilitated by Indici, and therefore they were not involved in his analysis. Tewes, Die römische Kurie, 107. 115 E.g., between a Rome-oriented North and a much less eager South in France and in Italy, and between the western and southwestern parts of the Empire and the northeastern parts. Tewes, Die römische Kurie, 78–79. Of the Chancery bulls, about 20 per cent did not concern beneficial affairs.

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figures had more than doubled under Leo X compared to the figures for Calixt III.116 More surprisingly, figures of the later Middle Ages were equalled, and even eclipsed, by the performance of the Dataria Apostolica in the 17th century. 5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1643

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Fig. 2.3. Papal provisions 1592–1644 (Per Obitum series): Orbis Terrarum

The series Per Obitum in the Vatican Archives (which, in theory, recorded papal provisions of benefices vacant because of the death of their holder) registers an average of 2,500 entries for bulls issued by the Chancery throughout the pontificates of Clement VIII (1592–1605) and of Paul V (1605–21). Figures surpassed the threshold of 3,000 provisions between 1612 and the early 1630s, after which they dropped again to pre-1612 levels.117 In the early modern Per Obitum list, the quantitative dominance of Spanish and Italian dioceses has become overwhelming, with German and French benefices being driven to the margins and the share of the Burgundian heritage (now reduced to the South Netherlands and Franche-Comté) and Liège shrinking to roughly 2 to 5 per cent. But there is more. The few remaining volumes listing all expeditiones of papal letters rubber-stamped in the Apostolic Datary118 suggest that overall figures of papal provisions must have 116 An average of 2,476 bulls issued on a yearly basis were registered under Calixt III, rising to averagely 3,481 bulls under Innocent, which eventually culminated in 5,448 bulls each year under Leo X. 117 ASV, Dataria Ap., Per Obitum, 1–42. Volumes for the years 1588/89, 1598/99, 1602, 1607, 1613, 1617/18, 1632, 1634/35, 1638, and 1642/43 are missing. 118 In the period under investigation, only ASV, Dataria Ap., Expedit., 1–3, have survived (Chancery bulls issued in 1621–24).

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been much higher, the Per Obitum series being the only survivor of five or six lists that were kept by probably as much secretariats and similar officials.119 A sample in these volumes with respect to the South Netherlands and the diocese of Liège suggests that c.60 per cent of all papal provisions were not registered in Per Obitum but were recorded by the secretariats of the Ordinarius and the Extraordinarius Sanctissimi.120 A more detailed scrutiny of these and other papal registers may not alter the conclusion concerning the predominance of Spanish and Italian clerics appealing to the Supreme Pontiff,121 but these samples combined do provide strong proof that papal provisions had anything but disappeared in the early modern period. These figures, in combination with Tewes’ findings, are troubling because they call into question many established beliefs with respect to the history of the papacy that are informed by methods and practices of periodisation commonly applied by historians and by the 17th-century historical actors they investigate. It is widely believed that, after the Western Schism, papal universalism had gravely been affected by the Conciliarist crisis, by the emergence of the dynastic state, and by the Reformation. However, Protestantism barely affected the machinery of universalism at the curia, as there is a strong correlation between regions that had enrolled Rome only to a marginal extent as the centre of Christianity in the late Middle Ages and those that spat on the proverbial Whore of Babylon afterwards.122 With respect to Conciliarism, it is a striking fact that the reform Councils of Konstanz (1414–18) 119 The secretary Per Obitum was the highest ranking official of the Dataria after the datario and the subdatario. Amydenius, Tractatus de officio et iurisdictione Datarii, Caput 5. Judging by the divisions in ASV, Dataria Ap., Expedit., 1–3, these secretaries (or secretariats) were called Commissiones (or the registrars/register of delegation of apostolic jurisdiction to judges in partibus), Ordinarius Sanctissimi, Extraordinarius Sanctissimi (which register alongside dispensations, confirmations of amortisation and the sale of ecclesiastical property, cassations of pensions on benefices and the like, as well as many papal provisions), Ordinarius and Extraordinarius Galliarum. 120 I.e., those with respect to benefices that had become vacant for a variety or reasons bar the death of their holder (resignations, permutations, simony, violence committed by a benefice-holder, irregularities of all kinds). The Per Obitum list, which in our sample (in the peak years 1621–24) contains c.40 per cent of registrations by the Dataria, does include many provisions of this kind, but the Ordinarius and Extraordinarius Sanctissimi seem not to have registered provisions per obitum. 121 The latter surface in great numbers in the other lists of expeditiones as well. 122 Tewes, Die römische Kurie, 356. Another element that should be taken into consideration, but which Tewes does not involve in his analysis, is the density of the clerical infrastructure, which was, in the High and later Middle Ages, much more developed in “Old Europe” than in the “New Europe” beyond the Rhine and the Danube valleys. Moraw, “Uber Typologie, Chronologie und Geographie der Stiftskirche.”

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and Basle (1431–37/49) sought to address ecclesiological conundrums primarily by reshuffling the respective niches of ordinary collators and of the papacy in the clerical job market. Eventually, concordats restored the primacy of Peter’s chair but put restraints on its room for manoeuvre with respect to the advowson of benefices and the taxation coming with it. Assertive princes who had previously sustained their clienteles via papal provisions but who now fashioned themselves as the protectors of national churches against the alleged abuses of Rome, were there to stay in Catholic Europe. But Tewes’ figures for France and Germany are particularly revealing with respect to their impact. The Concordat of Bologna (1516), which substituted the (poorly observed) Pragmatique Sanction de Bourges (1438)123 and normalised the relationship between the Eglise de France and the papacy until the French Revolution, has been situated by historians in a particular, above all diplomatic, context124 and has been generally considered the most restrictive with respect to papal provisions. All papal reservations with respect to collative benefices, bar Licet,125 were abolished. Hence, ordinary collators could only be burdened once (if they had more than ten benefices at their disposal) or twice (if they had more than 50 in gift) by papal provisions during a pontificate, while the pope could continue to wield his “right of prevention”; the right to fill offices if news about their vacancy had reached Rome first.126 Habitual recommendations by the king of aspiring bishops, abbots, and first dignitaries of metropolitan and cathedral churches were tuned into 123 This text, issued by Charles VII with the support of the “Gallican party,” ratified the conclusions of the Council of Basel, restored free elections, and nullified all papal provisions and taxes. Subsequent monarchs would use the text as the big stick in their negotiations with Rome while avoiding, at the same time, an open rupture that could put serious restraints on dynastic interests in Italy, French kings relying on the papacy to have their candidates nominated to episcopal sees. Clerics continued to consider papal provisions as a trustworthy road to benefices. Gazzaniga, “Charles VII et Eugène IV,” 68–69; Thomson, Popes and Princes, 160–61. As for the “Kurialismus des landesherrlichen Kirchenpolitik,” see, in a European context, Hashagen, Staat und Kirche, 75–80. A juridical approach in Gérardin, Etude sur les bénéfices ecclésiastiques, 137–43. 124 That is, the Italian wars, the antagonism between Louis XII and a militant Jules II, and, probably, the rising influence of the Spanish monarchy in Rome, which was likely to disturb communication lines between the Valois and the papacy. Cf. Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 16–33. 125 I.e., the first general reservation with respect to benefices because of the death of their holder apud sedem apostolicam. 126 “Le pape, grand perdant du nouveau système, conserve malgré tout un rôle plus important qu’il n’y paraît. ” Desportes, “Les chanoines de la cathédrale de Reims,” 254–55.

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a legally sanctioned right of nomination, while many royal prerogatives with respect to collative benefices were introduced later in the 16th century.127 Servitia and annatae that had to be paid in exchange for papal provisions to respectively consistorial and collative benefices were abolished. By contrast, the Concordat of Vienna of 1448, between the papacy and the German nation,128 confirmed the validity of the apostolic reservation Licet as well as its elaborations in later constitutions.129 It restored the free canonical election of bishops by cathedral and metropolitan chapters but mandated that they all be confirmed by the pope, while all first dignities after the bishop in cathedral and collegiate chapters were the Apostolic See’s to bestow.130 With respect to collative benefices, the alternativa mensium allowed the pope, within the interval of three months after the death or the departure of their incumbent, to fill offices that had become vacant in the six, uneven, apostolic months, while the benefices that became vacant in the other months were to be the reserve of ordinary collators.131 The German

127 I.e., the brevets de joyeux avènement and d’entrée, by which the king could provide, once in his reign, a cleric with a canonship in every cathedral or collegiate chapter in France; through their serment de fidélité, newly appointed bishops were obliged to provide one royal candidate with a benefice. More in Gérardin, Etude sur les bénéfices ecclésiastiques, and Olivier-Martin, Le régime des cultes en France, together with the articles of Naz and Mollat, respectively, in the Dictionnaire de droit canonique and the Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique. 128 Meyer, “Das Wiener Konkordat.” In analogy with the Pragmatique in France, the Mainzer Akzeptation of 1439 ratified the Council of Basel’s radical decrees (see Hürten, “Die Mainzer Akzeptation”) and was consequently used as a crowbar in the negotiations between the princes, the Imperial Church, and Pope Eugenius IV over papal primacy in the Empire, which led to the Concordat of Vienna. See Toews, “Pope Eugenius IV and the Concordat of Vienna.” 129 I.e., the reservation Licet, the only reservation in Corpore Juris Canonici Clausa and therefore part of common law. Thus far, there is no difference from the Concordat of Bologna of 1516. But Licet had been elaborated in Execrabilis and Ex Debito, the so-called Extravagantes that were incorporated, together with the other reservations, into the Regulae Cancellariae. These had the force of law in the Empire after 1448, but not in France after 1516. Legal subtleties in Feine, Kirchliche Rechtsgeschichte, 292, and Hinschius, System III, 130–32. 130 Before, only the episcopal sees subjected “immediately” to the Holy See had to go through this procedure; the other bishops were, theoretically, free to appeal to Rome in order to get more legal certainty, or not. “Diese Rechtsvereinheitlichung ist das entscheidende, von der Forschung bislang aber übersehene neue Moment des Wiener Konkordats. Als eine selbstverständlich wilkommene Nebenwirkung garantiertie die Wahlprüfung der Kurie den bisherigen Geldzufluss in gewohnten Ausmass.” Meyer, “Bischofswahl,” 133. 131 The alternativa was already a familiar concept by then, having been introduced in France during the last years of the Schism and at the Council of Konstanz. Details in Sznuro, “Les origines du droit d’alternative.”

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princes and (prince-)bishops were accommodated with nomination indults for bishoprics and/or collative benefices,132 the most extensive ones being the primariae preces granted to the emperor.133 It will not come as a surprise that late medieval and early modern critics of the papacy in the Empire strongly disapproved this much more permissive settlement and longed for a more restrictive Concordat of a Gallican bent; just as much as 18th-century regalists in Belgium, including the canonist Zegerus Bernardus Van Espen (1646– 1728), would mirror their projected Eglise belgique and its liberties in an idealised Gallican Church freed from the “abuses of Rome.”134 Appropriations of this type become highly problematic when they are reified into a state of affairs by contemporary historians, however. If the number of papal provisions soared in the late 15th century and during the pontificate of Leo X, it is because members of the proud Gallican Church intensified their ties with the curia.135 Enter, for the 17th century, the hundreds of papal provisions registered yearly by the Ordinarius and Extraordinarius Galliarum.136 Not only are they likely to nuance the dominance of the Italo-Iberian world (which in the absence of a concordatory regime continued to live with the Regulae Cancellariae)137 in the Per Obitum list but also they suggest that the

132 Concerning the Principality of Liège, see Dessart, “Les indults accordés aux évêques de Liège.” With respect to the nomination of bishops, see Schmidt, Das Kollegium Germanicum in Rom, 111. 133 I.e., the German variant of the brevets de joyeux avènement and d’entrée in France, allowing, as they did, the emperor to burden every ordinary collator in the Empire with one nomination at the beginning of his reign. 134 See Roegiers, “Nény en de Belgische kerk,” 171–88. See also Van Espen, Ius Universum Ecclesiasticum, tit. xxiii, cap. i art. xii. 135 An analysis in Tewes, Die römische Kurie, 257–94. Figures for Germany remained stable, but their relative numbers declined (21 per cent to 8 per cent), while the French clergy increased its share of appeals to Rome from c.20 per cent under Calixt III to c.one-third of all papal provisions under Leo X. Figures varied greatly from region to region. Compared to the northern dioceses, the western and the southern parts of the Empire seem to have intensified their contacts with the Roman curia. Interesting perspectives based on the regests of the Repertorium Germanicum in Meuthen, “Struktur des Deutschen Klerus,” here 293. 136 I.e., the secretariats in the Dataria Apostolica charged with the processing of petitions from France listed in the few remaining volumes of the series ASV, Dataria Ap., Expedit. 137 For Italy, see Prosperi, “Dominus Beneficiorum,” and the various contributions in Chittolini, Gli Sforza, la Chiesa Lombarda, la corte di Roma. On the benefice system in Spain, the only European country outside Italy where no concordatory regime was installed until 1753, see Nieto Soria, Iglesia y genesis del estado moderno, 343–80 (Castile) and Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne, 17–87. An interesting context in Dandelet, Spanish Rome, which has triggered lively discussions in European historiography. See, for instance, Visceglia, “Vi è stata una Roma Spagnola?”

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relationship between the Eglise de France and the Apostolic See were much more layered than concordats suggest. This conclusion, combined with the insights of research into Italy and Spain, calls for some serious rethinking of the history of the mutual integration (or the lack of it) between Rome and its periphery in the early modern period. Recurrent incidences of a “nationalistic” reaction against the abus de Rome need to be explained in the specific configurations in which they materialise instead of being reified into underlying political and ecclesiological constellations opposing centre and periphery. All this may seem commonsensical, but historians of the papacy have often stumbled into this pitfall nonetheless, using, as they did, concordats as descriptions of reality rather than as legal tools. As a consequence, the consensus among historians is that, in contrast to the heyday of papal theocracy in the Middle Ages, relationships between Rome and its periphery largely became a matter of diplomacy between the emerging modern states and the Supreme Pontiff, who pursued an analogously absolutist policy in Central Italy.138 This periodisation is informed, first, by the commonsensical but counterproductive concept of power as an asset that can be capitalised, which favours a history of winners (monarchs) accumulating power at the expense of losers (the papacy). Tewes’ research with respect to the later Middle Ages reveals that the growth of state power and the articulation of national churches by no means ruled out intensifying administrative ties with the Eternal City.139 Second, this opposition between direct administration in the Middle Ages and the primacy of diplomacy in the early modern period may be, to an extent, a product of the sources used. Much research with respect to the early modern papacy draws heavily on the dispatches of the nunciatures, while the tiresome travails of medievalists in the records of papal administration could attract few, if any, enthusiasts among students of the post-Tridentine period. In the next section, the Catholic Low Countries will provide an excellent case in point.

138

That is, in Paolo Prodi’s influential book Il sovrano pontefice. “Joannes Haller sah wie so vieles auch jenes Prinzip der entwickelten Staatlichkeit als Faktor für die Kurienbeziehungen richtich. Doch er und manch anderer glaubte, das Frankreich und Spanien auf dem Wege zum englischem Status ausgebauter Staatlichkeit gleich dem Land jenseits des Ärmelkanals einen ‘kirchlichen Absolutismus,’ eine ‘landesherrlichen Kirchenregierung’ installierten, dass sie sich auf diese Weise wie England dem Zugriff des Papstes auf den zentralen Konfliktfeldern der Besetzung kirchlicher Stellen, der finanziellen Abgaben und der Jurisdiktion erfolgreich entzogen. Aufs grosse Ganze gesehen ist das Gegenteil richtich.” Tewes, Die römische Kurie, 360. 139

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2.2.2. Towards a Belgian Church? Papal provisions on the fringes of Catholicism In the early 1700s, Van Espen sourly pointed out that the alternativa mensium and other provisions in the Concordat of 1448 were not observed in Belgium.140 A guide for academic nominees written in the 1630s by Guilielmus Vande Velde, a Law professor at Louvain and a “hands-on” expert on the area’s beneficial conundrums,141 delves deeply into the region’s multiple beneficial regimes.142 First, the duchy of Brabant, the counties of Flanders and Hainault, and the stewardships of Walloon Flanders remained vague terrain in terms of concordats throughout the early modern period. Benefices in the South’s core area were, just as those in Italy and in the Iberian Peninsula, immediately subject to the Regulae Cancellariae and, more specifically, to the papal reservation quattuor mensium.143 This can easily be explained by the entente cordiale with the papacy forged by the dukes of Burgundy, whose lands had, after all, been grossly over-represented in papal registers in the second half of the 15th century. In this context, the duke had admitted neither Concordat in his lands, with lasting institutional effects.144 Contrary to the (formerly French) county of Flanders, however, the county of Artois, as well as Tournaisis, came under the Concordat 140 Van Espen, Ius Ecclesiasticum Universum, pars 2da, tit. xxiii, c. i, art. xxxvii– xxxviii. 141 Vande Velde himself had to endure prolonged litigation, in the 1620s, in order to realise his claims to a canonship in the Cathedral of Cambrai by virtue of an academic nomination (see below). 142 Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22192. 143 This reservation stipulated that all benefices vacating during eight (as opposed to the alternativa’s six) apostolic months (January, February, April, May, July, August, October, November; Van Espen, Ius Ecclesiasticum Universum, pars 2da, tit. xxiii, cap. V, § iii–iv) were eligible for bestowal by the curia within three months. After the alternativa introduced provisorily by the Concordat of Konstanz (1418) had expired, Pope Martin V integrated the Reservatio quatuor mensium into the Chancery rules in order to safeguard the rights of the local churches for benefices vacating during four “ordinary” months. Stump, The Reforms of the Council of Constance. 144 In return, the dukes themselves had their family members and clients appointed by the pope to important benefices, including the (prince-)bishoprics in and surrounding their lands. The rotuli (or lists) of candidates for benefices recommended by the duke that were to be rubber-stamped collectively by the pope were endless. Cf. Jongkees, “Philippe le Bon et la pragmatique sanction.” The concordat of 1441 between Philip the Good and the pope for his German principalities probably should be understood in the context of the Mainzer Akzeptation of 1439, the German equivalent of the Pragmatique. “Sans doute le concordat de 1441 . . . restreignit-il fortement les interventions pontificales dans les églises des Pays-Bas. Mais Philippe le Bon épargna à Rome l’humiliation d’une pragmatique sanction bourguignonne.” De Moreau, Histoire de l’Eglise en Belgique, 4, 52. More in Tewes, Die römische Kurie, 143–45.

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of Bologna (1516) instead of under the Chancery rules, remaining as they did under French obedience until the Peace of Cambrai of 1526. By then, the Concordat of Bologna had been accepted for at least a decade, and the area was placed under the sovereignty of a prince whose relations with the Holy See were notably more strained than under his Burgundian predecessors.145 In analogy, the concordat of Vienna (1448) remained valid in those principalities of the Empire which were absorbed in the Burgundian or Habsburg Netherlands after Vienna (i.e., the duchy of Luxemburg in 1451 and the princebishopric of Cambrésis by the end of the 16th century).146 But it remained valid as well in the entire county of Namur and in the towns of Nivelles (in the duchy of Brabant) and Kerpen (a Brabant enclave on the Rhine), which had been Burgundian for decades. This may confuse historians whose etatist, top-down approach is likely to crumble under the weight of such incoherencies, but it is a comforting thought that contemporaries were (when convenient) dazzled as well. In the period under investigation, academic nominees and their opponents at least twice picked a good fight over which concordat was to be applied to which benefices.147 The situation in the Principality of Liège may 145 As a matter of fact, it had been the clergies of Artois and Tournaisis who had foisted the Concordat of Bologna on their prince, urging him to counter the proverbial flood of papal providees after they had returned under his obedience. OPB, 2, 509–511. 146 Or in cases of shared sovereignty, as was the case of Maastricht, a BrabantLiège condominium. “Ubi vigent concordata Germaniae (nempe in patria Luxemburgensi, Namurcensi, Cameracensi, civitate Traiectensi, Nivellensi et in oppido Cerpensi) . . . Queritur hic primo quinam collatores habeant omnes menses conformiter ad concordata Gallie. Responditur concordata gallie (que ordinariis concedunt 8 menses liberos et 4 affectos nominatis universitatum Gallie qui hic non recipiuntur) obtinere per totam Arthesiam atque etiam in ecclesia S Amati Duaci ut pote eo translata ex arthesia loco qui Broijlus dicitur prope Mertingium ad lisium fluvium. In aliis territoriis ordinarii tantum habent 4 menses iuxta regul. Cancell reservatoriam 8 Mensium preterquam ubi vigent concordata Germanie.” Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22192. 147 Cf. the following fragment from the faculty minutes: “ut curet examinari an in praxi obtineat, quod collatores Cameraci residentes [i.e., in Cambrésis, which came under the Concordat of Vienna] conferant alternis mensibus omnia beneficia etiam per Hannoniam [where the regulae cancellariae were valid] . . . iuxta concordata nationis Germanice, et si inveniat non conferre alternis mensibus, sed solum quatuor mensibus, sicuti collatores in Hannonia residentes curet litem pendentem statim decidi.” Acta Facultatis Artium, 12 August 1621, RAL, OUL, 715, 394. The other case, which equally offers a snapshot of the complexity of such debates, involved the bishop of Ypres in the 1620s, who claimed that his cathedral came under the Concordat of Bologna. “L’istesso canonicato havendo parimente conferito Monsignor Vescovo d’Ipri . . ., questo hora cerca d’impedire tanto la detta nominatione [of the university], quanto la provisione apostolica, pretendendo, che in esso non entrino le Regole della Cancellaria, ma le Concordate di Francia, per essere stato eretto dalla Prepositura

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look surprisingly normal. An independent ecclesiastical enclave surrounded by Habsburg lands, this principality lived with the Concordat of Vienna.148

HOLLAND

North Sea

UTRECHT

ZEELAND

Arendonk

Bruges

Antwerp Mechlin Brussels

Ronse

Lille

Tournai

Aire 2

Séclin

Antoing

Valenciennes 3

1 2 3 4

Stewardships of Lille, Douai and Orchies Tournaisis Cambrésis Lordship of Mechlin

Louvain

Diest

Nivelles

Mons Thuin Maubeuge

Jauche

Liège

Namur Sclayn Fosses

Huy

Kerpen

Maastricht

St.-Truiden Tongeren Visé

Cambrai

Borders of the 17 Provinces Demarcation Line of 1609 Provincial Borders

COLOGNE

Bilzen

Halle Ath

HAINAULT

Douai 1 Arras

Maaseik

4

Aalst

Oudenaarde

Cassel

Roermond Thorn

Ghent

FLANDERS Ypres

ARTOIS

CLEVES UPPER GUELDERS

BRABANT

Ostend

St.-Omer

MÜNSTER

Den Bosch

STATES BRABANT

Furnes

GUELDERS

UNITED PROVINCES

Aachen

LIMBURG

JULICH

LIÈGE Stavelot

NAMUR

Ciney Dinant

Bouillon (Liège)

Beneficial Regimes:

LUXEMBURG

Chancery Rules C. of Vienna C. of Bologna

FRANCE

Mixed, diverging Douai or disputed

Map 2. The Archducal Netherlands in 1609: beneficial regimes

Regolare di San Martino dell’ordine di San Agostino, che era già della diocesi Murinense in Francia, nella quale si osservavano le dette concordate. A questa pretensione risponde il provisto apostolico, ch’essendo stata unita la detta prepositura alla chiesa Iprense sia già quella estinta, e che habbia perso tutte le sue qualità, e ricevuto la natura, e qualità della chiesa alla quale è stata unita; . . . cosi debbano haver luogo nel detto canonicato le Regole sodette solamente.” Sanseverino, nuncio of Flanders, to Borghese, Secretary of State, 9 May 1620, ASV, Fondo Borghese, II, 109, 73r–74r. 148 The beneficial regime of Upper Guelders, a region that was barely visited by papal provisions (cf. below), could not be established with absolute certainty.

TRIER

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Concordats could not be appropriated by Van Espen as the unifying factor for a projected Belgian Church of a Gallican bent. They were aided by other institutional tools that, for the champions of national churches, could do the job. It has already been mentioned that, under the reign of Charles V and Philip II, informal recommendations to prelacies and bishoprics were gradually transformed into a full-blown real patronato of a Spanish (or a French) bent via the indult Fervor Purae devotionis (1515) and, later in the 16th century, via diocesan reform.149 The incorporation of abbeys into the new bishoprics not only brought along the advowson of benefices but also gave several bishops, who were already well connected with the nobility of state, a seat in the provincial States, thus adding to the hybrid character of these representative institutions in the early modern period.150 In return, the high clergy collectively became a stakeholder in the affairs of state because of its contributions to the Aids (extraordinary budgets granted on an annual basis to the prince), Burgundian dukes and Habsburgs having put serious restraints on the First Order’s fiscal immunities.151 But the Eglise Belgique identified also with specific legal practices, customs, and constitutions. In beneficial affairs, litigation over benefices under lay patronage had of old been a competence of secular tribunals. Notions borrowed from lay patronage concerning the temporal aspects of benefices152 were successfully mobilised to extend princely jurisdiction to other, “canonical,” benefices. Secular tribunals, whose procedures were less complicated and elaborate than those in

149 On the Spanish “Patronato Real,” “patronage de grâce” as opposed to the “patronage de droit” discussed in the previous sections, see Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne, 40–44. On the negotiations over the interpretation and introduction of the “nomination indult” (which was originally nothing more than the right to be consulted by the pope during nomination procedures) of Charles V with respect to abbacies and the first dignities in collegiate and cathedral churches, see Gorissen, “De invoering van het vorstelijk benoemingsrecht.” The similarities to the prerogatives conceded to François I in the contemporary Concordat of Bologna suggest that the pope was obliged to treat both rivals equally. 150 Bulst, “Rulers, Representative Institutions and their Members as Power Elites.” 151 Similar strategies were applied by the urban elites trying to limit the accumulation of lands exempted from taxes and subjected to the main morte. See, for instance, Prevenier, “De verhouding van de clerus tot de locale en regionale overheid,” and Van Uytven, “Wereldlijke overheid en reguliere geestelijkheid.” 152 Kerff, “Altare und Ecclesia,” 849–70.

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ecclesiastical courts, became a venue for litigation over benefices.153 In reverse, the constitution Eximiae Devotionis Affectus, granted by Leo X to Charles V on the same day as Fervor, stipulated that the prince’s subjects could not be summoned in first instance by ecclesiastical judges residing outside the Netherlands (most diocesan officials, before the reform of the 1550s). As this text was also mobilised against interferences of Roman tribunals, including the Sacra Romana Rota, it was an amenable tool to devise an opposition between a Belgian church and the capital of the world. The princely placet was the cherry on the pie of the Belgian Church, to be exalted by 18th-century regalists such as Nény and Van Espen as the ultimate remedy against the dreadful abuses of Rome.154 From the end of the 15th century onwards, when less cordiality was allegedly lost between the Habsburg successors to the dukes of Burgundy and the occupants of Peter’s chair, all Roman administrative, fiscal, and jurisdictional acts, including papal provisions, were to be examined by the Privy Council or provincial councils and were to be sanctioned in a formal placet. Envisaged as it was to counter the proverbial tide of foreigners distorting the clerical job market,155 the placet could have become an effective instrument to establish the prince’s control over all movement to and from Rome. It did not, however, for two reasons. First, the hybridism of elites and institutions that facilitated consensus-building in the Netherlands seems to have marked the relationship between power elites and the Eternal City to the same extent. In their instructions, archducal residents to the Corte di Roma were urged not to prevent papal provisions but to get acquainted with the procedures of the Dataria and the Apostolic Chancery, for the greater

153 Cf. De Brouwer, De kerkelijke rechtspraak. On the recursus ad principem, which shielded clerics in general and benefice-holders in particular from arbitrary measures of superiors, read Wauters, Recht als religie. 154 The princely placet was an accaparation of the episcopal placet granted by the papacy during the Schism. It seems to have had precedents in the duchy of Brabant afterwards as well. In a European perspective, see Hashagen, Staat und Kirche, 249–51, and Hinschius, System III, 749–63. With respect to the legislation on the placet, read Willaert, “Le placet royal”; an exquisite study of the placet in Wauters, Recht als religie, 143–212. 155 In this respect, the placet shows some remarkable similarities with the naturaleza required to obtain benefices in Spain. Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne.

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benefit of the prince;156 conversely, successive nuncios were instructed to indulge the ministers of the prince with benefices for their relatives and other favours in order to engender piety towards the Apostolic See of Rome. In this context, one loses track of who was controlling whom (To Whom It May Concern, that is), and it is hardly surprising that the granting of the placet by the central councils, analogous to the naturaleza required for applicants for benefices in Spain, was a formality in Roman eyes.157 Philip Maes, the princely agent in Rome (1610–18), complained in 1614 that the pope provided anyone with benefices in the Netherlands without consulting the prince (or his diplomatic representative) about the merits and qualities of the applicants. Yet, he did not suggest using the tools offered by the princely placet to ensure that only the prince’s men obtained apostolic favours.158 Moreover, only a fraction of papal provisions was indeed supported by diplomatic channels of communication. Seen from this perspective, Tewes and other historians may have overstated the effect of diplomatic relations on the administrative sway of Rome over its periphery. The sample of papal provisions in the Habsburg Netherlands (i.e., the provinces of Mechlin and Cambrai), based on the Per Obitum series in Fig. 2.5, indicates that an increasing number of clerics relied on papal provisions after 1620 and particularly in the 1630s, when diplomatic relations between Brussels and Rome were more frequently drawn into a format of conflict.

156

“Lune des principales causes qui nous a meu de vous donner ceste charge est enfin quaijez moyen de vous habiliter en la practicque beneficielle de Rome, et qua vostre retour soyez tant plus qualifie a nous servier en telles matieres, et aurons a plaisir que vous vous y employer diligemment, pour supplir a la faulte que scavez avoir icij en ce regard, chose que ne pourra sinon estre a nostre service et a vostre advantage et honneur.” Instruction secrete en particulier daulcuns poincts for Jean Richardot, Jr., first archducal resident in Rome, Négociations de Rome, 16 June 1600, AGR, Audience, 438, 135r–140r. 157 “Ne la materia istessa beneficiale s’è introdotto anco il placet, ma perchè non impedisce l’esecutione de le lettere apostoliche, non essendo questo capo molto pregiudiciale, sarà bene per adesso non ne trattare, ma riservarlo a miglior tempo.” Instruttione per Monsignor Guido Bentivoglio (. . .), 5 June 1607, ed. Cauchie and Maere, Recueil des instructions générales, 109–17. 158 Poincts et articles de ce que le chevalier maes at aprins en Cour de Rome …, in Négociations de Rome, 20 August 1614, AGR, Audience, 194r–111r. His predecessor until 1600, Laurens Dublioul, was even listed as a Referendarius Utriusque Signaturae in 1600; Weber, Die Päpstlichen Referendare, 1, 184.

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90 80 70 60 50

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Fig. 2.4. Papal provisions 1592–1644 (Per Obitum Series): Habsburg Netherlands and Liège

This suggests that other elements must be involved in the analysis. In this context, the metaphor of the market may be of use again: not political constellations, diplomatic postures, concordats, and Regulae Cancellariae but the growing pressure in the clerical job market that came with its normalisation from the Truce onwards induced clerics to turn more frequently to the Supreme Pontiff as the formal initiator of their appointment to office. Several arguments confirm this hypothesis. To be sure, papal bureaucracy did not produce provisions for two-thirds, or half, of the collative benefices that became vacant in Habsburg Netherlands, as it was entitled to do in line with Chancery rules and concordats respectively. Putting one’s eggs in a Roman basket entailed investing in contacts at the curia, paying fees to professional sollicitatores acquainted with local and regional customs which the bull-to-be had to anticipate in its clauses and derogations, and footing for the bill of the bureaucratic procedures themselves. And all this did not warrant a successful outcome, papal providees being disadvantaged by distance when it came to capturing possession of a benefice before their competitors.159 This is reflected in the geographical spread of papal provisions and the categories of benefices they concerned. Only c.380 localities in the Low Countries were visited

159 On the central role of the petitioner (or his agent in Rome), see for instance Frenz, Die Kanzlei der Päpste.

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by c.1400 papal provisions issued in the 16-year sample,160 c.60 per cent of which concerned benefices in the top 27 cities and towns that hosted 10 provisions or more.161 Large swathes of territory remained unaffected, Hovius’ disorderly Vineyard in the countryside being one of them. But the benefices coveted by papal providees were also very different from those figuring in Hovius’ registers.162 631

494 Prel. & dign. Canonships Altars Rectorships 168 63

Fig. 2.5. Papal provisions (sample): type of benefices

In Fig. 2.6, prelacies and dignities are, by definition, rare. Rectorships and vicarages (vicariae perpetuae), by contrast, are strikingly underrepresented.163 The benefices privileged by papal providees included, above all, canonships (35 per cent); next altars or other small benefices

160

Cf. p. 90 n. 109. These are (in order of performance): Liège, Cambrai, Bruges, Huy, Maastricht, Maubeuge, Brussels, Lille, Ghent, Aachen, Douai, Ronse, Ypres, Ciney, Visé, Tongeren, Furnes, Munsterbilzen, Séclin, Fosses, Sint-Truiden, Nivelles, Dinant, Cassel, Leuze, Tournai, and Namur. Interestingly, only half of the cathedral cities situated in the Low Countries figure in this “top 27.” Liège is lonely at the top, with c.230 entries (or onesixth of all provisions in the sample), while the highest concentration is to be found in the city of Bruges, which attracted 75 per cent of all provisions in its diocese. 162 The category “altars” includes: altare, capellania, beneficium simplex, beneficium, matricularia, sacristia, preceptoria, portio, cantoria, argentaria, custodia, and simplex servitiorum, all of which are benefices without the care of souls that were not dignities, and all of whose holders were not members of colleges of canons. The category “Prelacies and Dignities” encompasses: abbatia, abbatia secularis, decanatus, prepositura, personatus, commenda, archidiaconatus, prioratus, and Scholastria. The category “Rectorships” includes also other pastoral offices: archipresbiteratus and vicaria perpetua. 163 This may explain why the phenomenon of papal provisions has remained largely out of sight, the number of papal providees among the pastoral clergy being negligible. Compare Quaghebeur, De concursus, 169. 161

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(45 per cent), nearly 60 per cent of which were situated in the direct environment of high concentrations of ecclesiastics and similar career options, viz., the collegiate and cathedral churches and/or cities and towns that made it into the top 27. Compared with Tewes’ calculations, figures for the Habsburg Netherlands had dropped significantly.164 But whether this seriously affected the visibility of the Supreme Pontiff in the clerical job market remains a moot point. In the archdiocese of Mechlin, ranked third after Cambrai with c.100 provisions sampled in 16 years in Per Obitum alone, the pope must have been still second to the archbishop alone as a niche holder and administrator of the (canonical) clerical job market,165 while their respective spheres of action barely overlapped.166 In the smaller dioceses of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, similar results can be expected. In the absence of an indepth investigation into fluctuations on the job markets for canons and chaplains, it is relatively safe to conclude that seizing a canonship, or even an altar at Saint Donatian’s at Bruges or Saint Martin’s at Ypres, without a papal provision of sorts must have been a risky enterprise. By contrast, Rome was an absentee landlord in Antwerp, Den Bosch, and Roermond, the northeastern dioceses in Fig. 2.7 that took only 2 per cent of provisions in the sample.

164 Even if one takes into account the fact that Per Obitum registers only part of the Chancery bulls, that it does not list cameral bulls, that 17th-century dioceses in the Low Countries were much smaller than their medieval predecessors, and that specific provisions such as expectativae had been abolished, dioceses such as Cambrai (including part of the dioceses of Mechlin and of Antwerp) and Tournai (including the dioceses of Bruges and Ghent) must have struggled to approach in 16 years the 449 and 359 provisions, respectively, under Leo X (8–9 years; cf. Tewes, Die römische Kurie, 385). Habsburg Burgundy (Franche-Comté), which was frequently visited by papal provisions, was not included in the sample. 165 Papal bureaucracy did not hold a niche in the clerical job market that came under the patronage system, its benefices being exempted from papal reservations; it did function as an administrator of them, of course, as many lay patrons appealed to the papacy to rubber-stamp their appointments and as all statutory or material adjustments with respect to such benefices needed to be sanctioned by ecclesiastical authorities as much as their canonical counterparts. 166 This may account for the fact that papal provisions did not enter the picture drawn in contemporary historiography, which is preoccupied with careers in the parishes. Cf. Quaghebeur, De concursus, 167.

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Cambrai: 152; 11% Arras: 52; 4%

Namur: 33; 2% Saint-Omer: 11; 1% Tournai: 71; 5%

Bruges: 60; 4% Ghent: 44; 3% Liège: 766; 57%

Mechlin: 99; 7% N-E dioc.: 28; 2% Ypres: 52; 4%

Fig. 2.6. Papal provisions (sample): geographical distribution

These regional differences are overshadowed by the striking dominance of Liège. The diocese of Liège has always troubled medievalists as the most ultramontanist diocese avant-la-lettre of Christianity in this respect; and continues to figure among Tewes’ top five dioceses despite a (comparably) more restrictive concordatory regime and an impressive body of privileges shielding the proud Liège Church from papal intrusions. Liège, with 57 per cent of all provisions in the sample, turns upside down many of the tentative conclusions for Mechlin (20 per cent) and Cambrai (23 per cent). First, within the diocese, papal provisions were distributed more equally over the diocese’s territory.167 Second, when the different types of benefices are taken into consideration, papal bureaucracy proves to have been a much more regular passage point for a career in the Liège’s parishes as well,168 canonships being relatively underrepresented (30 per cent against 43 per cent in Mechlin and Cambrai) and the share of provisions with respect to altars outside large benefice pools (39 per cent) inviting comparison with the figures for the Habsburg Netherlands (43 per cent)—

167 I.e., c.220 localities for c.760 provisions, comparable to Hovius’ catalogus collationum if one excludes the exorbitant numbers for the city of Liège itself from the sample: c.220 locations (minus one) for c.530 provisions. 168 A full 90 per cent of the rectorships and vicarages in the sample were situated in the diocese of Liège, or 148 benefices in a vast diocese of c.1100 parishes (Tihon, Dictionnaire des paroisses). While the sample’s share of rectorships and vicarages is negligible in the other two geographical circumscriptions, they constitute c.20 per cent of provisions in the diocese of Liège.

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all this in spite of the greater density of collegiate churches and its resulting overrepresentation in the top 27 locations targeted by papal providees.169 Third, a differentiation with respect to the type of provisions is highly instructive as well, provisions of benefices that had become vacant because of the death of their holder (and therefore potentially coming under papal reservations) being less frequent in the diocese of Liège (55 per cent against 75 per cent in Per Obitum). Liège clerics seem to have appealed to the papacy more often for other purposes than gaining access to offices reserved by the pope; i.e., in order to prevent competitors from seizing the benefices they coveted; to seize benefices from others; to gain approval for transactions such as resignations and permutations; or in order to do all that simultaneously.170 This suggests that, after concordats, Church-State relations, and diplomatic contacts, the market metaphor eventually proves to be deficient as a reason for the ups and downs of the Dataria’s performance on the outskirts of Catholic Christianity. Applying it to the Liège case would imply that mortality rates among the Liège clergy were much higher than elsewhere; that competition was much fiercer, or both. While there is no evidence supporting the first argument, the second assessment calls for qualification as well, and puts into perspective the conclusions with respect to the provinces of Mechlin and Cambrai. The Principality of Liège, a crossroads of both rebel and royal troops, in spite of its neutrality had been gravely afflicted by the civil war in the Netherlands too; many properties of the Liège Church were situated beyond the ecclesiastical enclave’s borders; and much of its clerical infrastructure must therefore have been in tatters in the early 1600s. Papal universalism, Church-State relations, or competition were constituted in practice rather than the other way around: what was considered “best practice” in the perceived circumstances made clerics appeal to Rome. The more men aspiring to a clerical career did so, the more others were inclined to follow their example in order to increase their chances with the help of intimidating derogations and

169 Half of the 27 locations that attracted 10 or more provisions are situated in the diocese of Liège. 170 There is not necessarily a contradiction between the privatio of one cleric of his benefice in favour of another, and a transaction between them, as the first legal tool could be a construction to circumvent the formal requirements for resignations and permutations. Examples of such loopholes in Tewes, Die römische Kurie.

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clauses that were the reserve of papal bulls. At face value, this seems to have meant that keeping one’s benefice at Liège called for much more work (and that its possession was less secure) than in the Habsburg Netherlands. In the period under investigation, all this work was facilitated by multiple lines of communication and intelligence to the Eternal City, where Liège clerics were active in exactly those administrations which mattered: the Dataria Apostolica and the Cancellaria.171 Because these curialists were likely to rely more frequently than others on papal provisions (which does not exclude that they walked regionally embedded paths to office as well), they were prone to identification as a specific group (i.e., the so-called foreigners) by their competitors. There will be many occasions to revisit their activities and circuits in the following chapters, as they will turn out to be the major competitors of, among others, academics seeking office in the diocese of Liège. We can therefore turn safely to an association that needs to be explored more deeply for the purposes of this book: the ecology of academics and benefices.

2.3. The ways of academia. Universities and benefices Academics have crossed our path at various points in the previous paragraphs. Scholarship has paid due attention to the progressive scholarisation of the medieval and the early modern clergy. In universalist worlds that had to be managed by lawyers and theologians, university degrees became a convincing argument to use with ecclesiastical employers.172 Nonetheless, such criteria remained firmly embedded

171 Further research should establish whether the increase in petitions from the South Netherlands, with spectacular peaks in the 1620s and 1630s, was correlated with the existence in Rome of cardinals’ households that were familiar with the Low Countries, such as the ones of the cardinals of Bentivoglio (a former nuncio to Flanders) and De La Cueva (a Spanish politician based in the Low Countries until the late 1620s). 172 The proportion of c.30 per cent of the parish clergy (c.50 per cent in North Brabant) being formed at universities was not exceptional. Bijsterveld, “Du cliché à un image plus nuancé.” With respect to the canons of the cathedrals of Tournai (76 per cent graduates) and Utrecht (97 per cent) and of the collegiate churches of Bruges (64.5 per cent) and Brussels (a hub of princely administrators: 86.6 per cent) in the later Middle Ages, read, respectively, Pycke, “Les chanoines de Tournai aux études,” 601, Van den Hoven van Genderen, De heren van de Kerk, 248, De Keyser, “Chanoines

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in the context of a candidate’s family, friendship, and patronage,173 just as education itself was a protected privilege, often facilitated by patronage or benefice-holding.174 In the following sections, however, academics and graduates will emphatically not be featured as individual clerics seeking office but, rather, will be regarded as a collective that claimed, with explicit reference to its scholarly status, access to a niche in the clerical job market. It is not surprising that the largely clerical populations studying and teaching at the early studia generalia had taken a genuine interest in beneficial affairs from the High Middle Ages onwards. Like other circuits identifying with universalist spheres of action, however, their daily occupations did not match the job descriptions of the benefice system that their law teachers and alumni had helped to configure and transmit.175 And because canon law entrenched realities that had emerged in the previous centuries, learned corporations had materialised too late to become ordinary collators in their own right. As a consequence, academics were among those who would benefit the most from arrangements that allowed benefices to finance functions other than those to which they were perpetually attached. As a consequence, they sought to draw local benefices—through patronage rights, privileges, and incorporation—into their orbit. But medieval and early modern academics tried to control the beneficial market also on a more regional, national, or even universal level.

séculiers et universités,” 588, and Van Hofstraeten, Beloond voor bewezen diensten, 119. A very useful table comparing 15 chapters (12 cathedrals, 3 collegiate churches) in the Netherlands to the other parts of the Empire, France, England, and Scandinavia between 1245 and 1580 in Bijsterveld, Laverend tussen kerk en wereld, 206–07. 173 “Die gültigen traditionalen Regeln, die sich jeder Personengemeinschaft in Kirchen, Städten, Höfen oder Ämtern bemächtigten, sparten Universitäten und Gelehrte nicht aus. Ausschlaggebend waren oft die sozialen Beziehungsnetze, die Bindungen an Herren und Familien, an Verwandschaften, Freundschaften und Landmanschaften, an Haus- und Tischgenossenschaften.” Schwinges, “Karrieremuster,” 19. 174 Cf. the evaluation made by Bijsterveld, “Les jeux d’influence,” 361–63, Hesse, “Artisten im Stift,” and Miethke, “Karrierechancen.” In the early modern period, diocesan seminaries as well as Jesuit colleges would function as devises of loyalty as well, producing as they did clerics without a name who had been dragged out of the gutter and who could be expected to define their allegiances accordingly. See, for instance, Chatellier, “Société et bénéfices ecclésiastiques,” 75–98. An amusing case with respect to the young (Saint) Jan Berchmans in Put and Harline, A Bishop’s Tale. 175 In Southern France, specific benefices for scholars, so-called scolanie, came into existence in the 13th century (Verger, “Besoins et ressources financières,” 19), but the foundation of such benefices was anything but a widespread practice.

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2.3.1. The domestic interests of academia The organised flexibility of the benefice system made it possible to reconfigure benefices, temporarily or definitively, as primarily economic units, small rents that, being derived from inalienable Church property and/or from ecclesiastical taxes, could be used as highly secure ways to finance new institutions. In the later Middle Ages as well as in the early modern period, incorporation into universities, faculties, colleges, and chairs introduced benefices into the heart of the corporate nucleus176 of academic finances. Incorporation could assume three forms. First, benefices could be detached completely from their offices, which disappeared from the clerical job market and were consequently incorporated in an institution for its collective financing. Second, like the incorporation of the abbey of Affligem into Hovius’ episcopal see, they could be fused into single academic functions as well, whose holder automatically became, if he was a cleric, a Church official, just as Hovius remained responsible for sturdy monks resenting the degradation of their venerable abbey. Third, ecclesiastical institutions such as chapters could be subjected to academic jurisdiction, a legal construct that can be compared to the incorporation of monasteries or colleges of the religious orders into universities. A textbook case of the first type is offered by the University of Alcalà near Madrid, founded at the beginning of the 16th century. While older universities such as Salamanca and Valladolid continued to be financed in the early modern period through tithes and royal subsidies, the core of the dotation of Alcalà, the Spanish prototype of the early modern university college for secular clerics, was initially constituted by 60 benefices in the collegiate church of San Yusto y Pastor next to 143 pensions on other benefices scattered around in the archdiocese of Toledo.177 The Louvain Faculty of Theology possessed, from the late 16th century onwards, the personatus of the parish of Schyndel in North Brabant, the personatus of Hamont near Liège in its role of provisor (trustee) of the College of the Holy Spirit, as well as the priory of Bierbeek near Louvain. In this capacity, the faculty collected the

176 This “corporate nucleus” was introduced in the various contributions to Schwinges, Finanzierung, as the inalienable financial rights and privileges upon which academic communities could rely, distinct from increasing state financing and, therefore, intervention. 177 Rodríguez-San Pedro, “Structures économiques et financement,” 276.

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tithes in several parishes, which income sustained pious foundations and colleges or ended up in the pockets of the eight Faculty Regents.178 These tithes constituted a considerable part of the faculty’s income. In the 18th century, they outweighed salaries attached to chairs as a source of income for faculty regents.179 This type of financing was not at all limited to the institutions founded by, and for, the secular clergy, nor was it restricted to academic institutions of higher learning. Regulars also used their contingent alliances with popes, princes, and the diocesan clergy financing their institutions through benefices. The Jesuits in the Empire, for instance, who could (and would) not fall back on landed property that was the reserve of older orders, tried to acquire economic resources derived from rents and pensions on the property of other orders or from incorporated benefices to finance their colleges on a stable basis.180 In the Netherlands and Burgundy, the Jesuits of Dole and Douai as well as of the numerous colleges for the humanities relied, in the early 17th century, on the diplomatic representatives of the Archdukes in Rome to implement several incorporations of priories and other benefices. Bishops followed their example.181 Incorporation, however, did not necessarily imply the abolition of the offices linked to the incorporated benefices. The financing of universities in the Ancien Régime was primarily focused on the remuneration of individual staff members rather than on academic institutions,182 especially in universities where colleges only played, at least initially, a minor role. The Universitätsstifte (“university chapters”) that financed the late medieval universities of the Empire, whose founders were

178 The regents of the Faculty of Theology functioned alongside the doctors in Theology residing in Louvain. They often occupied a public chair, but this was by no means a prerequisite. More details in the context of the 1680 conflict over the appointment of faculty regents in Vatican, “Entre Madrid et Bruxelles: les nonces et le jansénisme,” 45–90. 179 See the previous note. This part of an academic don’s income could only be surpassed by the total number of benefices he may have collected through, among other ways, the academic privileges of nomination. Cf. Roegiers, De Leuvense theologen, 53 and 136–42. 180 General outlines on the financing of Jesuit colleges in the Empire in Müller, “Zur Finanzierung der Kollegien und Hochschulen.” 181 A list of 14 altars incorporated in the diocesan seminary of Ghent in Roegiers, De oprichting en de beginjaren, 162–64. 182 Cf. Hammerstein, “Epilog.”

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princes and/or cities, are a classic example.183 There, chairs were often simply connected with respective canonships remunerating them, and the appointment to a chair was consequently linked to the advowson of a single prebend by its patron or ordinary collator, the prince(-bishop) or town in question. University professors were charged not only with teaching but also with the divine cult and with religious offices aiming at the salvation of the university founder’s soul in the choir of their church:184 “German universities initially were little more than collegial chapters where teaching came first and religious services second; whereas in the average collegiate church, cult was the canons’ core business and teaching, although never completely absent, an occupation of the second rank.”185 The composition of these Universitätsstifte was, from the 15th century onwards, different from other collegiate churches, as it reflected academic views on merit. Their canonships were nearly exclusively affected by chairs in the higher faculties, especially those in Law and Theology. Members of the Arts faculties could better take their chances in other chapters, provided they could fall back on sufficient protection outside the university.186 When necessary, the clerical infrastructure in the immediate surroundings of the university was expanded. The situation in Louvain, a rather typical exponent of the so-called “second foundation wave” in the Empire, offers a telling example. The foundation bull Sapientie Immarcessibilis (1425) stipulated that the city, a major stakeholder in the project,187 had to provide for the financial and material framework

183 See Moraw, “Uber Typologie, Chronologie und Geographie,” 9–37, and idem, “Stiftspfründen,” 270–92; see also Schubert, “Zusammenfassung,” 238–40. 184 This was not always the case. In Tübingen, for instance, Pope Sixtus IV “recapitalised” the prebends of the collegiate church in favour of the university and thus abolished the chapter, a measure foreboding the destiny of the Universitätsstifte (and most other chapters) in Protestant areas later on. Meuthen, Kölner Universitätsgeschichte, 1, 32–34. 185 Paulsen, “Die Gründung der deutschen Universitäten im Mittelalter,” 283. The degree of integration between the university and these collegiate churches was highly variable. In Vienna, Erfurt, Rostock, and Basel, several prebends in one or more collegiates or cathedrals had to provide the professors with the necessary finances. In Prague, Heidelberg, Tübingen, Greifswald, Ingolstadt, and Wittenberg, entire collegiate churches formed the old core of university financing. Wagner, Universitätsstift und Kollegium, 16–17; See also Rexroth, Deutsche Universitätsstiftungen, 45–52. 186 Hesse, “Artisten im Stift,” 110–12; nonetheless, benefices were often used as a way to constitute a common dotation out of which individual salaries were paid; idem, “Pfründen, Herrschaften und Gebühren.” 187 Cf. Nelissen, De stichtingsbul, 58–66.

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of the new studium. In 1429, the salaries paid by the city to the professors were partially replaced by eight prebends in collegiate churches belonging to the lay patronate of the duke of Brabant, and seven canonships situated in Saint-Peter’s in Louvain itself. Fifteen years later, a second chapter with ten prebends was founded exclusively for the sustenance of the academic staff, while three more prebends out of 18 in the first foundation of Saint Peter’s were affected to university men as well, totalling 29 canonships that had to alleviate the financial needs of the teachers from 1444 onwards. These were at the advowson of the city magistrate of Louvain, which appointed all ordinary and a few extraordinary professors of the higher faculties as well as the two public chairs of Rhetoric and Ethics in the Arts.188 This financial model was applied to the four royal chairs in Theology and the office of university censor of books introduced by Charles V and Philip II. These would be remunerated by canonships in the first chapter of Saint Peter’s that came under the legal patronage of the prince in his position as duke of Brabant,189 and they likewise remained at the advowson of the prince and the Privy Council. Meanwhile, the Louvain “pool of benefices” had been enriched in the 1450s by the transfer of the collegiate chapter of Incourt to the parish of Saint James in Louvain, which in turn hosted 12 canonships.190 The difference between direct financing through the tithes (Salamanca and Valladolid) and the incorporation of benefices may seem subtle, at first sight. The main source of income of the university chapters, the priory of Bierbeek, and the two personates also consisted in the levying of tithes.191 Yet, the incorporation of benefices had its advantages. Analogous to the impact of the incorporation of the abbey

188 Paquet, Salaires et prébendes, 16–23. This central position of the city magistrate was not uncommon in the Empire. See De Maesschalck, “The Relationship between the University and the City of Louvain,” 50. When chairs in Law endowed by canonships in Saint Peter’s were assigned to laymen, the tie between benefice and chair was loosened, and other clerics joined the college of canons. For the period under investigation (for instance, the appointment in 1597 of Cornelius Bosmans, a Louvain patrician, as professor Decretorum), see Vingeroedt, Chanoines de Saint-Pierre, 92. 189 Technicalities on the balance of power in the Louvain chapters in Pasture, Les chapitres séculiers, 48. See also J.L. Bax, Historia Universitatis Lovaniensis, 1, KBR, Manuscrits, 22172, 79. 190 Pasture, Les chapitres séculiers, 47. The chapter of Saint James was incorporated in its entirety; its canonships not being attached to specific chairs. 191 The lions’ share of a chapter’s income was constituted by the tithes its canons levied in the parishes.

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of Affligem on Hovius’ collation rights, benefices, in contrast to tithes, could bring along the advowson of other benefices. As such, the theological faculty had been, since the 16th century, the ordinary collator of the parishes of Neervelp, Opvelp, Schyndel, and a few smaller benefices.192 By means of their preponderance in the chapters of Saint Peter’s, teacher-canons could simultaneously manipulate the local benefice market in favour of their clients. A fair portion of the unaffected canonships was occupied by academics as well. Many pastors of the city’s parishes, whose appointment belonged to the chapter of the first foundation, were members of academic councils at various levels. The pleban of Saint Peter’s was ex officio professor in theology and, just like the chapter’s dean, provisor of many scholarships in several colleges. It is hardly surprising that the deans, in their quality of managers of academic patronage, were regents of the Faculty of Theology as well. The chaplains of Saint Peter’s seem to have counted many up-and-coming men of the Academy among the chaplains, as did the clergy in Louvain’s wider environment.193 This merger of Louvain academic circles and the local church calls for further investigation, but must have been particularly dense because of the key positions that leading academics occupied in the Louvain churches. Seen from this perspective, this niche in the local beneficial market, in contrast to financing via tithes or otherwise, did more than merely finance universities. Benefices were devices not only of ecclesiastical hierarchies and similar clienteles but also of academic hierarchies, introducing as they did a clear-cut distinction between staff members who were local church magnates, who held (local) benefices, and who were in charge of the recruitment of other offices; and students, who did none of these things and were, increasingly, excluded from teaching.194 Other legal instruments—such as rights of patronage, papal nomination indults, or local agreements—could also be mobilised in order to obtain a similar position in the local clerical job market.

192 Roegiers, De Leuvense theologen, 1, 53. Thus, the new orders could acquire rights of appointment to ecclesiastical benefices as well. It is in its quality of persona that the Jesuit college of Halle was the ordinary collator of a few other benefices; cf. registers of the university and the Faculty of Arts, RAL, OUL, 4783. 193 In the surrounding rural deaneries of Tienen, Zoutleeuw, and Geldenaken, members of the university occupied more than 100 benefices by the end of the 15th century, which merits further research with respect to the early modern period as well. De Maesschalck, “The Relationship,” 50. 194 Cf. p 23.

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The University of Alcalà, for instance, benefited from a very complex regime regulating the advowson of the dignities and canonships in the collegiate church of San Yusto y Pastor, set up by the crown and the archbishop of Toledo in 1534. Hence, the rector of the university had the right to bestow the prebends vacating in the uneven months of the year to masters in Arts and Theology of Alcalà; in the even months, the archbishop could nominate doctors in Theology from Alcalà, Paris, Salamanca, and Valladolid, or doctors and licentiates in utroque from the same universities bar Paris, which had to clear the field for Bologna. The king, the lay patron of the Church, consequently presented their respective nominees to the archbishop, who provided the candidates with the canonical institution.195 When academics could not simply take over the local churches, they had to enter negotiations with other circuits. At Cologne, university men appealed to the papacy and were granted a first privilege in 1398, which enabled the rector and the city provisors to present university professors for one prebend respectively in the cathedral and in the ten collegiate chapters of the metropolitan city. In the course of the 15th century, more benefices in the cathedral were reserved for academics and a second, rather inefficient, Pfründengnade followed in the context of the conciliarist crisis. In the middle of the 16th century, however, popes and bishops joined to launch the University of Cologne as an outpost of the Catholic offensive in Germany. In this context, academics successfully translated, after long negotiations in Rome, the threat of heresy into additional prerogatives for academics. The third Pfründengnade granted the rector, the faculty deans, and the city’s provisors of the university the right to bestow all canonships as well as the sacerdotal benefices in the cathedral and in the collegiate church of Saint Gereon vacating in three of the six months reserved by the papacy in the Concordat of Vienna (1448). This prerogative was not permanent and had to be renewed every three, five, or seven years. Rights of patronage were acquired at a very early stage in the history of universities. In Paris, a very rewarding system was developed to punish local authorities and citizens for manslaughter and violence committed against university members. Offenders were forced to found a chapel for the benefit of the souls of the deceased, which was of course to be occupied by a university man presented by the

195

Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne, 65.

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rector. For the same reasons, existing benefices were transferred to the university. In the beginning of the 15th century, the rector of the university thus wielded rights of patronage over c.20 chapels and parishes.196 The total number of benefices thus integrated into Parisian academic circuits, whether these were linked to colleges, faculties, or the university, must have been much higher.197 Legal patronage was a typical asset (but not a monopoly) of the collegiate university, whose colleges often were endowed with landed property that brought along private churches. A broad niche in the clerical job market in England was occupied by the major Oxbridge colleges, where the incorporation of advowsons of benefices was considered, well into the 20th century, an adequate way to endow colleges and to ensure the future of their graduates.198 Incorporated benefices, legal tools to manipulate the local beneficial market, and benefices falling under academic rights of patronage fit into the definition of the “corporate nucleus” of university financing. This is the definition as it was introduced in the colloquium in Bern in 2001 in order to distinguish this system of financing from direct state intervention through subsidies. The latter financial resource would have been the Trojan horse of absolutism, as its share of overall university financing increased together with the “encroachment of the absolutistic state” on the university system. Whether this distinction is really helpful to evaluate the relationship between “university” and “the state” or not, however, is highly questionable. First, these concepts are informed by a flawed definition of the problem, capitalising, as they do, on a top-down, etatist approach to university history. In the case of the Universitätsstifte, university men were, by entering into chapters endowed by the prince or the city, integrated into

196

Kibre, Scholarly Privileges, 241–60. Kibre refers the reader to a 17th-century treatise: C.E. Du Boulay, Mémoires historiques sur les bénéfices, qui sont à la présentation et la collation de l’université de Paris. Paris 1675. 198 In the late medieval diocese of Lincoln, about 9 per cent of presentations to parishes were made by a few Oxford colleges. These continued to purchase advowsons after the Reformation as well, and preferred c.half of them to fellows. Porter, “University and Society,” 97. Colleges (e.g., Balliol College) continued to purchase advowson rights well into the 20th century. The Jagellon University of Cracow, where patronage over c.300 benefices scattered around in Poland constituted the core of university or faculty financing, is an example of similar niches held by learned institutions other than colleges. Cf. Michalewiczowa, “Le bénéfice en tant qu’élément de la structure d’organisation de l’Université Jagellone.” 197

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local, regional, or territorial circuits, which made it unlikely that they would appeal, as their medieval predecessors had done, to a cessio lectionum or to an emigration of the university.199 Second, even worn rights were claims that had to be realised time and again in day-today practice. Incorporation of benefices or, for that matter, the levying of (mostly temporary) pensions on abbeys, demanded, at least in the cases of Dole, Douai, and Louvain, princely protection in Rome, in the 15th as well as in the beginning of the 17th century.200 Once obtained, the absence of both legal and social protection, resulting in resistance from taxpayers or from tax collectors, could seriously jeopardise the collection of the tithes,201 while challenges in court to the legality of this or that operation could never be excluded. Third, the Cologne example shows how academics became dependent upon protection on a perpetual basis in order to preserve this “corporate nucleus.” The need to renew the Pfründengnaden and contingent competition from other quarters gave the Roman pontiffs ample occasion to reconsider their generosity towards the university.202 As such, the Cologne Pfründengnaden show some similarities with the Louvain privileges of nomination. These were, as we will see, in a strict juridical sense not limited in time. However, preserving them called time and again for a strengthening of the ties with power elites in the Netherlands and beyond the Alps. 2.3.2. The universalist vocation of academia The Louvain privileges of nomination had a much larger geographical impact than the Cologne Pfründengnaden. The attempt to control the benefice market in a wider area was as old as the universities themselves: it was, after all, largely universities that had engineered, with the help of law and theology, the universalist sphere of action

199 In addition, such a measure would result in a loss of their benefices because “university canons” were now bound by canonical residence. Wagner, Universitätsstift und Kollegium, 361. 200 There are c.600 (!) letters that contain information of the history of the universities of Louvain, Douai, and Dole in the Négociations de Rome (the correspondence between the Secretaries of State at the court, or the Archdukes themselves, and their resident in Rome) for the years 1600–25 (AGR, Audience, 437–61). More than half of these 600 letters concern (among others) the financing of academic institutions. 201 Cf. Chatellier, “Société et bénéfices ecclésiastiques,” 88. 202 Meuthen, Kölner Universitätsgeschichte, 64.

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underpinning the benefice system and vice versa. Integration of the academic elite into the local environment in which these international schools were embedded was not feasible in the High Middle Ages. An “academic elite” comparable to the highly visible teaching and administrative staffs of the early modern period, distinct from the masses of other scholars and students, and recognisable as such for outsiders, had barely crystallised.203 The first universities had grown organically, which means that academics initially had not been embedded in the local structures of Universitätsstifte. Consequently, they did not necessarily limit their scope to the local benefice market and turned to the papacy, another self-styled protagonist in the fabric of universal Christendom. Popes, strong supporters of the early studia that trained professionals for the emerging Church administrations, granted, in the 14th century, the first privileges de fructibus percipiendis in absentia dispensing scholars in Paris from canonical residence in their benefices during their stay at the university and/or installing a moratorium on the obligation to take the sacred orders.204 Privileges of this type became more or less common to medieval and early modern universities, to the extent that the Louvain version was issued together with the bull of foundation itself.205 With the help of these texts, scholars could use the benefices they held elsewhere as a grant or as a supplement to their emoluments as teachers. As such, they were deeply entangled with the interests of Academia in the benefice system outside the walls of the university town; interests that they increasingly realised through the impressive bureaucratic apparatus of the Avignon papacy.206 The growth of the papal system of provisions was partially triggered by the reliance of university members on papal support in their pursuit of benefices. Many of the earliest papal initiatives in the field were legitimised by papal charity in favour of poor clerics. Poverty became a benchmark for members of universities seeking office, while the Rules of the papal chancery privileged university men in general and graduates in particular. At the beginning of a new pontificate, university men and graduates sent collective rolls of petition, after the example of the lists of candidates recommended by princes to the Eternal City,

203 204 205 206

Vandermeersch, “Teachers,” 244–55. Kibre, Scholarly Privileges, 234–35. Reusens, Documents relatifs, 1, 10–13 and 15–17. Verger, “La politique universitaire,” 25–26.

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in order to be rubber-stamped by the Vicar of Christ207 and be processed into papal provisions in forma communi pauperum.208 In line with general studies on the papal system of provisions, the efficacy of these provisions has been called into question,209 but it remains a fact that universities all over Europe time and again fell back on rotuli beneficiandorum in order to fetch benefices for their members until the Conciliarist crisis. The 15th century was characterised by the frenetic search on the part of academics for new legal tools to safeguard, through benefices, funding for themselves and for their students during their stay at the university, as well as interesting career prospects afterwards. The assertiveness of academics at the reform councils of Konstanz and Basel cannot be understood without considering the imminent threat that academics felt about their losing access to the benefice system.210 Their success in translating their fears into new institutional niches in the benefice system was highly variable, however.211 The Concordat of Vienna (1448) sanctioned the victory of German nobility over university graduates, who were left virtually emptyhanded.212 Whether academics had ever been able to challenge the claims of the nobility is a moot point, however, especially in the cathedral chapters where papal provisions had not been, and would never be, successful without the support of the nobility.213 In the aristocratic Church of the Empire “only appointees with sufficient feudal clout could protect the rights and possessions of many German churches against

207 The most apt moment at which to send a roll of petition was apparently the election of a new pope, but universities were very flexible in determining other occasions at which to send rolls of petition. See Watt, “University Clerks.” 208 These were destined for “poor clerics,” that is, those who did not yet possess a benefice and could therefore appeal to papal charity at the beginning of every pontificate. An extensive treatment of expectative graces in forma communi pauperum in Meyer, Arme Kleriker auf Pfründensuche. An evaluation of the efficiency of this form of papal provisions in McDonald, “Poor Clerks’ Provisions,” 339–49. 209 Schmutz, “Erfolg oder Misserfolg?” His evaluation of the effectiveness of the academic rolls of petitions is negative. Because of the variable impact of papal provisions, the results for Heidelberg and Cologne cannot be extrapollated without circumspection. 210 See, next to the already cited work of Stump, Sznuro, “Les origines du droit d’alternative bénéficiale,” 1–25. 211 Swanson, “Universities, Graduates and Benefices,” 58. 212 Cf. p. 251–68. 213 Barraclough, Papal Provisions, 60. On the German nobility and the Church in the early modern Empire, see Duhamelle, L’héritage collectif.

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the predatory rapaciousness of their fellow nobles.”214 Interestingly, the re-provincialisation of churches in Germany observed by historians in the aftermath of the Concordat of Vienna, which turned upside down academic ranking orders in the Chancery rules,215 is associated (in Hesse’s study with respect to Swiss collegiate churches) with the withdrawal of jurists and theologians to their last refuges, Universitätsstifte or collegiate chapters that of old had been the reserve of princely or episcopal administrators. This then is contrasted with the success of artists elsewhere, who in the 15th and 16th centuries could aspire to prebends in collegiate churches that had previously been beyond their reach.216 The cathedral chapters remained, as they had always been, bulwarks of the nobility, which, in the later Middle Ages, increasingly abhorred the taking of academic degrees in order to distinguish themselves from non-nobles. In this context, academic claims to one-sixth of the canonships in cathedral churches were not likely to be honoured in a Concordat that had been negotiated directly between the German princes and the pope.217 The advantages of identifying with a scholarly status—except for the teaching staff itself218—were limited in this area, higher Church offices (and, therefore, the richest benefices) being a prerogative of the nobility or of the urban patriciate. As a consequence, many clerics’ career patterns shifted, which resulted in a relative decline in attendance in the higher faculties in general and the theological schools in particular.219 Enter the Reformation and

214 Stump, The Reforms, 93. The provisory stipulations in the Concordat of Konstanz (1417), that one-sixth of all capitular benefices and all parishes with more than 3,000 inhabitants were to be reserved for graduates, were abandoned in Vienna. Mercati, Raccolta di concordati, 177–85. 215 Meyer, “Das Wiener Konkordat,” 150. 216 Of course, most artists still had to content themselves with a chapel or a vicary, the number of canonships being limited. Hesse, “Artisten im Stift,” 110–12. 217 For the international context, see Toews, “Pope Eugenius IV and the Concordat of Vienna,” 178–95. 218 Owing, partially, to the endowment of the new universities with the help of canonships, the loss of papal patronage had not affected teaching staffs immediately. Secular clerics even managed to strengthen their position to the disadvantage of the mendicants. The proliferation of universities made it easier to attract the attention of local or regional patrons with benefices in gift. Meyer, “Das Wiener Konkordat,” 112. See also Dickerhoff, “Die katholische Gelehrtenschule,” 360. 219 “Allein die stark in Gewicht fallende Vermehrung der Studentenzahlen im spätmittelalterlichen Deutschland hätte rein rechnerisch eine quantitativ weit stärkere

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the Catholic offensive. Medieval universities did survive, but failed to realise their ambitions in the clerical job market. The University of Cologne had to back down, in the context (or in exchange) of an overall reform of academic institutions, from imitating Louvain’s successes in Rome in the 1570s (see below) and obtaining its own nomination privilege in the ecclesiastical province of Cologne.220 In the context of Catholic mobilisation against heresy, university founders—bishops rather than princes—did not fall back on the model of the “classical” university centred on a group of canons charged with lecturing to meet the new demand for trained theologians and apt parish priests, nor did they establish diocesan seminaries after the Tridentine model. The educational field in the early modern Empire was dominated by the Society of Jesus and its colleges, some of which evolved into semior full universities.221 Most of the remaining Catholic universities in the Empire were infiltrated, or taken over, by the Society as well. The prestige of the Jesuit Order as the hammer of heresy was immense; Jesuits managed to translate learned culture into the needs of the nobility which ensured them of the support of the cathedral chapters; and their numerous teachers in the humanities, in philosophy, and in theology did not make tedious claims to a higher beneficial career. That did not keep the Jesuits from trying to acquire institutional niches in the clerical job market, however, either via papal provisions or otherwise, or from trying to use their informal channels of communication with princes, bishops, and nobles to advance the careers of promising hangers-on who had not been born as bishops or canons of the Domstifte.222 In

Erhöhung der Pfründen für gelehrte Theologen nötig gemacht, wenn die Theologen ihren Anteil an versorgten Graduierten hätten ‘halten’ wollen. Davon aber kann keineswegs die Rede sein: In ihrem prozentualen Anteil an der Gesamtstudentenschaft sanken die Theologen sichtlich und erheblich ab, was aber letsten Endes auch die Erfahrung war, die die anderen ‘Höheren’ Fakultäten machen mussten.” Miethke, “Karrierechancen eines Theologiestudium im späteren Mittelalter,” 209. 220 “Proinde de qua reformatio istius Academiae facienda est, ea necessario a Sanctitate Vestra petenda erit, speramusque non minora largituram SV universitati suae, quam concesserunt predecessores vestri Academiae Lovaniensi, Coloniensis filiae. Cui tamen prospicere poterant duces Brabantiae, et Hispaniarum reges.” Status et modus reformationis academiae Coloniensis ad Sanctissimum Dominum Nostrum Gregorium XIII Summum Pontificem, 6 June 1577, ASV, Arm. LXIV, 10, 42r–49r. 221 Cf. Müller, “The ‘Jesuitensystem’,” 95–108. 222 They were the authors of the last, vain attempt of the reform papacy to restore its protection over scholars (and to “reform,” thus, the cathedral chapters in Germany) by reserving the concordatory apostolic months to alumni of the newly founded Col-

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general, there seems to have been little interest in the Empire in creating large, non-noble elites of graduated clerics who identified explicitly with their scholarly status, in the absence of open access to the higher levels of Church hierarchy.223 In the core of the French kingdom, by contrast, academics and students had impressive legal tools at their disposal. Already in the Pragmatique of 1438, one-third of the benefices of the Eglise de France had been reserved for nominations by the universities, after the model of the papal expectatives. The Concordat of Bologna extended this right to all graduates, with or without letters of nomination, and reserved all benefices of the Church of France that became vacant during four months of the year. In order to obtain benefices, graduates224 had to “insinuate” to a specific ordinary collator their letters of graduation issued by a famous university225 and submit testimonies that they had fulfilled the quinquiennium, the minimum of five years of study (Arts included) necessary to qualify for the privilège des gradués in the Concordat.226 The Concordat repeated academic ranking principles— i.e., the hierarchy of academic degrees combined with the seniority of degrees—to be applied when competition arose between different competitors. However, graduates could only claim benefices vacant by the death of their last holder (which excluded benefices involved in

legium Germanicum in Rome. Germaniker would indeed occupy, in the first half of the 17th century, up to one-third of the canonships in German cathedrals, but this is to be ascribed to the “aristocratisation” of the Germanicum. Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum in Rom, 45 and 109. Compare the Jesuits’ success at Pont-à-Mousson in attaching nomination rights to all benefices under ducal patronage vacating during one specific month yearly. Gérardin, Etude sur les bénéfices ecclésiastiques, 118. On the contacts with the (Jesuit) confessors of the French kings, who managed the latter’s feuille des bénéfices, read Chatellier, “Société et bénéfices ecclésiastiques,” 87–88. 223 Cf. Reinhard, “Kirche als Mobilitätskanal,” 333–51. 224 I.e., magistri artium having fulfilled the quinquiennium and the graduates of the higher faculties of Theology, Law and Medicine. 225 Orléans and Montpellier, for instance, were not qualified as “famous universities.” Gérardin, Etude sur les bénéfices ecclésiastiques, 115. The universities “réputées étrangères” (Pont-à-Mousson, Strasbourg, Douai, Nantes, Perpignan, Aix-en-Provence, Orange, and Besançon) in the newly conquered territories (which continued to live with their own beneficial regimes as well), constituting more than one-third of the French universities by the end of the 17th century, were excluded from the privilège des gradués. Julia and Revel, “Les étudiants et leurs études dans la France moderne,” 205. 226 His rights were restricted, however, in January and July, the so-called mois de rigueur during which he had to grant precedence to those disposing of letters of nomination issued by the “famous universities.” Technical details in Gérardin, Etude sur les bénéfices ecclésiastiques, and Olivier-Martin, Le régime des cultes en France.

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transactions between clerics) and the pool of eligible benefices gradually narrowed.227 “La notification des grades, si largement développée, n’est en rien la voie royale pour accéder à un bénéfice.”228 It is difficult to evaluate the efficiency of the privilège des gradués in absolute terms,229 but the concordatory prerogatives for academics played only a minor role in the recruitment of the diocesan clergy, compared to the 33 per cent of all benefices promised by the Concordat.230 Only 20 per cent of the graduates notifying every year their degrees to ordinary collators in the diocese of Lisieux, for instance, were newcomers; the others were “recidivists,” 33 per cent and 21 per cent of whom had not been successful after, respectively, one and two decades.231 As such, the expectative des gradués shows some striking similarities with papal provisions in the Middle Ages: first, a graduate had to be patient, had to make financial investments (insinuations or nomination letters of the universities were not free), was dependent upon local support, and, in numerous cases, had to suffer endless litigation in order to obtain a benefice; second, the number of insinuations largely exceeded the supply of benefices. “Le seul intérêt de l’insinuation est de permettre à un ecclésiastique de se faire connaître du collateur ou d’un éventuel résignant ou permutant.”232 The profile of the graduates themselves was in keeping with the efficiency of their prerogatives.233 With or without 227 Benefices under the regime of lay patronage remained unaffected; dignities in collegiate or cathedral chapters and benefices charged with the care of souls were excluded from 1606 and 1745 onwards. 228 Loupès, Chapitres & chanoines de Guyenne, 253. 229 The statistical material assembled by Julia and Revel measures the correlation between successful notifications of degrees and the totality of benefices granted in a specific range of time instead of comparing the number of successful insinuations with the unsuccessful ones. 230 In the dioceses of Reims, Le Mans, and Lisieux (an otherwise highly scholarised diocese), the rate of benefices vacating in the “graduate months” and filled-in via the privilege des gradués did not exceed, respectively, 11, 12.5, and 11.3 per cent. Julia and Revel, “Les étudiants et leurs études,” 212, 217–20. 231 That is, in the insinuation registers of the diocese of Lisieux. Julia and Revel, “Les étudiants et leurs études,” 213. The figures of Loupès, Chapitres et chanoines, are different. 232 Loupès, Chapitres et chanoines, 253. 233 Graduates from Paris engaged in more prolonged studies, including degrees in Theology and Law after the magisterium. They considered their insinuation as a shortterm investment, being able to draw on impressive old-boys’ networks anyway. For teachers and college presidents, acquiring a benefice via the privilège was a long-term investment, as their (poorly remunerated) chairs or administrations failed to shield

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the privilège, the close link between benefices and university studies affected the educational field in France in two ways. First, it enhanced the provincial character of the French faculties of Theology, integration into local or regional circuits being the most convenient path to office. Second, it may explain why the figures of attendance in France, with a general rise of theologians and canonists in the second half of the 17th century, do not match with the model of the “Revolution of Education” perceived by Laurence Stone elsewhere in Europe, which expired due to a saturation of the fabric of states and confessions combined with the closure of power elites.234

2.4. Pulling things together: Benefices, grants, and the fabric of academia The previous sections represent, in a nutshell, the state of the art on the relationship between benefices and universities in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Much of it has been informed by the work of medievalists. The relevant scholarship draws heavily on concordats and other such bodies, leaving, as a consequence, plenty of room for qualification. Much more research is needed, but a few interesting lines of approach in Robert Swanson’s challenging essay on graduates and benefices (in the Middle Ages) deserve to be extrapolated, albeit hypothetically, to the relationship among studying, benefice-holding, and ecclesiastical career patterns on the early modern Continent. Universities in later medieval England, in a response to what they perceived as a crisis of patronage, sought to exchange their insecure patronage relationships for an institutional niche in the clerical job market. Swanson does not underestimate the significance of the

them from need during their old age. The vast majority of graduates who contented themselves with the quinquiennium and the title of magister artium made up the third type. Like most medieval papal providees, they usually had already acquired a benefice (which explains why they could keep notifying their degrees en masse to ordinary collators for decades after their stay at the university) but sought to improve their situation by applying for other offices via letters of insinuation. Julia and Revel, “Les étudiants et leurs études,” 216. 234 Julia and Revel, “Les étudiants et leurs études,” 355; Stone, “The Educational Revolution.”

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conciliarist crisis, the unpredictability of the clerical job market, and the loss of papal patronage in the construction of this crisis. Unlike much German scholarship in the field, however, the author also pays attention to the general economic conjuncture that affected the benefice system between 1380 and 1430 and profoundly influenced the relationship between benefices and university membership. In the context of the economic crisis in the 14th century, the number of benefices available for the sustenance of clerics studying at English universities and elsewhere decreased significantly due to cumulation and/or mergers of benefices and appropriations by religious houses and chapters. Bishops lacking personnel in parishes depopulated by the Black Death were reluctant to grant dispensations of canonical residence to students. Nor had career prospects improved in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries for graduates after their stay at the university. This economic and demographical context coincided with the contestation of the papal system of provisions, which added to the sense of insecurity, while bishops, lay lords, and religious houses already had trouble enough managing their own circuits of patronage without being forced by legislation to reserve benefices for graduates. Non-graduate spiritual or temporal administrations increasingly occupied canonships in collegiate and cathedral chapters, at the expense of university alumni. These elements combined to fuel the English universities’ perception of their situation as dramatic: a decline of benefices available for students was likely to cause a decline of attendance and, consequently, in the income of teachers already facing harsh competition in the clerical job market.235 It is above all Swanson’s tentative answer to the question as to how this “crisis of patronage” was eventually resolved that deserves particular notice. He adopts, up to a certain extent, the interpretation developed by Lytle, who pointed out that the emergence of colleges with rectorships under their patronage compensated for the uncertainty in the clerical job market. But Swanson also points out that the collegiate university was likely to have met the needs of more students than the benefice system had ever done,236 while colleges never had enough benefices at their advowson to remedy the crisis of patronage

235

Swanson, “Universities, Graduates and Benefices in Later Medieval England.” Lytle, “Patronage Patterns.” This paper has provoked a vivid debate. Literature in Swanson, “Universities, Graduates and Benefices,” 28 n.3. 236

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their fellows allegedly faced. According to Swanson, it was changes in career strategies, as well as the circuits deploying them, that solved the problem.237 By the end of the 15th century, licences for absenteeism were more easily granted again, and laicisation in non-graduate as well as in graduate bureaucracies reopened perspectives for university men seeking to enter cathedral and collegiate chapters. In the meantime, however, academic aspirations had gone through a profound process of transformation as well. Benefice-holding was, out of sheer necessity, postponed to a later stage in a cleric’s career; simultaneously, college life made it possible to defer ordainment and benefice-holding, with the help of grants or short-term academic employment or other forms of patronage that were not necessarily dominated by ecclesiastical circuits. The laicisation of student populations in the later Middle Ages was both the result of and the solution to the crisis of patronage in the clerical job market that was so dreaded by academics, mitigating, as it did, competition between the remaining clerics. I have gone thoroughly into Swanson’s analysis of the crisis of patronage in later medieval England for several reasons. Swanson privileges the metaphor of the market, however deficient, over that of an inert benefice system. But above all, his insights on the link between benefices and collegiate life reveal an interesting analogy with later evolutions in early modern Catholic Europe. In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, the number of benefices that could be used as scholarships must have decreased dramatically once more, not because of the plague but in the context of Catholic mobilisation in the war against heresy. Absenteeism, especially with respect to benefices charged with the care of souls, had been stigmatised by the reformers as the most reprehensible abuse ever. This implied that, in the South Netherlands and the Principality of Liège, approximately 3,000 or 4,000 rectorships (compared to approximately 2,000 canonships) were at one stroke beyond the reach of clerics looking for a means to finance their studies. The vast reservoir of altars, which did not require strict canonical residence, was, indeed, still available and continued to be an important source of income for students and teachers;238 but the boom of such foundations having occurred in the later Middle Ages, 237

Academics kept complaining, however, until well into the 16th century. Swanson, “Universities, Graduates and Benefices,” 59–60. 238 Between 1609 and 1712, the numbers of ordinands holding a benefice as titulus gradually declined. See Vanden Broecke, Rekrutering en carrièrepatroon, 85–86.

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their number was in decline. If they were not incorporated or unified with other benefices in order to make the “tridentine” shepherds less dependent upon their flock, chapels were increasingly used for the sustenance of vice-pastors, a new type of cleric trained to supplement the parish clergy. The so-called “Tridentine spirit” consequently affected university life in more than one way. The foundation of many colleges within or outside the walls of the “classical” university gained new significance in the light of Tridentine decrees calling for a proper education of the parish clergy. However, it may have had to compensate simultaneously for shocks on the beneficial market that came with the very same Tridentine Spirit academics gave substance to by fashioning themselves as its avant-garde. In the universities of the Netherlands, the vast majority of the Church Militant’s future soldiers were thoroughly crammed behind the closed doors of colleges. Not surprisingly, Louvain witnessed a real boom in college foundations at the end of the 16th century and in the first decades of the 17th.239 As such, the highly desired distinction between a disciplined, culturally more homogeneous clergy and the laity materialised already within the walls of Academia, as most of the lay students in the faculties of Law and Medicine at Louvain lived in private rooms.240 All this piety and zeal was supported by grants: in 1500, c.200 scholarships had to relieve approximately one-seventh of the student population in Louvain; by the end of the Ancien Régime, more than 1,000 of them had been accumulated throughout the ages, 90 per cent of which were attached to the c.40 resident colleges.241

239 Under the Archdukes (1598–1633), 14 new colleges were founded, six of which were destined for the regular clergy. Roegiers and Vandermeersch, “Les archiducs et l’université de Louvain,” 290, n. 21. 240 Lawyers and physicians would have been recruited from the higher strata of society as well. Cf. the hypothesis put forward by Roegiers and Lamberts, Louvain University, 46. 241 See De Maesschalck, “Beurzen en colleges te Leuven in de 15de en 16de eeuw,” 556–63. The social history of student populations in Louvain, as well as the place of scholarships in it, still awaits a decent study. A list of the colleges in Louvain in Reusens, Documents relatifs, vols. 3–5. Cf. Trio, “Financing of Universities.”

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Plate 2.1. Pedagogy of the Pig The courtyard of the Pedagogy of the Pig. Limited access to benefices for faculty members who had to compete with Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians fuelled the concentration of the (mostly younger) students in Philosophy and the Humanities in four pedagogies in the course of the 15th Century. The ad hoc arrangement of the buildings recalls the organic growth of many college foundations at Louvain. Drawings in the course notes in Aristotelian Logic of the student Joannes Wouters from Mechlin, 1648–50. [Municipal Museum, Louvain]

Plate 2.2. Van Dale College Van Dale or Antwerp College, founded by the Antwerp canon Van Dale, for students in Law, Theology and Philosophy (1569), one of the few Louvain colleges that have preserved their original appearances until present day. Mark the hermetic, almost monastic, arrangement of the college buildings. Engraving in Gramaye, Joannes Baptista, Antiquitates illustrissimi ducatus Brabantiae (. . .). Brussels: Joannes Momartius, 1610. [Catholic University of Louvain, Central Library]

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Not only were the students of the Arts faculty and a growing proportion of their comilitones in Divinity housed in colleges in the period under investigation; so too was the overwhelming majority of academics themselves. At least three-quarters of a population of the c.240 individuals in Fig. 2.8 who occupied teaching positions, had a seat in academic councils, or were involved in the administration of the university and/or its constituents (or who, in most cases, combined these tasks) between 1598 and 1621242 had lived at some stage, if not during their entire career, in colleges. Boards Higher Faculties & Others: 23; 10% College Teaching: 4; 2%

Presidency + Theol.: 20; 8% Theology: 3; 1%

Law: 13; 6% Medicine: 4; 2%

Presidency: 47; 20% Presidency + Law/Med.: 17; 7% Arts: 105; 44%

Fig. 2.7. The collegiate university: Louvain staff members 1598–1621

This applied to the vast majority of those staff members who never made an academic career outside the Arts faculty (44 per cent of the overall population) and who, except for a few individuals active in local town or church administration, lived in the faculty’s four pedagogies. These had become impressive institutions already in the 15th century, precisely to compensate for the proportionally small number of benefices reserved for its teachers or regents. Others became either presidents (20 per cent) of one of the dozens of resident colleges243 at Louvain (many of which provided some tutoring or teaching as

242 The first attested date of birth is 1525 (Cornelius Reyneri Goudanus, deacon of Saint-Peter’s, + 1609), while the last registered death (Antonio Perez) occurred in 1672. 243 Our lists encompass 32 colleges. The Scottish college moved to Douai, and the College of Saint Augustine founded by Michael Baius had ceased to exist in the period under investigation.

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well),244 or joined the higher faculties of Theology, Canon and Civil Law, or Medicine (which, combined, hosted a third of the population). A solid majority among the 57 chair-holders in the higher faculties passing the review in between 1598 and 1621 combined teaching with presiding over colleges, the most famous of which were the Pope’s College, King’s College, and the Great and Small Colleges of the Holy Spirit. The share of theologians combining their chair with a presidency is overwhelming. Exactly half of the chair-holders of the other higher faculties did so too. Many other members of the faculty boards in the Arts faculty or in the higher faculties lived in colleges too, as private tutors or as administrative staff. The collegiate university may have contributed to the laicisation of students in English universities, but not with respect to the Louvain staff. The proportion of academics residing in colleges more or less corresponds with the number of clergymen at Louvain. The Brabant university, with even half of the professors in Law and Medicine being clerics, remained a clerical bastion, despite diverging trends elsewhere. Grants did more than merely support the academic enterprise financially, being intertwined as they were with academic life in all its aspects. The concentration of human and economic capital in colleges simultaneously gave rise to an academic elite that, in addition to occupying highly visible local church and teaching positions, could perform as administrators of colleges, as spiritual and intellectual mentors of the students put under their care, as scouts of talent, as the “natural” spokesmen and the saniores of the academic community, and as the centre of channels of intelligence and communication covering the university’s entire recruitment area; in other words, as brokers who, via their letters of recommendation and their networks, provided access to the world beyond the (supposedly) impenetrable gates of the colleges. Pious foundations had probably become, at least numerically, more important in the exchange of favours between students and teachers than benefices had ever been (or may have been); moreover, the rising dons probably had a greater impact on the distribution of scholarships than they ever had had on the advowson of 244 This was the case for the Collegium Trilingue, founded by Erasmus, with chairs in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek; and in Ghent College (also Collegium Vaulxianum), which hosted a Latin school. It is only by the second half of the 17th century that the Arts faculty would pull together all teaching in the humanities in Trinity’s College. Most residential colleges also provided private courses; compare references in Orcibal, Correspondance de Jansénius, passim.

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benefices. Consequently, relations within the clerical circuits at the university were configured in a highly hierarchical manner. Both students and presidents or chair-holders were likely to define their relationships with each other in terms of respectful gratitude in exchange for favours, loyalty, mutual affection, and similar obligations between unequal partners; in other words, in terms of academic patronage. It is not surprising that, first, Louvain university dons tended to make a lifelong career at the university, in contrast to lower degrees of professionalisation elsewhere,245 and that, second, they considered their alumni their spiritual clones who were responsible for the remarkable successes of Catholicism in Belgium.246 Whether or not this periodisation can be lived with, and to which extent students had indeed relied on benefices before the existence of colleges, is debatable. What matters here, however, is the juxtaposition of two alternative types of financing and of devising academic communities. Benefices and grants correspond with respectively open, loosely organised conglomerates of benefice-holders; and closed, quasi-monastic blocs crumbling under the weight of their own hierarchy. In the following chapters, it will become clear that between these two abstract models, a practical hybridism will prevail at Louvain. University men never made a clear-cut choice between the two corresponding financial techniques but instead benefitted from combining them, just as much as academic hierarchies could be devised or circumvented as the situation demanded it.

245

Roegiers, “Professorencarrières,” 239. This is not to say that students were indoctrinated by their mentors, or that they depended completely on the latters’ for protection—but the omnipresence of clientelist language in correspondence between scholars suggests that both parties saw it fit to organise their relations in an asymmetrical manner. Illuminating insights questioning the commonsensical notion of “indoctrination” in the second chapter “Cultures populaires” in De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, 1, 31 sqq. 246

CHAPTER THREE

THE JEWELS AMONG ACADEMIC PRIVILEGES. THE LOUVAIN PRIVILEGES OF NOMINATION TO ECCLESIASTICAL BENEFICES

Sulpice vous a rescrit comme, la veille de l’ascension, on luy offrit un certain benefice de grand revenu si on en pouvoit jouir, et qu’il l’a accepté, attendant si on le luy conferera en Hollande. Cependant 4 jours après, sa nomination qu’il avoit pendante à Lille est escheue par la mort d’un chanoine, et Boèce a accepté la chanoinie et elle luy a esté conférée. On prend possession pour luy. Je verray si quelque Satan Romaniste ne luy fera pas guerre, comme ils font souvent. Mais Boèce a mis tant d’empechemens, qu’il croit que les Romanistes perdront leur peine. Voilà comme Dieu en un moment accomode les affaires de Sulpice et Celias, et contre tout ordre et opinion. Car Sulpice n’était que le deuxiesme en nomination. Et cependant Dieu en fait mourir deux chanoines, l’un 24 heures après l’autre. Il a envie de la changer en simples benefices. On luy en offre desja 600 florins en un bénéfice, mais il requiert la residence en un lieu privilégié. Le temps esclorra les occasions.1

In the early 1620s, the pious and learned correspondence between Cornelius Jansenius and his French partner in crime Saint-Cyran suddenly took a prosaic turn when the Louvain academic discussed his recent fortunes in the clerical job market. Only a few years before, in 1617, the fresh president of the new Holland College had balked at engaging in the scramble for benefices, assuring his correspondent that he would only accept one if it fell into his lap.2 But Jansenius did not object to giving the wheel of Fortune a nudge in the right direction. One year later, in 1618, he had obtained a nomination letter from

1 Jansenius to Saint-Cyran, 2 June 1623, ed. Orcibal, Correspondance de Jansénius, 217. Sulpice and Boèce are code names for the author of the letter, Celias is an alias for the abbé de Saint-Cyran, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne (1581–1643; henceforth referred to as Saint-Cyran), with whom Jansenius had studied at Louvain and Paris and whom he had joined in his home diocese at Bayonne until his return to Louvain in 1617. 2 “Quand à moy, je suis encore sans benefice, non pas toutesfois sans esperance d’en obtenir avec le temps, si je voulois espérer. Mais je suis, peu s’en faut, sur le point de me resoudre à n’en chercher jamais de ma vie, s’il ne s’offre de soy mesme. Jay ma vie et ce qui me faut, pas une maille davantage.” Jansenius to Saint-Cyran, 18 May 1617, ed. Orcibal, Correspondance de Jansénius, 11.

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the university for benefices in “famous churches.”3 Five years later, God unexpectedly closed a door (for the two canons He had chosen to call) and opened a window of opportunity for the young academic from Holland. The collegiate church of Saint Peter’s at Lille figured prominently among the top 10 benefice pools in the region targeted by “Satans from Rome,” its canonships being among the most coveted benefices in the Habsburg Netherlands. This is not to say that Jansenius was impatient to broaden his horizon beyond the walls of the Ivory Tower: he obviously wished to continue his stay at the university by the grace of the university’s privileges de fructibus percipiendis in absentia. The appropriately poor and erudite Jansenius, who described himself as a cleric without “une maille d’avantage,” owed a lot to his re-found Alma Mater, whose privileges had enabled him to lay hands on this canonship and to use it as a source of income for his scholarly activities. Poverty and learning had been the hallmarks of university men in Louvain’s privileges. In 1483, in the bull Urget Nos, Pope Sixtus IV had granted the Louvain rector the right to appoint, under specific conditions, poor clerics of the university to (lower) ecclesiastical benefices in the Burgundian Low Countries. According to the bull’s preambles, appropriately called the Narratio in Diplomatics, the pontiff wished to safeguard the competitiveness of university men in a clerical job market reportedly dominated by powerful magnates outside the university, and to save them from misery during their old age.4 Thirty years later, in 1513, Pope Leo X endowed the dean of the Arts faculty, in the bull Admonet Nos, with a similar privilege in favour of those clerics who had obtained the degree of Magister Artium.5 The circumstances 3 Jansenius’ nomination by the university in 1618 was registered in Registre aux nominations, RAL, OUL, 4784, 35r. 4 Privilegia, 85–90. 5 Privilegia, 92–103. Already in 1512 and 1513, faculty members perceived their future privilege as an extensio, an extension, of the rectoral prerogatives granted to the university back in the 1480s. Indices, 1512 and 1513, RAL, OUL, 729, 3 and 9; Acta Facultatis Artium, 17 and 27 April 1510, RAL, OUL, 712, 295v, and 296v. Elaborate fragments of Urget Nos had been resumed in the narrative parts of the faculty’s privilege of nomination. The university’s bull was a necessary item of evidence in lawsuits against faculty nominees, Acta Universitatis, 9 December 1533, RAL, OUL, 54, 128v. Legal tradition could, if necessary, be invoked to argue that if by accident lacunae were found in the extension, the gaps could be filled with the help of its genetrix, Urget Nos; opponents, in return, claimed that this applied to the restrictions in the university’s bull as well; cf. “Dum collatores gravant, qui non habent plusquam 6 beneficia” Quaestio 2, Puncta Aliquot.

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in which these privileges were granted remain obscure. By obtaining them, however, Louvain adopted the generally observed policy of academic authorities throughout Europe to secure access to benefices for their peers and alumni. We are better informed about their reception by other stakeholders. Especially the much more extended privilege of the Arts faculty, which had been the object of academic lobbying in the heart of Christendom for several years, became a bone of contention both in Rome, where the pope’s fiat of 1513 only would be converted into a papal bull two years later,6 and in the Low Countries, where the faculty’s first nominations from 1515 onwards met with fierce, sometimes brutal, opposition from duped ordinary collators.7 The following two decades were marked by legal experiments fine-tuning the faculty’s privilege: after a first confirmation by Leo X, in 1517,8 the bull Rationi Congruit was officially rubber-stamped, although not without troubles, by Clement VII in 1523.9 It would only leave curial offices in 1525 after vehement litigation, but the bull’s incipit indicates that it had been granted by Clement’s predecessor Hadrian VI, the former Louvain divine who had briefly occupied Peter’s throne in 1522 and 1523 and who had died before the faculty’s letter of supplication could be converted, amidst curial intrigues, into a papal bull.10 While some of the attainments in this bull, including the extension of academic rights to the entire 6 It was the day on which the papal fiat ut petitur was written on a letter of supplication (which was later registered in the Registri supplicationum) that figured as the official date of the bull. Nonetheless, it could take months, if not years, to turn a supplication rubber-stamped by the pope or by curial officials into a bull that had force of law. Duped parties could challenge drafts of legislation before tribunals such as the Chancery’s tribunal litterarum contradictarum. The bulls (the privilege of nomination itself and an execution bull ) only arrived in 1515, when the first session of the faculty’s nomination board was registered in the libri nominationum. 7 On this episode, read Boute, “ ‘Regnum,’ ‘Sacerdotium’ en ‘Studium’.” 8 The bull Dignum Censemus, which had to exempt the Louvain privileges of nomination from recent annullments of provisions by the pope in March 1516, and the resulting insertion of these constitutions in the regulae cancellariae. UAL, OUL, no registration number. 9 26 November 1523; UAL, OUL, no registration number; Privilegia, 105–24. Legislation that had been initiated but that had been aborted by the pontiff ’s death could be resumed in the numerous Rationi Congruit bulls that were routinely issued by his successor and that were officially dated on the day after his inthronisation. More details in Frenz, Die Kanzlei der Päpste. 10 Boute, “Humanists in the Corridors of Power.” The letter of supplication, which allegedly was falsified by malevolent curialists who had already played an ambiguous role in the negotiations leading to the faculty’s oldest bull Admonet Nos, has been registered in ASV, Dataria Ap., Reg. Suppl., 1793.

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diocese of Utrecht, had evaporated in the period under investigation, it continued to be a point of reference with respect to the jurisdictional problems that inevitably came with controversial privileges. Another confirmation bull left the Eternal City under Pope Paul III,11 but legal innovations were only introduced in the bull In Praecelsa (1573) of Gregory XIII (1572–85),12 who also monitored the confirmation of the Louvain jurisdictional claims in the papal brief In Supremo of 1578.13 Both legislative texts had to make the privileges consistent with the decrees of Trent, amid claims from opponents that the council fathers had abolished them. The last significant alterations to the Louvain privileges of nomination were introduced in the bull Regimini of 1616. Regimini was amended in the 1670s but remained valid, alongside the other bulls, until the French revolution.14 Only the plenitudo potestatis of the vicars of Christ could authorise such wide-ranging privileges. Nonetheless, the sources of law concerning the privileges of nomination were not restricted to papal legislation. Because the learned corporations at Louvain enjoyed the full libertas statuendi (which, alongside the right to draft home-made rules, included the right to grant dispensations on them in specific cases), academic statutes elaborating on papal legislation furnish the second category of normative documents with respect to the jus nominandi. Third, the Habsburg princes of the Low Countries too acted as regulators. In the preamble to each bull, subsequent pontiffs claimed to honour not only the humble requests submitted by the academics but also those from pious and obedient princes figuring as protectors of their fille bien amez, the University of Louvain. This did not exempt the academics from submitting Roman bulls to the Privy Council or to the Council of Brabant in order to obtain the required placet letters, however. Most of these lettres de placet limited themselves to the obligatory clause that the privileges of nomination could not be invoked against the prince’s own nomination indults, collations, droicts de régale, his other beneficial rights whatsoever, or against the legal patronage exerted by the prince’s vassals.15 The placet granted in 1531 to the bull Rationi Congruit of 1523, by contrast, referred to as the 11

Bull Ex Debito, 2 March 1535, UAL, OUL, 71. Bull In Praecelsa, 1 March 1573, UAL, OUL, 74a; printed in Privilegia, 130–46. 13 Preserved in UAL, OUL, 51. 14 Bull Regimini Universalis Ecclesiae, 1 December 1616, UAL, OUL, 76; printed in Privilegia, 154–79. 15 Placet on Urget Nos of Maximilian I, 25 October 1484, UAL, OUL, 59—Privilegia, 91–92; Placet on Admonet Nos of Charles V, 15 October 1515, UAL, OUL, 62a–b; Placet on In Praecelsa of Philip II, 22 September 1573, UAL, OUL, 75b—Privilegia, 12

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Plate 3.1. Bull Gregory XIII In Praecelsa The papal bull In Praecelsa, in which Pope Gregory XIII confirmed the Louvain privileges of nomination and assured that decrees of the Council of Trent could not be invoked against them. Because these bulls also contain a synopsis of the previous legislative acts they confirmed, amended, or amplified, the text has become so long that the charter was issued in the form of a quire. [Catholic University of Louvain, University Archives]

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Concordatum Carolinum between Emperor Charles V and the Arts faculty, contained substantial bits of legislation.16 In this quality, it appealed to the regalist tastes of Van Espen, who staged the charter as a textbook case of the prince’s right to amend papal legislation.17 Under the cover of a Concordat, the emperor could flex his muscles in order to soothe local church magnates (especially in Artois and Tournaisis), while leaving the essence of academic attainments untarnished.18 Beyond the rhetoric concerning the lord’s authority in his realm in the preambles, the restrictions in the Concordat were probably the result of negotiations monitored, but not monopolised, by the prince’s advisors. This applies to papal legislation as well. Much of the daily business of governing, whether a state or Christendom, consisted in pondering, pruning, and rejecting or approving supplications submitted by petitioners and translated by professional procurators in the stylus curiae, the “curialese” of the Court of Rome. These supplications contained the outlines of the measures to be taken, as well as the derogatory clauses that had to beef up the bull-to-be with respect to local constitutions and practices, before the pontifical fiat turned them into papal decrees. In the next sections, it will become clear that the Louvain privileges of nomination were remarkably fit to meet the legal and practical difficulties nominees could expect in the Low Countries. Papal bulls furnished the legal basis, while academic statutes and princely legislation elaborated on them and were considered crucial in avoiding the abuses that inevitably came with the practice of privilege. This is not to say that we should join the choir of classical Church historians, regalists, or Church reformers denouncing the abuses of Rome or, in this case, committed by Louvain “benefice-hunters.” Privileges inevitably generate abuses, not because of the frailty of human nature but because the battle-cry of “abuse” was one of the few ways for opponents or competitors to translate their claims into a legitimate discourse and call for an annulment of the privileges in question. In legal doctrine, abuse was the dialectical twin brother of privilege.19 Many of the practices described in the following sec146–48; Placet on Regimini of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, 20 November 1619, UAL, OUL, 78—Privilegia, 179–81. 16 Placet on Rationi Congruit of Charles V, 12 May 1531, UAL, OUL, 67—Privilegia, 125–30. 17 Van Espen, Ius Ecclesiasticum Universum, Pars Secunda, Tit. xxiv, cap. vi. 18 Boute, “ ‘Regnum,’ ‘Sacerdotium’ en ‘Studium’,” 172. Details in idem, “Humanists in the Corridors of Power.” 19 Legal history has dedicated much attention to privileges. “Die Definitionsgeschichte des Privilegs ist Ausdruck seiner Definitionsschwäche.” Monhaupt, “Erteilung

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tions were widespread among clerics. Translating them into abuses requires a lot of interpretive work that needs to be analysed rather than repeated. Instead of adopting a normative approach and describing the gap between the real content of the privileges and academic practice, we will focus in the next paragraphs on how academics used them. This is not to say that institutions do not matter. They do, as the comparison between the Louvain privileges and the French privilège des gradués will reveal.

3.1. “Pas une maille davantage”? Scholars in the pursuit of poverty The target group of the Louvain privileges of nominations differed substantially from the pool of beneficiaries of the privilège des gradués in France. Graduates in France could only appeal to concordatory rights granted to university members after having completed the quinquiennium at one of the famous universities in the heart of the kingdom, which included obtaining the degree of Master of Arts. In this respect, the Louvain privileges appear much less demanding: a five years’ stay at the university was not a prerequisite. Clerics without academic degrees whatsoever were excluded from the faculty’s privilege of nomination, but they could still make use of the university’s privilege. In practice, however, nearly all university nominees were graduates: at least 70 per cent of applicants figuring in university records also applied for a nomination of the Arts faculty, which produced the bulk of nomination letters in the period under investigation.20 In the preamble to the faculty’s privilege, the Veneranda Facultas Artium—which in line with other universities in northwestern Europe hosted far more students than any other faculty—had presented itself as the very foundation of the university, the source from which all the other faculties rose.21 In the beginning of the 16th century, the philosophers had been trying to conquer, or to consolidate, their proclaimed niche on higher education as a gateway to studies in the higher faculties. The Leonina of 1513 was

und Widerruf,” 93. See also Potz, “Zur kanonistischen Privilegientheorie,” Van Hove, “De la notion du privilège,” Gaudemet, “De l’ambiguité du privilège,” and Roelker, Principles of Privilege. 20 Cf. Fig. 3.4, p. 158. 21 “Ex qua sicut ex fonte caeterae scaturiunt, ac ipsa Theologia, per quam hereses confunduntur . . . allicerentque plures ad ipsam facultatem, in illa, quae principium est omnium aliarum facultatum, studendum” Privilegia, 96.

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designed to do just that, stipulating as it did that only those members of the university who had graduated as magistri artium—which was obligatory for students aspiring degrees in Theology and Medicine but not for lawyers—could aspire to a faculty nomination. This had provoked fierce reactions against the faculty’s aspirations, notably from the Law faculties.22 In the period under investigation, its prerogatives would become the object of the “War of the Faculties” as well, but their fundamentals were no longer challenged. By holding out the prospect of a benefice, the faculty and the university hoped to boost their attractiveness to future graduates. One should not exaggerate the importance of the privileges as a carrot for aspiring students, however. The laymen studying at the university were excluded from the use of the privileges anyway. Clerics, for their part, did not present themselves as a united front before the nomination boards. Roughly one-quarter of the licenciates in Philosophy bothered to obtain the magisterial hat in the Arts,23 but it is the promotion lists of the Arts faculty that provide the most generic source to quantify the proportions of students that figured in the nomination registers of the university or the faculty before 1640 (see Fig. 3.1).24 If the figures for the early 1620s, of 40 to 50 graduations to the magisterium in the Arts (birettationes) yearly, are representative, one-third of the magistri artium or c.12 per cent of licenciates in Philosophy applied for an academic nomination. During the Truce, the proportion of nominees graduating in the higher faculties increased spectacularly. Viewed through the matrix of the benefice system as a job market, as it was perceived by young clerics, this evolution must have been fuelled by the recovery of the South and the related foundation boom at Louvain.

22 The granting of Admonet Nos should be situated also in the contemporary attempts of the Arts faculty to make the magisterium obligatory for students aspiring Law degrees. See Fierens, “À propos du jus nominandi,” and idem, “Les ambitions de la faculté des arts.” In the period under investigation, the only candidate who, in 1613, presented himself before the nomination board without having obtained his magisterium was refuted by the faculty board without wasting words. Acta Facultatis Artium, RAL, OUL, 714, 531r. 23 Based on the first half of the 1620s, when c.50 new magistri artium paid graduation fees to the university’s receptor on a more or less yearly basis. Liber computuum receptorum universitatis, 1621–1637, RAL, OUL, 275. The administrative documents of the Arts faculty are incomplete. 24 In the course of the 1590s, Jesuits estimated that in between 700 and 800 students lived in the pedagogia of the Arts faculty, while graduation registers for 1597 register 100 licentiati having completed the two-years’ cycle of Physics and Logic—a number that would double in the course of the first decades of the 17th century (cf. Fig. 1.1, p. 31). This suggests that close to 1,000 students were attending the faculty’s

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Fig. 3.1. Share of Licentiati Artium (1598–1621) figuring in the libri nominationum

At the same time, Fig. 3.2 reveals that their numbers did not keep up with the rise in overall numbers of graduations. They were increasingly outnumbered by the many secular clerics at Louvain who did not seek access to office via the academic job agencies. In line with figures for the population of 439 individuals registered as academic nominees in the archducal period,25 their numbers remained fairly stable after 1600, constituting one-quarter or one-third among graduates or would-be graduates in Theology (i.e., probably half of the studiosi visiting the Sacred Faculty’s auditories)26 in the period under investigation.27 schools by then, among whom were students of the humanities and a fair proportion of students who did not bother to graduate in the Arts faculty while preparing themselves for studies in Law or Theology (provided they were not interested in taking degrees in Divinity either). The high figures for matriculation (400–600 new arrivals yearly, with peaks of 800–1,000 matriculations in the 1620s and 1630s; cf. Schillings, Matricule de l’université de Louvain 1616–1651) indicate that many students left the university within the first year after their arrival. The sixth volume of the immatriculation registers (1568–1616) is lost. 25 I.e., the 439 individuals who were registered as applicants for a nomination between 1598 and 1621. Between 1598 and 1609, 228 did so, with 252 individuals (some of whom were already registered as nominees in the previous decade) figuring in the 1610–21 list. 26 Jesuits estimated in the 1620s, in another row over their right to teach (cf. p. 455–58), that c.400 students in Divinity attended the public schools of the Sacra Facultas. Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 259. In the second decade of the 17th century, an average of 30 to 50 students graduated as baccaularei formati after having completed the quinquiennium; this suggests that future graduates constituted half of the entire population of students in Divinity. 27 Numbers in Fig. 3.2 are based on the Catalogus Baccalaureorum (. . .), 1585– 1619, RAL, OUL, 505. Note: the statistics in the graph refer not to individuals but to

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80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

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Fig. 3.2. Share of Graduates in Divinity (STB) figuring in the libri nominationum

If the soaring numbers of clerics seeking benefices via academic nominations in the 1630s28 is to be related to the normalisation of the clerical job market,29 to the competition resulting from it, and to the corresponding attractiveness of the prerogatives that came with academic nominations, then the figures suggest that similar phenomena (high levels of graduations in Theology until the 1650s) may correspond to different realities in the clerical job market. That is, in the period of the Truce, coming divines may still have felt they could postpone their entry into the Vineyard of the Lord without jeopardising their chances in a market that was short of trained clergymen anyway. Seen from their perspective, the first decades of the 17th century may have been an era of golden opportunity. In more competitive times, the correlation between a prolonged stay at the university financed by grants or subordinate administrative duties in the colleges; rising graduation

graduations to baccalaureus biblicus, sententiarius, or formatus, the three stages that a full bachelor in Theology (i.e., a formatus) had to go through. In the long term, (i.e., 1599–1618), the proportion between individuals and graduations is to be estimated at roughly 40 per cent. 28 In the time interval 1631–40, about 290 (of the 432 individuals applying for a nomination in between 1622–40) individual nominees were registered in the Libri nominationum of the university and the Arts faculty; as opposed to the 220–50-odd individuals that applied for nominations in the previous decades. 29 For the hybrid notion of normalisation, see p. 84.

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numbers; and a longer and bumpier path to office can be expected to have grown stronger, resulting in more graduates applying for nominations. The major difference with the privilège des gradués resided in the stipulation that only resident members of the university were eligible for academic nominations.30 Contrary to French graduates who reiterated their insinuations during decades, nominees who left the university forfeited their rights to claim a benefice by virtue of academic privileges within the statutory term of four months. Their moves were monitored not just by ordinary collators with a grudge against academics burdening their collations but, above all, by comilitones preying on nominations of fellow university members who left the university without a dispensation or a leave of absence. The combination of residence and the obligation of acquiring academic degrees of sorts implied that individuals applying for nominations had already sojourned for three years or more at the university. Judging from the 17th century legislation, the Faculty of Arts had, moreover, only Louvain masters in mind, a point of view that was, in practice, shared by university administrators.31 Students and teachers who had already sojourned at other universities before coming to Louvain constituted c.8 per cent of a research population of 439 individuals registered as university or faculty nominees in 1598–1621.32 They were statutorily obliged to go through the (corporatist) ritual of the birettatio again at Louvain in order to continue their studies in Theology or Medicine; to teach in the Louvain schools; or to benefit from the faculty’s privileges.33 In this context, it is not surprising that faculty legislation was also more specific on residence itself, which for Louvain graduates was defined as one year of residence immediately before the

30

Cf. Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22191, 27v. 31 The nomination fees registered in the Libri Receptorum, 1621–1637, RAL, OUL, 275, record a post “alibi promoti.” 32 More than 70 per cent of foreign students and scholars had studied at Douai. German universities (Cologne, Mainz, and Trier) followed with 20 per cent of foreign graduates. A few individuals had sojourned at Bologna, Padua, Paris (Jansenius), and Leiden. The educational pedigree of about 6 per cent of the research population is unknown. 33 “Magistri aliarum universitatum non admittantur . . ., nisi ante promiserint se in hac nostra facultate non usuros privilegio gradus magisterii in artibus alibi suscepti.” Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 54r.

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nomination.34 With respect to alibi promoti, the faculty took measures in 1584 to stop “the flow of men who came to the university out of greed instead of love for knowledge,” requiring, as the contemporary statutes did, that they reside for three years (two years for staff members)35 before being eligible for faculty nominations. This statute was scaled down a few years later to 18 months, while regular Louvainists were eligible after one year’s residence. Our exemplary nominee, Jansenius, only applied approximately 12 months after his return to Louvain in March 1617.36 The hurdle of residence could be taken by Lovanienses as much as by graduates from Douai or elsewhere via dispensations on residence de annali or de sequiennali/biennali residentia, respectively, granted by the faculty’s congregation or its deputies charged with current affairs. This practice had been widespread in the decades (1573–97), immediately preceding the period under investigation (68 requests, 59 granted), suggesting that dispensations can be seen as a barometer of academic life. In the late 1570s, a tide of requests for dispensations, in tandem with complaints about a high turnover among students and staff and calls for more rigidity in order to avoid abuse of the university’s privileges, indicate that things were going in the wrong direction.37 After the disastrous first half of the 1580s, a prudent revival went hand in hand with a growing number of requests, especially from forces recruited 34 Cf Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 48r–v. In the period under investigation, the five university nominees holding an academic degree from or having sojourned for some time at another university were either staff members (such as Jansenius), or had already obtained a nomination from the Arts faculty. 35 “Ad occurendum hominum quorundam discurrentium fraudibus, ac venantium cupiditati, qui non studiorum sed beneficia acquirendi causa, ad hanc universitatem se conferunt.” Acta Facultatis Artium, 1 February 1585, RAL, OUL, 713, 222v. See also Acta Facultatis Artium, 22 December 1587, ibidem, 257v–258v. 36 I.e., after a prolonged absence for a decade in France. Cf. the first letter of Jansenius to Saint-Cyran from Louvain, 9 March 1617, ed. Orcibal, Correspondance de Jansénius, 4–5; his first nomination (by the Faculty of Arts) was rubber-stamped in March 1618. 37 “propter quotidianas istiasmodi supplicationes et rarepentes abusus . . . cum nemine imposterum super residentia dispensandum esse nisi primum ad tempus alquo residentiam suam inchoaverit ac super ea re formulam aliquam per decanum concipiendum esse que ordinationibus facultatis ascribatur. Deinde decreverunt domini procedendum esse adversus illos qui residentiam se continuaturos promiserant et nihilominus manent absentes adeoque omnes illos nominationibus suis esse privandos.” Acta Facultatis Artium, 4 December 1578, RAL, OUL, 713, 150r. The insistence on residence during the following years is particularly telling. Cf., for instance, the high turnover of teachers in Louvain in the second half of the 16th century, in Roegiers, “Professorencarrières,” as an indication of “difficult times.”

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elsewhere, in the 1590s. By then, the regents of the four pedagogies of the Arts faculty sought to keep up with rising student numbers via the recruitment of staff from Douai and from Cologne.38 The more rigid statutes drafted in 1602, then, which obliged licentiates from Douai or elsewhere to sit out the statutory time of two years and two months (i.e., the term in which an indigenous student could become a licenciate in Philosophy),39 mark a closure for restless Louvainists as well as for hopefuls from Douai. Statutory rigidity—which did not result in more requests being turned down, however—corresponds to the stabilisation of academic life during the archducal period—but in the same interval, the number of requests for, and approvals of, dispensations had halved anyway,40 down to the levels of the early 1570s.41 The familiar topos of foreigners roaming the beneficial stock of national churches had already surfaced in the Concordatum Carolinum of 1531 between Charles V and the Arts faculty. Ordinary collators, especially those in the southwestern provinces of the Low Countries, where shifting boundaries had fuelled uncertainties over the benefice regimes in force, had failed to distinguish, in the first decades after Admonet Nos, between the alleged tide of faculty nominees and the proverbial greed of papal providees. In order to soothe them, it was stipulated in the Caroline Concordat that foreign students or academics had to respect a moratorium of ten years of residence at Louvain before being eligible for faculty nominations.42 A Dutchman, and therefore technically a subject of the prince, Jansenius was not 38 Of the 19 requests submitted by alibi promoti (out of a total of 68) between 1573 and 1597, 12 were registered between 1591 and 1597; in these seven years, the dispensations for alibi promoti outnumbered dispensations (6) for indigenous Lovanienses. Acta Facultatis Artium, 1573–1597, RAL, OUL, 713. 39 Cf. Acta Facultatis Artium, 25 August 1602, RAL, OUL, 714, 112r–v; “ad licentiam promovendi perseverent continuo in universitate hac vel alia et in dicta facultate ut minimum per tres hymes et duas estates.” Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 31r. 40 There were 32 requests, 29 of which were granted. Acta Facultatis Artium, 1598– 1621, RAL, OUL, 714 and 1715. Seven requests came from alibi promoti. 41 A proposal in 1613 to exclude alibi promoti from the actus birettationis was, after consultation with the lawyers of the higher faculties, rebuffed. Acta Facultatis Artium, 27 February 1613, RAL, OUL, 714, 531v. Cf. the new statutes of 1615, Varia de universitate Lovaniensi, A.A.Pa., R.VII., 60, 216r–219v. 42 “Premiers, que nul ne pourra recepvoir ne avoir nomination en vertu des Indultz accordez à ladicte Faculté des Ars, d’aulcun benefice gisant en nosdict Pays de pardeça, s’il n’en est natif, ou s’il est estrangier, qu’il ne ayt residé esdicts Pays de pardeça, & vaqué aux estudes l’espace de dix ans, ou qu’il ayt obtenu de nous lettres patentes de consentement en forme due.” Privilegia, 126.

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frustrated in his ambitions, applying as he did for nominations both by the faculty and by the university one year after his return from France. The aspirations of other groups were more closely monitored, however, both within and outside the university, by competitors, by the authorities or, in most cases, by their combined action.43 When two members from their own cadre applied for the same nomination, the Congregation of the Arts faculty abstained from granting dispensations on the residentia decennalis and rigidly adhered to norms that provided the ultimate locus to settle disputes with a high potential for escalation.44 Clerics from the Principality of Liège figure prominently among academic nominees in the archducal period and were outperformed only by their comilitones from Brabant and Hainault in the nomination registers.45 However, except for those who joined the academic staff, not one of them claimed a benefice in the ecclesiastical provinces of Mechlin and Cambrai with the help of a faculty nomination. In an epoch struggling with uncertainty, the notion of the foreigner remained a versatile device in the negotiations in the clerical job market. In 1600, the archducal resident in Rome and his correspondents in the Secretariat of State in Brussels fretted over the oltremarini—English and Irish exiles—who acquired, with the help of diligent curialists, key ecclesiastical positions in Cambrésis, at the expense of their own pro43 Gisbertus Conventinus, a professor in Philosophy, decided to cede in 1613 to an assertive student (a so-called junior, cf. below) who competed with him for the same nomination, and who claimed that Conventinus, being a Leodiensis, did not qualify for a nomination to the collations of the provost of Mons. Nevertheless, Conventinus’ peers were prepared to grant him a dispensation for the three months he had still to go in order to complete his residentia decennalis. Acta Facultatis Artium, 15 May 1613, RAL, OUL, 714, 536r–v. 44 Cf. the competition between Henricus Rampen, a professor of Philosophy from Huy in the Principality of Liège, and his colleague Joannes Schinckelius. In order to avoid similar problems, Rampen applied for a placet with the Privy Council. Acta Facultatis Artium, 26 December 1606 and 5 January 1607, RAL, OUL, 714, 346; request to, and placet issued by, the Privy Council, 9 January and 8 February 1607, respectively, Université de Louvain 1556–1639, AGR, Conseil Privé, 1281. 45 Of the 367 individuals (of 439 registered as academic nominees between 1598 and 1621) whose geographical origin could be reconstructed, 22 per cent or 83 were natives of the Principality of Liège. They constitute the third largest group, after nominees from the Duchy of Brabant (101 or 27.5 per cent) and Hainault (88 or 24 per cent). Brabant, the Principality of Liège, and Hainault combined provided for c.threequarters of all nominees. Flanders (the Stewardships included) and the small county of Namur lag behind with respectively 30 (8 per cent) and 20 (5 per cent) nominees. The United Provinces (14 individuals, including one nominee from States Brabant), Artois (10), Luxemburg and Limburg (8), the Lordship of Mechlin (9), Tournaisis (3), and Savoye (1) figure more sporadically in the nomination registers.

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tégés—despite the strategic situation of this recently conquered area and the resulting need for an adequate management of patronage. The papal candidate for the provostship of Cambrai who had caused all this distress was Peter Lombard, the Irishman who had acquired, after a decade’s residence, several benefices via academic nominations before heading, in 1598, for Rome as the university’s representative.46 Conversely, Roman circuits (and above all the Liège curialists) were scandalised by the vicious strategies of power elites in Brussels using their clout with aspiring abbots and other magnates to bar the road to ecclesiastical office in the Habsburg Netherlands for Liège nationals.47 In 1625, they even considered retaliation via the exclusion of Fiamminghi from the rich beneficial stock of the Principality.48 Despite recurrent irritations, Liège clerics had several legal instruments at their disposal to gain access to the clerical job market of the Habsburg Netherlands, either by virtue of papal provisions or, theoretically, via university nominations.49 The Arts faculty, for its part, conformed to 46 “A yier recevi una de V.A. para su Sanctidad escritta en favor del Hermano del Conde d’essenghien, paraque se le confiera la prepositura de Cambraij, los cortisanos de Roma son mas diligentes, q’esso por q’ha mas d’un mes, que esta dada al Doctor Lombart, que reside a qui por la universidad de Lovanio a un negocio particular.” Laurens Dublioul to the Archdukes, Négociations de Rome, 16 April 1600, AGR, Audience, 438, 96r. “Sopra di che persevera Sua Altezza nell’opinion già scritta, che Sua Beatitudine sia per farne nuova provisione, a fine che non tutte le dignità ecclesiastici di questi stati siano date a stranieri oltramarini.” Frangipani to Aldobrandini, 7 October 1600, ASV, Fondo Borghese, III, 98c.1, 216; a few days later, the archduke resigned, but sighed nonetheless, “Que nous n’ouvrons volontiers cette porte qui peult estre de grand preiudice a nostre ostel, signamment en une place telle quest Cambraij dont depend le bien ou le ruyne de noz pais.” Archduke Albert to Richardot, Négociations de Rome, 13 October 1600, AGR, Audience, 438, 182r–183r. 47 Cf. the indignation of the papal nuncio in 1614: “Non può esser, che gli abbati, et altri ecclesiastici del Brabante, sian fatti giurare di non conferire i beneficii di loro collatione ai Liegesi, perche è notissimo, ch’essi Liegesi possono haver beneficii per tutti questi paesi di Fiandra, come all’incontro i Fiamminghi sono capaci dei beneficii dentro il dominio di Liege in virtù degli accordi antichi, seguiti fra quei vescovi, et i prencipi di queste provincie.” Bentivoglio to Borghese, 8 March 1614, ASV, Fondo Borghese, II, 136, 21r–22r. 48 “Acciò che desista dall’impresa, e co’la serenissima Infanta, e col Consiglio, che non voglino far questo pregiuditio alla Sede Apostolica, e necessitar Sua Beatitudine ad inhabilitar i sudditi di Sua Altezza alli beneficii del Paese di Liegi, che ne abonda più di qualsivoglia altra diocese di cotesti parti.” Barberini, Secretary of State, to Guidi di Bagno, nuncio of Flanders, 19 April 1625, ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 138, 110r–111r. 49 From an institutional point of view, the university’s privilege of nomination (which was not subject to the restrictions in the Carolina) could have been a vehicle for clerical migration from the Principality of Liège to the Habsburg Netherlands. In practice, only five Leodienses (of 52 university nominees whose geographic origin could be reconstructed) who did not join the academic staff had done so in the period under investigation.

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Caroline legislation to such an extent that academics did not balk at using normative texts as solid proof of good practice.50 Alongside residence and graduation, a third condition had to be met. Jansenius and his fellow nominees had to be, above all, poor clerics.51 Defining poverty was quite another matter, however. Nominations by virtue of both the university’s Sixtina and the faculty’s privilege were, to an extent, the equivalents of papal provisions in forma communi pauperum. From the High Middle Ages onwards, these had been granted in the beginning of each pontificate, when poor clerics (here defined as clerics destitute of benefices) could turn to Rome (or Avignon) in order to benefit from the proverbial liberality of recently elected pontiffs.52 In Urget Nos, Admonet Nos, and all later confirmations, poverty was defined in a slightly different manner, however. Holders of benefices, just like other clerics, were eligible for nominations by the rector or the dean, as long as their income did not exceed a certain threshold, the so-called taxa patrimonialis, which had been fixed at 40 Rhine florins in Urget Nos (1483). By 1574 at the latest, university nominees were required by statutory law to take an oath that their income did not exceed this taxa patrimonialis.53 Similar restrictions popped up in the Sixtine bull’s twin, the faculty’s Admonet Nos. The Caroline Concordat of 1531 granted by Emperor Charles V had already imposed a similar oath on faculty nominees, which was to be registered by a notary, in order to woo belligerent collators who had opposed the academics’ claims in the previous decades. The placet of

50 Consider, for example, a conflict between the faculty and the bishop of Tournai, who complained that his collations had been burdened too often by nominations. The faculty answered that one of the providees, Gerardus Corselius from the Principality of Liège, could never have been a faculty nominee, because he had not resided at Louvain for ten years yet. Another academic provided by the bishop, Kintius, was a Liégois as well, but had been a professor for many years. Correspondence and discussions in Acta Facultatis Artium, 20 March–20 April 1591, RAL, OUL, 713, 313r–316r; Acta Universitatis, 26 March–31 July 1591, RAL, OUL, 60, 320v. 51 “Et plerique ex eis paupertate maxime gravati” Privilegia, 96. The theme of poverty in the 16th century has been elaborated on in the unpublished dissertation of De Maesschalck, Kollegestichtingen. 52 The more current type of papal provisions (in forma speciali) was issued throughout each pontificate On the sometimes considerable numbers of clerics visiting the Avignon Court in the 14th century, see Meyer, Arme Kleriker auf Pfründensuche. These provisions were often considered by historians anything but efficient; cf. Tihon, “Les expectatives in forma pauperum.” A revision in McDonald, “Poor Clerk’s Provisions.” 53 Similar oaths were routinely registered in the Libri nominationum of the Arts faculty; the highly formalised minutes of sessions of the faculty’s nomination board.

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1531 also introduced other restrictions: in contrast with the university’s privilege, the taxa patrimonialis henceforth had to be respected by all applicants, not just by those applying for the first time. Whether or not the taxa indeed put restraints on the use of the Louvain privileges of nomination remains a moot point for the historian deprived of sources—but it was an unsettling question for contemporaries as well. A ruling of the Sacra Romana Rota in 1589, that the onus of proof in the field fell on nominees when their claims were contested,54 struck so much terror onto the academics that reversing it became one of their main preoccupations during the next three decades. By saddling their adversaries (not to mention historians trying to reconstruct the composition of academic incomes) with the task of furnishing proof that was difficult to obtain, academics hoped to make restrictions on their income more flexible. As a matter of fact, poverty (i.e., the possession of benefices) was not an important criterion of selection when students or academics competed for a nomination. It may have been an unwieldy one, though, as it was the challenger who had to produce positive proof in order to overrule other, academic, ranking principles. In 1573, Gregory XIII had raised the taxa patrimonialis considerably in order to compensate for devaluation in previous decades. Paul V would take similar measures in 1616 in order to address the inflation of the “Long Sixteenth Century.”55 In the period under investigation, legal disputes about the taxa would above all involve men of weight governing the university, not students. Roughly 4 per cent of the licentiati of the Arts faculty graduating between 1597 and 1608 eventually made an academic career of sorts and had a seat in an academic council, administered a college, and/or occupied a public chair in one of the five faculties in the archducal period.56 In light of the highly clerical character of the Louvain teaching staff and the mere fact that academics tended to spend many years at the university, it will not come as a surprise to learn that staff members were grossly over-represented in the nomination registers. Academics comprised 26 per cent of all individuals passing the review 54

Cf. p. 258–59. Respectively, 60 Ducatus de Camera (120–80 florins) and 100 Ducatus de Camera (200–300 florins). The average yearly income of a craftsman in Louvain amounted to c.200 florins c.1600; see Van Uytven, Stadsfinanciën. 56 I.e., the criteria for inclusion in this research population. Among faculty, the proportion of foreign graduates was higher than among students (13 per cent). It is known that 2 per cent assumed academic functions at other universities. 55

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in the nomination registers in between 1598 and 1621; but they did so much more regularly, obtaining 42 per cent of all nominations. Within their own cadre of c.240 individuals, 70 to 80 per cent (depending on whether the clerical contingent or the entire population is considered) applied for a nomination during their stay at the university. Like the figures for France, only a few dons among the 23 teachers of the Sacra Facultas Theologiae in this research population bothered to descend from higher spheres to queue up for nomination letters. Clerics holding chairs in Law or Medicine were more eager: half of them (i.e., 20–25 per cent of the 34 chair-holders in those faculties) continued to figure in the nomination registers after joining the higher faculties. But half of the theologians, and one-third of all chair-holders in Law and Medicine, had done so at an earlier stage of their career; nearly all (88 per cent) public teachers in Divinity and 44 per cent of the others were recruited from among the staff of the Arts faculty. Nine out of ten academics (including college presidents) figuring in the nomination registers, and 70 per cent of the entire population, had lived at some stage in the fold of “our mother, the Faculty of Arts.” Teachers and college presidents may have faced more difficulty staying within the limits of poverty set by the papal bulls, because they had their emoluments, the canonships attached to their chairs, additional subsidies, as well as a wide range of other means at their disposal.57 Leading academics suggested, during the visitation of the university in 1607, that their income derived from academic obligations should not

57 A reconstruction of the income of professional groups in Brabant in 1631, based on tax levels, is highly instructive: after a first category (archbishops, bishops, a few prelates, ambassadors, the highest nobility, and the presidents of the Collateral Councils) and a second class (high nobility, members of the Collateral Councils, and court officers) that had to pay respectively 100 florins and 60–75 florins, the university’s rector surfaced in the third class of taxpayers (50 florins), along with other court officials and members of provincial councils of justice. The chancellor of the university (i.e., the provost of Saint Peter’s) and the conservator (the abbot of Saint-Gertrudis) popped up in the fourth class (just as often as other members of the high clergy); while university professors surface in the fifth class of taxpayers (alongside urban parish priests, lords of baronial origin, village lords, aldermen, and treasurers in the chief-towns) paying 18–25 florins yearly. A second group of university teachers (presumably those of the Arts faculty) was to be found in the sixth class of taxpayers (12–15 florins), ahead of canons of small chapters and country parish priests, barristers, magistrates of smaller towns in a seventh class of taxpayers (6–10 florins), and the farmers, craftsmen, chaplains, middle-class merchants, and local officials in class 8–10. Paupers were, of course, not taxed. Van Uytven, “Vers un autre colloque,” 16.

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be considered when calculating the taxa patrimonialis.58 Academics were poor because they were academics, not because of some annoying scale that measured their income. This had been one of the main incentives, judging by the wordy considerations aired in the preamble to Admonet Nos, why the Arts faculty had solicited a privilege of its own. Its members were not only more numerous and, allegedly, more easily overlooked by the grandees in the higher faculties dominating the university’s nomination board. Its teachers and college regents indeed had reasons to see themselves as “poorer” than the others, in the sense of “deprived of benefices” and dependent on a fluctuating income from fees for teaching and lodging. In line with other Kollegiatstifte in the Empire, teachers in philosophy and the humanities could not fall back on canonships in the Louvain chapters, which were mostly the reserve of chair-holders in the higher faculties.59 The congregation of the Arts faculty shared the university’s detached and rather pragmatic attitude towards poverty when it came to deciding between academics competing for a nomination.60 Nonetheless, one of the key novelties introduced in the Leonina involved the taxa patrimonialis. Those who could only produce their magisterium in the arts—the juniores, to use the terminology of the Leonina—had to be “poor” within the Sixtine boundaries of 40 florins.61 But alongside the nominations minoris taxae after Urget Nos there were those majoris taxae corresponding with another category of nominees, the seniores,

58 “Ad primum videri sibi quod onus professionis in nominationibus possit deduci, quia minuit fructus.” Van Waefelghem, “La visite,” 285. 59 The teachers of the faculty were remunerated by emoluments derived from student fees. Van Belle, De fakulteit van de Artes, 180–84. The faculty’s two public chairs of eloquentia and ethica, the holders of which were appointed by the city, disposed of a canonship of the first foundation of Saint Peter’s; three other teachers who had performed their function for more than three years were allowed to compete with the baccalaureates and licentiates of the higher faculties for canonships of the second foundation of Saint Peter’s—but not with doctors. Paquet, Salaires et prébendes, 17–19. 60 It was used as a criterion at two occasions (out of c.30 cases discussed in the faculty’s congregation or deputatio; see below). Cases in 1618 and 1620, Acta Facultatis Artium, 23 October 1618 and 11 April 1620, RAL, OUL, 715, 230, and 325. The faculty itself did not engage systematically in investigations into the financial situation of its members; no candidate was ever refused because his patrimony exceeded the taxa. The burden of proof, according to the academics, lay with their competitors within or without the university. 61 Privilegia, 101.

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whose yearly income could not exceed 80 ducatus de Camera.62 “Seniority” reflected the general composition of the faculty board of the Arts, a large assembly of, in theory, 48 members, distributed over four nations and constituted by the eight regents and sub-regents of the four paedagogia; by the 16 professors in philosophy teaching there; and by 24 neutrales, who often were presidents of other colleges,63 licentiates of the higher faculties or, occasionally, professors in the humanities teaching at the faculty’s pedagogies. In Admonet Nos, seniors were those who had once been admitted to the faculty board, regardless of the fact whether they still had a seat there or whether they had moved on to the councils of the higher faculties.64 Membership of, say, college presidents and coming dons of the higher faculties could help in using the social capital of the Venerable Faculty of Arts to promote itself as a “Mother” of all other faculties. Conversely, access to benefices was at least one of the motivations for joining. But not all seniors were equal. The explication of different institutional positions in Admonet Nos was read by the artists as a system of precedence to be used when several faculty members competed for the same nomination, a reading which was, as we will see, canonised and elaborated in the faculty’s statutes.65 Among the senior members 62 The bull suggests that this stipulation was valid only for those that did not apply for a nomination for the first time. Maybe the letter of the law could have been interpreted thus, that those whose income exceeded the taxa could indeed apply for one nomination. In the period under investigation, however, no example of such a reading could be found. “& qui pro hac prima vice dumtaxat etiam ultra octuaginta florenos auri de camera similes annuatim habeat, alias vero de cetero ultra dictos octuaginta florenos auri de camera similes non habeat.” Privilegia, 100. The oaths in the Libri nominationum do not distinguish between those who were nominated for the first time and those who were not. 63 At least 28 (60 per cent) of the 47 college presidents without recorded affiliations with the higher faculties were members of the Arts faculty’s congregation. 64 “Quod decanus . . . unum ex magistris in Artibus, qui inibi in facultate predicta sex annis legerit, seu rexerit, vel ob doctrinae eminentiam ad docendum logicam aut physicam admissus, seu in illa novem annis promotus fuerit, & de illius consilio sit, vel aliquando constiterit.” Privilegia, 101. Admission to the Faculty of Arts required a seniority of six years after the birettatio, the formal act of graduation to Master in the Arts, except if the candidate had, in the meantime, been admitted to the regency of one of the four pedagogies or to a professorship in Philosophy. Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 3r–4v. 65 These had been drafted, in the course of the 16th century and in the beginning of the 17th, largely on the rhythm of papal and princely legislation; but in between the “great legislative moments,” specific issues were dealt with as well. The first traces of legislative action by specialised commissions of the faculty go back to 1515, when

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of the faculty, the bull listed teachers (legentes) and regents who had taught, or had been teaching, the youth or who had administrated the colleges during six years; those who had been allowed to teach logic or Aristotelian physics (that is, the teachers in philosophy who had not reached the status of legens sexennalis yet);66 and, finally, the neutrales in the faculty’s congregatio who had been graduated for nine years. The 1602 statutes pointed out that the subregents of the pedagogies could claim the same prerogatives as the regents, provided their number remained limited to one for every pedagogy. This limited the possibility that regents would expand their clientele at their whim by appointing subregents yearning for benefices. After all, not only the interests of the neutrales (among whom many college presidents) were at stake; the prerogatives of teachers in philosophy, even the sexennales among them, were not untouchable as regents (and hence subregents) could claim precedence by virtue of faculty legislation over legentes if their regency had lasted two years longer than the teaching of competing professors.67 Teachers in the humanities figured as the underdogs

the first nomination bulls arrived in Louvain; in 1515, 1525, and 1531, comprehensive alterationes were introduced. Liber primus nominationum, RAL, OUL, 4751, 3r–10v and 233r–234v; Indices, RAL, OUL, 729, 23. Other revisions took place in 1541 and 1571 (Indices, RAL, OUL, 729, 40–41, 44–45, and 98). The revision of the faculty’s statutes in the 1560s left legislation on the nomination procedures unchanged. The context of the statutes of 1615 will be elaborated below. Cf. p. 522–29. 66 A few “admissi” never taught but, nonetheless, could claim the same prerogatives as long as no actu legens (who, all things and the number of the years of service being equal, could claim precedence over ex-teachers and the rare “honorific” teachers) appeared on the horizon. This was the case of Ludovicus Medardus, an indigenous Louvainist and a canon of Saint Peter’s. No student ever graduated under his protection, and he never performed as examiner. Yet, his alleged position of admissus ad docendum was accepted by the faculty in 1621, which enabled him to claim precedence over his two competitors (one of whom was a neutralis) for a nomination with respect to the collations of the bishop of Ghent. The faculty was reluctant to use this tool of wielding patronage over those who did not belong to the staff of the paedagogia, as it was inclined to take into consideration the length of residence rather than the status Medardus claimed. Acta Facultatis Artium, 26 August–28 November 1621, RAL, OUL, 715, 394–99. Franciscus Paludanus, the regent of the Pedagogy of the Castle, claimed in 1598 to have been admissus ad docendum in 1596; he obtained precedence over another professor who had joined the staff sometime in 1597 because he was, at the time of his nomination, an actu docens replacing a teacher who had left the university. Acta Facultatis Artium, 19 May 1598, RAL, OUL, 714, 18r. 67 “Dubium fuit, an per regentes intelligantur subregentes, res est affirmata modo tamen unus constituatur in singulis pedagogiis.” Acta Facultatis Artium, RAL, OUL, 714, 112v. “Ad tollendam regentium multiplicationem.” Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 61r–v.

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of the professorial corps. Literarii were explicitly excluded from the status of legens sexennalis, though they were granted precedence over the other neutrales. The successive actions undertaken by the professors in the humanities (one of whom was the famous rhetorician Nicolaus Vernulaeus) to breach into the position of the philosophers in 1615 and in 1622–24 were unsuccessful.68 The settlements which the faculty put forward as compromises all stemmed from the arrangement of 1602. In the university’s statutes, the keywords were academic degrees, recommendation by the faculties, and the prerogatives stipulated in the papal regulae cancellariae. Faculty legislation, in contrast, privileged those who could produce an impressive record of service in the Arts faculty. After the model of Admonet Nos itself, of which faculty legislation was a very sophisticated translation that built in more checks and balances among the privileged themselves, these statutes were drafted by and for the faculty’s staff: the last obstacle for members of the higher faculties was the stipulation that, all other criteria being equal, those who were actu docentes or regentes had precedence over all others. Academic degrees, length of residence, benefice-holding, the applicants’ financial situation, or ordinations were taken into consideration only when the candidates qualified equally for the above-mentioned criteria.69 With respect to the rights of university nominees, the sting was in the tail. Jansenius’ fortunes went against all odds because he 68 Lots of material on this affair in the Varia de universitate Lovaniensi, A.A.Pa., R.VII., 60; Raisons qu’on fait valoir (. . .) pour recouvrer la prérogative de nomination dont les professeurs de lettres ont été privés en 1602 par décret de la faculté des Arts, in SAL, Oud Archief, 3993; in Université de Louvain 1556–1639, AGR, Conseil Privé, 1281, and in faculty minutes. 69 “Si inter pares in conditionibus supra positis contentio oriatur, preferantur magis graduati. Censeatur autem in Theologia licentiatus qui absolverit septennium in facultate Theologica in facultatibus iuris qui quinquennium in medicini qui quadriennium et in theologia baccalaureus qui triennium in facultatibus iuris et medicine qui biennium expleverit. Inter pares autem . . . preferatur is qui diutius continue et immediate ante resederit atque inter pares in his omnibus non beneficiatus beneficiato, et ubi sunt plura curata beneficia preferatur sacerdos non sacerdoti. Et inter non beneficiatos pauperior et ceteris paribus preferatur is qui primo indicavit decano.” Ordinationes facultatis artium (. . .), 8 and 9 April 1615, in Varia de universitate Lovaniensi, A.A.Pa., R.VII., 60, 216r–219v and 225r–v. The peculiar definition of magis graduatus stemmed from the statutes of 25 August 1602; in the second half of the 16th century, actual academic degrees were probably decisive. Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 47v–48r and 60v–61r.

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was “deuxiesme en nomination.” University nominees, whether or not they were members of the Arts faculty—Jansenius was, at this stage of his career—were required, by virtue of Admonet Nos and later confirmations, to grant precedence to those holding nomination letters issued by the Arts faculty. These formal prerogatives turned upside down academic ranking principles in the Regulae Cancellariae, which regulated precedence for papal provisions and, in the 17th century, regulations of the university. An overwhelming majority of secular clerics could produce an impressive record in the service of the Arts faculty. It was therefore procedures and informal practices, not the prerogatives of faculty nominees or professors, that caused, in the period under investigation, discontent among members of the higher faculties. In 1615, Joannes Drusius, abbot of Park and apostolic visitator of the university, was confronted with complaints from the higher faculties that the philosophers excluded them from the usufruct of the faculty’s privilege. From their point of view, the secrecy of the procedures in the faculty’s nomination committee, and especially the resignations of nominations the philosophers made in favour of their friends and clients, made it impossible for the members of the higher faculties to compete, while the deputation of the university (in which the deans of the four higher faculties constituted the majority) had established, after a thorough scrutiny of the faculty’s nomination bulls, that its privilege of nomination had been granted to the magistri of the other faculties as well. As a consequence, it is necessary to unveil the secrecy and to discuss the procedures behind the hundreds of nominations registered in the libri nominationum.

3.2. “Le temps esclorra les occasions.” Poor scholars and nomination procedures During the reign of the Archdukes, at least 779 letters of nomination were issued by the respective nomination boards of the university and of the Venerable Faculty of Arts. In this time interval, their performance was much more impressive than in the anni horribiles of the 1580s. In the 1620s and the 1630s, the number of both nominations and individuals applying for them soared compared to the first two decades of

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the 17th century (c.330 nominations each decade), despite the abolition in the Principality of Liège of traditional nomination privileges, and their substitution by the Concordatum Paulinum of 1616. The average frequency with which individuals went through the procedure, by contrast, did not change much over time, two nominees corresponding more or less with three registrations in the nomination books in between 1580 and 1640.70 Faculty and university statutes stipulated that nobody could hold two nomination letters at the same time; candidates were obliged to wait until their previous nomination had had its effect or to resign their nomination to the respective boards. Dispensations were, in principle, granted only to those university men whose previous nominations had resulted in litigation. Because two nomination boards operated independently from each other, however, it was possible to combine a university nomination with one issued by the faculty—a strategy adopted by Jansenius, for instance.71 In the long run, the number of nominations and individuals seeking them increased. This may have corresponded with the rise in attendance observed in the graduation registers; but it also correlated with a changing perception of applicants’ chances in an increasingly normalised clerical job market. It remains unclear why nominations peaked in 1595–97, 1629–30, and 1637. Particular events or upheavals in the clerical job market possibly had triggered an increased demand for special legal instruments provided by the powerful clauses in papal provisions or in academic nomination letters: in 1596 and 1637, soaring numbers at Louvain coincided with spectacular numbers of papal provisions for the region. But the cyclical character of the other peaks, which occurred every third year in each decade, is difficult to ignore. The rector of the university or the dean of the Arts faculty could not issue nomination letters on a whim, unlike at universities in France. In the Louvain brand,

70 I.e., 1.67 nominations for each individual in 1580–97; 1.64 in the period under investigation; and 1.65 in 1622–40. Staff members performed above average, typically with three to four registrations. 71 Back in 1618, Jansenius had also applied for a faculty nomination burdening the collations of the provost of Saint Peter’s in Cassel, but this application did not produce the desirable effects. Liber secundus nominationum, 2 March 1618, RAL, OUL, 4752, 418r.

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

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1581 1583 1585 1587 1589 1591 1593 1595 1597 1599 1601 1603 1605 1607 1609 1611 1613 1615 1617 1619 1621 1623 1625 1627 1629 1631 1633 1635 1637 1639

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nominations

advowsons

Fig. 3.3. Yearly registrations of nominations (1580–1640)72

specific time intervals with respect to the collators who were being “burdened” by academic nominations (instead of benefices that had become vacant in specific months) needed to be observed by academic authorities (instead of by individual gradués insinuating their letters at their discretion). The rector and the dean could issue nomination letters once and twice, respectively, during the prelacy of individual collators.73 Or they could do so every 20 years (the university’s vicennium) and every decade (the faculty’s decennium) if the benefice pool in question was managed by “immortal” collectives. This accounts for the rushes,

72 The advowsons listed in Fig. 3.3 and Fig. 3.4 replaced, by virtue of the bull Regimini Universalis, nominations for benefices in the Principality of Liège; cf. infra. 73 Whether nominations were valid after the death of the collator or the appointment of his successor was a point of discussion. In 1610, the fresh bishop of Arras, Herman d’Ortembergh, formerly an auditor of the Sacra Romana Rota and archducal resident in Rome, had to intimidate a nominee before his return to the Netherlands in the interests of his own protégé: “et m’è parso di lasciare per adesso il lovanista racommandatomi da diversi et in particolare da VS perche a me non mette a conto con gratificare quanto soggetto mettere in compromisso le ragioni della Chiesa et introdurre cattivo esempio et mala conseguenza contro il tenore dell’indulto istesso, . . . Pero sara ben ch’il detto signor Sucquet abbracci la presente occasione et pegili quanto prima il possesso, assicurandomi che il Lovanista facilmente sacquietera et saccomodera alla ragione.” d’Ortembergh to Prats (?), Secretary of State, Négociations de Rome, 4 December 1610, AGR, Audience, 445, 283r–v.

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in 1593, 1603, 1613, 1623, and 1633, for nomination letters burdening the collations of big, corporate employers such as collegiate and cathedral chapters; decennia and vicennia being scheduled by academic administrations after the years in which the original bulls of Sixtus IV and Leo X, in 1483 and 1513 respectively, had officially been granted.74 The dean’s right to wield the jus nominandi more frequently than the rector is another explanation for the dominance of the faculty’s nomination board, alongside the precedence of its nominees over those of the university and, to a very limited extent, the scope of the respective sources.75

702 634

313

95

83 46

74

12

1580–1597

1598–1621

university faculty advowsons

1622–1640

Fig. 3.4. Faculty nominations vs. university nominations76

74 Respectively in April and September, months recorded under the title “Incipit decennium” in nomination books. 75 University registers only recorded nominations that had resulted in an actual claim to a benefice (cf. below), while faculty sources also listed procedures that had been aborted. 76 A specific form of nominations in the records of the Arts faculty, the so-called “renominations” (cf. p. 174), were not included in Fig. 3.4.

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In spite of these impressive numbers, the range of Louvain’s privileges of nomination was much smaller than the 33 per cent of benefices reserved, in theory, for French graduates by the Concordat of Bologna. Even in the surrounding archdiocese of Mechlin, the threshold of 10 per cent of rectorships being seized via academic nominations was only sporadically reached, and then only in the second half of the highly competitive 18th century. The proportion of academic nominees among aspiring rectors in the 17th-century diocese of Ghent is negligible.77 Because it had been stipulated in the Sixtine bull that only collators with more than six benefices at their disposal could be charged by the rector of the university to provide a cleric with a small benefice, the university’s nomination board “owned” a niche, in the best of worlds, equal to one-sixth of all benefices. Enter the nominees of the Arts faculty (which notably claimed to be not bound by the Sixtine restriction of six benefices),78 and academic nominations may have accounted for half of the recruitment of the Church’s personnel in the South Netherlands. But this calculation rests on the assumption that the clerical job market was segmented into small benefice pools, failing to include big employers such as Hovius. Another variable is the turn-

77 Quaghebeur, De concursus, 124; in the 17th-century diocese of Ghent, they constituted a meagre 2 per cent of all new rectors. Vanden Broecke, “Seculiere geestelijken,” 200. 78 This restriction had not been incorporated explicitly in Admonet Nos, as it had in the university’s Urget Nos of 1483. Between 1580 and 1640, 6 per cent or 129 nominations burdened the collations of pastors or personae of parochial churches; all except five had been issued by the nomination board of the Arts faculty. Cf. Registre aux nominations, RAL, OUL, 4784, under the heading “rectors.” The last case dated back to 1578, when the student Johan Noteleers got into trouble due to his acceptation of one of the two benefices at the advowson of the pastor of Gutsenhoven (the collations of whom were burdened in the period under investigation as well ); interestingly, the rule de plusquam 6 was not invoked by the pastor himself but by an apostolic providee. Such affairs became grist to the mill of the opponents of the faculty’s privileges in the later 17th century (Puncta Aliquot, 28–29), who translated the rights of the ordinary collators into Rome’s interests: after all, the papal providee’s chances were already limited when small collators were burdened by papal provisions, let alone when Louvain nominees with ample clauses of precedence could intervene. Acta Facultatis Artium, 4 January 1578, RAL, OUL, 713, 128r–v. In 1622, French prelates having benefices in gift in the Netherlands were warned by the faculty that they should not try to invoke this restriction on the university’s privilege of nomination in order to oppose faculty nominations. Cf. Acta Facultatis Artium, 9 April 1622, RAL, OUL, 714, 443–44, at the occasion of the trial before the stadholder of Lille between Nicolaus de Watsinges, nominated by the Faculty of Arts, and the abbot of Saint Eloy.

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over of ordinary collators: short prelacies did not favour academics, nor did those lasting for more than a decade or two. And it rests on another assumption: that all opportunities to issue nomination letters were seized—which was definitely not the case. The c.175 nomination letters addressing collegiate or cathedral chapters, for instance, were unequally distributed. Some colleges of canons were honoured with a dozen or more nominations during a quarter of a century; others were hardly disturbed at all. Hovius, for his part, received not three but (at least) seven letters of nomination in his two decades in office.

Plate 3.2. Nomination Letter Nomination letter of 15 April 1602 granted to Franciscus Sinclaer, Magister Artium and cleric of the diocese of Mechlin, by Guilielmus Mercerus, Vice-Dean of the Arts Faculty, directed to the archbishop of Mechlin. Besides a short description of the bishop’s obligations by virtue of the Faculty’s nomination privilege, the document also bears the names of the witnesses and the signature of the notary of the university, Conrardus Sylvius. [Archdiocesan Archives, Mechlin]

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This calls for qualification. Just as much as Matthias Hovius or papal bureaucracy, neither nomination board at Louvain can be considered the author of grand nomination policies that could make the most of their privileges, even though both academics and their opponents recurrently claimed to be precisely that, when discussing, respectively, beneficial effects and abuses. The reasons are threefold. First, rectors (who also presided over the rectoral tribunal and the academic senate and its deputation)79 and deans were elected for, respectively, six months and one term, which made it impossible to devise lasting circuits of academic power via elective offices. The composition of the boards assisting them reflected the layered morphology of learned corporations: the university’s nomination board was manned by the five deans of the faculties;80 the faculty’s nomination board was constituted by the proctors of the four nations (Brabantia, Flandria, Hollandia, and Gallia), who functioned as electoral and polling constituencies in the faculty’s congregation,81 plus the receptor.82 In the course of the 16th century, the four regents of the pedagogies had imposed themselves as ex officio members of the faculty’s nomination board.83 Except for the receptor (who remained in charge for a one-year term), deans

79 On rectoral prerogatives in general and jurisdiction in particular, see Vandenghoer, De rectorale rechtbank. 80 “Neque nominatos inidoneos futuros ex eo etiam presumi debet quod non leviter ad nominationes admittantur, sed in Universitate quidem ex iudicio dominorum rectoris et decanorum quinque facultatum.” Memorandum of the university and the Faculty of Arts, Acta Universitatis, 15 July 1609, RAL, OUL, 63, 30r–v. 81 After the Parisian model, these “nations” initially had to correspond to the geographical origins of their members: Brabantia was constituted by all faculty members from the Duchy and from other territories that were not covered by other nations; Gallia recruited above all in the Principality of Liège and Cambrésis. Flandria hosted all faculty members from the homonymous county, from the counties of Hainault and Namur, and from the Lordship of Mechlin. The Holland Nation was the constituence of academics from the United Provinces, the British Isles, and Scandinavia. In practice, academic authorities sought to distribute academics over constituencies in more or less equal numbers, which meant that origins often did not overlap with nations. It was the nations that nominated, alternately, the dean and the receptor. Dumoulin and Duchene, “Europeanisme,” 227. 82 Privilegia, 105. 83 “In facultate autem artium ex iudicio decani eiusdem facultatis quatuor regentium receptoris et procuratorum quatuor nationum.” Memorandum registered in Acta Universitatis, 15 July 1609, RAL, OUL, 63, 30r–v. Cf. p. 215 and 618. On 17 September 1612, it was stipulated that subregents could not act on behalf of the regents in the nomination committee unless they had been commissioned in writing, a regulation that apparently already existed for teachers representing “their” regent. Acta Facultatis Artium, 17 September 1612, RAL, OUL, 714, 521v.

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of faculties and the representatives of the subdivisions of the Arts faculty were elected every term, in the latter case among the 48 members of the faculty’s Congregatio.84 This body was statutorily constituted by the 16 official teachers in Philosophy and the eight regents and subregents of the pedagogies. Formally, the other members, the so-called neutrales, could foster reasonable hopes to be elected for office (and therefore for a seat in the nomination board) in the 16th and 17th centuries, in contrast to more restrictive 18th-century statutes on the matter. In practice, however, at least 75 per cent of faculty offices were occupied by teachers or regents of the pedagogies, who also attended the Congregation’s meetings more frequently. Among the neutrales elected for office, presidents or local benefice-holders who had formerly been active in the pedagogies were prominent.85 Second, polling a majority of the members of either board was a formal prerequisite for a nomination. In the course of the 16th century, the Congregation of the Arts faculty had even established a procedure that meticulously pointed out the order in which each member was entitled to vote.86 And in 1613—when a new decennium was about to kick off—the numerical dominance of associates of the pedagogy of the Lily in the faculty’s nomination board was frowned upon by their

84 Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 8v and 10r. The new proctors were elected together with the dean; cf. the elections on the first of February, June, and September registered in faculty minutes. 85 Statuta Facultatis Artium and their modifications up to 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 4r. Between 1598 and 1621, c.576 proctors and their substituti—24 for every year—were elected, 416 of whom are recorded in the faculty minutes (Acta Facultatis Artium, RAL, OUL, 714–15). At the time of their election, 302 proctors (72.9 per cent) were ordinary teachers in Philosophy or (sub)regents. Among the 109 proctors who could be identified as neutrales, college presidents were prominent (44 or 45; c.40 per cent), after a group of 58 or 59 neutrales who did not occupy an administration or a chair in the humanities; several among them could be identified as local Church officials. The 37 neutrales who were proctors (34 per cent) had previously served in the four paedagogia. The faculty dean and receptor were elected immediately after, and before, they had performed as proctor of their respective nations. Statutes from the 18th century that limited access to office (and to seats in the nomination board) to (former) teachers or administrators of the pedagogia merely sanctioned existing practices. 86 The dean or the vice-dean only intervened, according to the statutes, after the voting procedure. The receptor voted first, followed by the proctors according to the seniority of their graduation as magister. Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 46v; draft of the new statutes, Ordinationes facultatis artium (. . .) c.4 August 1615, Varia de universitate Lovaniensi, A.A.Pa., R.VII., 60, 216r–219v; and Ordinationes, after 1616, RAL, OUL, 4747, 1st bundle, 1r. No word was breathed on the role of the regents in the procedure.

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other colleagues.87 These concerns notwithstanding, however, nomination boards, while seemingly conducting a lot of policy by churning out hundreds of nomination letters, were not the arena of politics. It was aspiring nominees who had to appear personally for the respective committees and apply for a nomination burdening the collations of a specific collator. Voting must have been, in practice, a formality, if it occurred at all. Decisions were reached on a consensual basis, after a bureaucratic scrutiny (including oaths taken by the applicant) had established the eligibility of the candidate. On the record, applications were refused only on technical grounds: because there was some uncertainty about whether or not the nomination in question was indeed vacant (which was the applicant’s responsibility to verify in the respective nomination registers held by notaries), or when the cleric in question could not produce the required licences or dispensations. The composition of nomination boards did not aim to assure political representation for all groups in an important field of academic politics; rather, it had to enact the institutional checks and balances that had proved their validity in other loci of decision-making. Even competition between two academics for the same nomination was strictly regulated. The detailed profiles of aspiring nominees in papal bulls or university and faculty statutes were not guidelines for a nomination policy to be conducted by the faculty or the university but had to provide for an unambiguous ranking order that could settle potentially disruptive conflicts between applicants. It is difficult to assess to what extent they indeed fulfilled this function in the case of the university’s privilege of nomination. The 17th-century statutes stress that, in the event of competition, doctors of the higher faculties seated in the academic senate had precedence over others; to be followed by those recommended by one of the faculties; by other graduates admitted to the academic senate; and by teachers and administrators. All things being equal, the cognitive hierarchy (Theology-LawMedicine-Philosophy) established in the Regulae Cancellariae of the papal chancery had to be invoked; if this failed to make the difference,

87

“An si hoc decennio contigerit unum dd. ped. Lilii concurrere cum aliquo alio de facultate, placeat difficultatem, si qua orta fuerit, referre ad facultatem maxime cum in illo pedagogio Lilii [r . . . es] sint, qui habent suffragium decisivum.” Acta Facultatis Artium, 19 September 1613, RAL, OUL, 714, 548v–549r.

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seniority eventually did.88 The fragmentary evidence at our disposal for the university board’s proceedings concern two cases in which these rules failed to deliver as pacification tools. As a matter of fact, it was disputed that they were being applied correctly,89 which in one case led to open litigation before academic tribunals.90 Much more information is available with respect to the Arts faculty. Open competition between two or, in five cases, three candidates in front of the nomination committees remained, however, limited, both at the beginning of and during the decennia. Only 30 cases (for c.700 faculty nominations) were recorded in the years between 1598 and 1621. In almost half of these cases, the faculty’s congregation was appealed to in order to settle disputes. The nomination board had to conform to a set of regulations that was much more elaborate than the university’s. Only on two occasions other than strictly legal considerations were invoked in the selection procedure. In 1610, the nomination board was prepared to defer the decision to the congregation of the faculty because a client of the influential professor in Law, Gerardus Corselius, was involved. In 1614, the Doctor in Divinity Schinckelius, a former professor in Philosophy who would be co-opted, in the same year, among the eight regents of the Sacra Facultas Theologiae, was even excluded from competition in order to safeguard the chances of Joannes Massen, regent of the pedagogy of the Falcon, with respect to the collations of the provost of Saint-Servais in Maastricht ratione qualitatum eius. In both cases, however, it is not certain that the nomi-

88 The university’s legislation prior to 1616 is lost. Only separate statutes surface in the Acta, that is, when they were passed by the Congregatio or prepared by the deputatio or ad-hoc commissions. The Ordinationes Almae Universitatis Lovaniensis pro bono usu nominationum (RAL, OUL, 4746) were certainly posterior to the Concordatum Paulinum, or to 1633, as it addresses the papal representative in Brussels as a pronuntius. Read Wauters, “Een labiel evenwicht.” 89 The doctor in Law Petrus Vermeij had applied for a nomination to the bishop of Saint-Omer, whose predecessor’s death he had been informed about by letters from his friends. He was rebuffed in favour of Thomas Fienus, a doctor in Medicine. With reference to jurists of reknown such as Rebuffus, Juan de Selva, the Pragmatique, “and other texts,” he claimed that his rights had been violated. Graduates in Law, according to the Regulae Cancellariae, as well as in common law had to be granted precedence over graduates in Medicine in the hunt for benefices. After the faculties deliberated, the congregation declared that, for the sake of peace, Vermeij’s complaint would be considered the next time the plaintiff applied for a nomination. Acta Universitatis, 14 January 1599, RAL, 61, OUL, 304v–305v. 90 Unfortunately the tribunals reaching the verdicts alluded to were not specified. See Acta Universitatis, 19 August 1621, RAL, OUL, 64, 297v–298r.

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nation board was willing to infringe on papal legislation or on its own statutes.91 This preoccupation with abstract norms may look surprisingly modern for academics engaged in overlapping patronage networks but was, in fact, based on sound pragmatism. The faculty’s statutes on precedence were, after all, drafted for the sake of its members in the first place, pondering as they did one’s merits towards this body. Except for one or two cases, all cases of concurrentia registered in the faculty minutes involved one, mostly two, or occasionally three faculty members.92 The brave junior who challenged, in 1620, a senior’s right of precedence for nominations to benefices that were statutorily reserved for juniores93 was fobbed off with the reply that the statute in question was obsolete.94 Potential disputes over nominations among the c.300 juniores in the research population never made it to the records. It is not unlikely that they were, at least proportionally, less frequent (cf. below), but the deafening silence on competition between juniores in the minutes over several decades suggests that any disputes were settled by other, informal, channels of mediation, in which negotiations between the respective academic patrons (or sheer intimidation) probably played their part. Such informal practices must have played a role in competition between faculty members too: staff from the same pedagogy, for instance, never competed with one another in the dozens of cases

91 In the first case, the faculty was to persuade the other competitor, a professor in Philosophy, not to apply, which was the only way in which the nomination board could proceed to the nomination of Corselius’ client. As Corselius did not want to be engaged, it never came to that. See, respectively, Acta Facultatis Artium, 10 May 1610 and 15 March 1613, RAL, OUL, 714 and 715, 454–455, and 10r. Strangely enough, in the second case Schinckelius had already left the faculty, and hence his professorship, several years prior. As a consequence, the statutes would have provided ample arguments to favour Massen, an actu regens, anyway. 92 Fifty-four of 65 concurrentes registered in the Acta, in 30 cases (against c.200 faculty nominations in favour of teachers in the period under investigation). 93 The so-called benefices minoris taxae (as opposed to those majoris taxae), which shall be discussed in the next section. The smallest benefices remained, at least statutorily, the reserve of juniores who were poor in the Sixtine sense (cf. p. 148). 94 Nevertheless, the statute in question surfaces in the regulae of 1602 as well in those of 1615: “Ut magistri juniores . . . non excludantur a nominationibus, debebunt domini deputati . . . etiam habere rationem collationum ad quas nominandum erit, ita quod juniores preferantur in collationibus habentibus plerumque beneficia minoris taxe.” Statuta Venerandae Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 48r; 1615, Varia de universitate Lovaniensi, A.A.Pa., R.VII., 60, 216r–219r. In 1620, the faculty admitted the existence of the rule but rejected its application. Acta Facultatis Artium, 30 May 1620, RAL, OUL, 715, 332.

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processed in the Acta. This may explain why things went according to the book as soon as disputes over nominations were submitted to the congregation of the faculty or to its nomination board. Statutory rigidity may have been the ultimate resolve in situations where other, informal means of mediation had failed, the more so since faculty members were engaged in multiple, hybrid networks and clienteles within the university and probably could not be prodded (or bullied) into resignation as easily as (most) graduates. It should be noted, moreover, that the faculty’s final decision in such occasions was challenged only once in the period under investigation. Obviously, the faculty had several tools at its disposal to keep spiteful university men in check. The only miscreant who had dared, in 1613, to cite the dean before the tribunal of the rector after being proved wrong in a dispute over a nomination, had some explaining to do when reappearing for the faculty’s nomination board one year later. It was his patron Gerardus Corselius, a university don of the first rank, who was allowed to recommend him out of this embarrassing situation.95 If nominations were the object of politics, these unfolded not within formal decision-making structures and public records but in the corridors of Louvain colleges and auditories. The third reason why neither the university nor the faculty could develop grand strategies in the clerical job market is rooted in the procedures after the nomination. Nominations targeted the benefice pools or the respective collators, not benefices as such. In the above-mentioned example, Cornelius Jansenius’ nomination burdening the collations of the provost of Lille had been “pending” for five years before the president of Holland College actually claimed a canonship of his choice. Other benefices at the advowsons of the provost may have become vacant in the previous years,96 but the ascetic college president had chosen to wait for something better to come along. Enter the papal provisions in forma communi pauperum, after which Louvain

95

Acta Facultatis Artium, 12 June 1614, RAL, OUL, 715, 16v. The immediate cause was a dispute between Oliverius Du Puis and Anthonius Carthon over the validity of a nomination, in which the latter was proved right by the faculty. Du Puys consequently took drastic measures and cited the dean before the rector. 2 November and 16 December 1613, ibidem, 6r–v and 2v–3r. 96 Another canonship at Lille belonging to the provost’s benefice pool had been claimed in 1620 by Jacobus Daulmerie, who held a letter of nomination of the Arts faculty granted to him only a few months earlier (Liber secundus nominationum, 6 February 1620, RAL, OUL, 4753, 431r). A faculty nominee, Daulmerie could shoot past Jansenius, whose nomination had already been pending for two years.

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nominations were modelled. Issued in the beginning of each pontificate from the High Middle Ages onwards, such provisions provided their holders with the right to claim a benefice that would become vacant in the future, either in a specific ecclesiastic circumscription or in the benefice pool managed by one or more collators. Such provisions were aptly named gratiae expectativae, the notorious expectative graces97 that would become the sitting target for Church reformers and classical Church historians alike. These had been extremely popular: by creating, in effect, “waiting lists” of papal providees, they discouraged local church magnates from capitalising on the distance between Rome and the periphery by speedily installing a candidate of their own.98 But while expectative graces remained the most efficient legal instruments in the local clerical job market in the later Middle Ages,99 their success had turned against them as these waiting lists lengthened and the outcome of tiresome and costly bureaucratic procedures in Rome became highly insecure: pontiffs had the tedious habit of dying before many providees had seized a benefice, or of annulling previous provisions if they lived long enough. The resulting volatility of the clerical job market triggered a rush for stronger clauses in the nonobstantiae, derogative clauses that came with every papal bull (including the Louvain privileges of nomination), and for “better” (i.e., anterior) dates circumventing the principle of prior in dato, potior in jure against competitors who had obtained their provisions before them.100

97 The practice of reserving benefices for specific persons, or the drafting of “waiting lists” (cf. the Rolls of Benefices in the Brussels’ administration) has also been observed in local circuits, being a highly useful way to prevent benefices from remaining vacant too long after the death of their holder and to offer both employers and employees some certainties. The practice disappeared in the 14th century, however, under the pressure of papal expectative graces that, via their juridical clauses, rendered other expectativae void. 98 Legal subtleties in Bégou-Davia, L’interventionnisme bénéficial. 99 A case study by Meyer on the influence of papal provisions on the recruitment of clerics in the collegiate churches in Zürich is particularly revealing in this respect: during the Avignonese papacy and the Schism, all canonships were obtained via expectativae; however, only 26 per cent of all claims on Zürich canonships with the help of an expectative grace eventually led to the possession of a prebend. Meyer, Zürich und Rom, 86–87. In the archdiocese of Salzburg, 24 of the c.210 expectativae issued during the pontificate of Martin V (1417–31) could be classified as successful. Weiss, “Päpstliche Expektanzen,” 151. They were highly coveted among German clerics as late as the first half of the 16th century; cf. Tewes, Die römische Kurie. 100 Via artificial, anterior dates (which were defined in the Regulae Cancellariae), curialists, university graduates, princes, nobles, and their protégés could claim a wide range of prerogatives over other providees. Schwarz, “Römische Kurie und Pfründenmarkt,” 135–36.

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It is amid criticisms that the Whore of Babylon was turning the Vineyard of the Lord into a stock exchange that reform councils at Basle and Konstanz had sought to instil some certainty and predictability in the clerical job market. At the Council of Trent, expectative graces had been abolished altogether in Sess. XXIV Can. 19, both as legal instruments (but informal recommendations subsisted) and as mental frameworks.101 The university’s representatives at the Council, who had good reasons to perceive this as a direct attack on the university’s privileges, had tried to put things right in the Council’s last session in 1564 (Sess. XXV Cap. 9 De Reform).102 Louvain academics, the selfacclaimed champions of Trent in the Low Countries, found it was difficult to prevent pernicious readings of the Tridentine decrees. Under the pontificate of Pius V Ghislieri, a competitor of a Louvain nominee for a canonship in Bruges had managed to get the Council on his side in the brief Romanum Pontificem (12 May 1569), which stated that the Louvain privileges of nomination were subjected to Sess. XXIV can. 19 and that university and faculty nominees could henceforward claim only benefices cum effectu vacante (benefices that had already become vacant before their nomination).103 Academics decided to mobilise all their resources in Rome as well as in Brussels in order to effect a full restoration of their privileges, or at least to curtail the free collations of the ordinary collators within one month after the vacancy of the benefice.104 It was not until the dawn of the pontificate of Gregory XIII

101 Concilium Tridentinum, 9, 987. The abolition of “planning” in the clerical job market (and on the market of patronage and clientelism) was not put into practice, because prolonged vacancies were to be avoided. It is not unthinkable, however that the disappearance of a formalised system of expectative graces in local circuits may have had a hand in the bishops’ sway over many rectorships devolving to them because ordinary collators did not find suitable pastors in a timely manner. 102 “Reliqui patronatus omnes in beneficiis . . . seu facultates et privilegia concessa, . . . alio quocumque jure, nominandi, eligendi, praesentandi ad ea cum vacant . . . et exceptis aliis quae ad imperatorem et reges seu regna possidentes aliosque sublimes ac supremos principes, . . . pertinent, et quae in favorum studiorum generalium concessa sunt. . . .” Concilium Tridentinum, 9, 1090. See De Ram, Mémoire, 72–76. On the academics’ attitude towards the publication of the council’s decrees, see Acta Universitatis, 1565–1566, RAL, OUL, 58 and 59, respectively, 115r–117r and 217r; Indices, RAL, OUL, 729, 81. Cf. Willocx, L’introduction, 234–35. 103 ASV, Brevi Lateranensi, 80, 637–41. 104 The loss of the jus preventionis, to “prevent” ordinary collations via nominations, probably made it much more difficult for an academic in Louvain to seize a benefice, because assertive collators and locally operating clerics could easily make moves before Louvain candidates had even gotten wind of the vacancy. Indices, RAL, OUL,

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Buoncompagni, formerly a teacher in canon law himself at Bologna (and Philip II’s candidate for the job), that academics could align the public interest with their reading of Trent and could obtain a confirmation of their privileges in the bull In Praecelsa (1573), the nonobstantiae of which stipulated explicitly that the Council’s decrees could not be invoked against the Louvain privileges. All this implies that academic nominations—just as much as the French privilège des gradués—were still modelled, in the 17th and 18th centuries, after the medieval expectative graces granted in large quantities by the papacy until Trent. Papal and princely legislation stipulated that fresh nominees had to notify their nomination to the collator in question via a formal insinuatio within one month after the nomination in order not to irritate “their” magnates unnecessarily.105 The formal claim to a benefice—the acceptatio sanctioned by a notary that was to be published formally on the site of the benefice and registered in the Libri Nominationum, could, in theory, occur many years later. Academic authorities barely intervened in the selection of benefices that were accepted, despite statutory regulations that nominees, and notably those accepting rectorships, had to ask their permission. In practice, nominees were only prodded into accepting benefices if they had postponed their acceptation indefinitely and had barred the road for others;106 in order to avoid harmful precedents (for instance

729, 51v–73r and 91–98; editions of relevant correspondence in Claeys-Bouuaert, L’Ancienne Université de Louvain, 297–98; and Pou y Marti, “La universidad de Lovaina,” 437 and 439. 105 I.e., the papal brief Nuper Cum of 1574 (university and faculty) and the Caroline Concordat of 1531 (with respect to the faculty’s privilege of nomination). Nomination letters were accompanied by notarial acts, or carried notarial notes in the margins or on the back of the document with respect to this formal insinuatio. Cf. the nomination letters in A.A.M., OUL, 1–10. Negligence could have serious consequences and was often the incentive behind “renominationes” which, in analogy to papal novae provisiones, had to compensate for disregard of the formalities. Several examples in the Acta Facultatis Artium, RAL, OUL, 714, 361, 537r–v, and 715, 18r, 88r–v, 443. Peter Lombard got in trouble in 1595 when his competitor for a Séclin canonship stated that his nomination had not been insinuated properly; the Faculty of Arts sent a memorandum in his support to the Privy Council in which it claimed that this allegation was false, as nominandi had to take a statutory oath that they would insinuate their nomination. Acta Facultatis Artium, 16 September 1595, RAL, OUL, 713, 428r–v. 106 In the beginning of the 1620s, some leading academics felt that nominees should be forced by statutory law to accept the first benefice that became vacant after their nomination in “their” benefice pool. The immediate cause was the exasperating

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university nominees accepting benefices before faculty nominees did); or when litigious benefices were abandoned and new candidates had to be found to pursue lawsuits that were considered vital by academic authorities. In this context, the supervision by the Arts faculty of legal agreements and other transactions between nominees and their opponents should be considered a prohibitive measure aiming at keeping the privileges intact.107 Benefices with care of souls may have formed an exception to this rule: the first conflict over whether or not nominees had to participate to the concursus surfaced only in 1620.108 A statute stipulating that nominees had to take an oath not to accept benefices charged with care of souls before having been examined by the deputation had already been drafted five years earlier.109 This suggests that academics, drawing on their experience as local Church officials and administrators, considered benefices of this type a distinct category that called for special treatment; nonetheless, “examinations” mostly consisted of the reading of recommendation letters from college presidents and by no means equalled, at least in the minutes, the number of rectorships claimed by virtue of the faculty’s nomination privilege within the same period.110

patience of Van Eertwijck. That he had “spoiled” another prelacy (another change of regime in Bruges had just occurred) apparently was a spanner in the works of other scholars: the last nomination to the bishop of Bruges by the university had taken place in 1602, after the appointment of De Rodoan (1602–16) to the episcopal chair. This nominee had accepted a canonship sometime in 1604, but the concerned prelacy lasted for 12 more years, which inhibited the university from using its prerogatives once more. Consequently, the nomination of Van Eertwijck by the university must have taken place after the ascession of Triest as the fifth bishop of Bruges in 1617. Strubbe and Voet, Chronologie, 254. 107 Except for the relevant oath to be taken according to university statutes, no cases have been attested in the Acta Universitatis. 108 Cf. the conflict with the bishop of Namur over the acceptation of a rectorship by Joannes Meurant, Acta Facultatis Artium, 23 June 1620, AGR, OUL, 715, 337; recommendations were issued. The outcome of the affair is not known. 109 “Quicumque deinceps nominabitur ad collationes sub quibus comprehenduntur beneficia curam animarum habentia iurabit antequam nominetur se non acceptaturum ullum tale beneficium, nisi prius exhibito deputatis ordinariis sufficienti ex eorum iudicio morum et doctrine testimonio sub pena nullitatis.” Ordinationes Facultatis Artium (. . .), in Varia de universitate Lovaniensi, A.A.Pa., R.VII, 60, 225r–v. 110 The first case occurred in 1617; only four other cases were attested in between April 1615 (the drafting of the statutes) and December 1621, against 19 acceptations of benefices with the care of souls in the same period.

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Plate 3.3. Act of Insinuation Insinuation to the diocesan administration by Joannes De Cuyper, Licenciate in Theology, of his nomination by the rector of the university of 27 December 1668 burdening the collations of the archbishop of Mechlin. The insinuation was duly certified by a royal and apostolic notary within the prescribed term of one month on 3 January 1669, in the presence of two witnesses. In this case, it was registered in the right angle at the bottom of the nomination letter itself, which often also bears the registration of the eventual acceptation. [Archdiocesan Archives, Mechlin]

Despite the legal format that was adopted, however, the time interval between nomination and acceptation tended to be short. Holders of nomination letters were, typically, eager to turn their rights into a possession of a specific benefice. In some cases, the difference from regular appointments to vacant offices was academic, as university members did not hesitate to accept benefices that were already vacant before their nomination. Almost 13 per cent of the 1007 acceptations (for c.2050 nominations in between 1580 and 1640) recorded in the Libri Nominationum mention the date of the vacancy of the benefice in question. A significant proportion of these involve nominations to vacant benefices (cum effectu vacante), whose acceptation was recorded on the same day. In the 1580s and 1590s, c.half of the positions claimed by virtue of academic nominations had become vacant before the date of the nomination. The archducal period occupies a middle position, with more than one-third of nominations taking place cum effectu vacante. Data for the 1620s and 1630s are scarce. If representative, however, the low proportions may well reflect the normalisation of

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the clerical job market. As the number of eligible clergymen caught up with economically viable benefices, there must have been fewer opportunities for nominees to make an easy catch without being challenged in court by competitors, this being a practice that remained heavily contested until the end of the 18th century. In the 1580s as well as in the 1610s and in the 1630s, more than half to approximately 70 per cent of the nominees who formally accepted a benefice did so within the first year, or even in the first quarter, after the nomination. Cornelius Jansenius belonged to a minority, mostly staff members111 who had the “maille d’avantage” of biding their time for three or more years until an honourable position became available. In these three time periods, a large proportion of nominations was followed by an acceptation within one month, which suggests that many nominees already had their eyes on a specific benefice before investing in nomination letters (which were not for free either) and wished to redeem their nomination quickly. Yet, figures vary from more than 40 per cent in the 1580s to 28 per cent in the 1610s and 31 per cent in the 1630s. If one takes into consideration the first year after the nomination, the 1580s once more take the lead with 68 per cent, now followed by the 1610s (63 per cent), with the 1630s lagging behind with slightly more than half of the nominations. Significantly, in the 1580s, only 10 per cent of nominees were still hesitating three years after their nomination, against slightly more than 20 per cent in the 1630s; the 1610s taking the middle position again with 4 per cent. These numbers, combined with the figures for nominations cum effectu vacante, suggest that in the 1580s and 1630s, it was job security that prevailed as a central preoccupation, albeit in very different circumstances: respectively, the shortage of financially viable benefices at the nadir of the civil war combined with the fact that many clerics had fled or died; or increasing competition in a (from the point of view of ecclesiastical authorities) normalising clerical job market. The gap between the 1610s, an era of opportunity in which clerics could take more risks without jeopardising their chances; and the eventful 1580s

111 In the 1610s, at least 12 out of 14 nominees who waited for more than three years before accepting a benefice were staff members.

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becomes more clearly articulated when only figures for staff members are considered. Nearly all acceptations by staff members in the 1580s occurred in the aftermath of the reconciliation of Antwerp with the Monarchy by Farnese in 1585. A real scramble for financially viable benefices, among teachers and presidents who had been on the rocks for years, can be read into the two-thirds of nominations leading to an acceptation within the first month (76.5 per cent in the first quarter) after the nomination, against, respectively, 18 per cent and 23 per cent in the 1610s and in the 1630s.112 In the period of the Truce, slightly more than 40 per cent of staff members holding nomination letters had not yet made up their mind two years later, compared to 8 per cent in the 1580s. Not every nomination led to the acceptation of a benefice. Nominees may have applied for a renominatio that, like papal novae provisiones, had to remove unforeseen difficulties. These could arise from nominees muddling the formalities—notably the insinuatio—towards “their” ordinary collator, from the latter’s death, or from the expiration of a decennium before the nominee in question had accepted a benefice of his choice. In addition, a number of resignations, not of benefices but of nominations, were registered in the Libri Nominationum as well. With respect to the 779 nominations recorded in the archducal period, 334 acceptations (256 or 37 per cent of the close to 700 faculty nominations) were registered. While university registers from the 18th century only kept nominations that had resulted in acceptations, the 16th- and 17th-century Libri Nominationum of the Arts faculty register re-nominations and resignations in c.23 per cent of all entries. The outcome of 37 per cent of nominations (41 per cent of faculty nominations) remains obscure. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the exact numbers of nominations abandoned because their beneficiaries had left the university.113 However, relative figures seem to confirm the normalisation of the clerical job market, which went hand in hand with increased competition.

112 The figures for the 1580s concern only those staff members who were still performing as such after 1598. 113 Only 27 entries between 1598 and 1621, or 3 per cent of all entries in the libri nominationum of the Arts faculty, refer explicitly to the departure of the beneficiary from the university, or his death, before a benefice had actually been claimed.

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266 287 99 59

98 60

105 52 25

452 334

207

1580−1597 Acceptations

1598−1621 Renominations

Resignations

1622−1640 Unknown/Exit

Fig. 3.5. Faculty and university nominations: outcomes

The larger proportion of nominations that led to an acceptation of a benefice in the period 1580–97 (53 per cent), on the one hand, and in the 1620s (48 per cent) or the 1630s (54 per cent), on the other hand, in combination with the proportionally smaller numbers of resignations and re-nominations in the third time interval suggest that in the archducal period, more clergymen left the university without putting their nominations to use. This may have implied prolonging their stay at Louvain and forfeiting other job opportunities that, for graduated clerics, must have been relatively abundant by then. Roughly 200 benefices were claimed, most within the first months after their nomination, by the c.320 students among the nominees of 1598–1621. In comparison, more than 80 per cent of staff members (or 130 out of c.160 individuals) who applied for nominations during their stay at the university eventually ended up accepting more than 250 benefices, which amounted to 140 benefices accepted by staff members in the archducal period alone. To be sure, academics did not turn their claims into reality more consistently than students: because they dwelled longer at Louvain, they simply applied more frequently for nominations. At the same time, they accounted for nearly all renominations and for two-thirds of resignations that were registered for nominations between 1598 and 1621. Via resignations, academics may have frequently privatised the authority of the respective nomination boards, just as much as clerics elsewhere did with the help of

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permutations and other transactions: by resigning their nominations formally (but with discretion), they could pass them on in practice to friends or protégés, allowing them to apply for the now-vacant nomination during the same session of the board before competitors could show up.114 It is these hidden activities that had triggered fierce reactions from the higher faculties in 1615.

3.3. “Il a envie de la changer en simples bénéfices.” Poor scholars, miserly benefices? Let us now turn to the benefice Jansenius had claimed: a canonship in the collegiate church of Saint Peter’s at Lille, one of the most lucrative prebends to be found in the South Netherlands. As a matter of fact, he was considering a permutation for two other benefices, the combined value of which would furnish him with a yearly income of 600 florins (or the threefold of an “academic” canonship in Saint Peter’s at Louvain). Jansenius’ example seems to contradict academic rhetoric, that the poor scholars at Louvain could only claim the most humble benefices in specific areas, their privileges being the object of various restrictions, financial and otherwise, imposed on them by prudent popes and wise princes. Only benefices situated in the Low Countries could be seized by virtue of the university’s nomination bull Urget Nos of Sixtus IV or the faculty’s equivalent Admonet Nos of Leo X. The use of the location of the benefice as a criterion was particularly well adapted to the organisation of the Church in the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages, when many collators—including most bishops and cathedral chapters—resided outside the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands. Under the reign of the Archdukes, only 3 per cent of nomination letters were addressed to collators residing in northeastern France (Laon, Noyon, Reims, and Verdun) or in the Empire (Cologne and Trier). Next, there were the dozens of collators in the Principality of Liège with benefices in gift in Habsburg Luxemburg, Brabant, Namur, Hainault, Guelders, or in Limburg, territories that until the diocesan reform of

114 A sample of 125 resignations (or one out of two resignations that were registered in between 1580 and 1640) suggests that slightly more than 40 per cent of nominations that were returned officially “in manibus facultatis” were claimed on the very same day by other university members, which probably allowed for many liaisons.

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the 1560s had been part of the diocese of Liège. In addition, a large number of benefices in the homonymous prince-bishopric were seized as well. It is also in this respect that the faculty’s privilege was more extended than the university’s. Geographical circumscriptions in the faculty’s Leonina being worded in terms of (medieval ) dioceses, faculty nominations could also be used to seize benefices in areas situated outside princely territories: the city of Tournai and the ancient prince-bishopric of Tournaisis,115 which would become part of the Habsburg Netherlands shortly afterwards; Cambrai and the county of Cambrésis, which were annexed by the end of the 16th century;116 the episcopal city of Utrecht; and, from Hadrian VI’s 1523 confirmation bull onwards, the homonymous diocese. Unsurprisingly, few acceptations of benefices in the rebel provinces were registered after the 1580s. The faculty’s privilege of nomination was much more extended because it included the Principality of Liège. Just like the figures provided by the Vatican Per Obitum series, the beneficial stock in this last area exerted a particular, albeit less pronounced, attraction on academic nominees. Between 1580 and 1640, the diocese of Liège hosted, according to Figs. 3.6–8, one-fifth to onethird of all claims to benefices (against 57 per cent of papal provisions) made by academics with reference to their combined nomination privileges in the diocese of Liège (Liège 1 in the graphs below) or via the new legal instruments provided by the Concordatum Paulinum of 1616 in the homonymous prince-bishopric (Liège 2).117 There are other 115 University nominees apparently did not balk at accepting benefices in Tournaisis as well: three out of eight claims to benefices made in the diocese of Tournai by university nominees between 1580 and 1640 were situated in the small province of Tournaisis or in Tournai. Registre aux nominations, RAL, OUL, 4784, 73 and 207. 116 Vande Velde explicitly ruled out these regions when he enumerated the provinces in which the university’s nominees could claim benefices. “Sunt Brabantia sub qua est Antverpia eiusque districtus quia ad marchionatum Sancti Imperii spectat et infra quam Mechlinia eiusque territorium provincia alioquin separata, Limburgum et relique ditiones transmosane, Luxemburgium et Cimacensis comitatus, Geldria, item Flandria (non tamen Tornacum utpote prius acquisitum anno 1521) Arthesia (non tamen civitas Atrebatensis aut Morinensis utpote de temporali dominio suorum episcoporum), Namurcum, Hannonia, Hollandia et Zelandia cum Frisia. Relique due provincie ex 17 Belgicis Ultrajectensis et Transisulana postmodum accesserunt . . . circa annum 1528.” Guilielmus Vande Velde, De Nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22191, 13r. 117 This new privilege, to which we will turn in the next chapters, was valid only in the Principality of Liège. Other regions situated both in the Habsburg Netherlands and in the diocese of Liège continued to be visited by academic nominees by virtue of the Sixtina and the Leonina.

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Other: 2; 1% Arras: 11; 6%

Liège 2: 0; 0% Liège 1: 61; 32%

Cambrai: 30; 15%

Namur: 13; 7%

Saint-Omer: 5; 3% Ypres: 5; 3% Mechlin: 25; 13%

Tournai: 17; 9%

Ghent: 5; 3% Bruges: 3; 2%

Antwerp: 5; 3%

Den Bosch: 5; 3%

Fig. 3.6. Acceptations: geographical distribution (dioceses) 1580–97 Other: 3; 1% Arras: 26; 8%

Liège 2: 12; 4% Liège 1: 66; 21%

Cambrai: 59; 19%

Namur: 32; 10% Ypres: 18; 6%

Saint-Omer: 3; 1%

Mechlin: 34; 11%

Tournai: 26; 8%

Ghent: 9; 3%

Bruges: 4; 1% Antwerp: 9; 3%

Den Bosch: 11; 4%

Fig. 3.7. Acceptations: geographical distribution (dioceses) 1598–1621 Other: 7; 2% Liège 2: 74; 16%

Arras: 23; 5%

Liège 1: 17; 14%

Cambrai: 68; 15%

Ypres: 14; 3% Namur: 73; 16%

Mechlin: 67; 15%

Saint-Omer: 13; 3%

Ghent: 9; 4%

Tournai: 30; 7% Bruges: 22; 5% Antwerp: 13; 3%

Den Bosch: 11; 2%

Fig. 3.8. Acceptations: geographical distribution (dioceses) 1622–40

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similarities with the Per Obitum list as well: the dioceses of Cambrai and Mechlin came second and third; the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai in its entirety proved to be more much more attractive for academic nominees than the one of Mechlin. An in-depth investigation may reveal to what extent these inequities are to be attributed to the unequal distribution of (financially viable vs. “nominal”) benefices over the respective circumscriptions. A diachronic approach informed by the model of a revitalised clerical job market after the Civil War is highly instructive in this respect.118 It is not only the number of acceptations that increased dramatically in the three intervals that are involved in the analysis, from 207 (1580–97) to more than c.350 (1598–1621) to more than 500 formal claims (1622–40).119 Their distribution over various geographical circumscriptions shifts as well. The share taken by the diocese of Liège was continuously shrinking, from 32 per cent to 25 per cent to 21 per cent of all claims to benefices by academics via formal acceptations or otherwise, a trajectory that could also be observed in Vatican registers between 1606 and 1640. The attractiveness of the ecclesiastical job market in the ecclesiastical province of Mechlin remained feeble in the archducal period (from 27 per cent to 28 per cent) and only started to gain ground (32 per cent)—despite the loss of Den Bosch in 1629 to the heretics—in the third time interval: notably in the dioceses of Mechlin, Ghent, and Bruges. In the 1620s and 1630s, the share of acceptations taken by the province of Cambrai remained stable at more or less 46 per cent. This must be ascribed to the spectacular rise, in relative and absolute numbers, of claims to benefices in the diocese of Namur. This diocese failed to attract many papal provisions but came second to Liège only in the 1620s and the 1630s as a venue for academic nominations. To an extent, the unequal distribution of acceptations can be accounted for by the geographical origin of nominees themselves: in the archducal period, the dioceses of Liège, Cambrai, Mechlin and Namur, which hosted 55 per cent of all acceptations, are indeed the

118 In c.9 per cent of registrations in the three time intervals involved in the analysis, the diocese and/or the location of the benefice that was the object of an acceptation could not be identified. 119 Advowsons by virtue of the Concordatum Paulinum, which were not taken into consideration in Fig. 3.5 because they cannot be considered acceptations, are also included in Fig. 6–8. (Liège 2).

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ecclesiastical circumscriptions that furnished 77 per cent of the individuals who were registered as acceptors in the university’s or the faculty’s nomination books.120 This suggests that many clerics from “the big four” used their nomination letters to gain access to the job markets of the other dioceses. The picture is more complex, however. Diocesan clerics claimed 45 per cent of all benefices.121 As a consequence, the behaviour of Louvain nominees in the clerical job market seem not to have differed significantly from papal providees (roughly 40 per cent of whom were diocesan clerics)122 or even from the individuals surfacing in Hovius’ collation registers, 53 per cent of whom turned out to be clerics of the archdiocese itself—numbers that outstrip the data for the 17th-century diocese of Ghent, where only 35 per cent of rectors, vice-rectors, and vicars in the first half of the 17th century were harvested from the diocese itself.123 The proportion of benefices accepted by diocesan nominees was, admittedly, on or above average in the “big four” (and in the diocese of Den Bosch).124 In absolute numbers, by contrast, the number of benefices in these dioceses claimed by extra-diocesan graduates equalled those in the other dioceses, where diocesan clerics tended to be grossly underrepresented in comparison with general figures.125 Seen from this perspective, clerical migration in relative and in absolute numbers cannot be considered a one-way traffic from regions bursting with clerics to clerical deserts, although it should be noted that this analysis does not take into account the directions of intra-diocesan migration.126 As soon as one starts to distinguish staff members among the nominees from graduates, the average of c.45 per cent of benefices accepted by diocesan clerics proves to be highly artificial, however. Although 120 Of the c.340 acceptations that followed a nomination issued between 1598 and 1621, 19 per cent were linked to individuals whose diocesan allegiance remains unknown. 121 Enough data were available for 249 acceptations, or 74 per cent of all acceptations following nominations rubber-stamped by faculty or university boards between 1598 and 1621. 122 Based on the samples for 1606–10 and 1616–20. Proportions even jump to 76 per cent if one includes the diocese of Liège, where 91–96 per cent of supplicants identified themselves as diocesan clerics. 123 This figure contrasts sharply with the proportion of diocesan clerics in the diocese’s ordination lists, more than 90 per cent of whom were natives of the diocese of Ghent. Vanden Broecke, “Seculiere geestelijken,” 203. 124 Figures vary from 45–50 per cent in the archdiocese of Mechlin and in Namur, to over 64–69 per cent in Liège and Cambrai, to 77 per cent in the diocese of Den Bosch. 125 I.e., the 45 per cent yardstick, which turns out to be the result of high figures for Mechlin, Cambrai, and Liège. 126 Compare, in this respect, Vanden Broecke, “Seculiere Geestelijken.”

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half of the acceptors among the members of the academic staff did use their nomination letters to seize benefices in their diocese of origin, they often claimed benefices in other areas as well. The 34 per cent of benefices accepted by diocesan clerics in this group, whose regional origins more or less reflect those of the entire population of staff members,127 contrasts sharply with the 62 per cent of “diocesan” acceptations completed by university members who never joined the academic staff, a proportion that outstrips the few data we dispose of with respect to general patterns of clerical migration via ordinary circuits in the archducal period.128 Graduates who chose to seek office outside the university did not just use their nominations as a gateway to other clerical job markets that were increasingly crammed into diocesan structures; they also may have tried to outperform, with the help of the prerogatives that came with academic nominations, potential competitors for specific benefices in their own diocese or even on their own home base.129 Because students became more frequent applicants in the 1620s and the 1630s, both in absolute and in relative numbers, it can be expected that the share of diocesan acceptations also rose in this time interval, especially in a scenario of increasing competition in the clerical job market together with its gradual normalisation. This hypothesis may well be supported by the evidence furnished by the Vatican Per Obitum series, where similar trends in the numbers of “diocesan” papal provisions can be detected in the first half of the 17th century.130 127 Again, it is Brabant and Mechlin that furnished the largest contingent of teachers (c.32 per cent or 79 individuals out of c.240 staff members), with the university town being the birthplace of slightly over 10 per cent of all academics. Flanders and the Stewardships, by contrast, furnished only 7 per cent of the teaching staff (16 individuals) and were, within the Habsburg Netherlands, surpassed by Hainault (13 per cent or 32 individuals). Artois and Tournaisis on the one hand, and the Southeastern provinces of Namur, Luxemburg, and Limburg on the other (regions that were situated on the Southwestern and the Southeastern fringes of the Habsburg Netherlands), provided 7 per cent of the teaching staff. Foreigners constituted the second largest group in the overall population (28 per cent): the Principality of Liège was second to the Brabant contingent only with 15 per cent, while one out of ten academics was recruited from among Catholic exiles from the United Provinces. Seven individuals had their roots elsewhere, i.e., in the Iberian peninsula, in the Holy Roman Empire, or in the British Isles. 128 The average of 62 per cent is, again, superseded by the dioceses of Liège, Cambrai, Namur, and Den Bosch, while Mechlin lagged behind with only one out of two acceptations being completed by a diocesan cleric. Students are underrepresented because fewer data are available on their geographical origins (i.e., c.140 observations for c.200 acceptors who did not join the academic staff ). 129 I.e., in 24 acceptations (c.15 per cent) by students out of 159 registrations that provide enough information on both the benefice and the acceptor. 130 It is less pronounced, however. In the ecclesiastical provinces of Mechlin and

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Enter the categories of benefices that were accepted by academics. A substantial number of benefices remained outside the grasp of Louvain claimants. The privileges of nomination (just as much as papal reservations of benefices, for that matter) only affected benefices of the canon law system whose advowson fell to clerics in their capacity as members of ecclesiastical hierarchy, not those who came under the system of lay patronage. These restrictions were explicitly repeated in the royal placet letters, which also ruled out claims to benefices whose appointment belonged to the prince by virtue of various nomination indults. In practice, this implied that prelacies in the Habsburg Netherlands, including the first dignities of collegiate and cathedral chapters (provostships, deanships, or secular abbacies) were untouchable. Last but not least, already in the 1540s, academic statutes had stipulated that acceptors of rectorships or other benefices charged with the care of souls had to observe canonical residence, provided that peaceful possession had been secured, within one year after the acceptation. Whether university men lived up to these ideals in the 16th century remains a moot point, but they did so at least from 1573 onwards, when the restriction was canonised by Gregory XIII’s confirmation bull, In Praecelsa. Seen from this perspective, the nomination books kept by the university and by the Arts faculty seem to be the local, academic variants of Roman registers of the Dataria Apostolica rather than copies of the lists of appointments produced by Hovius and his diocesan administration. Between 1580 and 1640, altars and other simple benefices were numerically the most prominent category of benefices claimed by academic nominees (421 registrations), followed by canonships (358 entries), with rectorships occupying the third position (267 registrations).131 Delving deeper into these data, however, one is under the impression that nomination books rather occupied a middle ground somewhere between Vatican registers and diocesan lists. First, rectorships were, at least in relative numbers, much more popular with academic nominees than with their papal counterparts. Second, they constituted the fastest growing segment in the Louvain registers, Cambrai, proportions of diocesan papal provisions rose from 38 per cent in the 1606– 10 sample, to more than 43 per cent in 1616–20, to 45 per cent in the 1636–40 sample based on Per Obitum, while absolute numbers more or less doubled from c.100 (1606–10) to more than 200 papal provisions (1636–40). 131 Again, the results for the Principality of Liège, which technically were not touched any more by the privileges of nomination from 1616 onwards, are included in these statistics.

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despite the spectacular rise of altars accepted in the 1620s and 1630s. The share of rectorships of the total number of benefices accepted by academic nominees had nearly quadrupled in 1622–40, from a miserly 9 per cent in the last decades of the 16th century to more than 23 per cent in the archducal period to 32 per cent in the 1620s and 1630s. 209 167 134 88 91

Canonships

136 121

Altars Rectorships

81

19

1580–1597

Not Specified

13

11

9 1598–1621

1622–1640

Fig. 3.9. Acceptations: types of benefices (entire population)

Moreover, claims to rectorships were, compared to papal provisions, no longer limited to one single diocese (Liège) but were gradually extended to 9 out of 12 dioceses in 1598–1621 and affected all of them in the third and fourth decades of the 17th century. This linear trend overlaps with another one: the gradual spread of acceptations over an increasing number of localities within the dioceses themselves. In the 1580s and 1590s, the top 27 locations in the Louvain nomination books took 56 per cent of all claims. This rate comes close to the highly unequal distribution of papal provisions, nearly 60 per cent of which involved benefices in locations abundant with clerics and similar career opportunities. In the archducal period, however, the top 27 locations that hosted three or more claims by virtue of academic privileges only took 48 per cent of all acceptations, and they lost even more ground in the third time interval (34 per cent).132 This linear trend matches well with the observation that, alongside the relatively

132 In the entire time period, the top 27 locations (Liège, Cambrai, Douai, Bruges, Nivelles, Ghent, Lille, Arras, Namur, Mons, Harelbeke, Ypres, Louvain, Saint-Omer,

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stable number of benefices that were accepted in, or in the immediate environment of, big hubs of clerical employment such as collegiate and cathedral churches, (rural ) parish churches, chapels, and hospital churches gradually entered the horizon of Louvain acceptors as well in the first decades of the 17th century. Louvain’s educational programme obviously started to bear fruits. This explanation might have appealed to the academics themselves, the model of the “pastoral graduate” who had been spiritually and intellectually prepared in the Louvain colleges being central to the image university men sought to convey about their role in society. However, the figures drawn from the nomination books cannot entirely be ascribed to the patient instillation of a specific pastoral habitus of a Tridentine bent, the activities of nominees in the clerical job market being much more diverse than general figures suggest. First, we have seen that the triumph of the Tridentine pastor was a hybrid product of high-minded ideals but also of the ups and downs of the clerical job market. Louvain nominees, for their part, did not diversify their targets in an unequivocal manner. Acceptations may have become less concentrated in specific locations in the diocese of Liège as well as in the ecclesiastical provinces of Mechlin and Cambrai in the first decades of the 17th century, but it is obvious that the suffragan dioceses of Mechlin lagged behind general figures both with respect to the different categories of benefices that were accepted and to the number of locations that were visited by academic nominees.133 The diocese of Liège furnished 13 out of 19 rectorships that were accepted

Cassel, Tournai, Maastricht, Mechlin, Ronse, Séclin, Aire, Hilvarenbeek, Den Bosch, Turnhout, Valenciennes, Antoing, Brussels) with more than eight acceptations over 60 years (i.e., locations with two or more hits in 1580–97; and three acceptations or more in the two following time intervals) attracted more or less 40 per cent of the 935 acceptations whose location could be identified, which is well below the 60 per cent of papal provisions in the top-27 localities with ten “hits” or more registered in the 16-year sample based on the Per Obitum list, more than half of which also figure in the Louvain top-27. 133 In the archducal period, Antwerp and Bruges were never visited by acceptors coveting rectorships. None of the other dioceses reached the average of rectorships constituting 23 per cent of all benefices that were accepted by academic nominees, Ghent and Den Bosch coming close with respectively 22 per cent and 18 per cent, but absolute numbers remain negligible (two rectorships in both cases). Mechlin and Ypres lagged behind with respectively 9 per cent and 6 per cent. The share of rectorships increased in the 1620s and the 1630s (with Mechlin approaching 22 per cent), but only topped the interval’s average of 32 per cent in Ghent (37 per cent). The decline in the relative numbers of rectorships accepted in the diocese of Den Bosch

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by academics in the last decades of the 16th century, but it already had to cede its lead to the diocese of Cambrai in the archducal period (rectorships constituting 41 per cent of all benefices accepted by academics in that diocese) and in the 1620s and 1630s (56 per cent). Most other dioceses of the homonymous ecclesiastical province performed well above average too, in both time intervals.134 Again, an in-depth investigation into the clerical infrastructure of the Low Countries and its economic hinterland may provide for some of the answers. The rural rectorships in Hainault (Cambrai) and South Brabant (Namur) were home to rich, large-scale corn growers who were more likely to yield high tithes, as opposed to the populous parishes of crofters who struggled to make ends meet on the industrialised and highly urbanised Flemish countryside.135 But other factors that cannot be reduced to the logic of the market may have played, in return, their own role in triggering a demand for nomination letters boosting the competitiveness of their holders. There may have been recruitment channels against which Louvain nominees found it difficult to compete, without their academic prerogatives. It remains to be investigated to what extent these channels may have passed through the University of Douai, located in the same French-Flemish town that hosted the provincial seminary established by the archbishop and his suffragans, and the colleges of religious orders whose abbots were responsible, alongside the bishops, for the recruitment of the rural parish clergy. The numerous canonships and other benefices that were accepted by Louvain nominees in the collegiate churches at Douai may offer a telling example in this respect. Moreover, draft proposals in the 1570s for a projected privilege of nomination of the University of Douai sought to enrol the archbishop of Cambrai as the apostolic executor who had to see to the privilege’s observation, and the army of

should probably be ascribed to the renewed hostilities from 1620 onwards, and to the loss of that territory to the rebels in 1629. 134 In 1598–1621 as well as in 1622–40, the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai furnished slightly more than half of the acceptations of rectorships. Within the province, only the diocese of Arras lagged behind with only 26 per cent of acceptations in the last time interval involving rectorships. By then, the diocese of Liège, which had still performed above average in the archducal period, with rectorships constituting 29 per cent of the benefices that were the object of an acceptation by virtue of academic nomination letters, struggled to reach the general average of 32 per cent. 135 A survey on (among others) rural economy in the Low Countries in Aerts, “Economische interventie”; see also Thoen, “The Rural History.”

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diocesan parish priests as potential beneficiaries.136 In 1609, the archbishop even submitted, via the status dioecesis he had to send to Rome every five years, a suggestive request to the Roman Congregation of the Council that would allow him to outmanoeuvre Louvain nominees by submitting them to the diocesan concursus.137 All this suggests that the Duacenses disposed of established, even institutionalised, lines of contact with big employers in their own hinterland that the Louvain nominees lacked. Competitive clerical job markets fuelled the emergence of the “Tridentine pastor,” but markets themselves became more “Tridentine” as well. Seen from this perspective, it is surprising that the number of urban rectorships that were accepted by Louvain nominees is negligible. Such occupations were, of course, more demanding, but much more prestige and financial gain was attached to them, via the casualia or otherwise. The South’s towns and cities must have been thrilling places for young and ambitious clerics who were keen on participating in the great enterprise of Catholic reform in the early 17th century. This apparent lack of interest should be ascribed partially to two factors: first, the advowson of urban rectorships was in many cases the reserve of the prestigious chapters of canons, which conversely managed relatively few rural rectorships compared to bishops and abbots. Second, nominees were not a homogeneous group. The Louvain job agencies took

136 As a consequence, the Douai proposal may have been shouldered by the archbishop of Cambrai as well (contrary to the Louvain privileges, which had been obtained without the support of bishops). Copia libelli supplicis universitatis Duacensis Rome SS exhibende, submitted to the Privy Council before 24 January 1574, UAL, OUL, 307. The bishop of Tournai, a friend of academics at Louvain and at Douai, was believed to promote Douai’s interests in the field in the late 1580s. Godefridus Chineij to his academic patron Wamesius, professor in Law, 2 December 1589, Acta Universitatis, 4 January 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 85r–86v. 137 “Cumque concurrant ad vacationes huiusmodi alumni seminarii provinciae Cameracensis ex universitate oppidi Duacensis Atrebatensis dioec et alii presbiteri ex collegiis et seminariis aliis, plerique baccalaurei aut licentiati in Theologia, ac alias in casibus conscientiae et iis quae pertinent ad functiones pastorales bene versati; Adveniant etiam sepius nominati ex universitati Lovaniensi qui vigore indulti apostolici volunt preferri aliis licet saepius et doctrina et qualitatibus requisitis inferiores et impares reperiantur; dignabitur Sanctitas Vestra declarare, quomodo archiepiscopus in hoc casu sese gerere debeat; an sit habenda ratio illius qui inter omnes examinatos maxime idoneus fuerit iudicatus, an vero Nominatus Lovaniensis inferioris idoneitatis praeferri debeat, . . . enim iuxta cap 18 Sessio 24 concilii Tridentini ordinarium debere approbato et reperto magis idoneo beneficium curatum conferre, non obstantibus privilegiis universitatibus concessis.” Cameracensis Relatio 6ti quadriennii exhibita die 10 februarii 1609 per procuratorem, ASV, Congreg. Concilio, Relat. Dioec., 175, 36v.

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care of both students and staff members, the latter having precedence over the former. This may explain (alongside the cyclical devastation of the South’s countryside by marauding rebels) why acceptations of rectorships were rare in the 1580s and 1590s: a relatively large proportion of acceptors in these days must have been staff members who had not left the university in its darkest hours and who did not wish to abort their academic career when the old Alma Mater started to show some signs of life again by assuming pastoral charges that would force them to leave the university. Their interests in the beneficial stock of the South Netherlands continued to diverge from those of the entire population in the next intervals as well, although these would gradually be overshadowed somewhat in general figures because of increasing numbers of students applying for nominations. 83

Canonships

49

Altars Rectorships

35 28 16 17

Not Specified

12 1

1

2

3

2

Fig. 3.10. Acceptations: types of benefices (staff members)

The preferences of staff members bring those of papal providees into memory, canonships and altars constituting the near totality of benefices that were claimed by them.138 Nearly 70 per cent of the benefices they claimed in the archducal period were attached to collegiate (42 per cent) or cathedral churches (28 per cent). Cathedral or metropolitan

138 This graph reproduces the different categories of benefices that were claimed, either via the classical nomination privileges or via the Concordatum Paulinum in the Principality of Liège from 1617 onwards, by individuals who joined the academic staff between 1598 and 1621. As a consequence, figures for the first and the last time periods do not represent the total number of benefices accepted by staff members.

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churches were therefore particularly privileged by staff members.139 In the period under investigation, their aspirations would provoke a major row with the chapters of the new cathedrals, which claimed that the exclusion of university nominees (as opposed to those of the Arts faculty) from benefices in cathedral churches in the Sixtine bull of 1483 (which exempted the medieval cathedrals) applied also to them.140 All this implies that their strategies were, from a geographical point of view as well as with respect to the categories of benefices that were accepted, much more focused than those of the population in its entirety. This accounts, at least partially, for the overrepresentation of staff members competing with one another for the same nominations in faculty minutes. The distribution of acceptations of benefices over the different dioceses did not differ substantially from general figures.141 Inside the dioceses, however, a very different picture emerges. Only 23 out of 66 locations (for 130 to 140 acceptations by staff members following nominations registered in between 1598 and 1621) took more than one acceptation, but they hosted more or less 70 per cent of the total number of benefices accepted by staff members.142

139 Even if we take into account the (generally larger) number of benefices that were attached to them, they remain slightly overrepresented. It is obvious that academics were more keen on targeting cathedral churches, where they had to compete not only with other clerics but also with other graduated clerics, a substantial number of canonships in cathedrals being reserved for licenciates or doctors in Law or Theology. It is impossible to make definitive statements with respect to altars, except by referring to the probability that many a cathedral will have hosted more altars than the “average” collegiate church. 140 The wording of the bull offers a telling example of curialist gibberish, because an exclusion (according to the Louvainists’ opponents) was formulated in a positive way: Urgent Nos stipulated that university nominees could seize all benefices, “etiamsi canonicatus et prebenda, administratio, vel officium in collegiata, aut scholastria, matricularia seu custodia in parochiali ecclesiis vel capella fuerit.” Privilegia, 87. This was also read in a restrictive way by Guilielmus Vande Velde, De Nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22191, 37v; at least with respect to the medieval cathedrals: “Interim comprehendentur hic istarum cathedralium que tunc erant collegiate ut ecclesia Antverpiensis, Brugensis, Audomarensis etc. uti hoc iam pridem de Antverpiensi decidit Rota 26 junii 1602.” Ibidem, 38r. Nonetheless, at least three altars were accepted in the (medieval ) cathedral of Arras by virtue of a nomination letter issued by the university. Registre aux nominations, RAL, OUL, 4784. See p. 358–47. 141 Of the acceptations by staff members in between 1598 and 1621, the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai took 52 per cent of all acceptations (compared to 46 per cent in the general figures); Liège was less prominent with 20 per cent, and the dioceses of Mechlin hosted 28 per cent of acceptations completed by staff members. 142 Cambrai, Liège, Cassel, Douai, Harelbeke, Arras, Ghent, Mons, Bruges, Tournai, Ypres, Nivelles, Antoing, Leuze, Mechlin, Ronse, Séclin, and Tienen. The figures for

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Because a large majority of canonships registered in the nomination books were claimed by staff members burdening the collations of collegiate or cathedral churches, the margins of other graduates who wished to haul in an urban rectory at the advowson of the same institutions must have been narrow, at least in theory. In practice, however, junior university men were by no means excluded from nominations burdening the collations of cathedral or collegiate chapters.143 Only a small minority of these nominations resulted in the acceptation of rural or urban rectorships. Despite the legal prerogatives of staff members, graduates were left ample room for manoeuvre to compete with seniors for the same canonships in the same churches. This rules out the possibility that only the leftovers in poorly endowed collegiate churches fell into their lap.144 Graduates accepting canonships were willing (and could afford) to wait substantially longer before turning their nomination into a formal acceptation of a canonship than their peers who went after rectorships and altars. And nearly 60 per cent of them did so in other dioceses, which suggests that they could mobilise channels of support or of information in the university’s projected hinterland that were not restricted to their place or diocese of origin.145 Seen from this perspective, it may come as a surprise that staff members did not emerge more frequently as concurrentes of juniors before the faculty’s congregation. In a number of cases, juniors may just have been fortunate. The taxa patrimonialis as well as peer pressure and academic legislation inhibited staff members from heaping up benefices indefinitely, just as much as the accumulation of papal provisions by some Roman curialists is not the equivalent of the endless accumulation of benefices—a distinction that competitors of academic nominees or of the “Satans Romanistes” failed to make. In addition, many students may have disposed of excellent channels of information concerning local job opportunities in the periphery: lines of contact they probably multiplied by socialising with their peers in the Louvain Vatican registers were already surpassed by the 18 locations in the nomination books that hosted three acceptations or more, and that took 62 per cent of all acceptations. 143 Approximately one-quarter of all acceptations completed by juniors burdened the collations of chapters. 144 Approximately 50 canonships, including six in cathedral or metropolitan churches, were snagged by (advanced) students. 145 Only 42 per cent of acceptations of canonships by graduates were “diocesan” acceptations, as opposed to the 62 per cent average for this population. Moreover, nearly half of them accepted their canonship only several years after their nomination, while altars and rectorships were claimed, in 70 per cent of all cases, within one year.

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colleges and that were not necessarily dominated by the academic elite. Graduates may have capitalised on resignations of nominations by their academic patrons, friends, or protégés among the teaching staff. And it is not unthinkable that well-connected graduates (the illegitimate son of the Chancellor of Brabant, for instance) could muster, via informal means, enough support to cajole potential competitors into restraint. Hierarchical ranking principles may have provided for a tested grammar to organise the hybrid fabric of Academia, but they could be manipulated or be put in brackets if the situation demanded it. Needless to say, such loopholes do not surface in administrative documents that were designed to do exactly the opposite: instilling an unqualified order into academic affairs. Examples of graduates claiming canonships in cathedral churches trigger other questions. Were university men not supposed, in their quality of poor and disinterested scholars whose income was below the taxa patrimonialis, to accept only humble benefices that narrowly saved them from starvation? Both privileges had introduced, back in 1483 and 1513, a taxa beneficialis on the yearly revenues of benefices that determined whether or not a benefice could be accepted by a nominee. In the university’s privilege of nomination of 1483, it was stipulated that only benefices that yielded a yearly income smaller than 30 golden Rhine florins—the monetary unit in the Duchy of Brabant and in several other provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands—could be claimed by its nominees. This was already a modest sum by 1483, but the Sixtine taxa must have been reduced to sheer symbolism in the course of the 16th century, when under the pressure of inflation the nominal income of craftsmen would quadruple or even quintuple.146 Already in 1521, and again in 1561, attempts had been made to obtain a raise of the taxa beneficialis; a programme that often went hand in hand with requests to raise, with one move, the taxa patrimonialis as well.147 The bull In Praecelsa of 1573 eventually raised the university’s patrimonial and beneficial thresholds to the level of the taxa Leonina in the bull granted to the Arts faculty back in 1513. There, a differentiated taxa beneficialis corresponded with the two categories of clerics who could apply for nominations: while juniors had to regulate

146

As far as the real value is concerned, see Van Uytven, Stadsfinanciën. See, respectively, transcriptions of the university’s minutes in Puncta Aliquot, 110 (the originals are lost in the flames of Louvain of 1914), and Acta Universitatis, 3 November 1560, in RAL, OUL, 58, 79r. 147

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themselves to the Sixtine taxa of 30 ducatus (instead of florins), seniors were allowed to accept benefices that yielded 60 ducatus de Camera, the monetary unit of the Apostolic Chamber that equalled, in the period under investigation, 2 to 3 florins.148 The upgrading of the taxa patrimonialis in the Pauline Concordat of 1616 was matched by a similar raise of the taxa beneficialis to c.100 ducats of the Apostolic Chamber. By contrast, the taxa Sixtina, which still applied to juniors (and which was expressed in terms of ducatus de Camera in early 17th-century legal documents), was never revised. The taxa beneficialis is, as a consequence, as ambiguous as its twin, the taxa patrimonialis, and therefore is not likely to have restricted substantially the pool of benefices into which academic nominees could dip. If the taxa were taken literally, the university’s privilege of nomination would already have become obsolete in the course of the 16th century. The claims of graduates who did not join the academic staff would have been forfeited, as the Leonine taxa and its later adaptations only applied to seniors. Even from the perspective of the taxa Paolina, the number of benefices that could be accepted by virtue of the nomination privileges would have gradually been reduced to the most destitute offices: the papal bull Regimini of 1616 contained the last legislative measure to adapt the taxa to inflation until the end of the 18th century. Yet, university men accepted more, not fewer, benefices in the next decades of the 17th century. A few examples may suffice. In the period under investigation, a strict reading of the taxa in the nomination bulls would have excluded the acceptations of the vast majority of rectorships in the diocese of Ghent. A 1623 census of the

148 The exchange rates of the Roman ducatus de Camera with monetary units in the periphery was subject to fluctuations, fluctuating again with respect to tenders that were used in everyday life. “Ita enim Hieron. Parc. In sua Practica Cancellaria apostolica in fine de monetar. Valore expresse docet florenum Brabantinum valere medium ducatum, et similiter florenum Carolensem, item librum monete Flandrie valere ducatus tres. Si vero ut nomen speciei olim valebat duobus florenis aut circiter hodie quatuor et ultra.” Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22192, 45r. In 1573, the Faculty of Arts considered the 150 ducati to be sent to Rome for the fabric of the Gregoriana as the equivalent of 300 Rhine florins. Acta Facultatis Artium, 1573, RAL, OUL, 713, 5r. In the Négociations de Rome of 1605–23 (AGR, Audience, 440–459), the pension of 6,000 florins for King’s College in Louvain, to be levied on rich abbeys in the Netherlands, still was translated, in the correspondence of the papal nunciature, as the equivalent of 3,000 scudi (which more or less corresponds to 3,000 ducatus de Camera). Jadin, “Procès d’information,” sticks to an exchange rate of one to three. Exchange rates between Roman and other European currencies in Hermann, L’Eglise d’Espagne, 77–78.

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diocese’s parishes reveals that by then, most shepherds had an income that equalled or surpassed the minimum income of 35 to 50 pounds (or 105 to 150 ducati de Camera, or 210 to 300 florins)149 that had been agreed at the Council of Mechlin in 1607.150 The fact that nominees seized almost one out of ten rectorships for which a concursus was organised in the 18th-century diocese of Mechlin suggests that they did not limit themselves to the most miserly parishes, the concursus being in practice organised for the better endowed ones. Judging from the benefices university men did accept, the taxa as a technical criterion seems to have become all but obsolete in Jansenius’ days. According to an academic memorandum drafted during the negotiations leading to the Pauline Concordat, not one single prebend of the Belgian church yielded more than 60 ducati (120 to 180 florins in the period under investigation)—that is, if only the grossi fructus of the prebend, that part which could be received by absentees residing in privileged places such as universities, were taken into consideration.151 Nonetheless, Cornelius Jansenius himself casually mentioned in his letter of 1623 that he had accepted a canonship whose value was estimated by candidates for a permutation to be double or triple the Pauline taxa of 1616. But what was the point then in pushing for an adaptation of the taxa in 1616? And why did it become a bone of contention in the struggle with the bishop of Ypres, who opposed the ratification of Regimini by the Privy Council?152 The academics’ answer, that the Pauline bull merely sought to adapt the taxa to inflation, only adds to the confusion, contradicting as it does their

149 That is, according to the exchange rates proposed by Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22192, 45r. 150 The data for the diocese of Ghent indicate that even in the 17th century alone the nominal value of benefices increased considerably. Vanden Broecke, Rekrutering en carrièrepatroon, 161. Again, it is not certain whether or not the fluctuating casualia were included in this sum. 151 “Ut constat ex eo quod taxa beneficiorum acceptabilium per seniores magistri sit 60 ducatorum auri de Camera ex grossis fructibus qui in loco privilegiato recipi possint distributionibus exceptis deductisque oneribus omnibus prout ipsemet Gregorius explicat pag. 101 quam summam nulla prebenda Belgii attingit.” Memorandum of the Arts faculty, c.1616, in BAV, Barberini Latini, 2852, 117–22. 152 “Que luniversite de Louvain et la faculte des arts auroient impetre de sa sainctete augmentation du privilege de nomination . . . quelles . . . sont de grand interest et preiudice au remonstrant et aultres collateurs des benefices de son diocese voire aussij aux aultres evesques . . ., entre aultre au regard de laugmentation de la taxe beneficiale.” Request from the bishop of Ypres to the Privy Council, to postpone the delivering of the lettres de placet, 16 July 1617, Université de Louvain 1556–1639, AGR, Conseil Privé, 1281. Cf. p. 193, 213, 586–87.

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earlier statements concerning the taxa.153 On top of all that, the taxa failed to determine unambiguously which part of the revenues was implicated. Academics referred to the grossi fructus that were paid regardless of the performance of specific religious tasks; but this did not keep them from claiming, in 1620, that additional revenues (such as attendance fees for canons, which could amount to one-third of the benefice’s yearly income) had to be remitted to absentee academics as well.154 All this did not add to the transparency of the taxa beneficialis, either in the eyes of contemporaries or those of present day historians. As a matter of fact, it remains difficult to assess the value of one single benefice (let alone of the more than 300 benefices that figure in the nomination books between 1598 and 1621), as it is far from clear which part, and proportion, of revenues were registered in, say, revenues declared by the holders themselves for fiscal purposes to diocesan and/or Roman administrations. An elucidating approach representing the Louvain point of view was developed by our legal advisor, Guilielmus Vande Velde. He agreed with the privileges’ opponents that the taxa indeed was not a fraud. Simultaneously, however, he construed a fitting theory in order to demonstrate that the taxa put no, or very few, restraints on Louvainist ambitions in practice. Vande Velde admitted that a few benefices whose revenues were not split up in a gros and additional revenues for resident benefice-holders that amounted to 2,000 (!) florins—the thesauraria of the cathedral church of Cambrai, the personatus of Bethel and Halle, to name a few—were exempt from academic claims. In his view, the taxa at the moment of the granting of the privilege should be taken into consideration, not the value of the benefice at the moment of the nominations or acceptations themselves. Once affected by the privileges of nomination, a benefice would remain forever susceptible to

153 “Sans aulcuns changement ou alteration pour le reguard des beneficies situez es paijs et seigneuries de sadicte alteze, saulf qu’en consideration . . . que la tauxe beneficiale de 60 ducatz a raison de lestimation des biens tousiours croissante lon eut peu prendre occasion de leur faire difficulte et nouvelles troubles a leurs estudes Sa Sainctete leur at octroije augmentation desdictes tauxes.” Request from the university and the Faculty of Arts to the Privy Council, 20 November 1619, Université de Louvain 1556–1639, AGR, Conseil Privé, 1281. 154 I.e., in a trial between the Louvain divine Joannes Schinckelius, who had accepted a canonship in Saint Hermes at Ronse, and the chapter before the Council of Flanders. Acta Universitatis, 18 March 1620, RAL, OUL, 64, 154r–v. See also the matters discussed on 16 June 1622, ibidem, 338v–339r.

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being claimed by virtue of academic privileges, even if its income had undergone substantial changes.155 And since time immemorial, Vande Velde concluded, almost all Belgian benefices had been automatically valued at 24 or 30 ducatus de Camera by the Apostolic Chamber in Rome.156 This custom probably dated from the Burgundian period. It might have muted calls for concordatory arrangements in the core of the Belgian Church, exempting as it did papal providees (who happened to be locals as well, in most cases) from paying the annates and servitia levied by the curia on benefices with higher revenues. Conversely, Vande Velde anticipated objections arguing that the raises of the taxa by Leo X, Gregory XIII and Paul V would have been superfluous. These adaptations did not add greatly to the efficiency of the Louvain privileges of nomination, but neither did they do any harm. The taxa’s use may have resided elsewhere. Its mere existence allowed academics, whom we have already recurrently caught in the action of turning normative texts into descriptions of reality, to affirm that only humble benefices fell into their laps, which matched well with their self-image of poor and disinterested clerics. And the taxa was of use for internal purposes as well, i.e., settling disputes between juniors and seniors (in favour of the latter).157 Conversely, an abolition of the taxa would have provoked reactions from ordinary collators, who probably would not have let go another legal argument they could add to their memoranda in clashes between their own favourites and nominees from the university. The opposition of the bishop of Ypres was set in a much wider conflict that would drag on well into the

155 “Itaque sicut beneficium semel taxatum semper manet taxatum, non tantum generaliter in ordine ad solvendum decimam Clem. Fin. De decimis prout hoc docet Rebuff. De decimis § 2 n 6 . . . quod beneficium semel taxe nostre seu nominationi obnixium semper manet obnixium quantumvis valor iste extrinsecus augeatur.” Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22192, 43v. 156 The bulk of benefices in the Low Countries and in the Principality of Liège that were registered in the Per Obitum list indeed yielded officially 24 or 30 ducatus if the papal provision in question gave access to a benefice that had become vacant Per Obitum. But the same benefices could be charged with a pension of 100, 200, or more ducatus if a permutation or a resignation was registered. 157 Cf. the arguments of Bax, a junior who applied for the nomination to the archbishop of Mechlin, which he said was subjected to the taxa minor in order to counter the competition of Ghiffene, professor triennalis. The congregation of the faculty decided that Bax qualified as a senior as well, and hence could not invoke junior prerogatives. Acta Facultatis Artium, 30 May 1620, RAL, OUL, 715, 332–35.

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1620s, and during which Vande Velde learnt his beneficial law the hard way.158 Vande Velde shrewdly developed another, analogous argument in order to demonstrate that benefices that had been eligible for acceptations in the days of the granting of the nomination bulls remained under the spell of the academic jus nominandi forever. Just as the taxa of 1483 and 1513 should be put into its historical perspective, the Bull Eximiae of 1515, which exempted the subjects of Charles V from summons before Roman tribunals, still applied to their 17th-century descendants as well and had become a cornerstone of the Belgian Church.159 By translating Louvain interests in the clerical job market into the jurisdictional interests of princely tribunals, Vande Velde probably hoped to kill two birds with one stone: safeguarding academic interests on the one hand, and, on the other, merging them with those of the power elites of the Low Countries, which were supposed to function as watchdogs of the region’s constitutions and privileges. That this already was a tested strategy in the period under investigation can be deduced from the following chapters. As a consequence, a few jurisdictional questions need to be tackled before trailing the fabric of academic interests and Catholic confessionalisation at Louvain in the archducal period.

3.4. “Boèce a mis tant d’empeschemens.” Poor scholars and legal violence Jansenius wrote, in his 1623 letter to Saint-Cyran, that he had accepted a benefice, and that “on prend possession pour luy.” So far, procedures remained largely an academic affair. However, the ordinary collator (in his case, the provost of Lille) was still in charge of providing the canonical institution of the benefice, if needed after a formal

158 Alleged transgressions of the taxa continued to look good on the lists of “abuses” committed by Louvain nominees. Cf. Quaestio V, “Dum taxam regulatam excedunt,” in Puncta Aliquot. 159 “Non tantum generaliter in ordine ad solvendum decimam Clem fin de decimis prout hoc docet Rebuff de decimis § 2 n 6 sed etiam specialiter in his provinciis tam in ordine ad impetrari in curia sub taxa 24 ducatorum citra solutionem quam in ordine ad non evocari extra patriam in prima instantia iuxta privilegium concessum Carolo 5° per Leonem 10 3° nonas julii anno 1515.” Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22192, 43v.

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examination of the candidate, while a formal missio in possessionem, the last stage of the whole procedure, often was the reserve of third parties: archdeacons, for instance, or colleges of canons who had to install their new members solemnly on their stallum in the choir. Guilielmus Vande Velde, Louvain’s hands-on expert, wrote with reference to decisions of the Rota on the matter, that an acceptation gave no right to a benefice (ius in re) but only gave its holder the right to claim one (ius ad rem).160 Caroline legislation and the faculty’s statutes stipulated that nominations burdening the collations of the same collator were to be issued successively, with the second nomination becoming vacant only after the first one had resulted in the acceptation of a benefice. This measure had to meet the concerns of ordinary collators in the beginning of the 16th century, but also prevented them from playing out nominees against each other, as they did in France with the dozens of graduates submitting their insinuations at their own discretion. Jansenius was “deuxiesme en nomination” only because he held a nomination letter of the university, not of the Arts faculty. Outsiders could raise obstacles, however. In the Louvain brand, nominees could, in theory, seize any available benefice regardless of the reason or the moment of its vacation. In practice, they barely intervened in the discreet negotiations between permutants or in the dynastic designs of uncles and nephews. Academic nominees limited themselves to accepting, in 96 per cent of all cases, offices that had become vacant because of the death of their holder. Considerable numbers of benefices did not just escape the ordinary collators’ control but also, apparently, were beyond the academics’ reach.161 Similar qualifications apply to the stipulations in both privileges, that benefices could be claimed by virtue of letters of nominations regardless of the month in which they had become vacant, and that university nominees had precedence over all other claimants, either holders of papal provisions or candidates of ordinary collators. Explicit derogations to the Concordat of Vienna, to the extensive privileges granted to the

160 “Dico 2do per nominationem acquiritur non ius in re sed ad rem Rota decis. 29 de renuntiatione in antiquis Rebuff de nominatione.” Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22191, 4v. 161 Seen from this perspective, it is surprising that Vande Velde highlights this difference with the nominations issued by French universities, resignations and permutations putting, in accordance with conjunctures in the clerical job market, more restraints on academic claims than suggested in the 1483 bull. Cf. Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22191, 37v.

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collators of the Principality of Liège, and to the customs and statutes of local churches had to discourage possible competitors.162 In addition, both privileges of nomination derogated to all general and specific apostolic reservations in the regulae cancellariae (including the reservatio octo mensium in favour of the ordinary collators) that had not been incorporated in canon law. Impressive though they may seem, however, these clauses by no means shielded nominees from competition, especially from the “Satans Romanistes” in Jansenius’ letter. In theory, the latter could easily overrule the nonobstantiae in the century-old bulls granted to the academics by fresh clauses. Additional measures on behalf of the academics might therefore be necessary, and the oblique reference in Jansenius’ letter to the “empeschemens” he had put in place, suggests that in his day, individual nominees themselves were responsible for monitoring the moves of potential competitors, or anticipating them. A tested strategy consisted in appealing to the Privy Council in order to have additional clauses de non prejudicandis privilegiis nominationum universitatis Lovaniensis inserted in the placet letters on potentially dangerous papal provisions, provided that the nominee in question disposed of the necessary channels of information.163 Similar tactics were suggested by the university’s agent at the curia in 1619–20 against holders of the primariae preces.164 162 According to Vande Velde, the latters’ rights to a benefice were only secure after the month in which nominees could legitimately lay a claim to a benefice, had expired. “Dico 4° nominatione ita afficitur beneficium nominato ut collatio alteri facta intra mensem nominato dato ad acceptandum sit nulla etiamsi nominatus interim non acceptet. Stapileus De Litt Gratie et iustitie tit. De vi et effectu clausul. § successive in 1° quem sequitur Wamesius cons. 252 n. 4.” Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22191, 37v. 163 In the middle of the 16th century, adding clauses de non prejudicando privilegiis nominationum in placet letters on papal provisions had been (according to the academics themselves) a matter of routine. It is not clear whether or not attempts to breathe new life into such generalised bureaucratic procedures from 1576 onwards had been successful. In 1581, only a timely intervention of the university’s deputy to the Privy Council could stall the granting of a placet to an apostolic provisus competing with a teacher in philosophy. Acta Facultatis Artium, 13 August 1581, RAL, OUL, 713, 188v–190r. 164 Cf. p. 585–86. Acta Facultatis Artium, 1619–1620, RAL, OUL, 715, 290, 311, 337. Frictions with precistae were more likely when the emperor himself ruled the Netherlands; cf. the materials described in De Vocht, Inventaire, 425–26. In the 1520s, nominees of the Arts had to clear the field for the imperial precistae. Cf. Acta Universitatis, January 1527, RAL, OUL, 54, 67r. From 1525 onwards, faculty statutes stipulated that “nullus nominatorum nec nominandorum acceptabit aliquod beneficium ubi erunt primariae preces nisi postquam constiterit quod illas habens eis uti nollet quoad illud

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With respect to candidates operating via local circuits, university men apparently balked at claiming benefices that had become vacant in ordinary months in the Principality of Liège.165 Back in 1554, the Liège clergy, in its quality of a “national Church,” had obtained a declaration from Pope Jules III that the Louvain privileges of nomination were subject to the Concordat of Vienna and that nominees could accept only benefices whose vacancy had occurred in apostolic months.166 In the period under investigation, university men obviously were not willing to put to the test the willingness of the Liège clergy to have a good fight over benefices. Their scruples to do so probably were well founded, Liège clerics being the instigators of the Roman offensive against the university’s privileges that will be reviewed in the next chapters. In the Habsburg Netherlands, it was princely legislation, and more specifically the Caroline concordat of 1531, that restricted the room for manoeuvre of (faculty) nominees. That the clauses regarding the exemption from lay patrons—the prince himself and his vassals—should be considered a restriction is improbable: only benefices of the canonical system had been affected by papal reservations of benefices, which means that benefices coming under legal patronage would have remained out of the academics’ reach anyway. But they did introduce stipulations with respect to the number of benefices that could be accepted in ordinary months, and/or with respect to time intervals that had to be observed in between two acceptations burdening the same collator.167 beneficium.” Cf. the Regulae Nominationum, in Liber primus nominationum, RAL, OUL, 4751, 8v and 10r. This statute was replaced in 1536 by a comprehensive statute enabling the faculty to monitor the acceptations of its nominees. 165 Of the c.30 registrations of acceptations of benefices in the diocese of Liège (out of 144 in between 1580 and 1640) that are recorded in the faculty’s nomination books, and that mention the month in which the benefices in question became available, only one benefice in the Principality of Liège had become vacant in an ordinary month; the four other cases involved benefices in Habsburg lands. 166 This was the case when Joannes Roberti, from Marches, tried to obtain a canonship in Thuin via his nomination by the Faculty of Arts (Acta Facultatis Artium, 2 November 1595, RAL, OUL, 713, 435v); and in 1602, when a nominee of the university had tried to obtain a benefice situated in the Patria Leodiensis. Acta Universitatis, 3 March 1602, RAL, OUL, 62, 84v–86v. 167 The concordat resumed Hadrian’s stipulation that ordinary collators who had to share their advowsons with the Holy See via the alternativa or the regulae cancellariae could only be forced to bestow one “ordinary” benefice per decade. If the second nominee longed for another benefice within the same decennium, he could only accept an “apostolic” benefice. Collators operating under the Gallican regime could only be obliged to bestow another benefice upon a faculty nominee after one

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Amid all these qualifications, many strategies remained available to make life difficult for nominees. If preventive measures failed, however, other, repressive legal tools had to be considered. During the heyday of papal theocracy, apostolic providees had learned the hard way that local Church officials were willing to use their competences to block them. When papal provisions got an obligatory character, they were consequently accompanied by executorial letters endowing third parties with more or less extended powers to assist the providee and to bring his provision to a satisfying end.168 Louvain academics did not need to rush to the periphery to make sure that they were installed properly on their benefice and to secure possession. Jansenius’ case is revealing in this respect, as it is obvious that others were monitoring his affairs at Lille. Successive papal bulls and briefs had provided the possibility of delegating this task to an executor or subexecutor with ample executive powers, analogous to those of papal providees. The notion of the executor apostolicus had been resumed in the Louvain bull of 1483 as well. The abbots of Park and Saint Gertrudis near and in Louvain, as well as the dean of Saint Gudula in Brussels, were appointed in Urget Nos to intervene, if need be, individually or collectively on behalf of the university’s nominees. That there were three of them must have ensured that at least one would take action. Moreover, it enabled the university to play them off against each other. The faculty’s bull Admonet Nos had been accompanied by a bulla executoria with far-reaching delegations of power to executors. These were extended to the university’s nominees in the papal brief Nuper Cum (1574) of Gregory XIII, which introduced more detailed procedures.169 From that time forward, university and faculty nominees could seize the possession of benefices via their executors even before they had

decennium, regardless of the month in which it had become vacant. Nominations that had not been effective before the death or the promotion of the prelate were automatically considered as the first nomination burdening the collations of his successor. 168 Barraclough, Papal Provisions, 137–52; Bégou-Davia, L’interventionisme bénéficial. After having obtained his provision, the papal providee himself had to contact the executor; he had to present in the presence of a notary and witnesses the litterae executoriae to the latter and ask him to issue a formal notificatio; both documents, executoriae as well as the notificatio, were consequently handed over by the provisus to the ordinary collator. After the formal acceptatio of a benefice, the providee turned to his executor, or a designated subexecutor of the latter, who had to provide him, auctoritate apostolica, with the benefice and introduce him into its actual possession. Ordinary collators who caused trouble risked excommunication, suspension, and interdict. Weiss, “Päpstliche Expektanzen,” 146–48. 169 UAL, OUL, 75 a; Privilegia, 152–53.

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informed the ordinary collator in question about their acceptation, and before the latter could raise objections.170 Because of the reluctance of canon law to chase clerics from their benefices once they had obtained them,171 possession gave university men a lead over their competitors and allowed them to cash in the revenues if a dispute was brought to court. It is in this context that Jansenius talked about people taking possession for him without bothering to mention the ordinary collator, the provost of Saint Peter’s at Lille. The executors mentioned in Urget Nos or of the faculty’s privilege of nomination had to make sure that the privileges of nomination themselves were observed as well. Papal bulls required solemn promulgation—the so-called fulminatio172—in the periphery in order to gain force of law. The apostolic executors mentioned in Urget Nos, as well as the other Church officials joining them in their function in later bulls, were apparently the most suitable persons to cater these

170 Previously, only faculty nominees could circumvent the ordinary collators when seizing possession, although several cases before 1574 suggest that university nominees did not flinch from imitating them. Cf. Acta Universitatis, 2 May 1530, RAL, OUL, 59, 62r. These practices were raked up by enraged prelates in front of the Privy Council (and disaffirmed by the university’s lawyers): “exposuerunt querelam dominorum prelatorum factam occasione abusuum per nominatos universitatis in acceptatione beneficiorum, qui secrete ut asseruerunt acceptant beneficia . . . ad que [respondit] dominus sindicus quod numquam comparet nominatos universitatis secrete acceptasse, cum hoc facere non possent, immo eorum nominationem collatoribus insinuare tenentur . . . et in causam denegationis sineet per sanctam sedem apostolicam executores deputati qui nominatis beneficia . . . acceptata conferre tenentur.” Acta Universitatis, 1 October 1529, RAL, OUL, 54, 83v. 171 “Secundo imponi onus gravissimum nominatis, qui cum priores sint in possessione ac proinde deberent essere rei favorabiliorem inter litigantes personam sustinere constituuntur per pretactam oblationem actores, et ad probationem duarum negativarum (quod est difficillimum si non impossibile) astringuntur.” Informatio Responsoria, in Négociations de Rome, before 1 September and after 23 July 1616, AGR, Audience, 450, 185r–188v, cf. p. 550–51. See also Van Espen, Ius Ecclesiasticum Universum, II, tit. xxvi. 172 This official act eventually resulted in a notarial instrument, which was printed in the hundreds and attached to the nomination letters. The act of fulmination was initiated by the indultary himself, who asked the executor to promulgate the concerned bull; within a fixed term, the executor called the indultary or his procurator before his tribunal in the presence of notaries and witnesses and personally inspected the content as well as the physical appearance of the bull. Thereafter, the notaries were charged with the redaction of the new text in publicam transsumpti formam; all interested parties were invited to appear on a fixed date and to make their comments on the bull if they felt like it, or to assist the solemn reading of the text. The report of the procedures on that day were recorded in the fulminatio, which was signed by two notaries and consequently sealed by the executor. From then on, the new papal decision had the force of law. Durand de Maillane, Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique, 3, 298; 16th-century copies in UAL, OUL, 304 and 305.

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services.173 Fulminations did not just take place when another new papal bull arrived in Louvain; academics turned to their executors more than once to go through an official act of promulgation. Between 1573/74 (the promulgation of the bull In Praecelsa of Gregory XIII [1573])—and 1620 (when the concordatum paulinum of 1616 finally could be put into practice), they did so on seven occasions, but we can only speculate as to why. Maybe these reasons were just practical, for instance, when the supply of authenticated copies and of nomination letters (to be completed with the name of the nominee, of the collator, the date, and so on and so forth) ran out.174 The number of executors, as well as of Church officials designated to act in this quality, varied according to the subsequent apostolic bulls that confirmed or extended the Louvain privileges of nomination in the 16th century. One executor seems to have been particularly popular, however, as he appeared in nearly every bull.175 The abbot of Saint Gertrudis, a monastery of regular canons of Saint Augustine at Louvain, was mentioned time and again. This is not because he was better at assisting nominees while they were seizing their benefices. The executores mentioned in the Louvain bulls never figured as executores of individual nominations. In the course of the 16th century, academics had fought (and won) recurrent battles with subsequent conservators of the privileges over the clausula ceterum that was to be inserted in the bulls’ fulminations and that delegated executorial responsibilities to third parties commissioned at the discretion of the nominees themselves.176 The abbots of Saint-Gertrudis had other duties to attend to, alongside sporadic Acts of Fulmination: as official conservators of the university’s privileges, they presided as judges over one of the two most

173 The 1483 bull had not been accompanied by a bulla executoria, a litterae sub filo canapis. Cf. Frenz, Die Kanzlei der Päpste, 61–62. The executoria charged one or more executors with the execution of the main bull, but it was not exceptional that the latter were appointed in the main bull itself. See, for instance, Gorissen, “De invoering van het vorstelijk benoemingsrecht,” 194–95. 174 There is no regularity in the intervals between the procedures. The Arts faculty ordered fulminations in 1573, 1577, 1578, 1597, 1613, and 1620. Acta Facultatis Artium, RAL, OUL, 713, 30r, 119r, 148r; 714, 5v–6r, 547r; and 715, 337. Promulgations on behalf of the university have been recorded in 1574, 1592, 1598, and 1613; attestation in the Acta Facultatis Artium, 20 April 1574, RAL, OUL, 713, 48v–49r, and Acta Universitatis, RAL, OUL, 60, 173r–v; 61, 285v–286v; and 63, 112v–113r. 175 Except for the bull Ex Debito, issued by Paul III in 1537. UAL, OUL, 71. 176 The identities of these subexecutors may open interesting perspectives on the microstoria of clerical careers and their related networks. The few attestations in the dozen of files concerning the privileges of nomination in the archives of the curia conservatorialis involve family members or high-ranking Church officials. Cf., for instance, the files in Dossiers des procès, RAL, OUL, 5831, 1st and 2nd bundle.

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Plate 3.4. Act of Acceptation and Procuration Provision by virtue of the Clausula Ceterum (cf. p. 200), 20 May 1692, of the rectorship of Wieze, archdiocese of Mechlin, accepted by Lambertus Gysens, Sacre Theologie Baccalaureus Formatus, by Landelinus Tordoir, a bachelor in Theology and canon of Saint James at Louvain. The ordinary collator (in casu the archbishop of Mechlin) is charged with the missio in possessionem (see p. 79). [Archdiocesan Archives, Mechlin]

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important (and controversial ) academic tribunals. Not surprisingly, discussions over the content of that academic jurisdiction were, as we will see, central to discussions over the Louvain privileges of nomination. The university’s jurisdictional autonomy dated back to the time of the foundation of the Studium itself by Pope Martin V. The bull Sapientie Immarcessibilis (1425) provided the tools for it, suggesting that the city of Louvain, as well as the duke of Brabant, were obliged to hand over their jurisdiction, in criminal as well as in civil or in ecclesiastical cases, to the rector of the new university. The installation of special tribunals with jurisdiction over university members, separate from the ordinary civil and ecclesiastical legal apparatus, was a common feature in the history of universities, but the extent to which this jurisdiction remained firmly embedded in Louvain academic circuits from 1425 onwards was less common. Until the end of the Ancien Régime, disputes among students or academics, and complaints of extranei against university men were often brought before the curia rectorialis. But while the rector’s jurisdiction may have been respected within the walls of Academia, he lacked the legal tools to foist his rulings on non-university members. Meanwhile, academics claimed that all litigation involving a suppositus was “different,” including lawsuits in which university men performed as plaintiffs. In order to realise this claim, a curia conservatorialis emerged that was presided over by a powerful prelate and that, consequently, could bully outsiders into compliance with its rulings with the help of different types of ecclesiastical censures. The notion of a conservator privilegiorum, a “warden of privileges” appointed by the pope, was, again, not new. In the High Middle Ages, thousands of conservators had been appointed by the bishops of Rome, to defend the interests of the privileged when the ordinary circuits were not able, or disinclined, to do so. Universities were definitely not the only ones who appealed to the papacy in order to obtain a conservator for their privileges, but they were indeed avid users of papal litterae conservatoriales.177 Widespread as it was, however, the institution of the conservator apostolicus in classical canon law was highly fluid. Their legal toolkit and competence must be situated somewhere in between the tools at the disposal of apostolic executors and those

177 A comparative, but elementary, treatment of universities and conservators in May, “Konservatoren,” 119–30.

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wielded by designated apostolic judges. In most cases, it is difficult to distinguish them from apostolic executors.178 In contrast to ordinary judges, they could act only on the request of their protégés (in casu suppositi of the University of Louvain); moreover, some legal traditions in classical canon law suggested that they could undertake only those legal actions which did not belong explicitly to the competences of the ordinary tribunals; and they could do so only when the violation of their protégés’ privileges was “notorious” or “manifest.”179 In dubious cases, they were expected not to interfere in order to allow the regular procedures of the law to have their course. Only a few of them managed to approach somehow the appearance of judices apostolici delegati by presiding over a tribunal in the strict sense of the word. Late medieval reform councils were ambiguous in their appreciation of the institution of the apostolic conservators, in spite of general criticisms on its dispenser, the papacy. The fathers of the Council of Trent, being much more a council of, by, and for diocesan ordinarii who translated Church reform into a revamped episcopal authority, were less reserved on the matter. They defined the practice of the conservators as “generally abusive,” charging that conservators tended to undermine—contrary to the intentions of the Holy See, of course—ordinary jurisdiction. However, the restrictions that were introduced to remedy these abuses were not to be applied to the conservators of universities, colleges, institutions of the religious orders, and hospitals. In the Netherlands, all conservatories had already been abolished by Philip the Fair in 1500. The young Habsburg archduke thus resumed the policy of his great-grandfather, Philip the Good, who had forbidden his subjects to obey the orders of ecclesiastical judges without his permission. On both occasions, however, the conservatory of the Brabant university had a lucky escape, and it would survive as the only institution of its kind in the South Netherlands until the Revolution.180 The conservator of the university would indeed become the president

178 The notion of a conservator may have been associated more with the defense of a privilege; hence the conservator’s mandate was often limited in time instead of in its tasks. May, “Konservatoren.” Executors may have been appointed ad hoc, with respect to the execution of one specific apostolic grace (for instance, a papal provision); but the Louvain example shows how relative these distinctions are. 179 May, “Konservatoren,” 102. 180 Contrary to the curia rectorialis, the tribunal of the conservator apostolicus of the University of Louvain still awaits a decent study. Features in Vandenghoer, De rectorale rechtbank, 202–07.

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of an academic tribunal that occupied a central place in the university’s judicial apparatus alongside the already mentioned curia rectorialis and its court of appeal (the quinque judices appellationum),181 the disciplinary committees of the Arts faculty, the diocesan court of first instance, and the apostolic court of appeals.182 This had not always been the case. The competence of the conservator installed by Martin V in 1425, in a third bull accompanying the foundation bull and the bull de fructibus percipiendis in absentia, had initially been restricted to safekeeping the interests of absentee benefice holders.183 One year later, his conservatorial powers were extended to the other academic privileges as well, in order to shield the suppositi of the new university from infringements by the diocesan ordinarius, by then the bishops of Liège.184 As such, between 1588 and 1625, subsequent conservators would issue many litterae monitoriales and other legal acts to prevent extranei from seizing goods and rents of scholars studying in Louvain, from arresting the income of their benefices, or from a wide range of incursions against the special privileges of university men coming under the denominator in actione mere personalis.185 It is not clear to what extent the conservator of the privileges managed to extend his jurisdiction in the first decades after the foundation of the university in order to perform as a cognitor of causes, i.e., as a judge who could pursue the legal procedures to the end and who could, in that quality, pass sentences.186 When, by the end of the 16th century and in the beginning of the 17th, academics tried to legitimise the activities of the Louvain conservatory as an ecclesiastical tribunal endowed with apostolic authority, they referred to the bull Attente Considerationis issued by Paul II in 1469. In this text, the

181 These judges were selected by the respective faculties; the tribunal as such was presided over by the delegated judge of the theological faculty. They were appointed simultaneously with the rector and are recorded likewise in the Acta Universitatis, 1588–1616, RAL, OUL, 60–63. 182 Vandenghoer, de rectorale rechtbank, 197–209. 183 Ed. Reusens, Documents relatifs, 1. 184 Bruwier, “Les conflits jurisdictionnels,” 569–82; Van Hove, Etude sur les conflits de jurisdiction. 185 Because the university’s deputies had to give their consent to suppositi in trouble before they could appeal to the conservator, their requests are recorded in the Acta Universitatis, RAL, OUL, 60–64. The fees paid by university men in need of litterae primariae are registered in the Libri receptorum of the university, 1621–1637, RAL, OUL, 275. 186 The first archival materials in the archives of the University of Louvain concerning the judicial activity of the conservator date from the 1550s. Cf. De Vocht, Inventaire, 486.

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pope not only had sanctioned the academics’ claims to be sentenced by their own judges but also had promised that they could draw their opponents before the academic tribunals in Louvain as well. Thus, the bull turned upside down in favour of the academics the principle of actor sequitur forum rei, forcing plaintiffs to bring their cases before the court of the defence.187 In the 16th century, it was established that suppositi had the choice of bringing their cases before the rector or before the conservator, but the latter proved to be the most suitable person to appeal to when Louvainists performed as plaintiffs. This ius tractus would prove to be even more problematic than the ius de non evocando granted to the university’s members by Martin V back in 1425. Disputes with other tribunals in the Netherlands and in the Principality of Liège were frequent and often could be solved only by separate agreements or by princely legislation explicating and delimiting the theoretically unlimited competence of the conservator. Until 1797, however, the academics in Louvain could maintain their contention that the conservator was competent in litigation over benefices. From their point of view (although many, as we will see, begged to differ), there was no reason to doubt that the jurisdiction of the conservator covered litigation involving Louvain nominees too; and that their opponents, consequently, could be forced to sue them on their terms. In Urget Nos as well as in Admonet Nos, there was no explicit regulation of the jurisdictional dimension of the Louvain privileges of nominations; it was only after the turbulent period in the second decade of the 16th century, coinciding with the first nominations of the Arts faculty by virtue of its new privilege, that Clement VII would affirm their claims explicitly in the bull Rationi Congruit (1523).188 This text would remain the legal ground for the contention that the conservator of the university’s privileges was competent in disputes involving nominees until the end of the 18th century. Meanwhile, the brief In Supremo Militantis of 1578, which followed a ruling of the Roman Congregation of the Council, stipulated explicitly that the Louvain conservators of the privileges were competent in all disputes involving academics, not just those concerning benefices.189 187

Reusens, Documents relatifs, 1, 220–23. “& quod dicti omnes . . . super beneficiis per eos acceptatis . . . extra dictam universitatem ad judicium trahi non possent; ipsi tamen nominati hujusmodi, suos in dictis beneficiis quoscumque adversarios coram aliquo ex conservatoribus privilegiorum ejusdem universitatis Lovaniensis trahere.” Privilegia, 120–21. 189 “Quaeritur pro parte rectoris et universitatis studii generalis oppidi Lovaniensis an privilegia per diversos romanos pontifices concessa universitatis suae, ne quis 188

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The importance of this tool in the hands of the Louvain nominees cannot be underestimated. The canonical notion that a conservator could not be subjected to the jurisdiction of the privileged he was expected to protect190 did not deter academics from ensuring the conservator’s loyalty by other means. First, the personnel of the conservatory, its notaries and procurators, had to be admitted by the ordinary congregation of the university on a yearly basis; the key figures of the conservatory, the signator primarum litterarum who had to render conservatorial letters efficient by his signature and by the rectoral seal, as well as the assessor, a jurist who “assisted” the conservator in his tasks, were always prominent members of the law faculties, despite being formally appointed by the conservator.191 Second, the conservator himself was, in fact, designated by the university. Several potential conservators had been mentioned in 1425, in 1469, and in 1562,192 endowing the academics in Louvain with the tools to accelerate the progress of their litigious affairs considerably. Instead, they stuck to one single conservator—often the abbot of Saint Gertrudis193—in order to keep the income and the prestige of the conservatory attractive enough for its holders, while their right to chose whomever they wanted among the five conservators mentioned in the conservatorial bulls increased their control over their institutional protector as well.194 In 1593, it was academics who wrote up a job description (including studiosorum seu suppositorum eorum in prima instantia sive in possessorio sive petitorio agatur etiam in quacunque causa possit trahi seu revocari ad judicium extra muros dicti oppidi, sint revocata per decretum xx sess 24 stante quod in eodemque concilio trid ut c v sess xiiii et c vi sess xxv reserventur”; followed by a series of notes and the final decree of the Congregation of the Council, 6 July 1576, ASV, Congr. Concilio, Positiones, 21, 255–57. Interestingly, the Congregation referred to earlier rulings in 1572 on the Louvain privileges, suggesting that it was involved in negotiations leading to In Praecelsa. 190 May, “Konservatoren.” Nevertheless, the deacons of Saint Peter’s in Louvain, titular conservators of the university’s privileges, were members of the Faculty of Theology. 191 In the period under investigation: Gregorius Wytfliet, (1558–1594); Petrus Gudelinus (1594–1619); Cornelius Sylvius (1619–1620); Jacobus Van Haacht (1620–1621). Reusens Documents relatifs, 1, 547–548. 192 Reusens, Documents relatifs, 1. 193 Between 1589 and 1625, three abbots of Saint-Gertrudis succeeded each other as conservators; they had been preceeded by a deacon of Saint Peter’s—Michael Baius— and would be replaced, in the second quarter of the 17th century, by deacons and provosts of Saint Peter’s as well. Cf. Reusens, Documents relatifs, 1, 522–24. 194 For instance in the 1540s, at the occasion of a quarrel between the university and its abbot, who refused to accept nominees himself. Acta DD Deputatorum, 8 August 1543, RAL, OUL, 57, 22v.

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detailed guidelines on how the privileges were to be interpreted) when appointing the 9th abbot of Saint Gertrudis, Arnoldus Ab Eynthouts, as their conservator.195 While the university thus disposed of a powerful prelate of its choice in order to protect its interests, the abbots of Saint-Gertrudis could acquire for itself the prestigious function of conservator apostolicus of the Louvain privileges.196 That Eynthouts (1593–1607) and Ludovicus ab Eynatten (1607–26) presented themselves in their epitaphs to posterity in their roles, first, of abbots of Saint Gertrudis and, second, of apostolic conservators of the university’s privileges,197 illustrates the prestige that came with the function in the beginning of the 17th century.198 Academics, in return, were free to switch conservators if the present holder of the office did not act according to their wishes; a possibility that was, in the course of the 16th century, considered more than once. Their room for manoeuvre to do so, however, was in fact limited. In 1615, a few members of the Faculty of Arts suggested that the abbot of the Premonstratensian abbey of Park near Louvain, by then the university’s protector at court,199 should be involved in his quality of titular conservator of the university in the defence of the faculty’s privileges. It was concluded that this could be done only with the consent of the abbot of Saint Gertrudis; after which no further initiatives were taken in order not to offend the latter200 and not to alienate a powerful prelate who had, just as much as the abbot of Park, a seat as a representative of the First Order in the States of Brabant. Academic claims must have seemed particularly odious to those confronted with them. Legal traditions held that apostolic conservators could only proceed when the violations of the privileges they had

195 The contract contained instructions on how to interpret the university’s privileges and admonitions to ignore counterarguments specified in the contract. Acta Universitatis, 31 May 1593; RAL, OUL, 60, 319v. 196 The promotion of the priors of Saint-Gertrudis to abbots had to add to the lustre of the conservatory. Cf. the bull Romanus Pontifex of 2 March 1450, issued by Nicolas V on the request of Philip of Burgundy, in Reusens, Documents relatifs, 1, 442–44. 197 Reusens, Documents relatifs, 1, 522–23. 198 It is not known to what extent the income from fees and honoraria may have added to the attractiveness of the function, as no decent study of the curia conservatorialis, including its economic aspects, exists. 199 The abbot had been appointed by the archduke and the pope as visitator of the university in 1607, and became the university’s princely superintendant in 1617. Cf. p. 431–86. 200 Acta Facultatis Artium, 16 August 1615, RAL, OUL, 715, 43v.

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to protect were notorious; that in other cases, ordinary jurisdiction had to run its course. The university’s conservator nurtured a rather ample interpretation of this “notoriety,” just as much as the academics themselves.201 Thus any contestation of a nominee’s claims became a blatant violation of academic privileges. And last but not least, academics claimed that the only ordinary jurisdiction in cases involving university men was the academic one—that is, if it suited them, since many members of the university sought justice elsewhere as well. Again, the notion of poverty would prove to be central to their argumentation in the beginning of the 17th century. The privileges of nomination had been granted to academics because they were poor; consequently, if the latter had to bear the costs of procedures before other tribunals, or even in Rome, their poverty would inhibit them from gaining access, because they could not afford adequate representation; last but not least, they could not be evoked outside the walls of the city of Louvain because of the importance of their tasks. It is, consequently, hardly surprising that contestation of nominations was often inextricably linked with the contestation of academic jurisdiction. The jurisdictional bull Rationi Congruit of 1523 had been ratified in 1531 by the Caroline Concordat. This princely charter introduced significant restrictions to the conservator’s jurisdiction over faculty nominations involving benefices in Habsburg lands.202 The latter could only rule in cases in which a suppositus of the university was involved; if the latter had already left the university, his case was to be brought before ordinary ecclesiastical tribunals for procedures in petitorio (i.e., over the validity of competing legal titles), and before the princely councils in the provinces in possessorio, i.e., in procedures that provisionally assigned the possession of a benefice to one of the parties. “Real and corporal” possession and the usufruct of a benefice were, after Roman law, considered distinct from legal titles granted by ecclesiasti-

201 The notion “contra notoria universitatis privilegia” is repeated, indeed, time and again, for instance in the closing speeches of the university’s advocatus fiscalis at the curia conservatorialis, trial of Gerardus Reijneri against Adamus Harlebecanus, Dossiers des procès, 1596, RAL, OUL, 5831. 202 “Queret aliquis utrum restrictiones seu modificationes privilegii Leonini iniecte perdicta concordata etiam hodie observari debeant in privilegio Sixtino responditur negative tum quod Sixtinum sit longe anterius et non ita preiudicet collatoribus ordinariis, tum maxime quod concordata ista tantum agant de privilegio Leonino, et tanquam restrictiva seu alias modificativa sint stricte accipienda, et ita nuper decidit concilium privatum contra capitulum Sancti Amati Duaci.” Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22191, 2r–v.

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cal authorities. For higher appeals en court de Rome, litigants could only turn to apostolic judges in partibus, usually local Church dignitaries—the deacon of Saint Peter’s or the abbot of Saint Gertrudis, to name a few—who were commissioned by the nuncio to settle specific disputes over benefices and other issues and who were assisted by an assessor appointed by the university.203 While the apostolic court of appeal at Louvain allowed academics to conduct Roman lawsuits without having to leave the university town, it was less permanent an institution than the tribunals of the rector and the conservator. The state of its archives is in keeping with this ad hoc character of the institution.204 Files with respect to lawsuits over benefices obtained via the privileges of nomination are lacking for the period under investigation. The deafening silence on this institution in the sources suggests that they did not play a primary role in dispensing academic justice.205 In his widely read textbook for nominees, Vande Velde stated dryly that only a minority among nominees bothered appealing to the conservator for procedures that went beyond the sending of litterae inhibitoriales to collators or apostolic executors promoting the interests of competing candidates in the beginning of a legal conflict. Academics, including university nominees, did not flinch from appealing more frequently to the prince’s tribunal than to that of the conservator in order to secure possession of their benefice, provided the benefice in question was situated in Habsburg Lands. University men, just as much as other clerics, preferred the instruments of coercion that princely councils had at their disposal against their competitors. Lawsuits before ecclesiastical courts (including the curia conservatorialis), by contrast, were notorious for their endless and tiresome procedures in petitorio.206

203 The papal nuncio, as legatus a latere of the Holy See, was endowed with the institutional tools to claim this function for himself; in practice, the nuncios had to avoid offending local and national constitutions. Wauters, “De speelruimte.” Commissiones of this type constituted the sixth series of expeditions of the Dataria Apostolica. Cfr. ASV, Dataria Ap., Expedit., 1–5. 204 That is, in the archives of the university’s apostolic court of appeal. Only eight files are preserved in Dossiers des procès et appels soumis au juge synodal délégué par l’autorité apostolique, RAL, OUL, 6218–6220, respectively, for 1577–90; 1608–15, and 1620–22. 205 The apostolic court of appeal may have been active more frequently in the second half of the 17th century. Cf. De Vocht, Inventaire, 501, n. 1. See also Vandenghoer, De rectorale rechtbank. 206 “Duplex est iudicium beneficiale petitorium et possessorium, licet autem liberum sit preterire possessorium et immediate intentare petitorium, vix tamen ullus hoc

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Roman circuits holding a grudge against lay interference in benefice affairs suggested that this distinction between different procedures was academic; arguments concerning the legal title to a benefice inevitably popped up in procedures in possessorio as well. This association would make the Brabant academics vulnerable at the court of Rome, where ecclesiastical jurisdiction had become, under the banner of the Tridentine decrees, a central preoccupation of what has appropriately been called “la seconde centralisation romaine.”207 When Frangipani moved from Cologne to Brussels in 1596 to become the first nuncio of Fiandra, he got no new instructions, since he was familiar with the “huomori e negotii” in the region, but in his correspondence, the nipote added that the papal representative at the archducal court had to defend ecclesiastical jurisdiction at all occasions.208 His successors were instructed to be vigilant towards infringements on ecclesiastical jurisdiction by the councils, even if their Roman patrons felt, “for the time being,” impotent to adapt jurisdictional practices in the Netherlands to their views. Conversely, archducal ambassadors were instructed to assure the pope during the first audience that no novelties had been introduced in the field, and never would be under the reign of his obedient son; when problems arose, the Holy Father should not lend an ear to “hommes indiscrètes et inconsidérés” but should await the explanation of the prince, who was the most respectful among Catholic princes towards the Holy See and the jurisdiction of the Church.209 It is in this context that Louvain academics struggled, during three decades, to have their privileges of nomination and jurisdiction confirmed against their competitors in the Principality of Liège.

fecerit tum quia possessorium facilius enervatur, tum quia eo preterito pars gaudebit interea possessione nisi utrimque aliter conveniatur . . . tum quia praxis ista sic ordinatur et minus obnoxia cavillationibus, incidentibus et appellationibus moratoriis, tum quia ut summum tantum potest bis in totum a iudice regio appellari, ita ut saltem 2da provocatione veniatur ad curiam supremam. Ubi a conservatore una et eadem pars potest appellare donec 3° conformiter fuerit condemnatus.” Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22192, 48r and 49r. 207 See Lefèbvre and Pacaut, L’Epoque Moderne. 208 “Sarà bene che ella s’informi delle cose di giurisditione, che intendo patiscono asssai in quelle parti, et avvisarme di ciò et d’ogni altra cosa minutamente che passi, tanto di Stato come di altra materia.” Aldobrandini to Frangipani, 27 April 1596, ed. Cauchie and Maere, Recueil des instructions générales, 3; a second admonition followed on 9 November 1596, ibidem, 7. 209 E.g., in the first instruction to Richardot, first archducal legate in Rome, Négociations de Rome, 15 June 1600, AGR, Audience, 438, 135r–140r.

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3.5. The litmus test of the market: Efficiency and necessity of the Louvain privileges of nomination Between 1598 and 1621, the nomination boards of the university and the Arts faculty issued c.800 nomination letters, at least 330 of which led to the formal acceptation of a benefice. The Louvain privileges of nomination provided their beneficiaries with a niche that, from a quantitative point of view, resembled the one occupied by an archbishop such as Matthias Hovius within the boundaries of his diocese or that occupied by a handful of big employers among other ordinary collators such as abbots or chapters. Unlike to ordinary collators, nomination boards could claim to be the managers of a far more differentiated number of benefices, their niche in the clerical job market not being limited to a fixed benefice pool. This allowed university men to put their nominations to use in line with their perception of the situation in the clerical job market. The number of benefices claimed under the authority of the university and of the Arts faculty was impressive, even when compared with the (much larger) number of papal provisions in the ecclesiastical provinces of Cambrai and Mechlin or in Liège. What do these numbers actually represent? Scholarship has made it incontestably clear that not all Roman bulls eventually resulted in the possession of a benefice in the later Middle Ages, an assessment that is probably valid for papal provisions in the early modern period as well. Nor can it be taken for granted that all individuals in Hovius’ collation registers eventually ended up as holders of the benefices the archbishop had bestowed on them. The right man on the right place tends to emerge only at the end of the negotiations today as well as in the 17th century, and appointments by legitimate authorities did not necessarily mark the end of the procedures. In the absence of a clear-cut consensus about who was to be recruited by whom for which position, and because of the organisation of the Church into communicating local and universal entities, candidates for office and lords of benefices had to realise their claims in a highly formalised way—if not in courts of law. All this applies to Louvain nominees as well. Many a nominee may have witnessed his claims being declared unfounded. Between 1588 and 1625, 60 to 70 references to lawsuits or to requests for legal assistance surfaced in university and faculty minutes. And a substantial proportion may have preferred to strike a deal with a competitor in exchange for a pension or another benefice—an outcome that was envisaged in academic statutes on the number of benefices that each

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individual was allowed to hold by virtue of academic nominations. Only an in-depth investigation into the number of nominations resulting in the possession of a benefice, and into the share of benefices garnered by nomination letters compared to other legal instruments, may reveal whether or not nominations and the acceptations resulting from them were indeed the cause of many a graduated cleric’s fortunes. But this is a book about academics pondering their chances in the clerical job market. Let us therefore focus on how they themselves assessed the efficiency and the necessity of the Louvain privileges of nomination. The first question has received many answers from a wide range of observers. Scholarship has revealed that even in the 18th century, the participation of nominees in the diocesan concursus for rectorships in the archdiocese of Mechlin was a mere formality, ending up as they did anyway on the positions of their choice.210 In the early 17th century, the bishop of Antwerp had proposed to impose restrictions on the acceptations of canonships in order to induce graduates to join the decimated army of the Church in the parishes—a measure that only made sense if collators did not consider nomination letters as mere “letters of application.” In 1600, Frangipani, the first nuncio to Flanders, warned the Secretariat of State in Rome that his room for manoeuvre in a row between a papal providee and a nominee over a canonship in Ghent was limited: the nomination indults granted to the academics were “si manifesti, et in uso” that the ministers of the prince in the councils of justice intervened in their favour.211 In 1613, academics would balk at substituting other legal instruments for their privileges when they had the chance to do so in the context of the “Roman Question,” nor would they seize the occasion of previous confirmations to introduce substantial innovations.212 It should be noted that just two or three individuals were registered as petitioners in Rome for novae provisiones of benefices they had accepted

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Quaghebeur, “Le concours diocésain,” 879. “L’altra è che l’indulti dell’università di Lovanio sono qui si manifesti, et in uso, ch’il provisto da quella anteriore nel tempo dell’altro provisto da Nostro Signore, et ottiene il possesso, difficilmente può privarsene, quando viene difeso da detti ss ministri . . . per la giurisdittion ch’hanno in ogni sorte di causa possessoria ecclesiastica.” Frangipani to San Giorgio, 2 December 1600, ASV, Fondo Borghese, III, 98c.1, 237r–v. Verdicts in benefice affairs constitute half of the Privilegia printed in 1728. 212 Memorandum of the university, Négociations de Rome, 20 September 1613, AGR, Audience, 448, 235r–v. 211

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via academic privileges in between 1598 and 1621.213 Douai, in one of its vain attempts to acquire its own privilege of nomination in the course of the 1570s, drafted a letter of supplication to the pope with a proposal for an institutional framework that was modelled after the Louvain privileges.214 All this suggests that university men had reasons to be satisfied with their privileges. Keeping nominations the single cause of graduated cleric’s fortunes required a lot of work, however, the efficiency of academic nominations being crafted by their procedures. Jansenius’ trivial reference to his being “deuxiesme en nomination” reveals that no competition could arise between different nominees (who were also much less numerous than their French equivalents); further, the room for manoeuvre of the ordinary collator to pick a nominee of his choice was correspondingly limited, being fobbed off, as he was, with one single candidate between the legally (or statutorily) prescribed intervals. Academic statutes went to great lengths to ensure that ordinary collators had no say whatsoever. Connivances with ordinary collators who tried to have their own cronies nominated by academic boards were strictly forbidden.215 At first sight, such a stipulation could only have been obsolete. Nominees 213 Aegidius Baius, a member of the clan of the Baianides who will play a prominent role in the next chapters, combined a provision with a nomination for an altar dedicated to Saint Catherine in the collegiate church of Saint-Hermes in Ronse. Dossiers des procès, 1603–1608, RAL, OUL, 5832; Henricus Paridanus, for a canonship in the cathedral of Ypres, for instance in Borghese to Sanseverino, 24 August 1619, ASV, Fondo Borghese, II, 105, 356v. Adrianus de Proost, a professor in Law, was recommended via the dispatches of the nunciature as well in order to obtain a benefice, but he does not figure among the Louvain nominees. Bentivoglio to Borghese, 16 February 1615, ASV, Fondo Borghese, II, 110, 110r. About two dozens nominees in the population figure in the Per Obitum series, but only one-quarter of them were university men at the time. 214 The proposal enumerated the circumstances in which the rector or the vicerector, assisted by members of the Congregatio, could burden the collations of ecclesiastical persons or institutions. Procedures were roughly the same, although not surprisingly, the regulations de preferentia differed substantially. The draft proposed different taxae for distinct groups of beneficiaries. The University of Douai’s plans differred in this from those of the Louvain privileges, that they also sought to reach specific groups of graduates holding teaching positions in schools for the humanities, in collegiate or cathedral churches, or who were involved in pastoral care. This suggests that the Douai proposal was shouldered by the archbishop of Cambrai, who was also projected as the university’s apostolic executor alongside the abbots of SaintVaast and Anchin. Louvain had obtained its privileges without the bishops’ intervention. Copia libelli supplicis universitatis Duacensis Rome SS exhibende, submitted to the Privy Council before 24 January 1574, UAL, OUL, 307. 215 “Item bona fide asseris quod non habes mutuum intellectum cum isto collatore ad cuius collationem petis nominari ad occupandum scilicet hanc nominationem in

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needed local channels of support, relying as they did on relatives or friends to act as informants or as apostolic executors on their behalf. Preliminary contacts with local Church magnates may have been the rule rather than the exception, and more than one letter of nomination was probably accompanied by letters of recommendation from the beneficiary’s college president; from other academic patrons, or even from the university itself to the collator in question. Academic authorities did not seek to eradicate such practices: a (rare) attestation in the minutes of a nominee who claimed to have been provided with the same benefice both by the ordinary collator and via his letter of nomination was not severely reprimanded.216 By definition, such practices rarely, if ever, ended up in official academic records. That was probably the point of prohibitive academic statutes of this type: they had to guarantee that no collator could formally claim any right of consent, any initiative on his or her behalf being explicitly ruled out by the interrogation procedures aspiring nominees had to go through when presenting themselves before academic nomination boards. And precisely because such practices had been rendered sufficiently inexistent in academic statutes and minutes, ample room could be left for informal agreements with Church magnates. This formalistic stance was adopted in other situations that threatened to reduce the efficiency of academic privileges. Once a nomination had been awarded and/or a benefice accepted, the nominee’s rights were sacrosanct. Academic authorities were recurrently approached by the nuncio, by members of the nobility of state, or by nobles with substantial clout at court to “use their authority” over nominees who were competing with their own clients for specific benefices. Although university men generously offered mediation in such cases and indeed boosted pressure on the nominee in question to be “reasonable,” they denied any suggestion that they could wield authority over an acceptor who was in suo jure, and never forced acceptors to abandon their claims.

gratiam collatoris ne ab alio forsitan nominando gravetur.” Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 53r. 216 I.e., the case of Viglius Breijdel, who was asked by the university to cede his right to a providee of the papal nuncio. Breijdel did not yield to peer pressure, with explicit reference to his obligations towards the ordinary collator who had provided him with the same benefice as well. Acta Universitatis, 17 November 1600, RAL, OUL, 62, 14v.

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Two examples may suffice. In July 1609, the Archdukes sent a request to the academic senate at Louvain urging its members to abstain from nominations with respect to one single benefice: the rectorship of the basilica dedicated to the Miraculous Virgin of Scherpenheuvel, a sanctuary that was destined to become the national shrine of the Catholic South. This newly endowed benefice was to remain at the bestowal of the archbishop of Mechlin. Four months earlier, Matthias Hovius had already tried, in vain, to convince the Louvainists by mobilising his friend, Jacobus Jansonius, an influential college president and Regius Professor of Scripture, for his cause.217 Because only one benefice was involved, academics could have obliged the bishop, the don, and their natural princes, but they refused to comply: making allowances to the archbishop was, after all, likely to trigger similar demands of other ordinary collators, to the detriment of the university’s poor scholars.218 The vicissitudes of Andreas Mantels, a professor in Philosophy who had accepted a canonship in the collegiate church of Saint Servais at Maastricht in 1621, offer a telling example as well. His competitor was Charles Lonson Van Eelen, the son of the Grand Dispensor of the archducal court219 and the candidate of both the Infanta Isabella— who had personally recommended him to the cardinal-protector of Fiandra, Scipione Borghese—and the papal curia, which had procured the papal provision.220 It is interesting to learn, first, that no efforts 217 The Archdukes to the university, Conseil d’Etat, Missives, Universités, 3 July 1609, AGR, Audience, 1948; Hovius to Jansonius, 26 February 1609, in Acta Universitatis, 1 April 1609, RAL, OUL, 63, 13r–14r. Hovius’ request was eventually rebuffed in Acta Facultatis Artium, 9 April 1609, RAL, OUL, 714, 428. 218 “Quod hic exemplum permovere poterit ceteros archiepiscopos et ordinarios collatores, maxime gallicarum partium et Leodiensium, ad idem tentandum vel obtinendum, et presertim, quod ordinarius loci (qui privilegia studiosorum tueri merito deberet) non nisi propter abusum gravem tale aliquid petiturum fuisse, arbitrabuntur Ubi tamen nullus verum abusum hactenus fuisse demonstravit, unde neque simile aliquod hactenus ab ullo prelato petitum fuit.” Memorandum submitted to the Archdukes by a university delegation to Brussels on 21 July 1609, Acta Universitatis, 15 July 1609, RAL, OUL, 63, 30r–v. 219 “A un hecho suyo estudiante de una prebenda que avia vacado en Mastrique, la qual la universidad de Lovayna en vertud de los privilegios que tienen de los sumos pontifices han denominado a otro, que ya tiene tomada la possession de manere que esta nuestra non tiene effecto, y hallandose cargado de tantos Hechos.” Supplication of Christobal Lonson van Eelen, dispensero mayor, to the Infanta, Négociations de Rome, before 29 August 1621, AGR, Audience, 458, 92r. 220 “Que su santitad por intercession del cardenal Borghese y la buena mana de VS havia conferido a su hijo Carolos Van Eelen.” Della Faille or De Fritema, secretary of State, to Vives, archducal resident in Rome, Négociations de Rome, 9 April 1622, AGR, Audience, 458, 92r.

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were made to chase the Louvainist from his benefice in favour of van Eelen; instead, the archducal resident in Rome was instructed to procure another expectative grace for the collegiate churches of Aachen and Maastricht.221 Second, academics felt confident enough to rebuff a request from the Infanta herself to hold their nominees in check and not to thwart Van Eelen’s chances a second time.222 Renewed lobbying in Rome by diplomatic channels on behalf of Van Eelen were matched by appeals from the academics to the States of Brabant, the warden of the land’s privileges, and by the mobilisation of their friends at court. In the course of the next chapters, it will become clear that the academics’ command of the constitutional discourse typical for the Low Countries was impressive. For now, it is obvious that this legalist attitude was not just the reflection of a political culture of sorts. It was also a device that allowed academics to hide behind the inviolable rights of nominees, to keep the door shut for all kinds of requests or for pressure from magnates, and to preserve nominations issued by academic authorities as the single cause of successful acceptations by virtue of academic privileges, independent from the support the nominee in question possibly had been able to foster from protectors outside the university. Enter necessity. The previous sections have revealed that the privileges of nomination were of use, allowing as they did their beneficiaries to respond flexibly to the opportunities they perceived on a highly differentiated, segmented, and floating clerical job market. Impressive numbers of graduates, teachers, and college presidents surface in the university’s and the faculty’s nomination books. But contrary to the academics’ (and many a historian’s) intuition that there should be a logic behind their beneficial strategies, this does not make them necessary. The work that went into keeping nomination letters the single cause of their holders’ possible success indicates that graduates who did

221 “Se sirviesse de procurarle de Su Santidad un Mandatum de providendo al nuntio que reside aqui para la primera prebenda que vacara en las yglesias de Aquisgrano y Maestricht.” De Fritema or Della Faille to Vives, Négociations de Rome, 9 April 1622, AGR, Audience, 458, 92r. 222 “Placuit responderi domino Lintermans quinque vel sex esse personas in facultate que per hoc magnum paterentur preiudicium, et facultatem nihil pose concludere nisi illae personae prius condescendant in petitionem domini Lintermans.” Acta Facultatis Artium, 23 October 1621, RAL, OUL, 715, 409.

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appeal to academic privileges could have tapped other social resources to get access to benefices. The majority of graduates in Theology did not even bother applying for them. The staunch attachment of academics to their privileges in an area that was home to one of the most open clerical job markets on the continent for graduates is impressive. Academics at Douai can serve as a control-group in this respect: despite lacking nomination privileges, the Flemish university was a big university, and France’s second biggest in the second half of the 17th century. On top of all that, the figures in the previous sections, when related to the normalisation of the clerical job market, indicate that the period of the Armistice and of the Truce (1607/09–20) was an era of golden opportunities. All this suggests that university men may have been better off without these privileges. A lot of energy was lost on their defence; their preservation made them both dependent on protectors outside the Ivory Tower and vulnerable to accusations of abuse; and their necessity was ambiguous from a market perspective. In addition, market-related arguments may convince (or fail to do so, in this case) contemporary historians when assessing the necessity of the Louvain privileges of nomination, but they barely surfaced in academic rhetoric, where the intimidating graphs figuring in the previous sections and chapters were notable for their absence. There, it was the omnipresence of heretics in the region, the poor scholars’ vital contribution to the Catholic offensive in the Low Countries as the storm troopers of orthodoxy, and (towards the authorities in Brussels) the semi-constitutional character of their privileges that did the job. Qualifications are in order. Academic nominations may have been considered useful, or even vital, by clerics trying to acquire the benefice of their choice in specific circumstances. Yet, it remains a moot point how these at-firstsight trivial matters became matters of concern for the entire academic community, the realm, and Catholic Christendom in northwestern Europe. How, in other words, their cause became a public cause that could enrol not only high-minded university dons looking after the interests of their protégés but also a wide range of earthly and heavenly protectors. It would take almost 30 years, in the Roman Question, for the public interest to dictate a confirmation of the Louvain privileges of nomination. Just as much as the efficiency of privileges was a product of a wide range of practices at Louvain, turning them into necessities for the realm and for Christendom apparently called for a lot of work, as the following chapters will reveal.

PART TWO

Assembling Academia

Titlepage 3. Reading, interpreting, and writing: fragment of a portrait of Jacobus Jansonius (1547–1625), Professor Regius of Scripture, beginning of the 17th Century, anonymous, oil on panel. For the full painting, see p. 466. [Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht]

CHAPTER FOUR

FLASHBACKS: PERFORMANCES OF ACADEMIA 1588–98

Some time in the late summer of 1598, a man in middle age left the university town on the shores of the Dyle and headed south. He may have been in a melancholic mood when turning his back on the old Brabant capital, having spent half of his lifetime in Louvain’s schools patiently trying to impart the principles and subtleties of Aristotelian philosophy to the youth. As a reward, he had been nominated by a grateful faculty to prebends in the collegiate churches of Douai and Séclin.1 Four years ago, our deserving canon had been welcomed on the highest peaks of the Louvain Parnassos, when he was solemnly proclaimed Doctor in Theology together with two other promising divines. He had more reason to be obliged towards his Alma Mater because he was an Irishman, one of the first among the hundreds of clerics who would find a safe harbour at Louvain during the next two centuries, far from the persecution in their unfortunate fatherland. His name was Peter Lombard, and he was heading for the capital of the world.2 His interests may have been many, for the call of Rome reached the inhabitants of God’s City in various ways. But at least one mission he had. His bags were filled with wordy recommendation letters accredited by the university’s seal of Saint Peter’s, authentic copies of solemn papal bulls, and cautiously worded juridical memoranda advocating a confirmation of the university’s privileges of nomination. Lombard would carry his precious burden through Liège, Trier, Milan, and Ferrara. In Ferrara, which had become briefly the theatre of papal power after its devolution from the Este to the States of the Church, he humbly implored the support of Archduke Albert, who

1 Reusens, Documents relatifs, 4; Liber secundus nominationum, 18 March 1584 and 18 August 1590, RAL, OUL, 4752, 201v and 222v. 2 Lombard was an Old-English, i.e., Anglo-Irish Catholic born (c.1554) into a longestablished merchant family in Waterford, where he had studied the classics at Peter White’s school. He arrived in the Spanish Netherlands before 1575, when he graduated as primus in the promotion of that year. Acta Facultatis Artium, 10 February 1575, RAL, OUL, 713, 64v. The basics in Clavin, “Lombard, Peter.”

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was on his way to his dubious heritage in the Netherlands.3 Both travellers, heading in opposite directions—Albert had just returned his cardinal’s hat and had married, by procuration, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia—were to become the focal points of Academia’s hopes and ambitions during the next two decades. The archduke awaited the noble task of elevating Infelix Belgium, torn by civil war and religious strife, to the flower of Christian nations again. The Irishman was sent to Rome with a mission that was considered vital to the South’s resurrection as well by his colleagues at Louvain. For ten years now, the renaissance of the old university had been hampered by the intrigues of clerics blinded by ambition and greed who harassed poor scholars who tried to obtain a small benefice as a shelter from need during old age. On Lombard’s shoulders rested the heavy burden of bringing these machinations to an end by throwing himself at the feet of the Supreme Pontiff. This chapter will delve into the decade preceding our Irishman’s travel to the Eternal City. This enables us to field several stakes, protagonists, and the networks supporting them before turning to the analysis of academic policy and interests in the archducal period (1598–1621). It deploys two “axes of identification” that informed many of the Louvain schemes in the following decades. And it broadens the scope somewhat, as other affairs—more precisely, the row with the Jesuits in the 1590s over the order’s rights to teach philosophy and theology—effectively stalled academic lobbying in Brussels and in Rome for confirmation of the university’s privileges until 1598. This episode allows us to tackle a few central questions. Even after marketrelated incentives have been proved in the previous chapters to have been a highly unsatisfactory explanation for why academics stuck to their privileges, several interpretive schemes remain on offer. These have to be put to the test in this and in the next chapters.

4.1. The pontiff, his cardinals, and the academics, 1588–98 Lombard was not the first Louvain academic, let alone the first doctor in Divinity, who travelled to the Eternal City—nor would he be the

3 Lombard to the rector and the deputy of the university, 28 November 1598, Acta Universitatis, 24 December 1598, RAL, OUL, 61, 301r.

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last, for that matter, as theologians would prove to be the university’s favourite export product across the Alps throughout the 17th century. Only eight years before, at the beginning of 1590, another learned man had been chosen by his fellow academics at Louvain to complete a mission that also would prove to be entangled with many other issues. Henricus Gravius was the son of the university’s book printer who, under the high protection of Charles V, had issued the Louvain Bible in the vernacular. Books would remain Gravius’ core business during his entire lifetime: in the Brabant university, where he would become one of the university’s leading theologians, but also in the heart of Christendom. In contrast to Lombard, Gravius had been called to Rome by the Vicar of Christ himself, in order to help the pontiff burn those books that posed a great threat to the soul and the spirit of Christians. 4.1.1. Pedanti a Roma, or the geopolitics of orthodoxy Gravius’ trip to Rome is anything but trivial to our story. He had been selected by his colleagues4 to act as a censor in a projected printing office that was to operate as a section of the Vatican Library.5 Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) had asked the university to provide him with an exquisite scholar, versed in theology as well as in law and in the classical languages. Louvain was obviously in the good books of Sixtus V’s Rome.6 In August 1589, Montalto, the cardinal-nephew, wrote to the university that the pope himself had ordered that one of the eight censors of the new Typographia Vaticana be recruited from the University of Louvain.7 Six months later, in early 1590, the famous jurist 4 This “appointment committee” consisted of two theologians and two jurists: Cuyckius, Goudanus, Wamesius, and Zuerius. Cf. the report of the commission to the university, Acta Universitatis, 2 April 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 94r. 5 On Sixtus’ projects with respect to the Vatican Library, see Bignami Odier, La Bibliothèque Vaticane, 70–75. The committee of censors indeed was one of the 15 congregations established by the curial reform of Sixtus V, which is considered a milestone in the history of the curia. Outlines in Del Re, La Curia Romana. 6 Cf., for instance, the same letter from Montalto to the nuncio of Cologne: “Specialmente s’è scritto a l’università di Lovanio, ne la quale sappiamo esser molti theologi non solo d’insigne dottrina, ma di molto zelo verso il servitio di Dio e de la religion cattolica” Montalto to Frangipani, 1 August 1587, ed. Ehses, Nuntius Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, 3. 7 “Eiusmodi librorum emendationi restitutionique octo viros preficere constituit [= Sixtus V], quos ex Germania, ex Hispania, ex Gallia atque ex Italia deligendos curat linguarum, et ecclesiastice historie cognitione, Sacre etiam Theologie vel juris canonici

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Wamesius, professor in Law and the dictator of the university’s official letters, had received promising news from Rome: the pope had declared personally to his correspondent that he was willing to reward deserving members of this international committee of censors with the cardinalate. In addition, His Holiness had referred explicitly to the future representative of Louvain, as it was his wish that the university have a protector of its own at the curia.8 Despite the university’s dire state, academic hopes must have been running high when they selected Gravius for a position whose job description might have been written just for him. The Louvain edition of Saint Augustine’s Opera Omnia, published in 1577, had scored many successes among the Eternal City’s erudites and reportedly was still a topic of conversation in Roman palaces in 1588,9 a reputation that may have been upheld by the Roman collaborators of the Louvainists, including the late cardinal Sirleto (1514–85), the former custodian of the Vatican Library.10 In the second episode of the Baianist affair (1579–80), Louvain divines had proved themselves capable of smoking out the snake of heresy in their midst while vigourously defending the Doctor of Grace’s legacy against abusive interpretations. The relationship with the papal envoy sent for the occasion, Father Francisco de Toledo, SJ,11 had been cordial, and Pope Gregory XIII (1572–85), for his part, had not hesitated to display his concern for the war-afflicted daughter of Rome through a substantial donation. It was at the request of the papal nuncio at Cologne, Giovanni eruditione prestantes, unum ex iis petit Sanctitas Sua ab universitate vestra, quem maxime idoneum iudicaveritis” Montalto to the university, 5 August 1589, in Acta Universitatis, 13 September 1589, RAL, OUL, 60, 74v–75r. 8 “Dum de mea causa apud suam Sanctitatem agerem, dixit michi sua sanctitas quod hic Rome instituisset collegium octo doctorum . . . et reliqui duo Germani et in Germania elegisset Universitatem Lovaniensem . . . addebat quod suo tempore promoveret ad amplissimos honores etiam cardinalatus si promereatur, et quod nihil magis optaret quam quod universitas hic perpetuo haberet aliquem cardinalem qui esset protector universitatis.” Godefridus Chineij to Wamesius, 2 December 1589, in Acta Universitatis, 5 January 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 85r–86v. Three months earlier, the pope had already referred to a doctor-protector of the Belgian provinces in general. Chineij to the university, 4 September 1589, in Acta Universitatis, 8 October 1589, ibidem, 77r. 9 Ceyssens, “Le ‘Saint Augustin’ du 17e siècle,” 118. 10 On the collaboration of Sirleto, who sent copies of 24 unedited letters of Augustine to Louvain, see Petitmengin, “A propos des éditions patristiques,” 203. On Sirleto as a pivotal figure of the recently founded Congregation of the Index during the pontificate of Gregory XIII, read Godman, The Saint as Censor, 32. 11 Cf. Grisar, “Die Universität Löwen zur Zeit der Gesandtschaft des P. Franciscus Toletus.”

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Francesco Bonomi (1584–87), that prominent divines drew up the socalled Corpus Doctrinae of Louvain, a document that confirmed the faculty’s Augustinianist position but that did not omit referring to the condemnations of Baianism by Pius V and Gregory XIII.12 The doctors’ interests in complying with the nuncio’s request (if they had not come up with the idea themselves) may have been many. Louvain divines, just as much as their colleagues at Douai, Paris, Salamanca, Alcalà, Coimbra, and several German institutions of higher learning,13 claimed a full magisterium in doctrinal affairs; a corporate authority that was wielded by a timeless body theologic that was legitimised by a heroic past in the defence of Catholicism and that was deemed (from the academic point of view) much more obliging than the authority or the professional qualifications of individuals. The Censura Lovaniensis that was drafted in 1587 on the teachings of the Louvain Jesuit Lessius on Grace and Free Will reflected, seen from this perspective, the faculty’s ambition to play a high game on the international theological scene. The most decisive element in the Louvain image-building in Rome may have been the fact that the Brabant University was the only centre of learning to answer an earlier call from Rome to the universities of Louvain, Paris, Salamanca, Coimbra, and Alcalà, back in 1587, to apply their expertise and prestige to the pope’s project:14 a former inquisitor and one of the first members of the young Index Congregation, His Holiness had decided that the Roman-Tridentine Index of prohibited books of 1565 (which was largely inspired by the Louvain Index) needed an update, as heretic authors and printers had not remained still during the last decades.15 In return, academics had sought to convince the pope that all Belgian printing offices (and by consequence book censorship) should be concentrated at Douai and Louvain.16

12

Cf. Roegiers, “Leuven en Rome.” Neveu, “Censures romaines,” 422. 14 Frajese, “La revoca dell’Index sistino,” 21. “Universitatum Parisiensis, Bononiensis, Salamantin[ae], Lovaniensis, aliarumque probatarum studia ad librorum expurgationem, et correctionem excitent, earumque diligentem operam et industriam requirant.” Congr. 28 January 1588, ACDF, Index, Diarii, 1571–1596, 30v. 15 Martinez De Bujanda et al., Index de Rome, 273. On Louvain’s involvement, see for instance Henricus Cuyckius, dean of the faculty, to the pope, 18 August 1588, in ACDF, Index, Protolli, IIa–B. 16 Henricus Cuyckius, faculty dean, in the name of the Faculty of Theology, to Sixtus V, 18 August 1588, ACDF, Index, Protocolli, IIa–2B, 579r–v. 13

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Plate 4.1. Frontispiece of Augustine’s Opera Omnia Frontispiece of the Opera Omnia, the authoritative text edition of Saint Augustine until deep into the 17th Century. The edition, which was prepared by a team of Louvain professors and their students, represented one of the university’s most prestigious enterprises of the 16th Century. [Catholic University of Louvain, Maurits Sabbe Library]

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In all these issues linking Louvain with Rome, Gravius, one of the university’s prominent philologists, had played his part, which had gained him correspondents in the Eternal City and something of a name,17 and which must have convinced the university’s appointment commission that he was fit for the job of censor—editor under a pontiff who was particularly concerned with the restoration of Christianity’s textual sources to their ancient splendour.18 However, there was probably more at stake than the prospect of spending the rest of his life in the true scholar’s most promising biotope in 17th-century Europe. And the pontiff’s benevolence had probably not been inspired merely by Louvain’s reputation. A letter from an irritated Montalto to the academics back in 1589, in which the cardinal-nephew had insisted on the modesty and the reverence to be displayed towards the Holy See, suggests that both academics and curialists wished to settle other issues as well.19 The theological disputes with the Jesuits at Louvain over Grace and Free Will had quickly escalated. A private, fraternal admonition by the faculty dons had become a public document that was sanctioned by their colleagues at Douai and that was endorsed by several high ranking Church officials in Belgium; riots were reported among students of both parties; a scandalized flock witnessed mutual recriminations of heresy launched from the pulpit as much as from the professor’s chair.20 In the name of unity among Catholics, Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, Bonomi’s successor as nuncio of Cologne, had been sent to Louvain to reduce the bickering scholars to silence and prod them into leaving the affair to the Holy See. Frangipani would soon discover that additional sticks and carrots were required, for the Louvain divines balked at submitting their views to scrutiny by the Holy Office. Interestingly, they had only decided at the peak of the conflict with the Jesuits to shoulder Sixtus’ project of

17 Cf. the remark of Ehses, Nuntius Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, 333, n. 2: “Die Wahl fiel auf den Professor Heinrich Gravius, dessen Name bereits mehrfach in dem Löwener Theologenstreit genannt worden ist.” See also Ceyssens, “Hendrik van Grave.” 18 Motta, Bellarmino, passim. 19 “Vestrum erit, quod estis polliciti litteris idibus decembris scriptis, re ipsa praestare, ut temperetis vobis in loquendo et quibuscunque rebus ostendatis modestiam vestram.” Montalto to the Faculty of Theology, 1 February 1589, ed. Ehses, Nuntius Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, 232. 20 On the role of “the people” in clerical discourse (in casu in the dispatches of the nuntiature), read Boute, “Que ceulx de Flandre se disoijent tant Catholicques.”

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drawing up a new Roman Index.21 Montalto’s answering letter of 13 September 1589 to the faculty’s eventual submission did not only laud the academics’ proverbial modesty,22 but sealed a bargain, launching the invitation for an expert from their gremium to become a member of the international committee of censors envisaged by his pontifical uncle. Having a watchdog, if not a vindicator, of the Louvain doctrinal claims in the heart of Christendom must have made dogmatic quibblers in Belgium go misty-eyed. Roman bureaucrats of the Faith, for their part, probably hoped to contain potentially embarrassing outbursts of dogmatic zeal in Belgium by drawing the Louvain doctors into their orbit, specifically the doctor who was noticed in Rome as the university’s lobbyist towards the Belgian episcopate in the Lessius controversy.23 Lessius, for his part, still tried to mobilise the Society’s expert in Rome, Bellarmino, for his cause as late as 1591.24 Other events may have fostered a sense of urgency for Louvainists, Jesuits, and curialists alike. By 1588, a dispute on similar lines had escalated into a tug of war at Salamanca between the Society and the Dominicans over the Portuguese Jesuit Luis de Molina’s Concordia gratiae et liberi arbitrii. In this episode, Cardinal-Archduke Albert of Austria (Viceroy and Inquisitor of Portugal until 1593) would become acquainted with the explosive potential of dogmatic debates, with wide political ramifications.25 When Gravius arrived in Rome in the late Autumn of 1590, he wandered into unknown territory, after the death of Sixtus V26 and the 21 When Frangipani arrived in Louvain in the second half of 1588, the Faculty of Theology had not yet answered the call from Rome to co-operate with the Sixtine Index project. “Non mi parve conveniente presentar a detta Facoltà lo breve destinatogli da N. Signore, non tanto per rispetto della causa istessa [controversy with the Jesuits], quanto per l’altro della Santità Sua, poi che havendogli Sua Beatitudine scritto altre volte su la materia dell’indice nuovo d’i libri prohibiti, non gli ha dato risposta anchora come doveva.” Frangipani to Santori, cardinal of the Holy Office, 4 July 1588, ed. Ehses, Nuntius Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, 164. Bonomi, Frangipani’s predecessor at Cologne, had already expressed his surprise about the unwillingness of the academics to react to the pontiff’s earlier brief; cf. Bonomi to Montalto (?), 22 October 1587, ACDF, Index, Protocolli, IIa–2B, 596r. 22 “Litttere vestre pridie kal. maij pergrate fuerunt Sanctissimo Domino nostro tanquam testes modestie vestre et erga Sanctitatem Suam studii ac observantie.” Montalto to the university, 13 September 1589, ed. Ehses, Nuntius Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, 332. 23 Van Eijl, “La controverse Louvaniste,” 233. 24 Motta, Bellarmino, 535. 25 Cf. p. 375–90. 26 Rumours of the pontiff ’s death reached Gravius upon his arrival in Liège. Gravius to the university, 9 September 1590, Acta Universitatis, 10 September 1590, RAL,

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ephemeral pontificate of his successor Urban VII.27 But recommendations from the university to the new pontiff, Gregory XIV,28 the latter’s determination to implement Sixtus’ plans, and a letter from the new nipote Sfondrati to the university in January 1591 kept the bargain between Rome and Louvain intact.29 The circuits in which Gravius was introduced, as a consultor of the Index Congregation and/or an expert in the service of the Magister of the Sacred Palace,30 were familiar to the academics. His first patron was Cardinal Carafa, the cardinal-protector of the Vatican Library and a member of the congregation of the Holy Office who had acted as a go-between in the Lessius affair.31 It was Carafa—presumably a stakeholder himself in having Sixtus’ plans implemented—who had helped the Belgian secure his job as a censor of the Holy See.32 Other members of the Sacred College were linked to Gravius as well: the scholar-friendly cardinals Borromeo, Colonna OUL, 60, 116v. Gravius decided to pursue his travel, despite orders from the academic senate to return to Louvain if the news proved accurate. 27 Gravius’ information on Sixtus’ death had been confirmed in Lucerne, on his way to Milan. In Milan he heard to his great despair that Urban VII, whose pontificate had only lasted 12 days, had died as well. Gravius to the university, 3 October 1590, Acta Universitatis, 16 November 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 130v. 28 “Ceterum ut primum istic constiterit quisnam surrogatus sit pontifex, mox ad illum universitatis nomine gratulatorie scribentur littere, simulque commendabitur universitas nostra, ut quem honorem Sixtus ipsi detulerit ac in primis evocando isthinc bibliothece, noveque Typographie prefecto, eodem prosequi ipsam velit, et quem iam dudum e suo gremio in Urbem transmisit libenter suscipere.” Gravius to the university, 3 October 1590, Acta Universitatis, 16 November 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 130v. 29 Sfondrati had given Gravius the opportunity to throw himself personally at the feet of the pontiff. Sfondrati to the university, 8 January 1591, in Acta Universitatis, 27 February 1591, RAL, OUL, 60, 163v. 30 The Master of the Sacred Palace, an office that came into existence in the 13th century and that was always entrusted to a Blackfriar, had been the first official of the curia charged, in the beginning of the 16th century, with the censorship, licensing, and prohibition of books in Rome and in the States of the Church. The “Pope’s Theologian” became an ex officio member of the Holy Office and the Index Congregation. Witcombe, Copyright in the Renaissance, 69. “Et fuit generalis Cong.o et interfuerunt Card.lis de Verona, de Ruvere, Sarnanus, Alanus et Borromaeus, et ex Consultoribus Mag.r Sacri Palatii electus Ep.us Hieracensis, Abbas Adrianus, Robertus Belarminius, Ant.s Agellius, Mag.r Angelus Rocca, Laelius Suessanus, Bartolomaeus Valverdius et Petrus Morinus cum iam obiisset Henricus Gravius Doctor Lovaniensis.” Congr. 23 March 1591, ACDF, Index, Diarii, 1573–1591, 43v. 31 Cruciani Troncarelli, “Carafa, Antonio,” 485. On Carafa as Louvain’s man of confidence in the Holy Office, read Van Eijl, “La controverse Louvaniste,” 263. 32 Further instructions from Rome, sent by Gravius and Carafa, arrived in Louvain in February. The minutes mention letters from Gravius dated on 5 January 1591 as well as from Carafa with suggestions concerning “people to write to,” but no copies of these letters were inserted in the minutes. Acta Universitatis, 7 February 1591, RAL, OUL, 60, 161r.

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(both of the Index Congregation), Cusani, and “many others” were deeply impressed by his learning, his exemplary life, and his piety.33 All this was posthumous praise, however, for Gravius’ sojourn in Rome proved to be short-lived. Only a few months after his arrival, death deprived the university both of Carafa’s protection34 and of its own representative. Gravius’ presence in the Eternal City has been eternalised by his modest epitaph in the Santa Maria dell’Anima, the national church of the Empire in Rome.35 If we are informed about the doctor’s reception among the Eternal City’s erudites, it is because of the affection “after the manner of David and Jonathan” between him and another lover of books, Cesare Baronio,36 who authored both Gravius’ epitaph and the letter to the university announcing the scholar’s death.37 An admirer of San Filippo Neri (and his confessor from 1593 onwards), Baronio was, together with cardinal Cusani, a member of the Oratorio, a spiritual congregation of secular priests in which the Sfondrati pope displayed a vivid interest. The librarian of the Vallicella, the Roman base of the Oratorians, and the acclaimed father of Catholic Church historians, he was the author of the monumental Annales Ecclesiastici, a comprehensive work of ecclesiastical history that would make history as the Catholic response to the Magdeburg Centuriae.38 Baronio’s travails in the history of the apostolic Church,

33 “Nam degustaverant egregiam ipsius eruditionem et sinceram morum probitatem, in pluribus comitiis de nonnullis ecclesiasticis controversiis summe peritie specimen edidit . . . Coluit eum inter illustrissimos ac reverendissimos cardinales vite, moribus et eruditione preclarus cardinalis Borromeus, Columna, etiam Cusanus et alii compluros cum omni officio prosecuti sunt.” Baronio to the university, 2 April 1591, Epistolae Illustrium ac Doctorum Hominum (. . .) Cesarem Baronium, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Manoscritti Serie Q, 44, 67–68. 34 Carafa met his Maker two months after Gravius had expressed, in his letter to his friends in Brabant, his concern for the cardinal’s health. Cruciani Troncarelli, “Carafa, Antonio,” 485. 35 The church was (and is) also host to an archconfraternity. On Gravius’ small epitaph in the right side aisle, read Verweij, De Santa Maria Dell’Anima, 43–44. 36 “Et instar Jonathe cum Davide conglutinata est anima mea cum anima illius, adeoque tenaci vinculo, ut nec mors ipsa, que soluit omnia, valuerit me ab eo separare.” Baronio to the university, Epistolae Illustrium ac Doctorum (. . .) ad Cesarem Baronium, 2 April 1591, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Manoscritti Serie Q, 44, 67–68. 37 Another letter of condolence from Pietro Francesco Giusti, the prefect of the college of the Typographia Vaticana, arrived in Louvain as well. Acta Universitatis, 15 March 1592, RAL, OUL, 60, 252r. 38 He was the editor of the Martyrologia, which would become, as far as we know, the subject of his learned correspondence with Gravius in 1588, whom he lauded for the edition of Saint Augustine. Gravius and Baronio had exchanged friendly comments on each other’s work. See Claeys-Bouuaert, “Un théologien belge,” 864–65. It

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as well as his profound Augustinianism, may have been particularly appealing to the Louvain doctor and his colleagues in Brabant.39 At Louvain, Baronio’s letter was immediately put to use for the university’s public relations.40 It also convinced university men that they were not without friends in the Eternal City, an impression that was vindicated by letters from the pope, from Sfondrati, and from Giovanni Andrea Caligari.41 The Roman erudite, who had been obliged by his honorary assumption in the Louvain assembly of doctors just two weeks before Gravius’ death,42 was immediately asked to lobby not only for another scholar of the university to be appointed official censor of the Holy See but also for this appointment to become the theological faculty’s reserve in the future as well, which had been, from the academics’ point of view, the late Sixtus’ evident intention.43 Articulating intentions of popes and princes will prove to be is not unthinkable that Gravius may have used his contacts with the Plantin presses in Antwerp to have the first parts of Baronio’s famous opus magnum reprinted. Pincherle, “Baronio, Cesare,” 477. On the Annales, see Norelli, “The Authority Attributed to the Early Church.” Other erudite contacts of Baronio in the South Netherlands included the abbot of Tournai; Martinus Delrio, the famous Jesuit author; and the humanist Lindanus, co-founder of King’s College at Louvain and bishop of Roermond (1569– 88) and Ghent (1588). 39 On Baronio’s Augustinianism, read Pastine, “Baronio e il Molinismo,” and his diatribes during the Congregationes de Auxiliis. Cf. p. 383. 40 “Speramus fore ut ea de Lovaniensi academia existimatio quae modo Romae est in nostram totius huius reipublice Belgice commoditatem . . . redundet.” Cuyckius to the Privy Council, 12 May 1591, Université de Louvain 1556–1639, AGR, Conseil Privé, 1281. 41 Letters from the pope in Acta Universitatis, RAL, OUL, 60, 189v–190r, Sfondrati, 190r–v, and from Giovanni Andrea Caligari, the bishop of Bertinoro, 190v–191r, whom Gravius had recommended as a potential broker in his last letter read in the Deputation of the university of 2 April 1591, ibidem, 165v–166r. 42 The rector and the university to Baronio, 29 March 1591, Epistolae Illustrium ac Doctorum Hominum (. . .) Cesarem Baronium, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Manoscritti Serie Q, 44, 22–23. 43 “Et ab initio quando primum ad vos ex mandato Sixti Quinti de mittendo ad huius muneris functionem, nostrorum aliquo, prescriptum est, simul hoc etiam fuit adjectum, quod illo qui mitteretur defuncto, vel translato ad alterius muneris functionem successoris eligendi facultas esset penes universitatem hanc pro perpetuis futuris temporibus, idemque hoc bulla erectae typographiae apostolicae continere videatur, . . . nec deerunt ex nostris qui digne Gravio succedant sanctissimo pontifici, . . . qui paratos magis se exhibere non qui enixius se ingererere contendant, ante exploratam a te paulo propius S. Beatitudinis voluntatem uti ex exemptio litterarum quod hic adiunximus Paternitas tua deprehendet.” The university to Baronio, 4 August 1591, Epistolae Illustrium ac Doctorum Hominum (. . .) Cesarem Baronium, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Manoscritti Serie Q, 44, 227–34. Compare: “Mittet vobis sanctitas sua litteras apostolicas, in quibus concessa esse universitati vestre electionis illius perpetua potestas [my italicisation] apparebit, vestrarum erit partium videre, ne ab aliis provinciis, atque

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the academics’ special field of expertise during the next three decades. Nonetheless, in the early 1590s, Rome failed to abide by whatever bargain university men may have made with Montalto back in 1589, the more so since the whole Lessius episode must have become old news in light of new events.44 Two conclaves and one pontificate after Gravius’ arrival in Rome,45 in March 1592, news reached the university that Ippolito Aldobrandini, a creatura of Montalto’s, had come to occupy Peter’s chair under the name of Clement VIII.46 Academic hopes, aired in the obligatory congratulation letters sent to Rome in such circumstances, were dashed one year later. A papal brief of 5 February 1593, addressed to the academic senate, limited itself to displaying the pontiff ’s favourable disposition towards the university and to recommending Baronio (the new pope’s confessor) as the academics’ best advocate ever in Rome.47 The latter was left with the task of bringing his friends at Louvain the ill tidings of wars against the Turks, heretics engulfing the Peninsula, and soaring criminality in the streets of Rome and in the States of the Church—pressing problems that distracted the pope’s attention from arts and letters.48 Qualifications are in order. Sixtus’ plans were watered down, but not buried altogether; nor were universitatibus a quibus tales viri ad urbem mittentur, vinci vos patiamini.” Montalto to the university, 5 August 1589, in Acta Universitatis, 13 September 1589, RAL, OUL, 60, 74v–75r. 44 A vague answer from Baronio to the university on June 30th, 1591: “Et si quem miseritis Romam loco Gravii, erit mihi alter Gravius.” Epistolae Illustrium ac Doctorum Hominum (. . .) Cesarem Baronium, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Manoscritti Serie Q, 44, 236–237. 45 Gregory XIV followed Gravius into the grave in October and was succeeded by Innocent IX during the Fall of 1591. Baronio cited the constant turmoil caused by three short pontificates in a row as the reason for his failure to achieve anything for his Louvain brethren. “Irritas esse redditas ob inexpectatam mortem Summi Pontificis cui egrotanti eedem minime reddi valuerunt cardinales autem qui eas acceperunt omnes una eademque responsione atque sententia, dicunt exspectandam electionem novi pontificis.” Baronio to the university, 18 October 1591, in Acta Universitatis, 29 November 1591, RAL, OUL, 60, 234v–235r. 46 Acta Universitatis, 3 March 1592, RAL, OUL, 60, 250r–v. Attestations of correspondence with Baronio and with Pietro Francesco Giusti, the prefect of the censors of the Typographia, in which the latter was thanked for his favourable disposition towards the university, Acta Universitatis, 15 March 1592, RAL, OUL, 60, 252r. 47 Clement VIII to the university, 5 February 1593, transcription in Acta Universitatis, 29 March 1593, RAL, OUL, 60, 314r. 48 “Ut in prestenti de re litteraria nec quidem cogitandi tempus dari videatur, vos autem Petri navicule, tot fluctibus agitate, precibus subvenite, et magnis clamoribus Dominum in ea dormientem excitate.” Baronio to the university, 13 February 1593, Epistolae Illustrium ac Doctorum Hominum (. . .) Cesarem Baronium, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Manoscritti Serie Q, 44, 237–38.

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the Louvain academics now barred from channels of communication with the Eternal City. Another countryman in the heart of the curia would be called (but declined the offer) to succeed the late Gravius as censor: Gerardus Vossius of Borgloon (1547–1607), a patrologist who, an expert of the Index Congregation,49 was in close contact with both Baronio and Cardinal Borromeo and had been in the good graces of Sirleto and Carafa as well.50 We will learn more about him later, as he figures in the next sections as Louvain’s best friend in Rome.51 Despite or because of these setbacks, the academic senate took to discussing, in September 1593, which cardinal had to be appointed as the university’s protector. At the request of Henricus Cuyckius, deacon of Saint Peter’s, chancellor of the university, and regent of the theological faculty, the academics’ first choice, Federico Borromeo,52 was eventually abandoned in favour of Giulio Antonio Santori, the cardinal of Santaseverina.53 Santori would remain the university’s cardinal-protector until his death in 1602. The latter had not only offered his services himself to the university (or to Cuyckius in the first place)54 but also was the face of the Holy Office,55 the Suprema among Roman congregations and the anticamera to the papacy in the previous decades.

49 Cf. the list of consultors recorded on 19 September 1592, ACDF, Index, Diarii, 1571–96, 52r. 50 Gysens, Gerardus Vossius, 219. 51 “Prestabit haec diligentius noster [my italicisation] Vossius.” Baronio to Lindanus, before 1588, Epistolae Illustrium ac Doctorum Hominum (. . .) Cesarem Baronium, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Manoscritti Serie Q, 45, 30. Vossius dedicated one of his works to Baronio; see Gysens, Quatre lettres inédites de Gerardus Vossius, 161, n. 3; the author elaborates on Vossius’ contacts with Borromeo as well. The newly erected Typographia Vaticana was already weighed down by debts at the moment of Sixtus’ death, and his successors would be less generous than the Montalto pope, even if Clement VIII resumed much of Sixtus’ plans in the bull Inter Gravissimas of 20 August 1593. Bignami Odier, La Bibliothèque Vaticane, 81. With respect to Vossius’ participation to text editions patronised by the pope, his appointment and refusal, see ibidem, 80 and 91, n. 62. 52 “Pro bono affectu erga hanc universitatem et studia.” Acta Universitatis, 13 September 1593, RAL, OUL, 60, 338v–339r. 53 On Santori as a learned cardinal and a bureaucrat of the Faith, read Ricci, Il sommo inquisitore. 54 Cuyckius, faculty dean in 1588, had been the spokesman of the Louvain divines in the Lessius controversy. Cf. his correspondence with Carafa and with the pope, ACDF, SO, St. St., E 7–c, 502r, 506r–v, 684r–685v. 55 Meanwhile, letters of recommendation were sent to the Jesuit father Francisco de Toledo, who had recently been created a cardinal by Clement VIII.

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During the last conclave, he had been among the papabili;56 in order to cushion the blow, the fresh pope had appointed him Penitenziere Maggiore of the Apostolic Church.57 A professional keeper of secrets, Santori was a public persona in the Rome of Clement VIII. His Louvain move has not been documented58 and therefore leaves ample room for speculation. The supreme inquisitor may have sought to renew Louvain’s bargain with Montalto. A watchdog of the Suprema’s prerogatives from the 1570s onwards, he may have anticipated the need for support in the row he had stirred up in the summer of 1593 between the Holy Office and the cardinals of the Congregation of the Index, over the Sisto-Clementine Index of prohibited books drafted by the latter (and blocked by Santori).59 The Diari or journals of the Index reveal that the Louvain divines were charged at several occasions with the expurgation of books and that Louvain censures, notably on Erasmus, the Talmud, and Cornelius Jansenius of Elder, were a point of reference for Roman experts. The aborted Index of 1593 contained a surprisingly long list of books in Dutch.60 In 1594, the university’s censor of books—Cuyckius—was lobbying for a timely publication of the new Index.61 Or the cardinal may just have been prodded into applying for the job by Cuyckius, which does not exclude the other options. The tug of war between the two Roman congregations over their respective 56 Santori was an exponent of the Roman wisdom that whosoever enters a conclave as a pope will leave it a cardinal. A moving description of Santori’s lonely hours after the failed attempt to seat him on Peter’s chair in Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste, 11, 10–16. “Et de eoque pluries actum fuit et spes fuerit quod esset futurus pontifex summus.” Acta Universitatis, 25 September 1593, RAL, OUL, 60, 340r–v. 57 I.e., the cardinal chairing the oldest tribunal (in foro interno) of the Apostolic See: the Penitenziaria Apostolica, the supreme confessional of the Church. Cf. Borromeo, “La Penitenzieria Apostolica,” and Rodríguez, “La Riforma della Penitenzieria Apostolica.” 58 No indications are found in his diaries (Memorie de i negozi che trattò il card. Santorio (. . .), ASV, Arm. LII, 22 and 22a) of his private audiences with several pontiffs nor in Tamburini, “Gli scritti del cardinale Giulio Antonio Santoro.” 59 In this context, read Frajese, Nascita dell’Indice, 139–75, and Ricci, Il sommo inquisitore, 380–82. 60 Cf. the 1593 Index in ACDF, Index, XXXVI, 8b. The list of Dutch books seems to be a copy of the Antwerp Index; however, some titles were added and an Index Lovaniensis was referred to as a point of reference for the Latin titles. It unclear whether an updated list was referred to, or the older versions of the 1540s. 61 “Lectae literae Regii et Pontificii Censoris librorum apud Lovanienses quae Sanctissimo Domino Nostro praesentatae fuerant, et decretum quamprimum insistendum expurgatorio Indice conficiendo ut pro utilitate omnium publicari possit.” 3 June 1594, ACDF, Index, Diarii, 1573–1596, 74r.

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competences and the methods of censorship to be applied involved, among others, Louvain’s famous and recently returned celebrity, Justus Lipsius, and his Politica.62 This book would, together with his De magnitudine Romana, exert an immense appeal throughout the courts of Europe. In Rome, it was notorious for its controversial inclusion in the suspended Index of 1590 and that of 1593.63 Cuyckius himself had become a stakeholder as well: the university’s censor of books,64 he had supervised and rubber-stamped Lipsius’ revision of the Politica following his reconciliation with the Church and his return to the South Netherlands and had corresponded on his behalf with another acquaintance of the Lovanienses, Bellarmino, who had to be rehabilitated by Clement VIII as a consultor after the unsavoury affair of the Sixtine Index. A former professor at the Louvain Jesuit college, Bellarmino was not only proposed by Cuyckius and Lipsius as an acceptable mediator in their issues with the congregation65 but also would recurrently be appealed to by the Brabant Alma Mater in the decades to come. At first sight, the link among Louvain, Cuyckius, and Santori looks like a renversement des alliances, Gravius having been associated by Baronio with Borromeo and Colonna, prominent members of the Index Congregation. Had academics at Louvain got bogged down in the quagmire of curial intrigues? That would require more evidence. It is intriguing that the late Sixtus had installed an international committee of no fewer than eight censors based in the Vatican Library, with the explicit goal of confining Catholic readers of patristic and ecclesiastical works to editions

62 On Lipsius, the Politica, and the reception and recuperation of his ideas in Europe, read the chapter “Scepticism, Stoicism and raison d’état” in Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 31–64. 63 De Bujanda, Index de Rome, 314, 420–21. The Politica’s fate was a hot topic of conversation in Rome: in the Congregation of the Index, which had explicitly included it in a session in October 1592 (Waszink, Justus Lipsius: Politica, 175); as well as by Clement VIII, in his Animadversiones to the Congregation’s cardinals urging them to remove the book from the list together with Bodin, Scaliger, and Masson. Frajese, Nascita dell’Indice, 153. 64 Cuyckius would occupy this role, and the related “royal” canonship in the first chapter of Saint Peter’s, until 1596 (when he was appointed bishop of Roermond), and he was succeeded by Guilielmus Fabricius. Vingeroedt, Chanoines de Saint Pierre. 65 Waszink, Justus Lipsius: Politica, 175–76. On Bellarmino’s double role as an author figuring in the Sixtine Index of 1590 (the predecessor to the suspended Index of 1593 that never went public because of the pope’s death in 1590) and as a consultor of the Index, cf. Godman, The Saint as Censor. Cf. Ceyssens, “Bellarmin et Louvain (1569–1576).”

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approved by Rome and produced by the Typografia.66 It is even more intriguing that simultaneously the Congregation of the Index’s room for manoeuvre was seriously curtailed by the pope,67 among others in the momentous reform of the curia in 1588.68 But Gravius had arrived in Rome two (admittedly short) pontificates too late, and did not live long enough, for the university to become a highly visible stakeholder, let alone a stake, in affairs that did more than opposing just a few cardinals of two competing congregations. The debates of the day antagonised supporters and opponents of moderation in the use of repressive methods (which did not unequivocally overlap with membership of one of the two congregations involved); over the position to be adopted towards nervous Venetian printing offices, which feared that Roman indecision or rigidity would ruin their business; and over the policy to be conducted towards the Serenissima’s major ally on the Peninsula, Henry of Navarre, the heretic king of France who was waging war on the Habsburg Netherlands. The rehabilitation of Henry IV among Catholic princes by Clement VIII, which was one of the most momentous events of the Aldobrandini pontificate,69 as well as the Clementine compromise in the Index of 1596 (which rehabilitated the Politica)70 were not merely the result of the victory of one curial faction over another.71 Roman politics of the day were compatible with Clement’s desire to redraw the political map of the curia and to keep at bay Spanish hegemony in Rome (whose champions were identified with hardliners in the Index and in the Holy Office)—a hegemony 66

Godman, The Saint as Censor, 103. The board of censors based in the Vatican Library is not discussed in recent scholarship. 68 It is this reform, only to be readdressed fundamentally under Pius X (1903–1914), which systematised and institutionalised specialised committees of cardinals (the Roman congregations) which were to function alongside the medieval Consistory (the assembly of the Sacred College of cardinals that advised the pope), the tribunals (Signatura Justitiae, the Sacra Romana Rota and the Penitenzieria Apostolica), and the offices (Cancellaria Apostolica, the Reverenda Camera Apostolica, the Dataria). Outlines in Del Re, La Curia Romana. 69 On the grand affairs of Clement VIII’s pontificate, read Fattori, Clemente VIII e il Sacro Collegio. 70 The appointment of Marcantonio Colonna, the leading figure of the beleaguered Index Congregation, to the protectorship of the Vatican Library after Carafa’s death, should probably be situated in this context. 71 This notwithstanding the opposition respectively from Spain against the absolution of Henry of Navarre and from Philip II’s man in Rome Peña, the Spanish auditor of the Sacra Romana Rota and a consultor of the Roman Index congregation. On Lipsius’ reception by the Spanish Inquisition, read Waszink, Justus Lipsius: Politica. 67

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from which academics had greatly benefitted under the pontificate of Gregory XIII72 but which now risked inflicting collateral damage on those involved in the Lipsius affair. Nor were Roman politics the result of grand strategies designed by the Supreme Pontiff himself. The outcome of both affairs was mediated, to a great extent, by circuits with wide ramifications that more often than not were related somehow to the Oratorio, the religious community that was to evolve into Papa Aldobrandini’s main think tank. It is from among the pious and erudite members of Neri’s Oratory that Clement chose his confessor: Cesare Baronio, who had recently been restyled a full-blown doctor Lovaniensis. Louvain probably failed to become the plaything of different curial or national factions, and it is relatively safe to conclude that curialists hardly bothered identifying the Louvain doctors with one of these factions. Individuals such as Santori or Baronio may have anticipated events or opportunities that never came about. The affair of the Censura Lovaniensis was eventually shelved by the Holy Office, the virtues of doctrinal imprecision being more valued in the Eternal City than among pedanti with an axe to grind in Belgium.73 Yet, it is evident that c.1590, the university’s official channels of communication with the Eternal City, which involved the learned cardinals and erudites at the courts of Sixtus V and Clement VIII, were monopolised by the theologians (and in 1593 by Cuyckius in particular). Seen from this perspective, the prime mover behind the Louvainists’ repeated attempts to establish close relations with the curia were theological issues in which they had high stakes. In this scenario, Homo Academicus’ most precious commodity was the university’s cultural capital, which was the object of the endless struggle for domination within the university and in the Eternal City. Conversely, contacts with the curia could reinforce considerably one’s position in the academic field, as the example of Cuyckius suggests. In Roman politics, however, a pedantic disposition towards toxic theological debates hampered Louvain ambitions to

72 I.e., with respect to the confirmation of the academics’ privileges of nomination and the derogation to the Council of Trent that had to make their privileges viable; as well as the donation of 2,000 ducati de camera (c.4,000 florins): measures that were taken at the request of Philip II. On the unique position of the Monarquía in Rome under “El Rey Prudente,” read Dandelet, Spanish Rome. 73 On the notion of the “pedante” in Italian courts, which was associated with monks and academics, read Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier, 115–16. The concept should not be overstretched, as the Inquisition is, of course, not an exponent of court life.

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redeem its cultural capital in social, corporate capital (sufficient support among members of the Sacred College resulting in a confirmation of academic privileges) until 1616. 4.1.2. Modesty, books—and benefices Another scenario is possible, however. Relations between Rome and Louvain went beyond theological disputes; these may not have mattered that much at all, as they were barely discussed in official university minutes; and many of the preliminaries in the previous section are sheer coincidence rather than grand strategies concocted by the theologians. The Louvain divines did not insist on a swift decision in the Lessius dispute either, despite the silence imposed on them by Frangipani until Rome had spoken. This suggests that theologians and their colleagues on the university board were concerned about something else; that being disowned by Rome in doctrinal affairs would harm other, more fundamental interests; and that Academia’s wiremen established communication lines with the major centre of patronage in the West in order to preserve these interests rather than to settle theological conundrums. In this scenario, the relation between knowledge and social resources is to be inverted. It is this plot that is most supported by the evidence in faculty and university minutes from the 1590s. To start with, Wamesius and the university had been informed in 1589 and 1590 about Sixtus’ promising plans to have a Louvain doctor elevated to the cardinalate by a student and client of his, Godefridus Chineij. The latter apparently had high stakes of his own in having a protector at the curia. A nominee of the Arts faculty, his acceptation of a canonship in Tongeren had been challenged by Roman writs, and he had complied. While pursuing his case for the Sacra Romana Rota, he spied on behalf of his colleagues at Louvain on the bishop of Tournai who was believed to be lobbying, during his visit ad limina apostolorum,74 for the University of Douai taking over Louvain’s rights 74 Sixtus V had, with the apostolic constitution Romanus Pontifex of 20 December 1585, extended the (obsolete) obligation for Italian bishops to visit the tombs of the Apostles at regular intervals to all bishops of Latin Christianity. Every 3, 4, 5, or 10 years they were expected to inform the pope of the “state of their diocese,” which in many cases came to replace, in a written form, the quinquiennial travel from the South Netherlands to the Eternal City. A list in Cloet, Repertorium van dekanale visitatieverslagen.

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of nomination in its own hinterland.75 In the past few years, another nominee had faced similar problems: in 1588, Gisbertus Danielis, a teacher in Philosophy, had asked for litterae inhibitoriales of the conservator of the privileges against a competitor for another canonship at Tongeren. He had been told by the academic senate that a friend in Rome (who turned out to be Carafa) would be contacted in order to shield him from being summoned by Roman tribunals.76 Soothing answers from Carafa notwithstanding,77 Danielis was summoned with reference to the bull In Coena Domini by Orazio Borghese, the auditor of the Apostolic Chamber and general executor of apostolic letters,78 to appear before his tribunal within 60 days.79 Two delegations of academics armed with copies of the academics’ papal bulls were sent to Frangipani, who then stayed at Louvain in the context of the Lessius controversy,80 to recommend the faculty’s case; but in spite of the nuncio’s promise to intervene,81 Danielis’ brother in misfortune Chineij was the next victim of a papal writ. 75 Chineij to Wamesius, 2 December 1589, in Acta Universitatis, 5 January 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 85r–86v. Louvain’s suspicion about its sister institution’s plans would not be roused again in the period under investigation. Cfr. Part I. The university’s attitude towards Vendeville, the bishop of Tournai, was ambiguous, the latter having been asked before his departure to recommend the university’s interests in Rome. Acta Universitatis, 14 November 1589, RAL, OUL, 60, 80r. It is indeed this bishop who would be identified as a “patronus singularis” for having invested in the Louvain pedagogy of the Falcon. 76 Acta Universitatis, 6 September 1588, RAL, OUL, 60, 21v. 77 “Placuit Sanctissimo domino nostro cum quo nomine universitatis vestre de causa beneficiaria magistri Gisberti Danielis diligenter ei, ut ea cognoscenda, et decidenda iuxta privilegia apostolica vobis concessa istuc remitteretur.” Carafa to Wamesius (in his quality of dictator litterarum of the university, see Reusens, Documents relatifs, 1, 311), 12 October 1588, in Acta Universitatis, 30 January 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 30v. 78 The Auditor Generalis Causarum Reverendae Camerae Apostolicae, often referred to as the Uditore del papa or A.C., had as the president of the tribunal of the Apostolic Chamber initially been competent in financial crimes committed by papal collectors and in civil disputes between the latter and those who had to pay taxes and annates, and had gradually expanded his field of action. Del Re, La Curia Romana, 299–301; but Borghese’s jurisdiction as executor generalis was legitimised by special faculties granted by the pope. Cf. the copy of a decisio rotalis, Leodiensis canonicatus coram Pegna, 12 May 1597, in Acta Universitatis, 18 September 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 335v–336v. 79 A copy of this writ (no date) in Acta Universitatis, 10 April 1589, RAL, OUL, 60, 335v–336v. 80 Frangipani arrived at Louvain, according to his correspondence, on 22 June 1588 and stayed in the Brabant city until 3 December, when he corresponded from Liège with the Segretaria di Stato in Rome. See Ehses, Nuntius Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, 2, 159 and 206. 81 Delegations that included several university officials visited the nuncio on 24 and 25 September 1588; no recommendation letter in support of academic pleas is

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All this puts Montalto’s letter to the Faculty of Theology of February 1589 into a different perspective. In response to a recommendation letter from Wamesius (Chineij’s academic patron), Montalto had intervened with his uncle to have the affair of the Louvain privileges transferred to an auditor of the Sacra Romana Rota. Montalto’s may have been a subtle warning rather than a favour, however, as another option was on offer: the way of grace. The Supreme Pontiff had displayed his willingness to confirm the university’s privileges, provided that the academics were prepared to acknowledge the pope’s benevolence.82 The call for modesty to be displayed by the theologians and Louvain’s subsequent demonstrations of obedience and reverence towards the Holy See obviously aimed at negotiating another bargain between the pope and the academics:83 in his already mentioned letter of 13 September 1589, which lauded the academics for their modesty, Montalto indicated that the file of the Louvain privileges had been transferred for examination from the Rota to Cardinal Lancelotti.84 More favours were to follow in exchange for Louvain’s reverence towards the Holy See, this being the letter in which the university was invited to appoint one of the pope’s future censors. Montalto’s warning that the path of grace was more likely to produce results was verified in the last months of 1589 and in 1590. In Chineij’s letters to Wamesius and Danielis, competing clientelist factions materialised that were firmly embedded in the microcosm of the tribunals and offices at the curia. The fact that the pope had suggested charging the cardinal datario (Gianbattista Palotta) with the examination of the university’s privileges suggests that it was not the university’s intellectual interests but its material interests that became the play-

recorded, however, in the dispatches of the nunciature (Ehses, Nuntio Ottavio Mirto Frangipani) in between 1588 and 1590. 82 “Id enim et Sanctitas Sua propensio erga vos, et merita virtutis vestre postulant, ut in eiusmodi rebus, que ad commoda vestra pertinent Romani pontificis beneficentiam agnoscatis.” Montalto to the university, 10 December 1588, Acta Universitatis, 8 March 1589, RAL, OUL, 60, 34. 83 In order not to stir things up, the university decided to drop its allusions to the Jesuit controversy in the letter it planned to write to Carafa for the preservation of their privileges; instead, the secretary of the Inquisition, Santori, had to be “instructed” on the Jesuit controversy. Another letter had to be written to Orazio Borghese. Acta Universitatis, 3 June 1589, RAL, OUL, 60, 46v. 84 Cardinal Scipione Lancelotti (cardinal 1583–98), who had been an auditor of the Rota himself, not his nephew Orazio Lancelotti (cardinal 1611–20). See Weber, Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, 2, 547.

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thing of different factions within the curia. Chineij found out that the datario had a case pending before Franciscus Oranus, a Rota auditor who happened to be the patron of Chineij’s challenger. In order not to offend Oranus, the cardinal refused to comply with his request to examine the university’s privileges.85 Chineij was duly deprived from his canonship within the next few months. Another protest letter from Wamesius, the university’s dictator,86 and another display of favour by Montalto later, the case had been removed (once more) from the Rota by the pontiff himself, as His Holiness was inclined, the cardinalnephew insisted, to cover the university with favours. Instead, Cardinal Pinelli (a member of the Holy Office and well acquainted with the Lessius affair)87 had been commissioned with the hearing of the case at the request of the Louvain procurators in Rome.88 Despite letters of recommendation and an instruction sent to Pinelli by Wamesius in favour of his client, these events did not shield Chineij’s colleague Danielis from sharing the same fate and being declared by the Rota an intrusus who had to be removed from his canonship. Meanwhile, Chineij had lost his academic patron at Louvain with the death of Wamesius in the first half of 1590. Two conclusions leap to the eye. First, after Wamesius’ death, the academic senate of the university, in sharp contrast to the congregation of the Arts faculty, refused to become a party in Danielis’ and Chineij’s case and balked at complying with Chineij’s request to appoint Laurens Dublioul (his Majesty’s agent for the Netherlands), 85 “Et propterea insteti quod alius ex illustrissimis cardinalibus surrogaretur, verum hactenus hec non potui impetrare licet maximam adhibuerim diligentiam, et propterea . . . tandem adivi illustrissimum cardinalem datarium et ipsum cum meo advocato informavi qui videns iusticiam cause mee, et tamen nolens offendere rotam et D. Oranum quem habet iudicem in propria causa, noluit causam nostram acceptare.” Chineij to Wamesius, 2 December 1589, Acta Universitatis, 4 January 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 85r–86v. 86 Wamesius to Montalto, 12 January 1590, regest in Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 32. In his answer of 20 March, Montalto referred to another letter from the university in its entirety, dated on 12 February 1590. 87 Domenico Pinelli, card. 1585–1611. Weber, Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, 2, 770. He was mentioned, alongside Asculano, Bellarmino, del Buffalo, Bianchetti, Arrigoni, De Givry, Du Perron, and the inquisitors Monopoli and Taverna, in a letter from Frangipani to the university that included a list of cardinals who had been charged with the examination of the Louvain censure against Lessius, 1588, in KBR, Manuscrits, 22192, 62v. 88 Montalto to the university, 20 March 1590, Acta Universitatis, 7 May 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 100v. The term procuratores vestri probably refers to Chineij’s private solicitors and advocates in Rome.

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Gerardus Vossius, and Clemens Sublindius89 as its procurators in Rome.90 The monitoring of the nominees’ cases was, apparently, as much the work of different factions and clienteles at Louvain as it was in Rome. Second, not only the academics’ correspondence with Montalto was dominated by Academia’s more prosaic concerns rather than by ethereal discussions on Grace and Free Will. University officials eventually agreed—without involving the name of the Alma Mater as such—to write letters of recommendation to the cardinals whom Chineij had suggested.91 Their names—Santori, Allen,92 and Colonna—are particularly revealing. Contacts with erudite cardinals in Rome, which had been established in the course of the Lessius affair and via Louvain’s recent stakes in the Sixtine Index, apparently were used as transmitters in the defence of the academics’ endangered niche in the clerical job market in the first place.93 This scenario unfolded along similar lines throughout the 1590s. As a matter of fact, it was Chineij’s letters in July and August 1590, in which he testified that an anti-Louvainist faction was being formed at Rome, that informed the university’s decision to send Gravius to the Eternal City. Academics at Louvain drew the same conclusions as Chineij, the future censor of the pope being charged by the university’s congregation with advocating a confirmation of the privileges of nomination rather than reviving the case of the censura Lovaniensis.94 89 From Ranst, near Antwerp, in the duchy of Brabant. He stayed in Rome from 1565 onwards as a notary and as a sollicitator causarum and became revisor supplicarum in 1598 (until 1609). Vaes, “Les curialistes belges,” 107. 90 See Acta Facultatis Artium, 27 May, 2 July, 13, 16 and 18 August 1590, RAL, OUL, 713, 286v, 290r and 291v–293r; Acta Universitatis, 2 and 27 June, 11 August 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 104v, 105r, 110r. This in spite of Chineij’s despair, that his cause was lost without letters of recommendation that involved the university itself as a full party the rights of which were being harmed. “Et propterea nisi iuver commendationibus despero de causa.” Chineij to Wamesius, 2 December 1589, Acta Universitatis, 4 January 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 85r–86v. 91 In the session of 11 August, Philippus Zuerius, the university’s new dictator, was commissioned to write the recommendation letters to Montalto et alios. Acta Universitatis, 11 August 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 110r. 92 Allen, an English exile, was a member of the Index Congregation and had recently been appointed archbishop of Mechlin by Philip II. In addition to his work as a cardinal-censor, he may have been interested, from the point of view of Chineij and his friends in Brabant, in advancing the cause of the university in his future diocese. More on the circumstances that eventually prevented him from occupying his episcopal see in the Netherlands in Harline and Put, A Bishop’s Tale. 93 The discussion of Chineij’s second letter in Acta Universitatis, 13 August 1590, RAL, OUL, 60, 110v. 94 Acta Facultatis Artium, 2 July and 13 August 1590, RAL, OUL, 713, 290r and 291v; Acta Universitatis, 13 August 1590, RAL, OUL, 61, 110v.

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The beneficia promised by Sfondrati in his letter to the university, in which he reported on Gravius’ private audience with his uncle, Gregory XIV, are apparently to be taken quite literally. Seen from this perspective, books appear as mere vehicles for benefices. When Baronio was implored, after Gravius’ death, to represent the university’s interests in Rome, the academic senate did not bother mentioning the Lessius affair but instructed him to promote the cause of Danielis95 with Sfondrati and with Caligari, the bishop of Bertinoro;96 it is also in this context that the theologians’ old fellow Toledo was to be rallied for their cause. In like manner, discussions over appointing an official cardinal-protector in the Fall of 1593 and the academic senate’s eventual choice of Santori were explicitly part of its strategy to have the university’s privileges confirmed.97 In the diaries the inquisitor kept of his audiences with Clement VIII, two interventions of Santori’s have been recorded that concerned Louvain. In both cases, respectively the university’s and Cuyckius’ beneficial interests were on the agenda.98 In 1594, the cardinal came up with the idea (suggested to him by the academics) of submitting the university’s privileges to the Congregatio Nationis Germanicae,99 a congregation charged with the affairs of Germany installed in 1591 and presided over by Cardinal Giovanni Ludovico Madruzzo, the prince-bishop of Trent.100 The cardinal had

95 Chineij, meanwhile, had been provided by the pope with a canonship in the same chapter and had disappeared from the scene. Cf. Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 32. 96 The university to Baronio, 4 August 1591, Epistolae Illustrium ac Doctorum Hominum (. . .) Cesarem Baronium, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Manoscritti Serie Q, 44, 227–34. Gregory XIV’s death aborted once more Baronio’s attempts to meet Louvain’s expectations. “Irritas esse redditas ob inexpectatam mortem Summi Pontificis cui egrotanti eedem minime reddi valuerunt cardinales autem qui eas acceperunt omnes una eademque responsione atque sententia, dicunt exspectandam electionem novi pontificis.” Baronio to the university, 18 October 1591, in Acta Universitatis, 29 November 1591, RAL, OUL, 60, 234v–35r. 97 The new cardinal-protector’s job description in Acta Universitatis, 25 September 1593, RAL, OUL, 60, 340r. 98 “Di Henrico Cuichio provisto della Chiesa Ruremondense, ch’è veramente decano della università di Lovanio, mostrarle le sue lettere (. . .). Le vide.” Diario Santori, 23 November 1595, ASV, Arm. LII, 21, 115r. 99 “E delle lettere per Sua Santità del rettore et università di Lovanio di non essere costretti venire a Roma, et delli privileggi loro che Sua Santità la rimette alla congregazione di Germania etcetera. Sua Santità disse che glie le mandasse il loro agente a parlarle.” Diario Santori, 26 May 1594, ASV, Arm. LII, 20, 352r. 100 Ad hoc commissions charged with the restoration of Catholicism in the Empire evolved into a stable Congregatio Germanica under the pontificate of Pius V in 1568, with ten cardinal-members under Gregory XIII. It was abolished under Sixtus V but was re-established in 1591 by Innocent XI, at the instigation of Madruzzo, and

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not only been a commilito of the late Gravius at Louvain in the 1540s but also had earned his spurs as an ally of the university in the previous decades during the negotiations leading to the bull In Praecelsa.101 Madruzzo had been enrolled by the academics as a scientific patron as well, the prestigious Louvain edition of Saint Augustine of the late 1570s being dedicated to him and to his nephew.102 Santori’s move must be situated in recent events in Belgium. There, the unfortunate Danielis had got himself into trouble for another canonship he had accepted in the collegiate church of Visé.103 Meanwhile, Joannes Clarius, a royal professor in Divinity, had been summoned— despite conservatorial litterae inhibitoriales and the involvement, by virtue of the constitution Eximiae, of the procurator general of Brabant—to appear before the new Uditore del papa,104 Camillo Borghese, a favourite and future creatura of the Aldobrandini pope.105 Danielis’ first case with respect to the canonship at Tongeren, which was still pending in Rome, had already been submitted to the German

remained active until the cardinal’s death in 1600. See Krasenbrink, Die Congregatio Germanica, esp. 261. No protocols have been preserved. Ibidem, 265 and 283. Its competences were subsumed by the equally ephemerical Congregatio de Propaganda Fide of Clement VIII. Cfr. Jačov, “Clément VIII et la fondation de la Congrégation pour la Propagation de la Foi.” The continuity with the contemporary Congregazione per l’evangelizzazione dei popoli dates from 1622, when Urban VIII installed the congregation De Propaganda Fide monitoring Catholic missionary activities in Europe and overseas. 101 This intervention had brought along rather expensive gifts. Cf. the bill presented by Gerardus Vossius (see below) in Acta Facultatis Artium, 6 June 1575, RAL, OUL, 713, 73v–73r. On Madruzzo’s studies at Louvain, see Motta, Bellarmino, 543. 102 Ceyssens, “Le ‘Saint Augustin’,” 115. 103 Acta Facultatis Artium, 30 April 1594, RAL, OUL, 713, 364v–365r; Acta Universitatis, 30 April 1594, RAL, OUL, 60, 371v. 104 He had accepted a canonship in the collegiate church of Saint-Denis at Liège. Acta Universitatis, 10 January 1594, RAL, OUL, 60, 359r–v. “Per calumniam nuper privatus, nulla monitione praevia ac qualitatibus meis callide suppressis, ad tribunal etiam nunc evocor reverendi domini Camilli Burghesii, et hoc Sanctitate Tua ignorante, idque contra notoria privilegia apostolica . . . nobis concessa, dictique domini Auditoris evocationem, prout ea ex superiorum beatae memoriae PPcum Pauli ac Gregorii XIII irrita est, irritam quoque Sanct. Tua declaret; aut si ea gratia indignus sim, caussam ad quemcumque iudicem in Academia nostra ab Apostolica sede constitutum remittat.” Letter of supplication of Clarius, 14 April 1594, ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 15r, in dorso 18v: “Al Card. Aldobrandini.” 105 The brother of Orazio, the previous auditor of the Apostolic Chamber, who had died on 3 October 1590. Weber, Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, 1, 123. Normally the office of Uditore del papa, one of the most expensive venal offices at the curia, returned to the Reverenda Camera Apostolica, but thanks to a coup led by Cardinal Montalto and to Medici protection, the Borghese family could “inherit” the office and pass on one of the most promising stepping stones for a curial career to Camillo. Emich, Bürokratie und Nepotismus, 3.

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Congregation, a move that had produced the desired effects: the congregation had ruled, in the middle of 1593, that the Louvainist’s case had to be remitted to the university’s apostolic conservator and that the Uditore del papa had to abstain from further evocations of Louvain nominees to the Eternal City.106 The involvement of the Congregation of the German Nation (which Santori probably had to turn, in 1594, into a venue for Clarius’ case as well) is significant. It highlights, first, the academics’ strategy to exclude the regular offices and tribunals charged with benefice affairs from interfering in the networks they had forged to preserve their interests. It also indicates that, after Gravius’ death, other circuits at Louvain took over many of the channels of intelligence and the initiative from the theologians. As a matter of fact, these circuits are likely to have continued their activities behind the grand strategies deployed in the academic senate and in the university’s correspondence. This calls for some qualification. Madruzzo was a promising patron; and appealing to a congregation charged with the co-ordination and supervision of reform and missionary activities in the Empire added substance to Louvain claims that, as the only bulwark of orthodoxy in a sea of heretics, the university deserved a special treatment. Yet, it is the middlemen who interest us here. Two secretaries of this congregation could be trusted to pass on the academics’ point of view: Clement Sublindius, Chineij’s sollicitator causarum, and Jacobus Blavirius from Grandville, a former subregent of the pedagogy of the Pig under Mattheus Boden.107 Blavier had been a nominee himself before disappearing from academic sources108 106

Acta Facultatis Artium, 10 September 1592, RAL, OUL, 713, 352v. From Ruckelingen, licenciate in Theology, president of Standonck College, from 11 July 1562 onwards regent of the pedagogy of the Pig. He died in September 1597. Reusens, Documents relatifs, 4, 209. 108 Blavirius was subregent of the pedagogy of the Pig before 29 March 1589, when he was nominated in this quality with respect to the collations of the dean of SaintLambert’s in Liège. Liber secundus nominationum, 29 March 1589, RAL, OUL, 4752, 217r; admission to the congregation of the Faculty of Arts in Acta Facultatis Artium, 7 October 1589, RAL, OUL, 713, 281v. The last attestation of Blavirius is to be found, again, in the Liber secundus nominationum, 2 August 1591, RAL, OUL, 4752, 226v. His identification remains dubious, as Vaes mentions a Blavirius who would have been performing as the agent of the cathedral chapter of Liège between 1588 and 1603. Another Jacobus Blavier (from Hodeige), a pupil of Gerardus Corselius, Ordinary Professor in Law, and frequent nominee of the Faculty of Arts between 1591 and 1598 (Liber secundus nominationum, RAL, OUL, 4752, 224r, 231r, 237r, 248r, and 270r) would accompany Lombard to the Eternal City in 1598, where he joined the famiglia of an auditor of the Rota (probably d’Ortembergh). In 1600, he asked, via his academic patron in Louvain, for letters of recommendation to the bishop of Liège, to whom he had been recommended by Clement VIII, in order to obtain a benefice. Clement VIII 107

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from 1591 onwards and then popping up again in the dispatches of the nunciature of Cologne as a papal providee three years later.109 Just as much as Blavier, Sublindius figured on many an ecclesiastical institution’s paylist as the Belgian factotum in Rome, and surfaces in this quality in academic minutes as well.110 In their quality of both curialists and sollicitatores, their interests in drawing benefice affairs within the orbit of their young and still feeble congregation may have been many. In addition, Sublindius and Blavirius lead us, via Leonardus Vossius,111 formerly member of the Faculty of Arts, deacon of Saint-Jean at Liège, ex-cubicularius of Pope Gregory XIII, and, respectively, their correspondent and apostolic executor in the Principality, back to the Eternal City, to the latter’s uncle Gerardus Vossius, the scholar who had lived in Rome since 1573 and who had been mentioned as Gravius’ successor in the Vatican printing offices.112 Vossius, Chineij’s other candidate to perform as the university’s official procurator, and his nephew had an impressive record of lobbying for the university in the negotiations leading to the Gregoriana and the brief In Supremo Militantis in the 1570s and against the attempts of Douai to haul in part of Louvain’s privileges of nomination in the 1580s.113 A doctor in theology of the Sapienza who would go down in history as the Belgian editor of patristic texts, befriended by Borromeo and Baronio, Vossius was a wintered curialist too.114 to Ernest of Bavaria, 1 March 1600, regest in Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 138; Acta Universitatis, 27 April 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 401v. 109 Brief from Clement VIII to Guilielmus of Grimbergen and Leonardus Vossius, respectively deacon of Saint Lambert and Saint Jean at Liège, providing Blavier with the rectory of Thynes in the diocese of Liège. Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 69. 110 No official appointment has been registered, but many decisions never pop up in the minutes of the university and faculty boards. Academics complained about communication fall-outs with Sublindius in Acta Universitatis, 3 April 1594, RAL, OUL, 60, 369v. On Sublindius as a professional lobbyist in Rome, see also Acta Capituli Antverpiensis, 20 July 1591, UAA, Kathedraalarchief, 1, 95. 111 Leonardus Vossius, from Hasselt, was admitted to the faculty board on 24 June 1564 (RAL, OUL, 747) and pops up repeatedly in the Liber secundus nominationum, 1563 and 1569, RAL, OUL, 4752, 118r and 170r. See also Gysens, Gerardus Vossius van Borgloon, 30. Leonardus stayed in Rome until 1575 and may have advanced, in return, the career of his uncle in the corridors of Roman palaces. 112 Warm recommendations of Sublindius by Vossius to Cardinal De Torres, 7 December 1607, ed. Gysens, “Quattre lettres inédites,” 170. 113 E.g., Acta Facultatis Artium, 15 December 1574 and 20 October 1579, RAL, OUL, 713, 57r and 162r. In 1575, one of the Vossii returned to the Netherlands and asked the restitution of 20 ducati de Camera spent on gifts for Madruzzo and Alciati in the proceedings for the Gregoriana. 1 June 1575, ibidem, 70r. 114 On Vossius as an erudite in Rome, see Gysens, “Quattre lettres inédites,” which draws on the unpublished licenciate thesis of the same author, Gerardus Vossius van

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Back again at Louvain, talking about Vossius was talking about Mattheus Boden, once Blavier’s superior at Louvain, under whom Vossius had graduated in the arts in 1566.115 Boden’s engagement in the so-called negotia academica at Louvain mirrored those of Vossius in Rome: when Vossius is mentioned in faculty or university minutes, Boden pops up as well. The latter acted for Danielis along the same lines as the late Wamesius had acted for his clientulus et discipulus Chineij: as an academic patron who could be obliged to activate his contacts in Rome in favour of a beleaguered professor of his pedagogy. His, and Vossius’, activities may have been obscured or sidelined for a while by Wamesius, Gravius, and their like, but from the early 1590s onwards, they, and with them the Arts faculty, took over much of the initiative (in the academic minutes) from the dons of the higher faculties in the exchange with the Eternal City.116 Santori, for his part, failed to surface in the minutes again until the early 1600s, and no other stakes emerged that lured Louvain divines and Roman circuits into becoming partners again—except, maybe, in the Lipsius affair, but that was always handled in private correspondence, not in official academic minutes. In the course of 1593–94, channels of communication to the Eternal City diversified and started to run over the interim Governor General Mansfeldt, the duke of Sessa who was Philip II’s ambassador to the Holy See, and the agent for the Low Countries, Laurens Dublioul.117 The arrival in January 1594 of Ernest of Austria, a Habsburg prince who was to boost the dynasty’s tarnished reputation in the Low Countries,

Borgloon. He acquired several benefices and had occupied thrice the position of clericus consistorialis for the Empire. Read Vaes, “Les curialistes belges,” 109. See also Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 25, 136, 246, and 452. The national clerici consistoriales had to represent the clergy of their respective nations in the Sacred College during a one year’s term. 115 Reusens, “Promotions de la faculté des Arts,” 389. 116 It had been Boden who, together with the dean and the notary, had to inform the higher faculties in September 1593, after six months of silence in the minutes, about the decision of the Congregation of the Germanic Nation. Acta Facultatis Artium, 10 September 1593, RAL, OUL, 713, 352v. 117 Mansfelt to Laurens Dublioul, 6 October 1593, Correspondance du gouvernement avec Laurent Du Blioul (. . .), AGR, Audience, 1468/12: “como los de la universidad de Lovayna se queran de que de cinco, o seys annos a esta parte algunos vasallos del Pays de Liega ayan pretendido de tirar en derecho por ante el Auditor dela camera apostolica algunos suppostos de la universidad directamente contra sus privilegios.” The same to the duke of Sessa, 16 October 1593, ibidem. The Ambassador represented the dynasty as such, while agents for the respective kingdoms and territories constituting the Monarquía assisted him in his tasks.

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may have informed the academics’ decision to go constitutional and to mobilise dynastic support for a confirmation of the privileges in Rome. In January 1594, the academic senate had granted Clarius the permission to involve the Council of Brabant and the Procurator General of the Duchy by virtue of academic privileges and the constitution Eximiae of Leo X, a measure that reportedly led to the imprisonment of an apostolic executor and that would not go unnoticed in the Eternal City.118 A few months later, it was decided that Danielis’ legal problems (and excommunication) because of another canonship he had accepted in the collegiate church of Visé were to be recommended to the Governor General as well.119 A delegation of Cuyckius, Boden, and the law professor Stephanus Weyms was sent to councillors that could be trusted,120 and found the archduke most benign—as could be expected from fresh rulers anxious to muster support in an area where the dynasty’s position was still fragile.121 Other diplomatic channels were tapped as well. After earlier attempts to rally the papal nuncio for their cause both in Brussels and in Rome,122 Frangipani’s appointment to the newly created diplomatic

118 Allegations in “obtinuit tam a concilio Brabantie supersessoriam quam a gubernatore Bruxellensi inhiberi iudicibus apostolicis ne in huiusmodi causa procedant et etiam fecit carceribus mancipare executorem qui sibi monitorium ab A.C. decretum presentavit ex quibus incidit in penas Bulle In Cena Domini.” Copy of the decisio rotalis of March 1597, coram Blanchetto, introduced in June 1596. A copy of the sentence in Acta Universitatis, 18 November 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 335v–336v. In June 1594, the Procurator General of Brabant was honoured, with explicit reference to the services he had rendered in the defense of the university’s privileges, with a munusculum academicum in wine at the occasion of a visit to the university town. Acta Universitatis, 23 June 1594, RAL, OUL, 61, 335v–336v. On academic gift exchange, see p. 499. 119 Acta Facultatis Artium and Acta Universitatis, 30 April 1594, RAL, OUL, 713, 364v–365r and 60, 371v. 120 Craesbeke, Assonleville, Houst, Maelcote, and Vander Borch, the president of the Privy Council, were honoured by a visit of the university’s delegation. Other issues had to be discussed as well, of course, as the university’s exemption from the Aids was under fire of other bodies represented in the States of Brabant. A report of the activities of this delegation in Acta Universitatis, 11 May 1594, RAL, OUL, 60, 373r. 121 A second mandate left for Rome the day after the academics’ delegation to the Governor General. “Que se les mantenga el previlegio que tienen sus subditos de no estar a derecho por ante el Auditor de la Camera Apostolica, y aunque soy cierto que VS lo habra ya mandado tratar este negocio por Lauro Dublioul agente de su mag.d en aquella Corte, todavia haviendome los dechos de Lovayna hecho nueva instancia sobre el mismo negocio.” An anonymous letter (Ernest of Austria?) to the duke of Sessa, 12 May 1594, Correspondance du gouvernement avec Laurent du Blioul (. . .), AGR, Audience, 1468/12. 122 Letters of recommendation would have been sent by Frangipani to the Secretariat of State in Rome in the course of 1594. In any case, a copy of the recommendation

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post in Flanders in 1596 may have fostered hopes that the diplomat would become the spokesman of academic elites rather than of the Liège clergy, which remained under the jurisdiction of the nunciature of Cologne. In 1597, the Louvain faculties of Canon Law and Divinity would link, via a favourable censure at the request of the nuncio himself,123 their prestige to one of Frangipani’s most cherished projects: the Directorium for the archdiocese of Cologne, a collection of laws and decrees in conformity with the Council of Trent that had been translated into a number of practical counsels. Frangipani dedicated the Directorium to the coadjutor of Cologne, Ferdinand of Bavaria, but his work had to settle old accounts as well. The fierce reaction from Garzadoro, his former co-operator (and competitor) at Cologne, indicates that not everybody hailed the Directorium as a labour of love.124 The nuncio’s friends at Louvain also welcomed Frangipani’s protégé and secretary, Sandrino, into their midst, and he could, thanks to a special regime, complete his law studies under the protection of Weyms. This would earn the latter, in 1605, a recommendation of Frangipani for a job in the Grand Council of Mechlin, the highest tribunal of the Habsburg Netherlands.125 Sandrino would function as a go-between between the Brussels nunciature and the Louvain schools in the years to come, and in return other members of the nuncio’s famiglia would find a refuge under the folds of academic patronage as well in the near future.126 arrived at Louvain, with an accompanying letter addressed to the academics themselves. No explicit mention was made of the university’s troubles in Rome, however; the letter does not figure in Roberg, Nuntius Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, vol. 4. 123 The Directorium was a matter of great concern for the Italian diplomat, as is reflected in his correspondence with Tilman Vosmeer (see the editions by Louant and Van der Essen, Correspondance), the brother of Sasbold, the apostolic vicar of the north—and a friend of Jacobus Jansonius. Academics may well have suggested, for instance via the line Jansonius-Vosmeer-Frangipani, to grant their support to the nuncio’s initiative themselves. 124 Garzadoro was sent by Rome to Cologne in 1593 with virtually the same competence as Frangipani for reasons which are of no avail here. The competition between the nuncios escalated into a regular war, especially after Garzadoro imprisoned one of Frangipani’s clients. See the introduction to Van der Essen, Correspondance, xlix. The Italian’s transfer to Brussels may have aimed at easing tensions at the two-headed nunciature of Cologne as much as at raising the profile of the Brussels court as a centre of European diplomacy. 125 Frangipani to the college of doctors in Law, 12 September 1597, ed. Louant, Correspondance, 213; Frangipani to Weyms, 2 January 1598, ed. ibidem, 271; Frangipani to the Great Council of Mechlin, 29 October 1605, regest in ibidem, 551. 126 Cf. a letter of recommendation from the university to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, at the occasion of Sandrino’s return to Rome in the beginning of 1604: “Jam complures anni sunt quod hic in Belgio nostro continuis officiis tam publice tam

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This does not imply that all was quiet on the Roman front. In the course of 1594–95, Sublindius was struggling to keep further summons of Louvain academics at bay, and he managed to have the examination of the lawsuits of Danielis and Clarius assigned to Arrigoni, an auditor of the Rota and one of the new pontiff’s favourites. Again, a strictly legal context was avoided, as Arrigoni was to perform as a papal advisor extra rotam.127 Vossius resurfaced in academic minutes in September 1596 and urged the academics to write letters to Ascanio Colonna (Marcantonio’s nephew) and his friend Baronio, who had recently been elevated to the cardinalate. The patrologist complained that he failed to answer accurately the numerous questions in Rome on the state of the University of Louvain and suggested that, in the absence of a physical representation at the curia, the academics had to mobilise the dead by attaching a catalogue of the university’s illustrious scholars to a formal treatise of the privilege128—a device that probably had to boost his own credit as the famous university’s agent at the curia as well. Academics at Louvain may have badly needed such propaganda stunts in 1596, as Vossius’ letter brought ill tidings: the battle for suitable judges was lost; Danielis’ case having been assigned to Peña, the auditor of the Rota for the crown of Aragon, instead of being remitted to the academic tribunals at Louvain. Clarius, for his part, was considered an enemy of ecclesiastical liberty in the corridors of Roman

privatim bene de omnibus meretur egregius vir Joannes Xandrinus illustrissimi hic Octavii Tricaricensis episcopi Sancte Sedis Apostolice apud principes nostros nuncii secretarius tanta sua dexteritate et fide ut ad eius merita accedere nihil possit quo fit ut omnes ei multis nominibus simul devinctissimi et merito ingrati censeri debeamus nisi quacumque ratione possumus paria illi faciamus.” The university to Aldobrandini, 2 December 1603, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 25r–v. 127 Attestation of a letter to Danielis (anonymous) and plans to write, in return, letters of recommendation to Sublindius and Arrigoni, mentioned in Acta Universitatis, 22 August 1594, AGR, OUL, 60, 390r; briefing by “avunculum meum Jacobum” [= Blavirius] in a letter from Rome (anonymous) to Clarius, ibidem, 6 February 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 20v; fragments of letters from Sublindius to Leonardus Vossius, deacon of Saint Jean in Liège, 28 October and 4 November 1595, sent to Clarius, minutes of 2 December 1595, ibidem, 95r; official act of the university sanctioning its iniunctio in Clarius’ case, 14 January 1596, ibidem, 110r. 128 “Cuius rei omissio forte aliquando vobis poterit esse detrimento dum de Lovaniensi statu a plerisque sepius interrogor quod respondeam non habeo.” Vossius to the university (with references to his correspondence with Boden and Cuyckius), 3 August 1596, Acta Universitatis, 7 September 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 165v–166v. If the illustrious scholars of Louvain could not be present physically, they just had to mobilise their dead predecessors, the latters’ books, and their merits to represent the university in the curia.

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tribunals. Vossius’ pessimism about their chances was verified when the Sacra Romana Rota struck two severe blows to the Louvain aspirations: the supreme tribunal of Catholic Christianity found in 1596 that the Louvain privileges, despite their confirmation by Gregory XIII in 1573 and 1578, had been derogated by more recent papal legislation on the competences of the Uditore del Papa (in the Danielis affair), and ruled in 1597 that Clarius had forfeited his right to use academic privileges altogether when trying to enforce them with the help of secular authorities rather than appealing to the pontiff himself.129 The vicissitudes of Danielis and Clarius seem to have triggered a knock-on effect: in October 1597, five more cases were enumerated in an academic memorandum that was to be submitted to the Privy Council. They involved another professor in philosophy in the pedagogy of the Pig (Guilielmus Flechin), three students whose acceptations of altars (in the collegiate church of Saint-Bartholomé at Liège and in the parishes of Brustem and Dommaert), and a rectorship (of Jusserenne) in the Principality of Liège were challenged by Roman writs.130 On 16 April 1598, the rector of the university opened a session of the academic senate with the dramatic statement that now all university men claiming benefices in the prince-bishopric with the help of academic nominations were summoned by the auditor of the Apostolic Chamber.131 In that year, it was about time the academics started to rethink their networking strategies. But what was at stake? 4.1.3. “Quei di Liegi che per natura sono litigiosi.” Nobles, curialists, and poor academics in the clerical job market Not all legal conflicts over nominations were lumped together in the “Roman Question” basket. Alongside the legal assistance that was

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The fact that both rotal decisions (copies in Acta Universitatis, 18 November 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 335v–336v) only deal with questions de jure and not de facto or, more precisely, that they largely deal with the admissibility of both cases—the very issue that Arrigoni had to examine—suggests that another move had been made by the two litigants’ opponents to get “more suitable” judges, a strategy that the Louvain academics, of course, continuously practiced themselves. 130 Draft of a memorandum in Acta Universitatis, 13 October 1597, RAL, OUL, 61, 256r–260v. 131 It is difficult to verify this statement. The archives of the ten parallel bureaus processing files for the tribunal of the uditore del papa contain only fragmentary documentation with respect to the period under investigation. Inventory available in ASR.

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routinely granted to other nominees, conflicts over benefices in the neighbouring Principality of Liège (and therefore the preservation of the Faculty’s privilege) raised concerns at Louvain. It is tempting to account for this by pointing at the impressive record of Liège clerics harassing Louvain nominees in the 16th century and to the endless list of jurisdictional disputes between the ecclesiastical enclave and the Duchy of Brabant. These were indeed fuelled by conflicts over benefices between nominees and Liège clerics. Belgian councils of justice could not intervene directly in the Principality, but they had other tools at their disposal to assist academics, such as harassing officers of ecclesiastical tribunals or seizing property of Liège churches in Brabant, Limburg, and other limitrophic areas. Conversely, the church of Liège could produce an impressive corpus of privileges of its own, it disposed of its own apostolic conservators, and it had in the past displayed its willingness to defend its prerogatives with vigour. Nonetheless, new incentives are to be found to account for new sparks of opposition. Precedents are likely to have informed the patterns of conflict, as indeed it was in the interest of the parties involved to keep new disputes recognisable enough so that they might be solved. However, reifying orchestrated conflicts into a constellation that can account for them, would not only be tautological; it would also fail to explain why the prince-bishopric of Liège became a troublespot again after 30 years of relative peace. Jurisdictional conflicts over the meandering border between the Habsburg Netherlands and Liège may have been part of political folklore, but there is no evidence—in academic minutes (despite numerous references to the Leodienses), in the regests of the minutes of the chapter of Saint-Lambert representing the clergy in the Principality’s States, or in the remaining minutes of the prince-bishop’s Privy Council—that these became a vehicle of systematic opposition to Louvain claims orchestrated by clerics who identified with the privileges and liberties of the “national” church of Liège.132 The 1555 brief Decet Romanum Pontificem probably had removed the incentives to do so and was indeed observed—if not in principle, then in practice—by nominees balking at accepting Liège benefices that had become vacant in ordinary months. One or two 132

Regests in Bormans and Huisan, “Répertoire chronologique.” The minutes of the Privy Council were gravely damaged in the Second World War. Only the resolution books for 1587–88, and 1606–11, have been preserved (AEL, Conseil Privé, Protocoles et Résolutions, 18–21), but their condition is highly affected.

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conflicts with ordinary candidates were recorded, but they failed to attract the academics’ attention.133 The meddling of Roman tribunals in the vicissitudes of Chineij, Danielis, Clarius, and others is significant. To be sure, the Sacra Romana Rota was the supreme court of appeal for all legal disputes over Liège benefices, including those which had become vacant in ordinary months. The Auditorate of the Apostolic Chamber, by contrast, which had to see to the execution of apostolic provisions, was not. Liège clerics also were troubled by summons of the Uditore del papa and invoked their own privileges to oppose them.134 The minutes of the Privy Council of Liège, which just as much as its Habsburg equivalent had to preserve, in the name of an absentee prince-bishop, the country’s privileges and constitutions, contain references to conflicts that bear resemblance to those surfacing in academic minutes. In contrast to the first half of the 16th century, it was a Rome-centred terminology that was used to counter Louvain claims.135 Gravius’ discussion of the Chineij case offers an interesting point of departure. In his letter from Rome of 12 January 1591, he stated that Chineij’s opponent for the canonship in Tongeren had died. As the notion of “equity,” central to beneficial law, provided for the possibility of substituting another candidate in the place of the deceased,136 the Louvain agent

133 Requests for legal assistance submitted by Joannes Roberti of Marchiennes, a student in Divinity who had got into trouble over a canonship at Thuin, were not granted “ratione malorum temporum” (Acta Facultatis Artium, 23 July 1594, RAL, OUL, 713, 369v)—because Roberti had accepted an “ordinary” benefice. The faculty seemed to invite him to be compliant: “Permissum quoque est dicto M. Johanni ut si velit receptis sumptibus quos fecit a capitulo Tudiniensi desistat hac vice in jure suo prosequendo.” After a few letters to and from the secundary and primary clergy of Liège, the faculty was apparently not prepared to get involved: “[conclusit] . . . placere dominis ei cuius nomine ille propositus fuit, liberum omnino relinquere tentare quod videretur suo periculo et preiudicio: excepto quod si conveniat cum adversa parte (non pretensurus tamen ad hoc se habere facultatis suasionem et consensum) habeatur liber a periculo perjurii [concerning the statute, that no nominee could engage in a transaction with contingent opponents without the consent of the faculty].” Acta Facultatis Artium, 2 November 1595, RAL, OUL, 713, 435v. 134 “Sed cum maximo scandalo fere semper ita provisi, a provisis apostolicis turbantur, citantur sc ad Rom Cur vigore brevium de capienda possessione, ita quod pauperes clerici vel ius suum deserere vel ingentes sumptus subire cogantur.” Status Dioecesis Leodiensis, discussed in Congr. 6 February 1591, ASV, Congr. Concilio, Relat. Dioec., 443, 2nd bundle. 135 Cf. Boute, “‘Regnum,’ ‘Sacerdotium’ en ‘Studium’,” 169–76. 136 The death of one competitor, jurists reasoned, could not automatically imply that his adversary was allowed to take advantage of the situation, as it did not affect his rights on the possession of a benefice; hence, another candidate could be introduced

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had tried to ensure that Chineij himself obtained a surrogatio of his opponent’s rights, which would have solved the problem. According to him, substitutions in favour of other claimants were generally applied at the curia.137 However, via his agent in Rome,138 the papal nuncio (Frangipani) had successfully substituted a noble in Chineij’s opponent’s place, in order to accommodate Ernest of Bavaria, archbishop of Cologne, bishop of Münster, Freising, Hildesheim, and Liège.139 The identification of Chineij’s opponent as a noble who enjoyed the protection of the archbishop of Cologne, one of Rome’s cornerstones in the North Sea area, is instructive. The clergy of the Principality of Liège and its intertwining with the local and imperial nobility has not yet been able to attract the attention of modern scholarship, but a few elements may add, for the time being, to a better understanding. The church on the shores of the Meuse was, together with Cambrai until its integration into the Spanish Netherlands, the western outpost of the Reichskirche. The imperial Church covered, after its partial secularisation by Protestant princes, c.100.000 square kilometres and c.10 per cent of the population of the Empire.140 Its cathedral chapters were the playground of different segments of the German nobility.141 Bishops combined their episcopal dignity with that of worldly princes who were elected by the canons of the Domstifte. They were recruited from among the highest ranking dynasties of the Empire, as other noble lineages could not field, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the social, diplomatic, and economic clout that was necessary to

against him. Cf. Barraclough, Papal Provisions. A number of entries in the Per Obitum list of the Dataria Apostolica indeed involved surrogationes. 137 “Maxime cum huius curie et cancellarie stylus et consuetudo sit, collitigantibus pro beneficio duobus alterum in alterius demortui suffici locum, nec novum adversarium dari.” Gravius to the university, 12 January 1591, Acta Universitatis, 27 February 1591, RAL, OUL, 61, 163r. The data in Per Obitum suggest that this practice was less widespread than Gravius suggests. 138 Marcello Filonardi (Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 31), Advocatus Fiscalis, then assessor of the Holy Office and the brother of the bishop of Aquino, which explains why Gravius had urged the university to send letters of recommendation to the latter. 139 “Nam reverendissimus Calatinus apostolicus nuntius nescio quem nobilem archiepiscopo Coloniensi agente commendavit, cuius causam dominus Marcellus Aquinatensis Episcopi frater negotiorum hic supradicti nuntii actor et gestor . . . per potentissimos amicos sollicitavit” Gravius to the university, 12 January 1591, Acta Universitatis, 27 February 1591, RAL, OUL, 61, 163r. 140 Duhamelle, L’héritage collectif, 23. 141 The standard work is Hersche, Die Deutschen Domkapitel.

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be elected to an episcopal see, and to defend ecclesiastical property against voracious, let alone heretic, princes.142 Liège and the abbatial principalities of Stavelot and Malmédy would constitute, together with the ecclesiastical principalities of Cologne and several other Hochstifte, the Sekundogenitur par excellence of the house of Bavaria until the 18th century.143 This implied, of course, integration of interests with the local elites.144 The strategies of Verflechtung developed by Ernest of Bavaria (1581–1612) and by his nephew Ferdinand (1612–50; coadjutor with right of succession in 1602)145 in their Liège prince-bishopric have not been studied yet, but there are moments of negotiation that merit our attention here. In 1600, Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, by then nuncio in Brussels and the author of the Directorium for reform in the diocese of Cologne dedicated to Ferdinand, had been charged with an apostolic visitation of the churches in the city of Liège. In the report resulting from this visit, he transmitted the pleas of the cathedral and collegiate chapters of the capital, which had received the endorsement of the archbishop of Cologne. It was Ernest of Bavaria who performed as the official petitioner for this visitation, which in turn provided a platform to pass through a number of requests to the Eternal City. A win-win situation was in the make: while Ernest tried to haul in a taxation on abbeys and provostships in order to land his episcopal mensa and sought to prepare a smooth transfer of power to his nephew after his death, he provided, in return, the churches of the city with powerful channels of communication to Rome to pass on their views; Frangipani, for his part, was eager to outperform Garzadoro (nuncio of Cologne 1596– 1606) in his own backyard as the reformer of local churches.146 Two

142 Reinhard, “Kirche als Mobilitätskanal.” The free election of bishops had already been granted in the Concordat of Vienna (1448), but only the fear for a major desertion of entire chapters to Protestantism made Roman circuits respect the German nobility’s claims. Meyer, “Bischofswahlen.” 143 Reinhardt, “Die hochadeligen Dynastien in der Reichskirche,” 224. 144 “Wer aufsteigen will, muss sich in den Domkapiteln Freunde, aber darf sich keine Gegner schaffen.” The motto of the elector of Mainz, Lothar Franz von Schönborn (1655–1729), Maier, “Bishof und Domkapitel,” 237. 145 Strubbe and Voet, Chronologie, 286–87. Ferdinand was already coadjutor in 1596; cf. the university to Frangipani, 10 November 1596, ed. Vander Essen, Correspondance, 18. 146 This story, in which Frangipani reportedly tried to bring the nunciature of Cologne under the jurisdiction of Brussels, would drag on at least until 1606, when Garzadoro and Frangipani were called back to Rome at the start of a new pontificate.

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major themes were addressed in the nuncio’s report: the collegiate churches and the cathedral were in a dire state; and the nuncio and the clergy asked the pope to remedy this state of affairs. This was to be done by limiting the access for non-nobles to the city’s canonships in order to reverse the “gran diminutione dello splendore et dignità della chiesa” by doctors in Law and Theology “di bassa conditione.”147 The diagnosis had, of course, to legitimise the remedy, but there may have been good reasons to present things the way in which Frangipani and the Liège chapters did. Civil war in the Netherlands did affect economic conjunctures, and consequently the clerical job market, in the neighbouring ecclesiastical enclave.148 Many chapters were the proprietors of landed estate situated in the war zone. The collegiate church of Saint Paul in Liège, for instance, had been forced to suppress temporarily five canonships out of 30 in order to pay its debts,149 and the chapters of Saint Peter’s and Saint Bartélémy’s asked for the suppression of seven canonships out of 30.150 A similar, but even more drastic reduction of the benefice reservoir had, in Frangipani’s report, to be conducted in the main chapter of the cathedral of Saint Lambert’s: half of the 60 canonships had to be suppressed, according to the canons, in order to ensure the financial viability of the others. Fluctuations in the clerical job market must have made it more difficult for the circuits in and around the Liège chapters to sustain their clientèles. However, they also furnished the arguments to boost the chapters’ exclusivity. It consequently is not surprising that clerics who claimed benefices with reference to their academic status, let alone with reference to an academic nomination, were not particularly welcome. The cathedral chapter asked, “con molta instantia,” another favour from the pope,

Cf., for instance, Garzadoro to Scipione Borghese (the new cardinal-nephew and secretary of State, 20 May 1606, regest in Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 220. 147 Cf., for instance, the Informatione per l’Ill.mo et Rev.mo Signor Cardinal Aldobrandini sopra i particolari dimandati a Nostro Signore dal Ser.mo S.or Elettore di Colonia, come vescovo e principe di Liegi, ed. Louant, Correspondance, 119–20. 148 Several files concerning the use of the income of temporary vacant benefices (including canonships) in Liège churches, their temporary suppression, or their incorporation in the Jesuit college are preserved in ASR, Paesi Stranieri, Francia e Belgio, 6, fasc. 53. On the devastation of the Principality by marauding troops, see Status Dioecesis Leodiensis, discussed in Congr. 6 February 1591, ASV, Congr. Concilio, Relat. Dioec., 443, 2nd bundle. 149 Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 45–46. 150 Frangipani to Aldobrandini, Informatione dello stato della chiesa di Liegi et delli pesi et gravezze del suo capitolo, ed. Louant, Correspondance, 117–19.

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i.e., to be exempted from the Louvain privileges of nomination. Seen from their perspective, it was “poco honesto” that the cathedral chapter had to tolerate “strangers” in its midst while Liegesi were (reportedly) barred from canonships in the Netherlands.151 The suggestion that non-nobles were to be excluded to restore the reputation of the Church and to strengthen heavenly and earthly networks suggests that the primary clergy of the Principality, the archbishop of Cologne who supported its claims, and Frangipani (who needed local support for his reform plans) shared a lot of assumptions and ambitions with the aristocratic church of the Rhineland. This is likely to have affected, according to the same principle of Verflechtung and due to the cumulation of benefices, the recruitment of its secondary clergy in peripheral collegiate churches as well, whose top positions were the reserve of canons of Saint Lambert’s. The desiderata of the Liège cathedral chapter, which represented the clergy in the States of the Principality, reflect the same strategies of closure as the other Domstifte in the Empire and may have heralded generally observed patterns of “aristocratisation” in the course of the 17th century.152 This aristocratic model of Church hierarchy—which had its ramifications in the lower ranks of God’s army as well, nobles having to sustain their own clients—did not match well with the Belgian, “academic” model of a Church of and for poor, pious, and learned men. Poverty, alongside modesty, was central to the academic self-understanding, and in the period under investigation, university men went to great lengths to ensure that they were poor. Research into the settings and the vestimentary codes on 16th- and 17th-century professorial portraits153 has revealed how university men at Louvain, despite 151 “Ha similmente domandat’ il capitulo, . . . quest’altra gratia cioè che l’indulti concessi da quella Santa Sede a diverse academie, et particolarmente a quella di Lovanio, di nominar persone alle prebende . . . non s’estendessero a questa chiesa di Liegi, giudicando poco honesto che rifutandose da Brabantini qualsivoglia persona di Liegi provista con autorità apostolica di alcuno beneficio nel ducato di Brabanza, stimandolo straniero, sia chesta chiesa obligata all’accettar indifferentemente alcun di loro.” Frangipani to Aldobrandini, Informatione dello stato della chiesa di Liegi et delli pesi et gravezze del suo capitolo, ed. Louant, Correspondance, 114. 152 The number of noble quarters required for admission rose, in 1615, from four to eight. Most Domstifte in the Empire required eight to 16 noble quarters c.1600, a number which would increase, in the course of the 17th century, to 32 quarters. See Pölnitz, “Stiftsfähigkeit und Ahnenprobe,” 349–55. 153 Cf. De Ridder-Symoens, “Professorial Representation and Self-Representation in Portraits,” paper presented at the symposium Image and Imagination. A new approach to university history from the Middle Ages to the present (International Committee for

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their integration with clerical and secular power elites, continued to convey, until well into the 17th century, a strong corporate identity that was indebted to monastic ideals of gravitas and austerity.154 Codes of conduct to be embraced by teachers and students in university statutes sought to propagate restraint and modesty.155 This should by no means be understood as an awareness of the loss of prestige and of status inconsistency of the academic caste in the Age of Absolutism. In tandem with hyperbolic statements about the academic role in Society, Paupertas academica was highly distinctive. Academics were poor because their aristocratic poverty befitted them, not because of their financial situation. And indeed it was the academic’s best friend, poverty, that was under attack in the late 1580s and in the course of the 1590s. From 1588 onwards, rumours were rampant at the curia that the Louvainists used their privileges to enrich the opulent instead of bringing relief to the poor, and that academics acquired nominations only in order to pass them to third parties.156 Armed with papal bulls and faculty statutes which had to prove the groundlessness of these calumnies, the university’s delegates on two occasions implored the papal representative—Frangipani was residing at Louvain in order to settle the dispute between Jesuits and divines of the faculty—to recommend to the pope the cause of the Faculty of Arts, the self-proclaimed seminarium of the Holy See.157 It was in Chineij’s case that the Sacra Romana Rota found, in 1589, that the onus of proof with respect to poverty fell the History of Universities, Sydney, 5 July 2005). I wish to thank Prof. Symoens for sharing her paper with me. 154 This in sharp contrast with more luxurious and colourful attire emerging from the 16th century onwards in universities elsewhere in Europe. De Ridder-Symoens, “Management and Resources,” 206–07. 155 Cf. the habitus theologicus, the dressing code for divines, that was obligatory for students living on a grant at the Major and Minor colleges of the Holy Spirit; “Et ex unanimi consensu fuit conclusum, neminem admittendum ad possessionem realem bursae, qui non prius sibi providerit de toga oblonga, casacca et pileo quadrato.” Acta Facultatis Theologiae, 12 September 1619, RAL, OUL, 387, 118. 156 Acta Facultatis Artium, 12 September 1588, RAL, OUL, 713, 269r. 157 Frangipani arrived, according to his correspondence, on 22 June 1588 in Louvain and stayed in the Brabant city until the 3rd of December, when he started to correspond with the Segretaria di Stato from Liège. See Ehses, Nuntius Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, 2, 159 and 206. The nuncio had promised to intervene, was enthusiastic about the rigid legislation of the faculty, and in the end did nothing. The delegations sent by the Faculty of Arts, including several university officials, visited the nuncio on 24 and 25 September 1588. No recommendation letter in support of the academic pleas could be retrieved in 1588–90. Ehses, Nuntio Ortavio Mirto Frangipani.

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on the academics, not on their opponents—a fate that would also be bequeathed to Danielis and, a few years later, to Clarius, who tried to put things right in a 1594 letter of supplication to the pope.158 Clarius’ supplication was accompanied by a memorandum of the university in which Clement VIII was urged not to abolish the taxa patrimonialis altogether but to raise it to 200 Ducatus de Camera (or approximately 400 florins) in order to avoid “molestations” of poor academics by the tribunal of the uditore del papa in the future.159 Seen from this perspective, the notion of poverty must have been bolstered as a benchmark of academic identity against aristocrats who sought to revamp the Church with pomp and circumstance and who were eager to reserve the benefices of the Principality for their own cronies. Qualifications are in order. The canons of Saint Lambert’s main target were the Liège patrician families, which claimed prebends for their offspring and which used academic titles as an alternative entry ticket. In the early 1600s, one-third of the 60 canonships in the cathedral were occupied by members of patrician families—their number would increase to two-thirds in the course of the 17th century—which apparently was a thorn in the flesh of Frangipani’s informants during his visitation tour in 1600.160 Enter the opponents of the Louvain academics. While they can easily be lumped together as papal providees, they are difficult to identify unambiguously as members of an imperial

158 “Calumniae nos isthic Leodiensium presertim quorundam conturbant . . . et opulentes nihilominus fingunt . . . per calumniam nuper privatus, nulla monitione praevia ac qualitatibus meis callide suppressis, ad tribunal etiam nunc evocor reverendi domini Camilli Burghesii.” Letter of supplication of Clarius to the pope, 14 April 1594, ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 15r, in dorso 18v: “Al Card. Aldobrandini.” 159 “Itaque rogamus per viscera misericordie christi, decreto suo hanc evocandi iniuriam Sanctitas Tua e medio tollere dignetur, simul illud etiam sancire, ut magistris ac professoribus nostris tantillum beneficiorum cumulare liceat, unde absentes simul ad ducentos auri de Camera ducatos annuos, percipiant. Ne similis molestiarum occasio, aliis post Clarium ex hoc capite deinceps oriatur.” Supplication of the university, 14 April 1594, ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 14r. 160 “Ma esaminandose tal gratia da me, l’ho giudicata d’esecution difficile et pericolosa . . . essendone alcuni figli di cittadini di questa città, e pigliariano protettion i loro padri, per non privarse del mezo loro da penetrar i segreti del capitolo, ch’è capo di tutti l’Ordini di questa patria.” Informatione dello stato della chiesa di Liegi (. . .), ed. Louant, Correspondance, 110; “vi s’introdussero i graduati ignobili, quali sono adesso di tanto numero nel capitolo . . . l’effetto della qual è il posto in questo, cioè ch’ . . . li nobili . . ., se sdegnono adesso di trattare con i capitolari ignobili delle cose publiche di questa chiesa, onde col tempo è da timerse qualche scisma.” Informatione (. . .) sopra i particolari dimandati a Nostro Signore dal Serenissimo Signor Elettore di Colonia, come vescovo et principe di Liegi, ed. ibidem, 129–30.

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nobility that confronted the meritocratic claims of poor and learned scholars with its own, aristocratic logic. In the previous section, Chineij’s first opponent was identified as a famigliare of Franciscus Oranus, an auditor of the Rota—which had kept the datario from intervening in the affair despite the orders of Montalto.

Plate 4.2. Funerary bust Franciscus Oranus Bust of Franciscus Oranus (1545–99), Liège patrician, former professor in Philosophy at the Pedagogy of the Castle, and Rota Auditor, on his funerary monument. [Santa Maria dell’Anima, Rome]

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Oranus was a native of the Principality and a member of a Liège patrician family. On several occasions, however, he was identified as a curialist in the first place, as recurrent complaints from the Liège clergy that Oranus violated its privileges reached Rome in the 1580s and the 1590s.161 Traditional historiography claims that the numbers of Fiamminghi and Lieggesi in a curia increasingly dominated by Italians had diminished considerably by the end of the 16th century.162 At this stage of research, data suggest that the “Italianisation” of the curia in the early modern period needs to be revised: the phenomenon may have been partially created by the selection of sources, most of which were produced by cardinals as protagonists of high curial politics, or by their households and clientelist networks. The data furnished by the Per Obitum list or by “peripheral” sources listing leaves of absence suggest that more foreign clerics were present at the curia than generally assumed. Young clerics with the same profile as those nominated by the Faculty of Arts roamed the Roman curia in search of knowledge, benefices, or both.163 It remains unclear to what extent the recent installation of apostolic nunciatures in Cologne and (from 1596 onwards) in Brussels had boosted the Liège presence in the heart of Christendom. Several Liège clerics were employed by the nuncios of Cologne and Flanders, but these officials often had strong ties to bureaucratic circuits that were already active in Rome.164 From the second half of the 16th century

161

For instance, Ernest of Bavaria to the Secretary of State Tolomeo Galli, 6 October 1584, regest in Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 15 n. 1; Ernest to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, 26 May 1594, regest in ibidem, 68. 162 Cf. Vaes, “Les curialistes belges,” 101. 163 “Versatur semper in Rom. Cur. numerosa iuventus ex civitate et dioecesi Leodiensi ex quibus sicuti multi industria et omnibus artibus sibi et patrie prodesse student, ita plures in hoc tantum incumbunt ut diversis modis, diversorum impetrent beneficia pretexent ut plurimum bullas noviter editas, nova decreta, decisiones Rotae, notabilia cancellariae, interpretationes concilii, et similiae quae ut extra corpus iuris sunt, ita ad notitiam nostram nunquam pervenerunt hoc interim dumtaxat satagentes ut a possessoribus beneficiorum pro cessione iuris et redimenda (hoc vocant) vexa, aliquid extorqueant, supplicatur obnixe ut huiusmodi provisionibus parce atque illis tantum quorum actiones suspectae non sunt concedantur.” Status Dioecesis Leodiensis, discussed in Congr. 6 February 1591, ASV, Congr. Concilio, Relat. Dioec., 443, 2nd bundle. 164 Members of the Stravius and Vervianus family recurrently pop up as administrators of the nunciature of Flanders. Henricus Stravius was the datary of the nuncio in Van der Essen, Correspondance, lxxviii; his uncle, Franciscus Stravius, was revisor supplicorum in Rome; see Vaes, “Les curialistes belges.” Another “Liegese” had been Frangipani’s secretary during his Cologne nunciature. Cf. the signatures in documents

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onwards, key positions reserved for representatives of the Germanic nation (e.g., one seat in the Rota, a position of reviser of supplications in the Signatura Justitiae and the consistorial cleric representing the clergy of the Empire in the consistorial meetings of the Sacred College) had become the reserve of Liège clerics, competition being limited due to the lapse of many other regions in the Empire into heresy; to Wittelsbach and Habsburg protection; or both.165 The Congregation for the German Nation was an employer of Liège secretaries, who also performed as sollicitatores at other curial offices. Last but not least, dozens of Leodienses were recorded in the Per Obitum list as present in Rome and/or as regular officials of the curia. At this stage of research, it is impossible to map this group of Liège bureaucrats who, in the words of Philip Maes, the archducal resident in Rome in 1615, had colonised the Dataria Apostolica and the Apostolic Chancery.166 Dynasties of curialists from the Principality—Stravius, De Salmis, Oranus, De Vivariis, Emerix, Mottman, Vander Ameyden, and others—can also be traced as members and provisors of the confraternities of the Santa Maria dell’Anima and Campo Santo Teutonico, the churches and hospitals for pilgrims from the Empire in Rome. While some of them made a brilliant career,167 many others manned lower offices at the

by Frangipani in 1602 to Rome, Collectanea Peña, ASV, Arm. LIV, 49, 8r sqq.; Bertrandus Vervianus as the nuncio’s secretary in Gesualdo to Borghese, 1 April 1616, summary in Van Meerbeeck, Correspondance des nonces Gesualdo, Morra, Sanseverino, 29. Compare this text fragment: “cum illustrissimus nuncius et eius predecessores abbreviatoribus leodiensibus, quas ex urbe secum adduxerant usi sint.” Memorandum of the university, 1616, Négociations de Rome, AGR, Audience, 450, 185r–188v. 165 Vaes, “Les curialistes belges,” 103. The Signatura, precursor of the Supremo Tribunale della Segnatura Apostolica, derived its name from the central act in the processing of supplications, i.e., the putting of a signature under a supplication either by the pope or by the referendarii in praesentia domini nostri papae. From the 13th century onwards, it assisted the pontiff in the processing, summarising, and briefing of the thousands of supplications sent to the curia. In the beginning of the 16th century, a Signatura Justitiae developed alongside a Signatura Gratiae, the first being charged with the hearing of judicial affairs, as a court of first instance, of appeal, and of cassation or revision. Del Re, La Curia Romana, 229–31. The college of referendarii was charged with supplications submitted to both Signaturae; cf. Weber, Die Päpstlichen Referendare, 1, 17–30. 166 “Pour cause des liegeois desquels estant la plus part composee si bien la chancellerie que datarie.” Maes to the Archdukes, Négociations de Rome, 17 October 1615, AGR, Audience, 449, 353r–v. 167 Cf. Indekeu, “Emerix (Em(m)erick(x)), Johannes,” and idem, “Motmans (Mot(t)man(n), Motmanno) Cornelius Hendrik (Cornelio Arrigo).”

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curia; at the national churches of the Empire; or in San Giuliano de’ Fiamminghi.168 The profiles of the nominees’ opponents are highly instructive. Danielis’ second opponent, with respect to his canonship at Visé, was the candidate of Oranus’ brother, the archdeacon of Kempen.169 Clarius, for his part, stated in his 1594 letter of supplication that his opponent—a member of the De Blocquerie family—had blatantly ignored a papal mandate to send the case back to the Louvain conservator of the privileges. His claim that the Uditore had renewed his summons behind the pope’s back is probably correct as the pontiff himself did not meddle in the bureaucratic routine of curial offices.170 However, it is probable that the cardinal-nephew, Pietro Aldobrandini, had been involved, as another De Blocquerie was two years later referred to as his commensale e famigliare.171 The student Matthias Ghennaert’s path to office was blocked by Lambertus Ursinus, a member of the De Vivariis family and an abbreviator of the Apostolic Chancery,172 while one of his comilitones, Joannes Censier, had to overcome the networks at the curia of Leonardus Thisius, a former Romanist himself.173 Thisius had emerged victorious in the diocesan concursus and 168 Only a small minority was identified, in the Per Obitum list, as famigliari of the pope, or of the households of the cardinals: Zollern, Pamfili, Bentivoglio, and Barberini. This does not rule out the possibility of many roles accumulated by one curialist. The Per Obitum list does not list a full curriculum vitae of providees, but (sometimes) registers the quality in which a petitioner had been granted a benefice and the prerogatives he consequently enjoyed according to the papal chancery rules. 169 Identification based on Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 36 n.1. 170 “Et hoc Sanctitate Tua ignorante, idque contra notoria privilegia apostolica, cum potestate invocandi bracchium seculare adversus illorum temeratores, nobis concessa.” Letter of supplication of Clarius to the pope, 14 April 1594, ASV, Segr. Di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 15r. 171 Brief of Clement VIII to the deacons of Saint-Jean and Saint-Paul at Liège, 13 November 1596, regest in Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 113. Christophe De Blocquerie was Aldobrandini’s secretary 1603–11. Vaes, “Les curialistes belges,” 115. 172 On Lambertus and his family, see Vaes, “les curialistes belges”; on his career (Abbreviator maioris praesidentiae in 1597, referendarius utriusque signaturae in the same year, provisor of the Santa Maria dell’Anima and, later on, prodatario of the Apostolic Church, and diplomatic emissary of the Holy See in France and in the Empire), see Weber, Die Päpstlichen Referendare, 3, 955. 173 Leonardus Thisius, probably a relative of Theodatus Thisius, had been an employee of the papal chancery in between 1575 and 1595 (Vaes, “Les curialistes belges,” 113). A brief of 30 April 1588 urges the archdeacon of Ardennes and the deacon of Saint-Servais in Maastricht to bestow a Liège altar to Leonard Thys, scriptor of apostolic letters and familiaris Sanctissimi. Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 28. In the 1590s, he pops up as the rector of Lisse. Brief of Clement VIII to Theodorus Thys, 28 February 1597, regest in Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique, 115.

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tried to realise his claims to the rectorship of Jusserenne via Rome. Two other papal providees could not be traced back to these Roman circuits, but a third specimen, Joannes De Chapeaville, a canon of Saint Lambert’s and the Vicar General of the diocese, was charged regularly, in the 1590s, with helping Roman curialists seize their benefices in the Principality.174 As a matter of fact, it was Franciscus Oranus who turned out, by the end of the 1590s, to be the author of the renewed clashes between Louvain nominees and Liège competitors, claiming as he did the glory for inserting a particularly harmful clause in papal briefs that turned all potential competitors of papal providees, including Louvain nominees, into intruders.175 Oranus was a hands-on expert of the Louvain privileges. He had studied at Louvain; taught Philosophy for a while at the Pedagogy of the Castle, and had been rewarded with a nomination burdening the collations of the bishop of Liège.176 The Rota judge was well acquainted with the jurisdictional privileges coming with the academic status as well, having procured the incarceration, in the beginning of the 1580s, of an executor of the diocesan tribunal of Liège.177 Oranus’ activities (just as much as those of Lambertus Ursinus, for that matter) may provide a textbook case of the slippery quality of networks. Most, if not all, members of the Liège “primary” clergy (i.e., the cathedral clergy), and many future curialists had completed part of their studies at Louvain. Just as much as the offspring of the power elites in the Habsburg Netherlands who visited universities across the Alps during their grand tour, however, almost all Liège patricians and

174 The two providees whose background remains unknown are Saverbroot and De Freisne. A dozen briefs to De Chapeaville, canon of Saint-Lambert, as apostolic executor in Dessart et al., Inventaire analytique. 175 Oranus took the glory for having interfered in the formulation of the clauses in papal briefs (“. . . ‘Non habentes provisionem a Sede Apostolica’ ab aliquot iam annis mutata ea forma ita conscribuntur ‘et non habentes provisionem a nobis ipsis.’ Cuius mutationis auctorem se fuisse gloriabatur D. Oranus”) and was said to have opposed a confirmation of the privileges in general as well (see below). Lombard to the university, 28 August 1599, Acta Universitatis, 18 September 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 332r–335r. 176 Liber secundus nominationum, 30 December 1580, RAL, OUL, 4752, 197v. See also Reusens, Documents relatifs, 4, 35. 177 “Devote sincere dilecte, intelleximus te in oppido Lovaniensi curasse arrestari et adhuc ad tuam instantiam detineri Hermannum Oplen civem huius nostre civitatis et executorem curie nostre Leodiensis notorie contra statuta et privilegia.” Partially burned letter of the Privy Council of Liège to Franciscus Oranus, “scholar at Louvain,” Dépêches du Conseil Privé, c.31 August 1581, AEL, Conseil Privé, 105, 44v.

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many curialists moved on to other universities in the Empire or even in Italy to obtain academic degrees.178 Oranus obtained a doctorate in Law in Siena before joining the Roman curia. He and many others probably did not belong to the inner circles of Academia, especially after they had left and redefined their loyalties and allegiances accordingly. It was difficult for Louvain academics to integrate themselves into bureaucratic networks at the curia that considered provisions of benefices their birthright.179 The interests of curialists and of their clients and allies in Rome or in the periphery merged, moreover, with those of other networks operating on a higher level. The Auditorate of the Apostolic Chamber had been beefed up in the course of the 1560s with new competences and legal instruments. A venal office, it was an asset to investors, new families seeking to breach into the curia, and the treasury of the Holy See. Its purchase in 1588 by Orazio Borghese (for 60,000 scudi or 120,000 florins), with the support of Montalto, had nearly caused his family’s ruin, as Orazio died prematurely in 1590 without even having obtained the cardinal’s hat that normally came with the job after a term of six years. Whereas the position would normally have been put up for sale again by the Apostolic Chamber, it is high protection that saved the Borgheses’ fortunes: the new Sfondrati pope, Gregory XIV, the godfather of the late Orazio’s brother Camillo, benignly allowed the latter to inherit the vacant post.180 Under the pontificate of Papa Aldobrandini, Camillo’s career boomed. He entered the Sacred College as a creatura of Clement VIII in the second wave of promotions to the cardinalate in 1596181 and surfaced in Santori’s Diario as one of the pontiff ’s most trusted ministers,182 until he eventually succeeded Clement VIII in 1605. It is such practices that have been described by Emich, Reinhard, and others as textbook-cases of Verflechtung. Taken

178

Nearly all graduated canons of Saint Lambert’s cathedral studied at Louvain, but 80 per cent of them had obtained their degrees elsewhere. See Chapeau, “La formation universitaire des chanoines,” 79–114. 179 This may reflect in the strikingly low numbers of foreign clerics seizing benefices in the diocese of Liège via papal provisions, compared with the dioceses of the Habsburg Netherlands. 180 Emich, Bürokratie und Nepotismus, 3–4. 181 Fattori, Clemente VIII e il Sacro Collegio, 4–5. 182 Memorie de i negozi che trattò il card. Santorio detto di San Severina nelle audienze che ebbe da varii pontefici dall’anno 1566 al 1594 (. . .), ASV, Arm. LII, 20–22 A. The competences of the Uditore del papa were confirmed by Clement VIII in 1596. Del Re, La curia Romana, 300.

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at face value, the paradigm of Verflechtung can be extrapolated, via bureaucratic patronage and otherwise, to the lower echelons of the curia as well. In this scenario, the Louvain networks were no match for those of wintered curialists who could plug their own clientelist practices into the interests of the high nobility in Rome. Conversely, it is academic networks and factions that put a confirmation of the privileges on the agenda of the academic senate at Louvain or that removed the Roman Question from it, according to the circumstances. Although the evidence is more fragmentary than the sources produced by papal families, it is largely sufficient to conclude that clientelist networks were omnipresent in Academia too. Another (or a complementary) working hypothesis is on offer, however. It is not colliding networks but the practice of privilege itself that shaped conflicts over benefices. The assessment that “obviously, Louvain professors could not integrate into Liège circuits at the curia” is not just tautological; it is also incorrect. Close to 15 per cent of the Louvain staff in the beginning of the 17th century were natives of the Principality, constituting the second biggest group after the Brabantines (35 per cent) when grouped along geographical lines;183 60 per cent of the nominees burdening collations in the Principality were Leodienses as well;184 and Clarius, a native of the Principality, was to become, in 1605, the first president of the Collegium Leodiense founded at Louvain by the prince-bishop and the cathedral chapter.185 Camillo Borghese’s activities as uditore del papa have to be put in a broader perspective. An edge of the veil is lifted by his successor, Marcello Lante, who would suggest, in 1604, draconian measures against the academics because “he could not bear their contempt of the authority

183 In the course of the 17th century, the number of Liège clerics among the teaching staff remained considerable. See Roegiers, “Professorencarrières.” 184 At least in between 1598 and 1621. This implies that the number of “diocesan acceptations” was substantially higher than the average for the entire research group (45 per cent). 185 Reusens, Documents relatifs, 3, 413–14. This was already proposed to Frangipani by the cathedral chapter of Saint-Lambert’s: “Oltra le sudette gratie s’è dimandato de più dal capitulo a Nostro Signore che, trovandose alcune borse di buon numero fondate da molti canonici di questa chiesa in diversi collegii et diverse academie, come di Lovanio et di Colonia, si contentasse la Santità Sua di commutare la voluntà d’i fondatori in questo caso . . . se reducessero in un collegio o in una casa da comprarse da questo capitulo nell’Università di Lovanio, et ordinare di più che tutte le borse se fundassero per l’avvenire, . . . s’unissero et incorporassero alla casa o collegio sudetto.” Frangipani to Aldobrandini, Informatione (. . .), ed. Louant, Correspondance, 114.

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of the Apostolic See and of himself.186 In the “culture of office” governing the Roman curia, ceremonial and jurisdictional prerogatives and competences that came with officialdom became the prerogatives of the individual. Because of the fluidity of identity in an increasingly diffuse socio-religious order, the office-holder felt compelled to defend his honour and that of the office in order to accumulate reputazione, the very basis of power.187 Faced with status-inconsistency in the face of competition by diocesan seminaries and Jesuit colleges, academics, for their part, were likely to answer in kind to challenges of privileges that symbolised academic poverty and learning. The analogy with another fight in the 1590s, now over full-blown symbolical practices such as graduation rituals, is difficult to ignore. As a matter of fact, this quarrel over rituals may explain partially why the Louvain doctors did not manage to get their benefice affairs accomplished in a suitable manner in Rome and why they allowed, as a consequence, Liège curialists to harden their position and the problems of Clarius and Danielis to escalate. The university would recommend the “Roman Question” again to the papal nuncio only at the end of 1597,188 while the feeble attempts to mobilise the princely councils for their cause in 1594 were only resumed in that year as well. According to the nuncio, academics and members of the Privy Council had become alienated in the meantime.189 Vossius cum suis continued to lobby in Rome “pro aris and focis Lovaniensibus,” but he barely referred to the troubles of Louvain nominees when reporting on his activities. His 1596 correspondence did not focus on the

186 “Auditor eidem Sanctissimo retulit indigne ferens contemptum Sedis Apostolice et sui.” Thomas White Lombard to Arnold ab Eynthouts, abbot of Saint-Gertrudis and conservator of the privileges, 21 August 1604, Acta Universitatis, 8 October 1604, RAL, OUL, 62, 205r. With respect to the context, see p. 332 and 342–43. 187 “Se il senso della propria identità è intessuto di una forte qualità relazionale, e si percepisce la propria collocazione come perennemente minacciata e perennemente da difendere, anche la gestione delle cariche di cui si trova investiti ne sara permeata . . . Come il bisogno di difendere perennemente il proprio onore deriva dal fatto di assumere la reputazione, e quindi gli altri, a far parte della propria identità, così la necessità di rivendicare continuamente le proprie facoltà giurisdizionali deriva dalla mancanza di precisi confini tra i diversi poteri.” Ago, Carriere e clientele, 141. 188 The university to Frangipani, 9 October 1597, ed. Van der Essen, Correspondance, 101–02. 189 “Havendo talmente offeso l’animi di questi signori del consiglio privato, che l’hav’ in gran parte alienati dall’università.” Frangipani to Aldobrandini, 23 October 1596, ed. Van der Essen, Correspondance, 239.

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Roman Question in the first place, nor did he call for a solemn catalogus transporting the famous doctors of Louvain to Rome in order to support a swift confirmation of the Louvain privileges.190 In the minutes of the academic senate and of the Congregation of the Arts faculty, another issue had come to haunt academic minds, and it was apparently given absolute priority—even to the extent that university men in Louvain were willing to jeopardise their cordial relationship with power elites in Brussels whose support they badly needed in the Roman Question. Between 1592 and 1597, Louvain Jesuits tried to imitate their Douai and Cologne co-religionists and to acquire the right to organise public courses in Philosophy. In line with events elsewhere in Europe, academics at Louvain sought to counter these attempts. For obvious reasons, there was little use in underscoring their status as poor and learned clerics: the Jesuits claimed to be all that too, and could reasonably object that their fathers were not even allowed to hold benefices in return (although their colleges devoured large quantities of benefices via incorporation). So in this conflict, academics pulled another building stone of their identity out of the bottom drawer that was central to their self-understanding, an item that was directly related to their claims to a niche in the benefice system but had been of little use in their wrangling with Liège curialists: that public teachers at Louvain and their alumni were, or rather had to be, secular clerics in the first place. Just as much as leading university dons felt compelled to defend the scholars’ poverty by stepping into the breach for embattled nominees, now they had to project the university as a monolithic bastion of secular clerics.

4.2. “Veluti altare contra altare.” the battle of the schools, 1592–98 The distinction between secular and regular clerics was not invented for the noble cause of keeping out the Jesuits in the 1590s, drawing as it did on a long and venerable tradition of infighting between secular clerics and mendicants at medieval universities.191 In the Louvain

190 Vossius to Boden, 10 November 1596, in Acta Universitatis, 28 December 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 185r. 191 See, for the medieval universities, Traver, “Secular and Mendicant Masters.”

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context, the religious orders barely surface in academic councils; they were virtually absent from the faculty board of the Arts faculty, do not figure in its promotion lists, and did not perform as examiners. The religious houses incorporated into the university—i.e., all religious institutions in the university town, bar the Jesuit college192—mostly catered their own teaching in Philosophy and Theology. The Faculty of Divinity remained ultimately in control of the granting of academic degrees and public teaching. Although statutes allowed two or three members of the religious orders to be co-opted as faculty regents, their representation in the Collegium Strictum tended to be precarious and short-lived in the early 17th century.193 The Spanish Blackfriar De Torres, regent between 1611 and 1615, was allowed to teach publicly and obtained a special permission from the faculty to perform as the mentor of secular clerics as well.194 Immediately after Torres’ departure for Spain, this “Dominican chair,”195 funded by the Archdukes, was suppressed under pressure of the academics. Torres would be one of the two friars who occupied a public chair at Louvain until the French Revolution.196 Beyond the walls of the university town, the Faculty of Arts would enter a coalition with Douai against the public courses in Philosophy offered at the Blackfriars’ college of Saint-Omer.197 Simultaneously, requests from their co-religionists at Maastricht had to be rejected, while the Louvain Blackfriars were admonished not to follow the example of the convent of Saint-Omer.198

192

Qf. Quaghebeur, “L’echo européen.” In the period under investigation, two Blackfriars occupied a seat in the Strict College of Regents of Theology; another one or two probably had a seat in the Lata Facultas which all doctors and licenciati in Divinity residing at Louvain could attend. Later in the 17th century, the representation of the Dominicans and the Augustinians in the Strict College became more or less institutionalised. Cf. Roegiers, De Leuvense theologen. 194 “Supplicavit D M N Fr Thomas De Torres sibi permitti ut non solum sui ordinis et aliis religiosis id etiam aliis quibuscumque requisitus presidere posset . . . conclusit decanus . . . hanc tamen permissionem domino Torres concessam ad alium extendi nolimus.” Acta Facultatis Theologiae, 14 May 1612, RAL, OUL, 387, 29. 195 Torres’ chair was founded after the model of the extraordinary chairs in Divinity and Philosophy reserved for the religious orders at Spanish universities, whose public colleges were in most cases administered by the secular clergy. Cf. Peset, “La organización de las Universidades españolas,” 105. 196 The attempts of the Dominicans (and other orders) to acquire for themselves the chair of Scripture in 1625 were blocked by the secular clerics. Acta Facultatis Theologiae, 26 October 1625, RAL, OUL, 387, 231. 197 Acta Facultatis Artium, 5, 27, 28 January and 16 July 1618, RAL, OUL, 715, 111 and 151; Acta Universitatis, 20 January 1618, RAL, OUL, 64, 78v–79r. 198 Acta Facultatis Artium, 1 February and 16 July 1618, RAL, OUL, 715, 118 and 152. 193

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Yet, the most clamorous conflicts between secular and regular clerics did involve the Jesuits.199 In all three universities of the Burgundian heritage—Louvain, Douai, and Dole—the adaptation of the learned corporations to new circumstances was related to the rise of the Society as an international player in the field of higher education. As elsewhere in Catholic Europe, relations with the fathers were often drawn into a conflict mode. And it is a striking fact that graduation rituals were recurrently staged as a casus belli by the academics. In the late 1580s as well as in 1613, the secular clerics in the faculty and university boards at Douai, supported by their Louvain colleagues, tried to force the Jesuits to ditch the separate graduation rituals for their alumni at the College of Anchin.200 At Louvain, Jesuit attempts in the 1590s and in the 1620s to organise a philosophical college after the model of their Douai college met with fierce resistance from the academics, among other reasons because the Jesuits insisted on separate graduation ceremonies for their alumni (in the 1590s) or were suspected of aspiring to them (in 1618–27). In 1620, academics at Dole observed with horror, in a letter to their Louvain colleagues, that the Jesuits did not flinch from imitating the academic pomp displayed during the promotions of the Arts faculty—and briefly opened a Pandora’s box of expectations to which rituals had to respond: Nam cum ceremoniae quibus in suorum promotionibus quaevis academia utitur ludicrae aut mimicae non sint, sed in eis insit aliqua dignitatis ac ornatus ratio: consequens profecto et a privatorum collegiorum moderatoribus usurpari non debere.201

The administrators of private colleges (the Jesuit college at Dole) had to be stopped from imitating academic rituals, because ritual practices are not ridiculous or merely mimetic games. However, the rich ritual life of Academia is apparently supposed to do just that: symbolise a logic of dignity and decorum. The reasoning seems a wee

199 The first attempt dated back from 1583. See Donnelly, “Padua, Louvain and Paris.” 200 The Douai Faculty of Arts to the Privy Council, 1 October 1587, Université de Douai 1584–1698, AGR, Conseil Privé, 1285, and Acta Universitatis, 8 August 1613, RAL, OUL, 116v–121v. 201 University of Dole to the rector and University of Louvain, 25 August 1620, in Acta Universitatis, 6 September 1620, RAL, OUL, 64, 233v: cf. the University of Louvain to the rector and University of Dole, 10 September 1620, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 209r; more correspondence with the universities of Dole and Douai with respect to the Jesuit Question in the Autumn of 1620, ibidem, 210r–216v.

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bit sophistic. It obliges nobody (except for other 17th-century academics, of course); nor will this type of reasoning convince sceptics that academic rituals are indeed more than “empty gestures.”202 Therefore, it is hard to do justice to the attempts of academics in Dole, Louvain, and Douai to raise the profile of graduation rituals as a credible stake in their clashes with the Jesuits. Scholarship on the conflict at Louvain in the 1590s has struggled to attribute any credibility at all to the squeals of academics about their beloved rituals. “In fact, the faculty of arts wanted to keep the Jesuits from teaching by all means.”203 In his outdated but inevitable Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, Poncelet invokes the vested interests of the Arts faculty and its leverage over the higher faculties when accounting for the opposition against Jesuit teaching. While Poncelet fails to involve rituals in his analysis, Donnelly does not even mention them in his comparative study of antiJesuit antagonism at Paris, Padua, and Louvain.204 This approach is problematic. First, the Arts faculty was not always able to dictate its agenda to the other faculties, which raises the question of how its power was assembled in this specific context.205 Second, vested interests are not a haven for historians trying to articulate the ultimate cause of the conflict. A consensus about these interests was only gradually reached in the course of the 1590s. Making this outcome a cause is tantamount to turning upside down the chronology of events. Third, scholarship has abandoned the notion of “mere ritual” informing the traditional scepticism of historians in the 19th and 20th centuries towards ritual practices.206 After the crisis of structuralism, historians have avoided going from one extreme to the other and attaching too much meaning to rituals as functionalising rites that minimise conflict and that restore the equilibrium of organic, homeostatic societies. Students of rituals deploy the uncertainties surrounding them,

202

Judging by the attempts of the Dole professors to anticipate sceptical arguments, sceptics of ritual were already around in the 17th century. The Reformation is widely known to have triggered the first “crisis of representation,” but this was not limited to Reformed churches. Moreover, a long tradition of bashing of rituals already existed in the Middle Ages. Genealogies of ritual scepticism in Buc, The Dangers of Ritual. 203 Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 196. 204 Donnelly, “Padua, Louvain and Paris.” 205 “Composite power” will be discussed below, see p. 482–86. 206 Trail-blazing insights on rituals in the Burgundian Netherlands on the crossroads of courtly and urban culture in Arnade, Realms of Ritual; the emergence of a group of “experts” of performative practices constitutes the central theme of Van Bruaene, Om beters wille.

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their strategic manipulation, adaptation, or appropriation by different actors with diverging purposes, their emotive power, or their explosive potential in a contentious society,207 in line with Renata Ago’s correlation between the fragility of status and conflicts over ceremonial or jurisdictional prerogatives.208 The notion of ritual as a distinctive, symbolic strategy is also central to a captivating book entirely dedicated to academic rituals in early modern Germany, Marian Füssel’s Gelehrenkultur als symbolische Praxis.209 Conflicts over academic rituals, which became increasingly common in early modern Germany in line with a generally observed inflation of rank conflicts,210 had the same function as the conflicts analysed in Ago’s Roma barocca. At German universities, maintaining one’s status proved to be an uphill struggle in the face of competition from nobles and a rising class of state officials. Füssel’s insights will prove to be as crucial for a clear understanding of the Louvain case as Ago’s. However, in her approach, any contested practice can become a challenge to one’s identity as well as an opportunity to affirm it. This is a sound analytical position but does not solve the problem of why exactly these practices (the imitation or duplication of academic rituals) became highly controversial in these particular circumstances— and not, say, the Jesuits’ concerns about vestimentary codes during public disputations.211 Füssel, for his part, is more focused on the specific advantages offered by rituals to settle status conflicts,212 but he does have to resort to arcane forces such as a “logic of distinction” or “social magic” to explain why academics believed their rituals did, in effect, design the academic order, and how rituals could become a credible stake.213 207 Cf. Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, and a criticism of Buc in Koziol, “The dangers of polemic,” 383. 208 Ago, Carriere e Clientele, 141. Cf. p. 267 n. 187. 209 Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur. 210 In 17th-century Germany, the inflation of rank conflicts brought before princely courts was considered a relatively new phenomenon; cf. Stollberg-Rilinger, “Rang vor Gericht,” 410. 211 Cf. the 3rd article in the Notata a deputatis societatis Jesu circa statuta almae universitatis Lovaniensis & vener: facultate artium quoad ea a quibus societas eximi cupit, no date, in UAL, Ghent (1958–1959), 157. 212 The spatial positions allocated during the performance of rituals to the participants is unambiguous and is therefore likely to become a symbolic bone of contention when participants wish to reopen negotiations over their status. Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur, 94–95; Stollberg-Rilinger, “Rang vor Gericht,” 402. 213 Füssel puts to practice the approach advocated in Burke, “Performing History.”

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It is time to revisit the ritual theory of the Dole professors. If we stick to a literal translation of their words, this “logic of dignity and decorum” was to be found in the practice itself. The Louvain conflict in the 1590s will prove to be a case in point. If one respects the chronology of events, a multi-layered logic of sorts was constituted in the practice itself, and rituals were not just controversial but also highly performative—otherwise they would not have become controversial in the first place. Historians have been pulling down the walls between society and theatre by considering rituals one among many performative practices that generated the realities they described. Academics trying to keep the Jesuits out prove to be much more inventive, however, when it comes to tearing down all kinds of boundaries. In order to trace this demolition work, we should go back to Poncelet’s assessment of academics trying to stop the Jesuits by all means. The argument is that academics had their own theories about rituals, that they were capable of making this theory work in more than just a “symbolic” way, and that rituals therefore not only mediated, in line with Poncelet’s innocuous reference to “by all means,” the conflict between Jesuits and academics, but also the fabric of Academia itself. A brief chronology will serve as a vademecum. 4.2.1. The anatomy of a conflict In 1593, the town of Louvain launched the plan to allow the fathers of the Society, following the example of other universities, to teach litterae humaniores, philosophy and metaphysics.214 Already in 1583 the Jesuits had tried to acquire a position at Louvain similar to that which they held in the University of Douai, but they failed to obtain the consent of the Faculty of Arts. The matter gained momentum when, one year later, in 1594, news reached the faculty board of the Arts that the bishop of Antwerp, Laevinius Torrentius, intended to found in his testament a Jesuit philosophical college in Louvain.215 The faculty board reacted vehemently and implored the bishop to abandon his 214 Acta Facultatis Artium, 23 January, 10 February and 2 August 1593, RAL, OUL, 713, 342r, 344 r, 351r. 215 Acta Facultatis Artium, 26 March 1594, RAL, OUL, 713, 364r. Read Marinus, Laevinius Torrentius. On his activities as a humanist, see De Landtsheer, “The Library of Bishop Laevinus Torrentius.” Alongside his library, his legacy to the fathers consisted in a capital of 24,000 florins that could be used to buy rents of approximately 1,500 florins yearly. Cf. the Testament of Torrentius, 29 March 1595, ARSI, Fondo

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plan to found a “fifth pedagogy.” Two arguments would frame the negotiations in the early stage of the conflict. First, free courses after the Jesuit model would cause the ruin of the other pedagogies. Second, the fathers of the Society would never be prepared to submit themselves to rectoral jurisdiction.216 A compromise was reached, including a yearly dotation of 600 florins to be paid in the future by the Jesuits to the old pedagogies. Until then, they would limit themselves to lectures in metaphysics, which was not a part of the curriculum taught at the pedagogies.217 As Poncelet suggests, however, more was at stake than merely financial practicalities. When negotiations on the modalities of the order’s teaching failed, the Faculty of Arts appealed to the council of Brabant for arbitration; the Jesuits mobilised the Society’s privileges to teach and to grant academic degrees in Theology and Philosophy and appealed with the support of the city to the Privy Council.218 In August 1595, a royal decree was issued to settle the affair: the Jesuits were allowed to establish a fifth philosophical college alongside the old pedagogies; Jesuit courses would not be free; and the resulting minervalia had to compensate for the loss of income of the other pedagogies. The Jesuits’ teaching in the new college and their students as well were subjected to rectoral and decanal jurisdiction, but the order could organise its own examinations extra lineam, without participating in the central examinations and the promotion ceremony of the four pedagogies. In return, the honour of furnishing the primus of Louvain emerging from these central examinations remained a reserve of the pedagogies.219 This applied also to the ranking of the students according to their scholarly achievement in lineae in the central promotion list, which gave access to grants in the higher faculties.220 Academics had not awaited this verdict—with which they would refuse to comply—as they felt

Gesuitico, Collegia, 1459, Nr. 26, and Torrentius to Claudio Acquaviva, general of the Society, 1 February 1595, ibidem, Nr. 25; a copy in UAL, Ghent (1958–1959), 158. 216 Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 196. 217 Compare the instructions from Acquaviva to Oliverius Manareus, SJ, provincial of Belgica, 4 November 1595, UAL, Ghent (1958–1959), 159. 218 Memorandum of the town of Louvain to the Privy Council, 20 April 1594, Université de Louvain 1556–1639, AGR, Conseil Privé, 1281. 219 Cf. Bruneel, “De Primus.” 220 Edict of the Privy Council of August 1595, Acta Universitatis, 5 September 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 79r.

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that they could not, this time, go against the support commanded by the Jesuits in Brussels.221 A first supplication letter had left for Rome in order to rally the papacy to its cause in June 1595, and another one followed two months later.222 The resulting papal brief Accepimus Nuper prohibited the Jesuits from teaching logics and physics, but they could continue their classes in metaphysics and in the other sciences that the university had allowed. The brief was destined to the abbots of Park and Saint Gertrudis, who had to see to its execution.223 The Privy Council got wind of it and admonished the Louvainists that they should not try to have their brief executed without a placet. Similar letters were sent to the abbots, whose content left little doubt that such a placet would never be granted. The academics received an angry letter from Cardinal Albert of Austria, who had recently arrived as governor of the Habsburg Netherlands after his brother Ernest’s death. The new Governor General simultaneously mobilised the Spanish ambassador in Rome in favour of the Jesuits.224 Meanwhile, the fathers abided their time and continued to teach, which resulted in another papal intervention. A second brief, this time directed to the Society’s general in Rome, Claudio Acquaviva (1581–1615), was more successful, because it could be passed on to the fathers without requiring a formal placet, thus dissolving the awkward situation which “inhibited” them to obey papal orders.225 The fathers ceased lecturing at once,226 which created a promising context for the university to move towards the centre of the negotiations again. As the Privy Council had now openly been repudiated by Ignatian obedience, the academics could accommodate the interests of “Brussels”—avoiding a loss of face—with their own concerns. Negotiations over the suppression of one pedagogy in order to improve

221

Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 204. Letter of supplication of the Arts faculty to Clement VIII, 30 June 1595, in ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 8r–v; 30 August 1595, Acta Universitatis; 30 August 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 74r. 223 22 December 1595. A copy in A.A.Pa., Corpus VII, chest xxiv, 2nd bundle. See also the accompanying letters from Vossius to the university, 23 December 1595, UAL, Ghent (1958–1959), 157, and from his nephew Leonardus Vossius (at Liège), 22 January 1596, UAL, OUL, 344. Cf. Acta Universitatis, 25 January 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 115r–117v. 224 Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 218. 225 Gysens, Gerardus Vossius van Borgloon, 191. 226 Notarial acts, 10 April 1596, ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 3r. 222

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the financial state of the others carried the official approval of the university, but they came to a halt when academics proved unable to sort out which pedagogy had to be suppressed, and which logic could be found to justify the measure227—a failure that was ascribed by exasperated commissioners of the Privy Council to the emotional attachment of university men to the colleges where they had spent their youth.228 Academics, for their part, felt that the suppression of one pedagogy—a manoeuvre to furnish the Society with teaching infrastructure229—would be interpreted as a rejection of the traditional ways of Academia in favour of the Society’s didactic models.230 Backed by the abbots of Saint Gertrudis and Park, the university eventually humbly implored the Supreme Pontiff to recommend their case to the cardinal of Austria.231 The papal brief Bonarum Artium of 11 October 1596 indeed would warmly recommend the university to the pious governor of the Netherlands, urging him to silence the legists disseminating discord and envy.232 The brief offered the latter, while performing as an obedient son of His Holiness, the occasion for which he was

227 “Inherendum esse conclusioni de servando pedagogiorum numero . . . quandoquidem oportunum medium aut rationem qua extingui pedagogium aliquod possit, non videant.” Memorandum of the Arts faculty, Acta Universitatis, July 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 147r. 228 “Domini licet fateantur quattuor pedagogia subsistere non posse, constanter tamen persistunt, diminutionem, ob affectum, quo singuli in suas scholas, ex quibus emerserunt, feruntur, a facultate vix sperari posse.” Anton Houst, Commissioner of the Privy Council to Louvain university, to Nicolaus Bonnart, SJ, 26 June 1596, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 229 “Collegium Porci patribus facile concedendum, vix tamen audeo in latum illum campum cum illis descendere, metuens ne quod nunc laudant post recantent.” Houst to Bonnart, 26 June 1596, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 230 “Cum huiusmodi pedagogii suppressio fieri nequeat sine iusta patronorum piorumque fundatorum offensione et alienatione regentium in eo pedagogio et docentium iniuriam eiusdemque pedagogii non levi ignominia, quod quasi insufficienter hactenus philosophiam docuerit, societatis professioni cedere, et extingui mereatur, quod sane et in ceterorum pedagogiorum quibus commune est docendi institutum eadem forma et modus, iniuriam et confusionem vergere videtur.” Memorandum of the Arts, Acta Universitatis, July 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 147r. 231 “Qua in re, quia magnum minuendae invidiae in Illustrissimi Cardinalis Alberti nomine Catholicae majestatis per Belgium optimi, et iam clarissimis contra religionis hostes victoriis gloriosi gubernatoris favore, momentum nobis positum existimamus, obnixe optaremus eidem caussam nostram Tuae Sanctitatis authoritate commendari.” Supplication of the Arts faculty to Clement VIII, 19 September 1596, in ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 9r–v. 232 “Sed quoniam interdum aliqui, ut audimus, aulici et consiliarii humano affectu, ne quo graviore verbo utamur, discordiarum semina alunt, et quae recte constituta sunt labefactare moliuntur.” Clement VIII to Albert, cardinal of Austria, 11 October 1596, ed. Van der Essen, Correspondance, 396.

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waiting233 to avoid loss of face, to find a way out of the deadlock, and to restore the dynasty’s image as the protector of the university. The fears of Frangipani, who delivered the brief to the prince in January 1597, that the pressure on the academics to reach an agreement with the Jesuits would not be removed by this manoeuvre, did not become a reality.234 4.2.2. Accounting for academia: Rituals as managerial practices It is not my purpose to discuss every single document drafted by the academics and their opponents between 1593 and 1597.235 A memorandum drafted in 1596 provides an interesting point of departure to address the question of why academics opposed Jesuit integration in the university, why opposition was not limited to the Faculty of Arts, and how promotion rituals were woven into this conflict of interests. The text was submitted in March 1596 for approval to the academic senate by Cuyckius, who was identified by the Jesuits as their major opponent. At that moment, the first papal brief to the abbots of Park and Saint-Gertrudis had failed to suspend Jesuit teaching, the Belgian fathers having convinced Acquaviva that in the meantime a compromise—the royal decree of August 1595—had been reached. The 1596 memorandum was, at least in its preamble, surprisingly moderate, stressing as it did the wish of the university to come to terms with the Jesuits. Obviously, it was a text designed to muster support for the reasonable claims of the academics, not rouse spirits that were already convinced. Moreover, it had to gratify different audiences. The document was submitted to the Privy Council in Spring,236 and a copy 233 “La differenza tra l’università co’li padri gesuiti di Lovanio . . . havendo talmente offeso l’animi di questi signori del consiglio privato, che l’hav’ in gran parte alienati dall’università sudetta non senza suo danno, ha mosso questo serenissimo prencipe a desiderar ch’io procurasse qualche concordia . . . m’ha fatto replicar ch’io la tentasse almeno per quel fine d’informarne la Santità Sua, acciochè, conosciuta perfettamente la qualità della causa, possa col suo sano e santo giudicio ovviar all’inconvenienti ch’usciranno dal lassarla nel termine, nel qual’adesso se trova.” Frangipani to Aldobrandini, 23 October 1596, ed. Van der Essen, Correspondance, 239. 234 “E temo che, nonostante lo breve, se continoarà il persuader l’università che in ciò si concorda con i padri, però ne ho avertita a fin che, se ne fusse molestata, posso io defenderla secondo la mente di Sua Beatitudine.” Frangipani to Aldobrandini, 15 January 1597, ed. Louant, Correspondance, 11. 235 An endless series of articles and reactions to these articles drafted by academics and Jesuits in UAL, Ghent (1958–1959), 157 and RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 236 “Scriptum quod illustrissime vestre dominationi superioribus diebus misit universitas Lovaniensis non est novum, sed copia eius quod in quadragesima nuper obtu-

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of it surfaces in the archives of the archdiocese of Mechlin,237 which suggests academic rhetoric had to rally other powers that be for the university’s cause as well. The archives of the Louvain Jesuit college list several copies of Cuyckius’ text, as the fathers had to answer to it in several responsiones, and the memorandum was submitted again by the end of 1596 to Frangipani.238 Three gravamina were articulated. The two first arguments were related to the financial compensation of the old pedagogies, which was deemed insufficient and anything but honourable for the secular clerics teaching at the traditional pedagogia, and the refusal of the Jesuits to adopt the faculty’s tested didactic and disciplinary paradigms. Jesuits would be able to utilize their quickly expanding network of colleges in the Netherlands to withdraw applicants from the university colleges. As a result, different didactic models would become a threat to doctrinal stability: the laws of the market (as opposed to intrinsic arguments) would force other teachers and doctors in every discipline to adapt themselves to Jesuit methods in order to survive, “nec juvenes nec parentes judicare possunt.” A comparison between the management of the body academic and the body politic, where stability was a central concern, had to enrol the public realm’s watchdogs.239 The third gravamen, the argument involving graduation ceremonies, linked the fate of the Arts faculty to that of the other learned corporations, especially the Faculty of Theology. The Jesuits’ plans to withdraw their licenciandi from the faculty’s common promotion ceremony would have devastating effects both for the faculty and the university. It would destroy the image of unity in Academia. It would give the impression that, at Louvain, two universities competed with each other; that there would be two faculties of Arts and two faculties of Theology. This argument was rhetorically reinforced by a commonplace drawn from

lit serenissimo cardinali.” Memorandum of the Jesuits to Frangipani, end of 1596, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 237 A.A.M., OUL, 10. 238 Memorandum of the Jesuits to Frangipani, end of 1596, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. Several copies of the university’s Gravamina can be found in the same box. 239 “Tum quia si alio meliori seu doctore, seu docendi modo se offerente, veteres doctores in quacumque disciplina, novuis cedere debent nulla erit aut docentium aut doctrine in scolis academicis stabilitas, nulla perpetuitas. Quod ut in civili gubernatione qui rebus presunt sibi fieri nollent et ad perturbationem reipublice pertinere iudicarunt, sic ut de academia republica idem sentiatur, equum esse arbitramur.” Acta Universitatis, 24 March 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 136r–138v.

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Saint-Augustine:240 Jesuit and academic institutions of higher learning would stand up against each other as “two altars in one city.” This statement must have been particularly convincing, with heretics at the back door who were expected to triumph at any sign of discord among Catholics. What exactly did happen during these promotiones? In the administrative accounts of the Arts faculty, little ink was spilled over the socalled “solemnities that were observed in line with old and venerable customs.” In 1593, for instance, they only mention that on the 18th of November, between 10 and 11 am, the chancellor of the university (i.e., Cuyckius)—in the presence of the rector, the doctors in Theology, Law, and Medicine, the faculty’s officials, and many other licenciates and masters—had created, in the central building of the Arts faculty (the so-called vicus artium), the following licentiati in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in the order listed below, after they had taken the oath on the profession of the Faith introduced by Pius V in 1564.241 There follows a list of consecutively numbered names of the 53 promoti of that year, the baccalaurei who had given evidence of their acquaintanceship with Aristotelian logic and physics before the examination committee of the Arts faculty.242 A horizontal line separated the numbers 1 to 12 from the rest (the so-called promoti of the prima linea).243 Another line was drawn between numbers 24 and 25, after which the remaining 29 postlineales of that year were listed.244 Little excitement can be detected in this dry account, compared to the lively descriptions of civic or religious ceremonies and festivities of the early modern Low Countries. Within an hour, academics apparently got through the entire programme. 240 On the use of commonplaces as a strategy to convince an audience, read the introduction to Waszink, Justus Lipsius: Politica, 49–52. 241 We are not informed about the physical position of the participants during the ceremony. 242 In fact, it seems that few baccalaurei did not make it to the promotio, as the lists of bachelors in the minutes of the Arts faculty overlap with those of the promoti. 243 In the margins, the faculty’s notary charged with the keeping of the Acta or the scribe acting on his behalf took the effort to annotate a few names with the initials of the respective pedagogies they represented.Only four or five names in the first linea are marked with a letter designating the pedagogy in which the students in question had earned their spurs. There are examples of promotion lists where every single student was marked with a letter, but these are the exception rather than the rule. 244 In the first decade of the 17th century, graduation numbers trebled, quadrupled, or even quintupled; the number of licentiati in the first two lineae was fixed at 12 students per linea, however. Actus Licentiae Anni 1593, in Acta Facultatis Artium, 18 November 1593, RAL OUL, 713, 359r–v.

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In that case, the Louvain promotio would probably never have made it to ego-documents, newspapers, and to a lemma in Diderot’s Encyclopédie Raisonnée, all of which tell a very different story. In 18th-century narrative sources, the attention shifted from the austere solemnities in the vicus artium to the so-called “Primus of Louvain”: the student who had outperformed his comilitones during the examinations; who was ranked first in the promotion list; and who was to become the pivot of numerous festivities, ceremonies and outbursts of joy and violence in the public space during the days preceding the solemn promotio.245 As soon as the name of the promising young man was revealed by the faculty’s authorities, his comilitones took to the streets of the university town, carrying around the insignia of the pedagogy, while provocations and insults of and from students of the other colleges recurrently resulted in riots. The day before his proclamation, a solemn entry of the Primus took place, in which he was accompanied, under salutes and bell-ringing, by his family, friends, and by musicians, via a route that was planted with triumphal arches, to his pedagogy, which was decorated with banners, emblems, and chronograms eternalising the event. After his official proclamation by the faculty’s beadle in the presence of high ranking officials of State, Church, and City who had been invited by the academic authorities, a Te Deum was sung in the victorious pedagogy’s chapel. Over the next three to five days, official feasts and banquets organised by the pedagogy alternated with excesses and corteges of disguised freshmen in the streets of the university town. Academic order was emphatically restored during the ceremony registered in the Acta: university men withdrew within the walls of the Vicus Artium and witnessed the transition of rowdy students into licentiati artium who were unambiguously ranked according to their intellectual performance.246 The Primus went on to his home town, where he was received with gifts, fireworks, and salutes. Although we do not have access to comparable sources with respect to the end of the 16th, and the early 17th century,247 things must have

245 The following description has been borrowed from Bruneel, “Le Primus de Louvain.” 246 The accounts in the Acta portray this ceremony as a purely academic one, in sharp contrast with the proclamation of the Primus a few days before. Compare, with respect to the restoration of Law and Order in a civic context by the corporate ritual of the shooting guilds after reversal feasts, Arnade, Realms of Ritual. 247 The festivities coming with the promotion in the early 17th century have not been studied yet. With respect to the second half of the 17th century, information

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Plate 4.3. Promotion List of the Arts Faculty, 1593 The Actus Licentiae or promotion list of 1593, under the deaconate of Gerardus Corselius, in the Acta Facultatis Artium, RAL, OUL, 713, 359r–v. Mark the lineae separating the first linea of students from the second one and from

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the postlineales. The Primus of Louvain, in this case Johannes Huberti from Hasselt (Principality of Liège), is not separated from the rest by textual or spatial markers. In the first linea, the pedagogy of a few students has been indicated: P(orcus), F(alco), C(astrum). [State Archives, Louvain]

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ran their course in a fairly similar way.248 In the 18th century, the celebration of the Primus of Louvain was considered an age-old tradition nurtured by the Austrian Habsburgs to accentuate continuity. In the 1595 royal decree, leaving the honour of furnishing the primus to the old, pedagogies had to woo academics who balked at embracing the Jesuits as their colleagues. And Jesuit criticism of the excessive rivalry, the violence, and the disturbance of public order by students and the teachers of the Arts faculty that accompanied the yearly promotio249 suggests that already in the late 16th century, the austere solemnities displayed in the official records of the Veneranda Facultas were preceded by burlesque and violent rites of passage and reversal ceremonies in the public space that put the ordo academicus aside for a short while250—but that conversely were not committed to documents instilling order on the academic enterprise.251 The selection of practices that made it to official records and those that did not in turn informed the ritual theory deployed by academics in the 1596 memorandum. It is from their highly formalised accounts in the Acta, not from eye-catching festivities blurring the line between academic, civic, and reversal ceremonies, that university men would distil a ratio dignitatis might be available in newspapers such as the Courrier véritable des Pays-Bas or the Ghendtsche Posttydingen. I wish to thank Prof. Dr Claude Bruneel (Université Catholique de Louvain) for his suggestions. 248 It might be rewarding to browse through the accounting books of the pedagogies, which have sporadically survived. The victorious pedagogy had to foot the bill for the festivities, a sum that amounted, in the 18th century, to 25 to 40 per cent of the pedagogy’s budget (Bruneel, “Le Primus de Louvain”). See De Vocht, Inventaire. 249 “Maxime enim dedecierit religiosos tot lites, dissidia, aversiones animorum, pericula periurii, pugnae, tumultus discipulorum, lapidationes fenestrarum et alia mala que hactenus Lovanii ex hac fonte partim inter professores pedagogiorum partes inter discipulos manarunt nec ita cessarunt, quin a biennio sit universitas hec experta.” Responsio ad pretensa gravamina quae universitas Lovaniensis exhibuit illustrissimo ac reverendissimo domino nuncio apostolico contra lectiones philosophicas Societatis Jesu, end of 1596, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 250 Insults, violence, disguises—although more specific data would be welcome, the data suggest that Louvain students were drawing on a carnavalesque or charivari-like repertoire that, despite the obligatory but completely vain pre-emptive disciplinary measures taken by the academic authorities, may have been viewed with indulgence. See Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 99–101. 251 Jesuits, by contrast, focused on the disorder coming with academic graduation rituals, and recurred to a discourse that was much similar to the one framing other attempts to channel and Christianise traditional festivities: “quibus etiam accedet ex illa animorum aversione futurum ut fructus omnis spiritualis quem societas ex ceteris suis functionibus in tota universitate et omium pedagogiorum professoribus ac discipulis colligere possit, aut nullus sit aut exiguus.” Responsio ad pretensa gravamina (. . .), end of 1596, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12.

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et ornatus in their ritual practices. This may explain why the 1595 compromise failed to win over university men, even though the tradition of the primus of Louvain must have been a rare vehicle to project academic authority towards broader audiences.252 In addition, the academics’ “ritual theory” is quite unconventional to modern eyes. Rather than being under the spell of their rituals’ emotive power or social magic, Cuyckius cum suis turned to rather down-to-earth problems arising from the separate promotion (and examination) procedures planned by the Jesuits. In the Gravamina, grants attached to the numerous resident colleges for students of the higher faculties, most of which were reserves for aspiring theologians, were assigned on the basis of merit, i.e., on the ranking of the applicants of the respective pedagogia in the faculty’s central examination procedures and its common promotion ceremonial. This entailed that brilliant Jesuit alumni would be excluded from access to grants in the higher faculties. The Faculty of Arts would use a similar argument two decades later when it ruled, on the request of its colleagues at Douai, unfavourably against the separate promotion ceremonies held by the three colleges (including the Jesuit colleges of Anchin and Marchiennes) of the Douai faculty. But why should dons of the higher faculties suddenly bother about students who had preferred Jesuit teaching to that of the secular clerics of the pedagogies? In the previous chapters, it has become clear that grants were more than just economic units, mediating as they did spiritual, cognitive, and social hierarchies.253 In the 1596 memorandum, academics phrased their concerns from this perspective. They were not concerned bout the brilliant students who were denied access to grants. Instead, the concern was that colleges and, as a consequence, Public Interest would be deprived of brilliant students.254 The dons were very well aware that the exclusion of the Society’s students from the market of academic 252 The tradition of the Primus was indeed never used as a counterargument against separate promotions. This corresponds, again, to administrative practice: In the promotion lists, the primus was not separated by markers from the other students, in sharp contrast with the lines separating the lineales from the so-called post-lineales. 253 Cf. p. 125–32. 254 “Primum ex scola societatis promoti bursarum in collegiis theologicis aut aliis nulli capaces erunt, eo quod dicte burse afficiantur illis qui in communi promotione bonum et laudabilem ordinem sunt consecuti: ut propterea collegia supradicta preclaris omnibus ingeniis que in scola societatis excolentur hoc mo(do) penitus spolianda sint que interea primum in ipsam iuventutem deinde in universam rempublicam redundabit.” Memorandum of the university, Acta Universitatis, 24 March 1596, RAL,

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patronage gave them a only temporal lead, which would quickly evaporate. The Jesuits had already demonstrated, at Douai, that they were capable of pooling grants themselves, and they would be even more able to do so if they managed to secure an output of grateful alumni of their own, whose affection and the gratitude to their former mentors were mediated, according to academic theories, by promotion rituals.255 In this scenario, the statutory discrimination of their students in the competition for grants was likely to become a rhetorical asset in enrolment strategies towards potential benefactors instead of a disadvantage. This would result in the fabric of a parallel market of academic patronage that would escape the control of the regents of the Faculty of Divinity and that, the number of powerful patrons and generous donators being limited, would develop itself at their cost.256 But the secular clerics of the traditional colleges were likely to lose their grip over teaching as well. Jesuit grants would redirect the flow of students to the popular auditories of the Jesuit college at Louvain, where the chairs of Thomism and Scripture, occupied by theologians of renown such as Bellarmino in the 1570s and Lessius from the 1580s onwards, provided a full alternative to the public teaching provided by the faculty. In the 1590s, diplomatic correspondence between Brussels and Rome explicitly referred to the project as the nucleus of a future Jesuit seminary.257 Yet, while Jesuit teaching in Theology was a thesis

OUL, 61, 136r–138v. In 1590, the entry of nine students in the order had already sparked controversy. Cf. Poncelet, Histoire, 331–38. 255 Affection and emotions did play a role, as academics ascribed the willingness of pious donors to found new scholarships (in the pedagogy where they had studied) to the memory of the honors they had been covered with in a common promotio that, on the one hand, had to eternalise the relationship between alumni and the pedagogy where they had been trained and, on the other hand, visualised the unity of Academia. Informatio et Judicio Universitatis Lovaniensis de utilitate et necessitate concursus omnium paedagogirorum ad unam promotionem, unumque in ea ordinem, no date, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 256 This concern was made more explicit in another document, the Rationes propter quas facultas Artium Academiae Lovaniensis putat usum privilegiorum concessorum societati Jesu quoad professionem philosophiae et gradus in ea conferendos, sibi posse incommodare (in the margins: “scriptum manu proprio Domini Cuyckii”) in RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 257 “Et comme lon adresse un seminaire de Theologie a Louvain de la mesme compagnie et quil ny a dont le soustenir, sa majeste sest contentee que lon y unist les biens et revenuz dun monastere dict des escoliers situe en la ville de Leewe duche de Brabant.” The Secretariat of State in Brussels (?) to Laurens Dublioul, agent of Flanders, 12 February 1593, Deux letters du gouvernement (. . .) de 1593 et 1596, AGR, Audience, 1468/10.

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for some (such as, for instance, Torrentius),258 it was a reprehensible hypothesis for many a Faculty bigwig.259 It is in this sense that academics wanted their audience to read the concluding remarks in the 1596 memorandum, that the three gravamina combined had to be taken into account if one did not want to invite a hostile takeover bid against the university by the Society of Jesus.260 Performing rituals, and the exact way in which they were performed, apparently entailed much more than the symbolic constitution of an academic corporate identity. Academic graduation rituals realised this unity in a tangible way. In the logic of university men, separate promotions would inevitably create a separate infrastructure.261 The cycle of credibility in which graduation rituals generated brilliant alumni who generated, in turn, pious foundations for other promising youths, would slow down or even come to a halt. Just by performing graduation rituals separately, the Jesuits would be able to realise the very same role in society that academics considered theirs. The Jesuits’ insistence on separate promotions suggests that they agreed with the academics at least on that.262 This is not to say that 17th-century university dons, while blurring the line between managerial and ritual practices, can unequivocally be labelled as captains of (academic) industry. The businesslike approach to academic rituals in the 1596 Gravamina was entangled with other concerns. Academics stressed that the Fathers sought to dissociate

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“An forte sacram theologiam docentes Lovanii a Philosophia arcebuntur?” Torrentius to the university, 6 May 1594, Acta Universitatis, 11 May 1594, RAL, OUL, 60, 371v–372v. 259 See, for instance, the comments of Oranus, SJ, on the consequences of aborting the plan to set up a philosophical college at Louvain: “Quod si remissiores animo quodammodo concidisse aemuli viderint, suo tempore contrabuntur theologicas nostras scholas edeoque ipsum collegium evertere, cuius rei non laevia argumenta ex expositione praelectionum theologicarum horis iisdem, et suorum a scholis nostris avocatione.” Note, after 1598, ARSI, Fondo Gesuitico, Collegia, 1459, Nr. 28. 260 “Deinde si utile reipublice belgice est ut tota academia Lovaniensis in unam societatis scholam transeat, saltem ex parte duarum facultatum theologice et philosophice, quarum hec academie mater et principam illa proles, maxima et culmen est, tunc utilis hec nova scola censeri poterit.” Memorandum of the university, Acta Universitatis, 24 March 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 136r–138v. 261 Reversal feasts could be tolerated to a certain extent, because turning upside down the academic order in burlesque rites, which did not provide a viable alternative, in return may have accentuated the necessity of the “existing” academic order. Compare with respect to civic rituals Arnade, Realms of Ritual. 262 “Sur deux points ils restèrent intraitables: la liberté de suivre leurs méthodes et le refus des promotions mixtes.” Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 203.

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themselves not only from the faculty’s graduation ceremonies but also from the good and laudable ranking order that was achieved via promotion.263 University men wished to trigger a healthy competition between students that would incite them to virtue, piety, and zeal.264 Their insistence on the necessity of cognitive hierarchies among students devised in a common promotion refers to the order’s generally observed suspicion (at least in the 16th and early 17th century) of ceremonies that, because of the ranking they introduced, were not likely to instil humility on their students, or that conversely would damage their honour and self-esteem.265 Seen from the perspective of

263 “Eo quod dicte burse afficiantur illis qui in communi promotione bonum et laudabilem ordinem sunt consecuti.” Memorandum of the university, Acta Universitatis, 24 March 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 136r–138v. Compare the more aggressive wording in the 1613 advice to the Privy Council on the situation in Douai: “Accedit quod distincti ordines in actibus promovendorum qui Duaci iam in usu sunt, ad formam Lovaniensem in unum magis ordinem redigendi sint quam multiplicandi. Nam Universitas Duacensis in sui erectione iussa est universitati Lovaniensi sese conformare, et id etiam quoad unum ordinem promovendorum ad aliquot annos fecit, donec spiritu singularitatis magis quam fraternitatis, divisionis quam communionis, separatione facta, promovendorum tot ordines erecti sunt quot auditoria, tot turmae quot scholae.” Acta Universitatis, 8 August 1613, RAL, OUL, 63, 116v–121v. 264 This function of rituals was made less explicit in the 1596 Gravamina, but the disciplinary function of the promotio, which may have been enhanced by the reversal of academic order in the liminal period in between the publication of the name of the Primus and the final solemn proclamation registered in the Acta, was elaborated on in the Informatio et Judicio (. . .), middle of the 1590s, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 265 Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur, 175. Jesuit teachers resorted to different methods: they drew up catalogues ranking students according to their performance in each of the materials that were taught, a method that recalls the catalogues the Jesuits sent to Rome evaluating the members of their order according to different “dimensions” as well (cf. Quattrone, “The Jesuit Ordering”). Their aversion to committing an unambiguous ranking order of their students to writing resonates in their arguments against the reintroduction of a common promotio at Douai: “Dautant qu’il nest aucunement raisonnable, dester le droict qu’appartient a chaqun professeur de denominer choisir et avoir huict lineaux de ceus de son cours nij que d’entre de tant et de beaux et rares esprits qu’ij se rencontrent en l’un et l’autre, lon choisisse seulement huict par ou l’espoir de l’honneur, esguillon ordinaire des jeunes gens, seroit ostee, moins encore de prendre et tenir en une seule promotion des dicts deux cours l’ordre que jugeroient les professeurs de la faculte, veu qu’ (. . .) il n’est possible par le moijen d’ung examen de deux heures et peu plus pour les lineaux cognoistre et juger parfaictement de la preeminence de l’ung sur lautre, selon que se peut voir par le balancement des catalogues desdicts professeurs d’Anchin [= one of the two Jesuit pedagogies at Douai] a l’encontre des promotions esquelles diverses personnes meritoirement jugees capables des premiers places, [my italicisation] ont este rejectes vers les derniers et au contraire les moins suffisantes avances notablement par dessus leur rang, d’ou est procede, que la pluspart des mijeux verser en principales parties de la philosophie ont delaisse de promouver, e voulans hasarder leur honneur et reputation a un examen incertain de deux heures [= central examinations of the Arts faculty], et les autres, bien que grands

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university men, the Jesuits were not ready to submit to a hierarchy that was identified with virtue, piety, and doctrinal excellence. In line with Ago’s findings, the issue over graduation rituals was inextricably linked to the second gravamen about the fathers’ unwillingness to submit themselves to academic jurisdiction, which probably rendered their promised reverence towards university officials completely meaningless in academic eyes. The academics’ suspicions may have been fuelled by other experiences that we will have to return to in the next chapter, in which the fathers of the Society were identified as enemies of ecclesiastical hierarchy as well. Graduation rituals assembling the entire university behind the impenetrable walls of the Vicus Artium had to do more than visualising the unity of Academia and settling financial questions. They simultaneously had to resolve ambiguities that transcended the interests of the pedants of the schools: the nature and the inherent necessities of the social, religious, and spiritual Order. 4.2.3. Sources of uncertainty When one follows the reasoning of the dons, their ritual performances not only held the social fabric of Academia in place. That would have implied that the body academic was replaceable, a message that university men, for obvious reasons, were not trying to convey. In the “performance of a performance”266 unfolded in the 1596 memorandum, academics also emphasized in their concluding remarks their necessity for the public realm, while questioning the utility (let alone the necessity) of Jesuit teaching for the desired revival of the university and of the South Netherlands: both the university and the Faculty of Arts were, by the grace of God, already recovering quickly from the turmoil of war and would continue to do so without Jesuit help.267 In addiesprits ne tenant compte d’estudier tout au long de lannee, se sont contentees sur les deux mois derniers saddonner seulement aux definition, et autres choses semblables necessaires pour l’examen et utiles aux sciences, mais nullement suffisantes, sans les mathematicques, moraulx, livres de anima, metaphijsiq et aultres belles parties de ceste estude, dont on ne faict aucune recherche, et demande par lesdicts examens.” Memorandum of the Douai Jesuits for the Privy Council, Summer of 1613, Acta Universitatis, 8 August 1613, RAL, OUL, 63, 116v–121v. 266 The terminology here has been drawn from Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur, 143. 267 “Primum quia nulla necessitas ad novam hanc scolam cogit, sive ex parte universitatis, que hac schola tot annis caruit, et absque ea stetit ac floruit; sicut et nunc ea carere potest et absque ea feliciter reflorescit, sive ex parte societatis ipsius, que

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tion, university dons suggested that the alternative (a Jesuit university that would eventually substitute traditional teaching by secular clerics) would deprive towns and villages of learned pastors, canons, and other secular clerics versed in theology.268 The argument is interesting. Nobody could seriously assert that skilled labourers in the vineyard of the Lord were not of use, especially with triumphant heretics at the back door. Judging by the unprecedented proportion of secular clerics among the Sacre Theologie Baccalaurei, Licentiati, and Doctores in the Catalogus Promotionum between 1585 and 1618, Louvain was indeed a bulwark of the secular clergy; even among the doctors in Divinity, members of the religious orders were outnumbered by secular clerics.269 Jesuits, for their part, were notable by their absence from the faculty’s catalogus promotionum between 1585 and 1619. They took their degrees at Douai, under the auspices of the order.270

suos sibique subditos vel hic vel alibi docere potest, absque tali cursus philosophici promiscua scola, que ad promotionem ducens, reliquas scholas in discrimen vocet.” Memorandum of the university, Acta Universitatis, 24 March 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 136r–138v. 268 “Ut insigniter noxium censeri debeat nisi forte noxium non est spoliari civitates ac pagos pastoribus, canonicis aliisque clericis secularibus theologica et philosophica eruditione imbutis” Memorandum of the university, Acta Universitatis, 24 March 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 136r–138v. 269 Catalogus baccalaureorum (. . .) a Ven. Facultate Theologiae promotorum, 1585– 1619, RAL, OUL, 505. Seculars constituted respectively 84, 78, and 60 per cent of graduates at Louvain. At Padua, for instance, slightly less than half of the graduates in Divinity were secular clerics. Cf. Negruzzo, Theologiam discere et docere, 269. The University of Paris would narrow the gap with the Louvain figures only by the end of the 17th century (Brockliss, “Patterns of Attendance,” 520 n. 24). Brockliss’s assessment that secular clerics only became interested in theological studies in the course of the 17th century, in the context of the reaction against Protestantism, should be handled with caution. What we do see is a rise in the proportion of secular clerics among the graduates in a university system where only a very small proportion of secular clerics took degrees in theology because of the privilège des gradués, which only prescribed the quinquiennium (two years philosophy, three years theology) and the magisterium in the Arts (see Julia and Revel, “Les étudiants”). The only exception to this general rule was the University of Paris; see below. 270 Fig. 4.1 lists the Sacrae Theologiae Baccalaurei Biblici (STBBibl; the first of three bachelor degrees; cf. Fig. 1.1 p. 31), and the minority of students who obtained the degree of Sacrae Theologiae Licentiatus (STL) or Doctor (STD). Extrapolating from the STBBibl population, Blackfriars and Praemonstratensians divided half of the 149 graduates from the religious orders between them, followed by Augustinians, Carmelites, and Benedictines (respectively 22, 18, and 13 individuals). Individuals belonged to the Regular Canons of Saint Augustine, the Cistercians, and the Wilhelmites; two Spanish Trinitarians were also listed. Membership of ten individuals was not specified.

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STBBibl 149; 15%

840; 85% STL 59; 22%

212; 78% STD 17; 40%

25; 60% Secular

Regular

Fig. 4.1. Graduations in Divinity: Regulars vs. Seculars

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However, the tacit implication, that consequently the Jesuits should not be allowed to teach philosophy (or theology), is not that straightforward. Throughout the Catholic world, Jesuits were already participating in the formation of the secular clergy, which they did not omit to point out in their Responsiones to the university’s Gravamina.271 In the period under investigation, their activities in the colleges of Louvain, Douai, and St-Omer were explicitly aimed at the edification and the spiritual guidance of both aspiring clerics and practicing pastors. At Louvain, the fathers prided themselves on being the confessors of academics and students, their college functioning as a hub for pastoral activities in the university town.272 In a 1618 report to the general in Rome, they listed six Marian sodalities of more than 1,200 students and burghers, an audience that equalled membership of Jesuit sodalities in populous Antwerp.273 Their educational activities were not limited to the Theology chairs at Louvain but also involved teaching the Catechism in several Louvain colleges, including the pedagogies of the Arts faculty.274 In the absence of a clear-cut societal order, Jesuits could easily draw their pastoral and teaching practice at Louvain into a logic of necessity by merely pointing at the precedents, with the help of interpretive methods similar to those deployed, in the 1596 Gravamina and elsewhere, by academics making themselves indispensable for the realm and for Christendom. All this suggests that the Louvain doctors, although they did not say so, had a specific model of graduated secular clerics in mind, which only they could deliver, only via a thorough spiritual and intellectual formation at Louvain. Seen from this perspective, the faculty’s promotions were indeed a vehicle of Public Interest. But that model 271

Responsiones, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. “Bona pars studiosorum, maxime autem professorum, ac theologie baccaleorum, (e quo numero desumuntur fere ecclesiarum pastores) nostris confiteantur.” Note on the desirability of Jesuit teaching, 1593, ARSI, Fondo Gesuitico, Collegia, 1459, Nr. 33bis. 273 Flandro-Belgica 1618, report for the general in Rome, in ARSI, Fondo Gesuitico, Collegia, 1459, Nr. 41. 274 According to Poncelet, the Jesuits were already charged with the teaching of the Catechism in the pedagogies in the 1590s. Cf. Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus. The 1618 report mentions five Latin courses of the Catechism destined at students from various colleges, alongside the seven catechism courses offered in the vernacular for the Louvain youth. Flandro-Belgica 1618, report for the general in Rome, in ARSI, Fondo Gesuitico, Collegia, 1459, Nr. 41. In the 1630s, the faculty decided to replace the Jesuits with domestic teachers in the four pedagogies. Cfr. RAL, OUL, 782. 272

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apparently could not be made more explicit in the 1596 memorandum. Three decades later, a terminally ill Jacobus Jansonius, a theologian whom we will identify later as a protagonist of the anti-Jesuit faction at Louvain in every single conflict between academics and Jesuits from 1588 onwards until his death in 1625,275 was much more explicit. In an internal document that we can consider as Jansonius’ testament, the old fox enjoined the other regents of the theological faculty not to yield to the pressure of regular clerics—Jesuits or Dominicans—who were trying at that time to amass public chairs in Divinity. His argument consisted of two parts. First, the royal and the ordinary chairs in Theology were endowed by canonships that could only be held by secular clerics, which excluded members of the religious orders from public teaching. In this reasoning, the measures taken to finance academic life back in the 15th century were decontextualised and reframed as clear intentions detailed by the university’s founding fathers and protectors. Second, Jansonius appealed to a clear division of labour between secular and regular clerics: while the task of the latter, in Jansonius’ world, consisted in sacris erudiri, which meant that they consequently were likely to direct their students towards a life of erudite contemplation,276 it was the task of the first ones to orientate, by their very example and by their teaching, the youth in their care towards pastoral and similar functions in the Church.277 Ecclesiastical benefices in the local churches that excluded the regulars from teaching thus became an important element in a fabric in which the dons could imagine themselves as a hierarchy of “pastoral theologians”:278 as shepherds who could figure simultaneously as experts in the—above all practical—science of Salvation, and who were—as pastors, canons, teachers, college presidents, and spiritual guidesmen alike—doubly qualified to set an example for their successors. 275 On Jansonius (†1625), Professor of Scripture at Louvain and President of the Pope’s College, read Ceyssens, “Autour de Jacques Jansonius.” 276 On the superiority of the doctus over the eruditus, read Guelluy, “L’évolution des méthodes théologiques,” 65. 277 “Convenire autem Reipublicae in ordine tam secularium quam religiosorum habere primae [notae] doctos, atque doctores, hoc etiam intuitu ut S Theologiae auditores convenientius dirigerentur ad pastoratus et similes ecclesiae functiones, et quod religiosi convenientius eos erudirent, atque adeo instantius pertraherent ad statum religionis, quam sacerdotii secularis.” Jansonius to the faculty board of Theology, Acta Facultatis Theologiae, 16 February 1625, RAL, OUL, 387, 213–214. 278 This concept has been borrowed from Grès-Gayer, “The Magisterium,” 434–35.

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In this context, it is rewarding to compare the course of things at Louvain c.1600 with the transformation of the Parisian faculty into a self-styled company of pastoral theologians in the course of the 17th century.279 Both universities furnished many of the bishops and the elites of their respective hinterlands. As the distinction between secular and regular clerics had proved for centuries to be a highly amenable tool for organising the Church Militant, structuring internal conflicts and containing them, theologians imagined their university as a university of and for the secular clerics responsible for the reCatholicisation of the South Netherlands and France, and identified their opponents accordingly. The comparison between Louvain by the end of the 16th, and Paris in the beginning of the 17th century can be pushed further. Both companies of pastoral theologians linked their double identity of scientists and shepherds to the magisterium claimed by the respective faculties in Theology. In both universities, orthodoxy was a crucial element in the development of academic identity in general and in distinctive strategies deployed against the Jesuits in particular, in the 1596 memorandum as well as in other circumstances.280 The Doctrina Lovaniensis of 1586 was matched by the body of doctrine drawn up by their colleagues at the Sorbonne a few decades later.281 The contexts in which university men sought to streamline knowledge into a body of doctrine, had been fairly similar as well: while this corporate authority in doctrinal affairs continued to be a constitutive element of the self-image of theologians at Louvain, Paris and elsewhere, it proved increasingly difficult to affirm it towards assertive bishops and above all towards the papacy who claimed a similar authority; claims that threatened to transform the status of theologians from teachers of the Church into mere councillors of ecclesiastical hierarchy.282 All this sheds a new light on the drafting of the Doctrina Lovaniensis after the

279

Cf. Grès-Gayer, “The Magisterium.” While Paris could look back on a much longer history, the heroic 16th century was a highly formative period in the identification of a “Louvain school” as a bastion of orthodoxy in the battle against Protestantism, the authority of which had to defy the centuries. On this heroic 16th century, read De Jongh, L’ancienne Faculté de Théologie; de Bujanda, et al., Index de l’Université de Louvain 1546, 1550, 1558, and Van Eijl, “Louvain’s Faculty of Theology during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.” 281 Grès-Gayer, “The Magisterium,” 426–28. 282 Cf. Minnich, “The changing status of the theologians.” 280

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Baianist episode, and on the reluctance of Louvain divines to embrace a modesty after a Roman recipe in the Lessius affair. Yet, in the 1596 memorandum, the only reference to orthodoxy can be detected in a more formal concept, i.e., the vague notion of a stabilitas doctrinae that had to be safeguarded, nothing less, but nothing more. One reason could be that academics did not want to jeopardise both their stakes in the Jesuit Question and their claims in doctrinal matters by bringing in their highly controversial magisterium. But there is more. Stabilitas doctrinae popped up already in the minutes of the Faculty of Theology in 1595. A few months before, the Council of State in Madrid had suggested that a second public chair in scholastic theology, that was to substitute the royal chair of the Sententiae, would be redundant, given the fact that the projected Jesuit college would organise courses in Thomism as well.283 In this context, the faculty board insisted that only teaching by secular clerics, following the (ambiguous) tradition of the Louvain School, could assure the stability and the uniformity of doctrine—“quod est hic potissimum pre oculis habendum”284—a qualification that obviously referred to the open-ended conflict over Grace and Free Will with the fathers of the Society. Amidst all this uncertainty about hierarchy and orthodoxy, it is not surprising to learn that Louvain academics in their 1596 memorandum did not bluntly incriminate their opponents as heretics, even if several theologians and their students running the Arts faculty considered Lessius and the Louvain Jesuits as all but Pelagians.285 Such arguments were, after all, anything but convincing towards the wider public that they tried to reach in 1596. The memory of the embarrassing controversies on divine Grace and Free Will still being fresh among their audience, academics preferred to turn to the generalised, more for-

283 “Neantmoings comme entendons que les peres de la societe du nom de Jesus audit Louvain enseigneront en leurs escolles ledict Saint Thomas nous advertirez incontinent de ce quen est, et si ladicte lecon peult suffire, sans quilz ont besoing daultre aux escolles publiques de vostre faculte.” Fragment of the Council of State to the Faculty of Theology, 28 November 1594, fragment in Acta Universitatis, 5 July 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 63r. 284 Acta Universitatis, 5 July 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 63r. 285 Close to 80 per cent of faculty members took degrees in Theology (30 per cent STB; 29 per cent STL; 19 per cent STD). As a matter of fact, many teachers in the Arts faculty considered their teaching assignment as a way to pursue their studies in Divinity. Only 15 per cent took degrees in Medicine or Law.

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mal concept of stabilitas doctrinae and the inscription devices286 that had to produce, in the absence of a Roman confirmation silencing the Louvain Jesuits, uniformity of doctrine towards the outside world: the promotion rituals of the Arts faculty that were put in jeopardy by the Jesuits’ insistence on separate graduation ceremonies. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, however. Did rituals actively intervene in the structuring of the relationship between academics and the outside world (e.g., the Jesuits), or were they just a cover? 4.2.4. The battle of the schools The analysis of the 1596 memorandum developed in the previous paragraphs is a rhetorical performance itself of academic performances. It is, for instance, highly questionable whether the presentation of things in 1596 could have become the university’s point of view back in 1593, 1594, or even in the beginning of 1595, when the battle over the legitimate representation of Academia was still going on. Although the concerns deployed in the previous section did figure on the academic agenda in the period under investigation, they cannot be considered clear-cut interests that fuelled opposition against the Jesuits. In fact, the university was deeply divided over the question, opinions ranging from sheer indifference to the respective anti- and pro-Jesuit attitudes aired by a minority of protagonists. It was Jacobus Baius, professor regius of Catechism, regent of the Sacra Facultas, and the nephew of the late Michael Baius, who profiled as one of the driving forces behind the project of setting up a Jesuit college in Philosophy at Louvain from the very start.287 In his letter written in 1593 to an anonymous Jesuit, he claimed the glory for engaging the local elites as well as the first men of the university, all of whom wanted to bring the affair to a favourable conclusion.288 Poncelet 286 The concept of “inscription device” has been borrowed from science studies, where it is understood as a mediator (a machine, in this case a rhetorical or performative act) that transforms an indefinite substance into a clearly circumscribed, “natural” entity. Read Law, After Method, 19–21. 287 It was Baius who proposed the matter to the congregation of the Arts faculty. Cf. Acta Facultatis Artium, 23 January 1593, RAL, OUL, 713, 342r. 288 “Post novissimas litteras T R scriptas distinctis vicibus egi cum magistratu, cum decano facultatis artium et regentibus pedagogiorum, cum domino cancell D Zuerio et variis aliis nostre universitatis primariis vicis, qui omnes propositum negotium ad optatum finem perduci vehementer desiderant. Ac ipse tandem magistratus Lovaniensis serio rem aggressus supplicationem decano et facultati artium exhibunt,

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puts the professor up on the stage as one of the main sources of information the fathers could rely on in the inner circles of the university throughout the 1590s, and as late as 1604 he pops up again as an indefatigable promoter of the good cause in the correspondence between the general and the Belgian superiors.289 The head of an academic dynasty, Baius’ interests in championing the project may be many: in the course of the 1590s, he had been negotiating with the chapter of Lille (where he held a canonship by virtue of an academic nomination)290 over the transfer of 14 grants to a house out of his uncle’s patrimony that had previously hosted the short-lived Collegium Sancti Augustini.291 Paving the path, via the Lille foundations, for a full-blown Collegium Baianum entrenching his family’s interests in the academic enterprise must have appealed to the divine.292 Excellent contacts with the Jesuits would have allowed him to dip into their pool of promising youth and to compete with older and richer colleges recruiting their students along more traditional lines. By the end of 1595, Baius seems to have isolated himself, as he refused to support the decision of the academic senate to protest formally against the fathers’ plans to start teaching the following year293—and he disappears from our sources as one of the university’s official commissionaries in the negotiations with the fathers, the city, and the Privy Council in Brussels.294 ac consules, pensionarius, et alii primarii viri personaliter comparentes cum dominis facultatis artium tractaverunt.” Baius to the Provincial of the Jesuits (?), 7 August 1593, A.A.M., OUL, 3. 289 “De collegio quod nobis attribui optat D Doctor Baius consideratae sunt rationes allatae a vestre reverentia et patris procuratoris iudicium his inclusum audivimus, quod nobis non improbatur, sed egunt, omnia istic examinanda diligentius, et curandum ut non fiat quequam, nisi consentientibus iis qui offendi alioque possent, nimirum universitati et academicis.” Acquaviva to Manareus, 14 February 1604, ARSI, Fl.-Belg., Epp. Gen., 1, II, 910r. 290 His nomination and acceptation (resp. 27 August 1574/28 July 1575) are registered in Registre aux nominations, RAL, OUL, 4784, 35r. 291 Not surprisingly, the matter only surfaced in academic minutes when the deal was done. Several provisions were made in 1597 for the College of Lille to be enriched by Baius’ legacy after his death. The chapter appointed Baius and Joannes Clarius as the provisor of this new college and charged them with the drafting of the statutes. Malderus was the first president of this college. Notarial instrument of the deacon and the chapter of Saint Peter’s at Lille, 22 June 1597, in Acta Universitatis, 4 July 1597, RAL, OUL, 61, 233r. 292 Elementaries on the Baius college in Reusens, Documents relatifs, 3, 440–41. 293 “Protestatus fuit se non consentire in pretactam inhibitionem faciendam, et voluit suam protestationem per me notarium scribi et annotari.” Acta Universitatis, 2 September 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 78r–79r. 294 Baius continued to represent the university in several delegations, but seems to have been excluded from the delegation to Brussels that had to salute the new

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Baius’ position is interesting, as he had been, alongside Jacobus Jansonius, one of the three drafters of the 1587 Censura against Lessius.295 Stability of doctrine was, apparently, not automatically incompatible with Jesuit teaching in philosophy, at least not according to most Louvain theologians. Joannes Stryen, the bishop-in-exile of Middelburg and the first president of King’s College (–1594), had given his warmest support to Torrentius’ initiative in 1594.296 Dogmatic stakes had not been an evident matter of concern for Henricus Cuyckius either, one of the co-authors of the doctrina Lovaniensis in the previous decade: the (pro)chancellor had initially supported the foundation of a Jesuit college before changing his mind and becoming the most visible member of the opposition,297 which earned him many a reproach of treason in Jesuit writings.298 Another theologian of renown, the English exile Thomas Stapleton, entertained warm relationships with the order. A former professor at Douai, he had sided with Lessius in the debates over predestination or Free Will before being transferred by the Privy Council to Louvain as Michael Baius’ successor on the royal chair of Scripture in 1589.299 In 1595, he was still considered a champion of the Jesuit cause and negotiated on behalf of the Society with the abbot of Saint Vaast over the subsidies to be granted to the pedagogies;300 one year later, however, he figured alongside an ardent governor general, the cardinal of Austria, as soon as it had been decided that the Jesuit Question had to be brought up during the audience. He was substituted by Boden, the regent of the pedagogy of the Pig and one of the opponents of the Jesuit project. Acta Universitatis, 15 February 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 125r. 295 Van Eijl, “La controverse Louvaniste,” 210–13. 296 Joannes Stryen to Torrentius, before 8 July 1594, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. Stryen also pops up as the author of several letters in support of the Society in the Lessius Controversy, ACDF, SO, St. St., E 7–c, 737r. 297 In his correspondence with Torrentius, the bishop of Antwerp, he stated that he was favourable towards the project at first, but that he changed his mind when evaluating the opposition it provoked. Cuyckius to Torrentius, 27 February 1594, cited in Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 196. The above-mentioned letter of Baius to an anonymous Jesuit equally portrays the university’s Chancellor (i.e., Cuyckius) as one of the academics favourable to the Jesuits’ cause. 298 E.g., in the expositio cum Cuyckio, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 299 E.g., Stapleton to the bishop of Middelburg (who was residing at Louvain as president of King’s College), 11 May 1588, in ACDF, SO, St. St., E 7–c, 118r. 300 Thomas Wiringus, SJ, to an anonymous co-religionist, 1595, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. Stapleton provided the Jesuit with information about financial transactions among the colleges of Anchin, Marchiennes and the King (the staff of which was composed by secular clerics) at Douai; he also surfaces as one of the academics who, at the beginning of 1595, was helping the Jesuits to find funds for the other pedagogies; Georgius Duras, SJ,to an anonymous co-religonist, 9 January 1595, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12.

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member of the anti-Jesuit faction, Jansonius, as one of the university’s commissioners to Brussels.301 The role of Jansonius, the president of one of the biggest colleges at Louvain, the former president of the College of Saint Augustine, and a critic of Jacobus Baius’ intellectual achievements,302 cannot be deduced from public records, but he does figure as the third man in exchanges among Cuyckius, Boden, and Vossius.303 Jesuit intelligence had spotted him attending a conspicuous religious ceremony in the great hall of the pedagogy of the Pig on Saint Anne’s day 1595, during which the Jesuits were bracketed as Turks and heretics plotting to overturn the pedagogy, the university, and the fatherland.304 Nor was the position of the Arts faculty itself, 75 per cent of which consisted of graduated theologians, unambiguous in the early 1590s. Its congregation was referred to, in Baius’ letter of 1593, as a heterogeneous lot whose decisions, in the absence of a streamlined hierarchy and common intellectual interests, were often annoyingly unpredictable.305 A formal concept such as stabilitas doctrinae consequently was not designed for external use alone but also may have been helpful, because of its vagueness, when trying to overcome internal differences of opinion. 301 Cf. the report on the delegation of Stapleton and Clarius to the nuncio in the Jesuit Question, Acta Universitatis, 21 December 1596, RAL, OUL, 61, 183r. As for his position in the doctrinary debates of 1587–88, see the protests of the Faculty of Theology of Louvain, in the wake of the controversies with Lessius, against the printing of some of the sermons contra predestinationem ex solo Dei placito and contra gratiam efficacem written by Stapleton, by then still professor at Douai. Frangipani to Montalto, 2 August 1590, ed. Ehses, Nuntius Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, 499. 302 Jansonius had already aired scathing comments on Baius’ intellectual skills and his position in the debates over Grace and Free Will, cf. p. 405. 303 Jansonius figures often as a representative of the university in the delegations sent to Brussels in the Jesuit Question. He was never identified by royal councillors or Jesuits as a troublemaker, but he emerges as the third man when the utmost secrecy was required. Cf. Cuyckius to Boden, 12 February 1597, UAL, Ghent, D22. 304 “Haec in Paedagogii Porcensis Aula, altari, ramis, corollis e contortis herbidisque funibus dependentibus, ornatiore, praesente Eximio Domino Magistro Nostro Jansonio, et eiusdem pedagogii moderatoribus, et studiosis, ac aliis pro libitu suo adventantibus externis publice declamata fuere, auditorum oculis interea dum haec recitantur iniectis in societatis nostrae religiosos a Domino Subregente ad eandem declamationem invitatos. Ipso Dive Anne [die] 1595.” RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. The orator had been a student of Jansonius, who was suspected of having written part of the oration himself. Kerkovius, SJ,to his superiors, 2 August 1595, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 305 “Quoniam in ea facultate pluriorum consensus requiratur, et magna sit judiciorum varietas, cum ibi sint Theologi, jurisperiti, medici philosophi, humaniorum litterarum cultores, capellani ecclesiarum, quorum diversissimi etiam sunt scopi.” Baius to the Provincial of the Jesuits (?), 7 August 1593, A.A.M., OUL, 3.

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In this context, it is not surprising that the fathers, in their correspondence with the order’s general, Acquaviva, sought to personalise the opposition. They had good reasons to do so, Acquaviva having warned not to push through their claims without the consent of the university. As a consequence, opposition at Louvain had to be marginalised to a few noisy individuals who had lost sight of Public Interest. The fathers were not the only ones who saw things this way. Before his death, Torrentius had tried to intimidate supposedly isolated members of the higher faculties who sided with the recalcitrant philosophers.306 At the onset of the affair, the city of Louvain would inform the Privy Council about the intrigues of an anything but representative faction that consisted mainly of the regents of the Falcon and the Pig,307 the two pedagogies Baius had envisaged as possible venues for Jesuit teaching.308 As late as 1598, a memorandum of the Belgian Jesuits to the general in Rome pleaded for negotiations to resume, the anti-Jesuit faction at Louvain being decapitated after the death of Mattheus Boden, the regent of the pedagogy of the Pig and an antiJesuit of the first hour, and the departure of Cuyckius to his episcopal see of Roermond.309 But whereas opposition against the Jesuit project was anything but evident in the beginning of 1594, let alone unambiguous, it gradually became more evident and less ambiguous in the following years. This was the result of carefully crafted identity politics of which the 1596 memorandum can be considered a textbook case. In order to outmanoeuvre the advocates of a Jesuit philosophical school within the university, the anti-Jesuit faction had to position, first, the academics as

306 “Quod ex quorundam litteris intellexerim non solummodo artium facultati propositum vestrum displicere verum aliis quoque professoribus primariis, quod tametsi ita esset, egre tamen desisterem.” Torrentius to the university, 8 May 1594, Acta Universitatis, 11 May 1594, RAL, OUL, 60, 371v–372r. 307 “Estants advertij, que les regents des pedagogies du faulcon et pourceau . . . se sont transportes en la ville de Bruxelles a telle intention de tascher par tous moijens possibles dempescher et annihiler lerection de certaine fondation que Monseigneur le reverendissime dAnvers at destine de faire.” City of Louvain to the Privy Council, 20 April 1594, Université de Louvain 1556–1639, AGR, Conseil Privé, 1281. 308 Baius to the Provincial of the Jesuits (?), 7 August 1593, A.A.M., OUL, 3. 309 “Absunt etiam iam ab universitate primi contradictores, et turbarum autores, nam D Cuyckius in Ruremondanum episcopum assumptus, regens porci peste nuper admodum exvinctus: plerique alii in societatem propendent, a qua doctrinam hauserunt.” P. Orani de cursu philosophico Lovan., 1598, ARSI, Fondo Gesuitico, Collegia, 1459, Nr. 28. Dillenus, the regent of the pedagogy of the Falcon, left the university at more or less the same time. Reusens, Documents relatifs, 4, 371–72.

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a monolithic block that stood for its clear and evident interests. The generalisation of distinctive programs cultivated by the few hard-liners in the Faculty of Arts and in a divided Faculty of Theology not only aimed to rally support outside the university but also had to realise a common ground for opposition among academics themselves, via specific rhetorical devices that identified the interests of the Arts faculty with those of the theologians; that re-enacted the familiar and visible distinction between regular and secular clerics; that covered up internal disputes via the notion of stability of doctrine; and that distinguished between necessity and utility. This identity policy framed the three concrete gravamina, in which the issue of the separate promotions postulated by the Jesuits played a crucial part. The text being designed as the voice of Academia in its entirety, most moderates among the academic staff were likely to agree that creating divisions within Academia via rituals cum managerial practices was a recipe for trouble. Rituals were not just the guarantee of stability towards the outside world. In the conflict with the Jesuits, (theories about) promotions produced a solid interest group out of a loose conglomeration of scholars as well. Graduation rituals contributed to the consolidation of this interest group too. By continuously raising reasonable objections engaging most other members of the faculty and university boards, the antiJesuit faction could gradually turn friendly negotiations over practical issues into a situation of open conflict in which the academics could perform as a party whose rights were threatened. Time was on the faction’s side. From 1595 onwards, the prophecy fulfilled itself that Jesuit teaching would only cause trouble if academic demands were not met. In front of what they considered tergiversations of a minority, the fathers had pushed through their plans, in line with Baius’ recommendations,310 before the subsidies for the other pedagogies had been secured. Later that year, academics were confronted with the tangible consequences of the incorporation of a Jesuit college when the Privy Council forced them to rubber-stamp the transfer of one student,

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“Si facultas artium . . . amplecti minus libenter velit, rogo tamen ut reverentia vestra instar periti medici phrenetico etiam invito medicamentum prebere non gravetur, neque importunitate quorundam minus sapientium fatigata propensionem animi erga nostram universitatem remittat Fortassis expediret quamprimum philosophiae saltem professionem in vestra domo institui, etiam independenter ab artium facultate cetera suo tempore obventura plane confido.” Baius to the Provincial of the Jesuits (?), 7 August 1593, A.A.M., OUL, 3.

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Florien de Montmorency, a nephew of a high ranking official of the Council of Finances, to the Jesuit college-to-be.311 Academic affiliations often being drawn into a web of patronage, Florien’s affair could easily be considered an attack on the honour of his pedagogy and his regent. Moreover, it involved the nephew of a powerful statesman and therefore may have foreshadowed the loss of patronage, interesting contacts, and the resulting meltdown of pious foundations.312 That the fathers, adding injustice to insult, continued to teach philosophy in spite of unmistakable orders from the Supreme Pontiff (the first brief Accepimus Nuper of August 1595) and from their general (who insisted on the university’s consent); that they consequently were not likely to submit themselves to the jurisdiction of the rectors or deans either; that they relied on the support of “outsiders” (the Privy Council); that the councillors in Brussels planned to suppress, presumably in favour of the Jesuits, one pedagogy; that the Council of State in Madrid had seriously considered suppressing a chair in theology destined for secular clerics in favour of the projected Jesuit seminary; and that the fathers moreover continued to raise highly divisive stakes such as separate promotions—all these events, when drawn into a confrontational format of “we” against “them,” became evident proofs that there was no talking to the Jesuits, who were blinded by ambition, who did not seek to accommodate the interests of their future colleagues, and whose project had to be considered a hostile takeover bid directed against the entire university. This brings us to the second argument. Promotion rituals allowed the anti-Jesuit faction and the moderates to get their act together. By contrast, they seem to have played a minor role the moment outsiders had to be enrolled as stakeholders of the academic cause. In his letter of 2 January 1595 to Boden, Cuyckius, who by then was lobbying for the university in Brussels, focused on the subsidies that had to be secured for the old pedagogies,313 as these were likely never to be 311 The Privy Council to the Faculty of Arts, 7 December 1595; Université de Louvain, 1556–1639, AGR, Conseil Privé, 1281. Transfers of students from one pedagogy to another were a delicate matter that was rigidly regulated by the faculty’s statutes, the honour of the colleges in question and their regents being involved; Statuta Facultatis Artium, 1602, RAL, OUL, 707, 19v–20v. 312 Acta Universitatis, 12 December 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 100r, 101r–102v; Acta Facultatis Artium, 13 and 18 December 1595, RAL, OUL, 713, 441r–v; 443v–444r. 313 “Si prorsus reijcerentur Jesuitae ab omni philosophica professione, numquam nos apud curiam favorem reperturos esse: quia ad invidiam hoc pertinere putabant omnes.” Cuyckius to Boden, 2 January 1595, UAL, Ghent, D22.

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found; in the worse-case scenario, it was imperative that the anti-Jesuit faction did not marginalise itself but could continue to perform as a bona fide negotiating partner that could settle reasonable conditions under which the fathers could teach the full academic curriculum.314 As a matter of fact, the university’s representative may even have dropped the case of the common promotion in the months preceding the 1595 verdict of the Privy Council,315 only to field it again in the 1596 Gravamina. When Cuyckius and his fellows were outmanoeuvred anyway by the 1595 compromise and appealed to Rome,316 separate promotions were not considered the most convincing argument by the academics themselves, failing to mention, as they did, their cherished rituals in their letters of supplication sent to the pope in the summer of 1595.317 In order to keep the fragile consensus at Louvain from dissolving with the help of intimidating papal briefs that chastised ambitious Jesuits, other enrolment strategies were required. The affair had first to be problematised in a way that could engage Roman circuits in favour of the Louvain academics; and support was to be secured from high-ranking patrons among the members of the Sacred College. In both respects, academics were successful. As for the definition of the problem, academics did not delve into distinctive programmes that risked alienating both Roman circuits and their moderate colleagues from the common cause to be, but generalised their stakes again by translating a quarrel between academics and Jesuits over promotion ceremonies into a conflict between the

314 “Non possum rebus bene expensis aliter censere quam quod satius sit ita contrahere, quam contendere, nam dos illa sexcentorum renorum . . . numquam fortassis obtinebitur, tantisper in sola metaphysica consistent Jesuitae, et si . . . et reperta illa dote admittantur, non nisi legibus illis admittentur quae praescriptae sunt.” Cuyckius to Boden, 2 January 1595, UAL, Ghent, D22. 315 “In extremo articulo qui est de concursu plus laborandum erit. Scio hanc fuisse constantem totius facultatis atque etiam universitatis ut sit concursus omnium in unam promotionem et haec mea quoque semper sententia fuit: fuit et aliorum collegarum meorum; sed flexerunt me in aliam sententiam quae ex postremo quodam scripto vestro commemoravit dominus Malcotius.” Cuyckius to the rector of the Louvain Jesuit college, 2 August 1595, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 316 Many examples of recurrent tactics to play out the Roman curia against the authorities in the Netherlands in Roegiers, “Was de Oude Universiteit Leuven een Rijksuniversiteit?,” 545–64. 317 Registered respectively in ASV, Segr. Di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 8r–v, and Acta Universitatis, 30 August 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 74r. Common promotions did play a role in the negotiations between Vossius and Acquaviva, however; cf. Vossius to Boden, 19 October 1596, UAL, OUL, 313.

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Louvain fathers and the Holy See. In their letters of supplication, the university had become Rome’s daughter whose scholarly peace was being disturbed by uncompromising Jesuits who had not only refused to come to terms with the university men but, moreover, had appealed to secular judges in order to gain their cause.318 This presentation of things looked all too familiar to Roman eyes, which viewed the royal councils in the Habsburg Netherlands a hotbed of lay interference in ecclesiastical affairs. It may also explain why academics adopted a low profile in the Roman Question in 1595 and 1596, as renewed clashes with the Uditore del papa would be difficult to reconcile with the profile they sought to adopt in their conflict with the Jesuits. In this context, the Jesuits’ arguments that the royal councils had only offered arbitration might only have added to the image of their insolence in Rome. Second, the anti-Jesuit faction happened to be well connected with the curia and could rely on influential members of the Sacred College to intervene in their favour. Vossius’ brokering activities in Rome mirrored once more those of Mattheus Boden at Louvain. Another academic accredited with contacts in Rome was Dillenus, the regent of the pedagogy of the Falcon and the second troublemaker identified by the town magistrate.319 Cuyckius, for his part, was the Louvain spokesman towards the university’s cardinal-protector, Santori. The latter reportedly had started an investigation of his own, as the fathers had got air of an incriminating letter of Cuyckius to the cardinal.320 There is no evidence that the supreme inquisitor intervened in his favour, but at least he could not be rallied by the Jesuits and their allies in the university either. Channels of intelligence between Louvain and the Eternal City were controlled by the Vossius-Boden team until the regent’s

318 “Neque tamen impetrari ullo modo potest, ut cum bona gratia de his nobiscum sentiant, sed ad seculare principis consilium trahunt nos invitos, et conturbant universam huius academiae quietem, non solum preter rem, sed contra mentem, etiam et voluntatem Reverend. Patris Generalis Claudii Acquavivae.” Letter of supplication of the university to the pope, 30 June 1595, ASV, Segr. Di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 8r–v. 319 Cf. Acta Facultatis Artium, 26 August 1587, RAL, OUL, 713, 250r. 320 “In prima causa nostra cum facultate Theologica, quod [Cuyckius] defenderit facultatem potest excusari, sed non . . . 3) Quod ad illustrissimum Cardinalem Sancti Severini scripserit contra me et alterum, accusans quod nos moliremur novas turbas contra quietem facultatis, quod fuerat omnino contrarium teste ipsius conscientia, meis studiis, . . . Sed ego ita probavi cardinali actiones meas ut dolum noverit viri amicitiam simulantis.” Expositio cum Cuyckio, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. It is an anonymous document written, judging by the handwriting, in the South Netherlands.

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death in 1598, while their main opponent, Jacobus Baius, probably had no contacts other than the Jesuits themselves in Rome. In order to obtain the first papal brief, Vossius had managed to involve the two Colonna cardinals, Marcantonio and Ascanio, two prominent members of the Italo-Iberian faction in Rome with whom he probably was acquainted via his activities as an erudite. Both could be enrolled as the descendants of Pope Martin V, the university’s founder,321 and indeed fashioned themselves in their supplication to the pope as the natural advocates of an obedient daughter of Rome who was being harassed, at the request of the Jesuits, by secular tribunals in the Netherlands.322 That Marcantonio was the protector of Flanders, moreover, added a national dimension to the matter, which Vossius sought to beef up by rallying, with the help of flattering letters from the Netherlands, the Spanish ambassador for the university’s cause. Letters in favour of the Jesuits from Brussels to the representatives of the Monarchy and of Flanders in Rome probably thwarted his endeavours,323 but Vossius could nonetheless work on Acquaviva by defining the negotiations in the Netherlands in terms of a conflict between the university and the fathers. This view was embodied by letters from the university (or from Boden and Cuyckius themselves) denouncing the intransigence of his co-religionists at Louvain. As a result, the Jesuits of the Belgian province became ipso facto disobedient subjects who had ignored Acquaviva’s unambiguous orders not to undertake anything without the consent of the university. Vossius 321 “Quorum uterque ex familia est Martini Quinti pontificis a quo universitas ista erecta esset et prima sua privilegia accepit.” Vossius to Cuyckius, before 12 December 1595, UAL, Ghent (1958–1959), 157. “Et illud maxime quod scriberet ille tuam illustrissimam celsitudinem ad laudatissimae illius et imortalis memoriae Martinum V Pont Max qui hanc nobis Academiam erexit et multis auxit privilegiis suum quoque genius et successionis referre originem.” The university to Ascanio Colonna, 13 January 1596, UAL, OUL, 308. 322 The Colonna cardinals to Clement VIII (no date), in ASV, Segr. Di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 11r. It is Vossius who suggested to the pope, in a postscript on the letter of supplication, what had to be done (identification based on handwriting): “Necessarium . . . paci et tranquillitati Universitatis generalis studii Lovaniensis, ut sua Sanctitas quamprimum Litteras supersessorias in forma brevis det, quibus inhibeatur patribus soc ne philosophiam Lovanii in preiudicium aliorum pedagogiorum doceant . . . Dirigi . . . poterunt dicte littere supersessorie abbatibus monasteriorum S. Gertrudis intra, et S. Marie Parcensis extra muros oppidi Lovaniensis, vel eorum cuilibet, etc.” 323 Compare the presentation of things in the diplomatic dispatches between Brussels and Rome, the archduke to the duke of Sessa, ambassador of Spain, 14 March 1596, Deux letters du gouvernement (. . .) de 1593 et 1596, AGR, Audience, 1468/10, 5r–v.

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even managed to become a broker of information between the general and his unruly fathers, after communication disorders between the generalate in Rome and the Belgian Province had come to the fore.324 Thus he could capitalise on Acquaviva’s attempts to consolidate and streamline the Society of Jesus after the heroic era of its foundation, and to assert the authority of the Roman decision-centre over an order that until recently had identified itself, to a large extent, with Castile and Spain.325 Nudging Acquaviva into action as a general whose authority was in jeopardy had required another letter, the embarrassing brief from a pontiff who had to vindicate ecclesiastical liberty and supervise the discipline among the clergy, as the academics had of course not failed to point at the tensions they had brought about between the fathers and their general.326 This coup de grâce was delivered by Vossius’ involvement of Cardinal Toledo, an old acquaintance of the theological faculty and one of the first creature (alongside the nipoti Pietro and Cinzio) of the Aldobrandini pope.327 That Toledo and Acquaviva were not exactly on speaking terms—the latter had tried to block the former’s assumption in the Sacred College—may have helped. But Toledo was known in Rome as an ex-Jesuit in the first place, as the closest councillor of the pope alongside Cardinal Baronio, and as the cardinal-protector of the Society. With Toledo’s intervention, not only the peace of the university and of Catholics in general was at stake but also the interests of the order itself. The old cardinal was the most impressive argument the Louvainists could produce in Rome against

324 Cf. Acta Universitatis, 7 December 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 95r. The general’s instructions to cease lecturing at once were sent via Vossius to the university “ne iterum retardarentur [the general’s final order to suspend all teaching in 1596] vel iterum per patres illos traderentur.” 325 Several illuminating articles on Acquaviva’s policy and the challenges he faced in Broggio et al., I Gesuiti ai tempi di Claudio Acquaviva. Cf. p. 375–77. 326 “Et conturbant universam huius academiae quietem, non solum preter rem, sed contra mentem, etiam et voluntatem Reverend. Patris Generalis Claudii Acquavivae, explicatam litteris eius mense augusto anni superioris scriptis, ad . . . Cancellarium.” Letter of supplication of the university to Clement VIII, 30 June 1595, ASV, Segr. Di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 8r–v. This theme was rehearsed in the memorandum of 30 August as well. Acta Universitatis, 30 August 1595, RAL, OUL, 61, 74r. Compare the apologies in Acquaviva to Cuyckius, 20 August 1596, UAL, Ghent (1958–1959), 157. 327 Fattori, Clemente VIII e il Sacro Collegio, passim.

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recriminations that they had obtained their brief from the pope without impartial counselling.328 At Louvain, an investigation was launched by the Privy Council in order to find out who was responsible for soliciting the papal brief, but it seems to have consisted mainly in re-enacting the relationship between the university and the councillors in Brussels. Business had to go on as usual: the Council’s authority was vindicated, the guilty conveniently were never found, and the matter was shelved. Via its networks, the anti-Jesuit faction had been able to portray, first, the university as an interest group under threat; second, the papacy as the restorer of peace and unity among the Catholics; third, the Belgian Jesuits and their allies in the Privy Council as activists who, in their zeal and out of human affection or ambition, had misunderstood the true interests of the realm and of the true faith; and, finally, the archduke as the representative of a great dynasty whose filial piety towards the papacy was beyond doubt.329 But this constellation had been crafted by another letter welcomed by the parties involved as a way out of the deadlock: the third papal brief to the Archduke, one of the first achievements of Frangipani after his transfer to the newly created nunciature of Flanders. Further steps taken by Vossius, via the duke of Sessa and the Spanish Rota Auditor and legal councillor of the Embassy Francisco Peña, to have the Catholic king himself intervene had become redundant in this context.330 4.2.5. Achieving certainty. Rituals, ritual theories, and the legalisation of rank conflicts In their conflict with the Jesuits, academics dissolved not just the boundaries between theatre and society but also those between society and business, business and religion, and between religion and technology. In the 1596 Gravamina, grants and graduation rituals were mediators of a cycle of credibility, a concept that has been successfully applied

328 See, for instance, the playing out of Toledo against the bitter incriminations of Acquaviva, in a letter from Vossius, probably to Boden, 19 October 1596, A.A.Pa., Corpus VII, chest xxiv, 2nd bundle. 329 Compare Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur, 289–90. 330 “Cuius etiam caussa se serio cum oratore acturum promisit mihi heri reverendissimus Franciscus Pegna Auditor Rotae Hispanus quando ipsi litteras rectoris et universitatis Lovanio 13 septembris datas tradidi.” Vossius to Boden, 19 October 1596, UAL, OUL, 313.

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by anthropologists and sociologists of science to the academic Darwinism structuring the world of Big Science today.331 The conflict with the Jesuits provides the historian with a moment of negotiation in which the hidden agency of otherwise worn rituals in organising the fabric of Academia can be brought to the surface again. Considering graduation rituals simultaneously as managerial tools, cognitive practices, sociological methods, and communication techniques, rather than confining them to the realm of so-called symbolic practices, helps us understand how academic ceremonies could become full-blown performative practices generating the (academic) world they described, despite uncertainties over society and truth slumbering even within the walls of the Ivory Tower. From the academic point of view, graduation rituals made present an unqualified socio-religious order that existed without their interference.332 Committing rituals to writing in the 1596 Gravamina reified, in return, their ritual acts into a stable and homogeneous object.333 As a consequence, rituals could do their structuring work without having to be performed continuously during the conflicts with the Jesuits at Louvain (and at Douai).334 Conversely, the Jesuits sought to reverse these procedures as well as the logic of conflict they generated: they suggested to burn the prolific writings produced in the course of the conflict as a means of pacification.335 Rituals relate to ritual theories in the Gravamina in the same way that scientific methods relate to the scientific methodology in the introduction to scholarly works. Just as much as historians delete part of their own practices and implicit understandings in order to make their models work automatically, additional work was required before graduation ceremonies could trigger a cycle of credibility encompassing

331

On this notion, read Vinck, Sociologie des sciences, 63–65. Their function was, as a consequence, metonymical rather than metaphorical. On history as a metonymical practice making present an absent past, read Runia, “Presence.” 333 Compare the role of manuals on accounting (as a homogeneous object) in stabilising the performativity of diverse and heterogeneous accounting practices (including, in our case, ceremonial practices) in Quattrone, “Books to be practised.” 334 The line between practices committed to writing and practices as such was blurred continuously by academics; compare, for instance, the performativity of academic statutes discussed in the previous chapter, a subject which will have to be elaborated on in the next chapters as well. 335 “Fore bonum ut ad pacem omnes scripture utrimque comburerentur et fieret actus de oblivione et refussione.” Expositio cum doctore Cuyckio, 1596, RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 332

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business, religion, and society alike. First, the Gravamina do not elaborate on the somewhat messy procedures underpinning the ranking order in the promotion lists of the Arts faculty. Even if one overlooks the mediation of a “tribunal of experts” that had to poll a majority in the absence of consensus,336 the practical organisation of the examination required that students be already classified in different “classes” beforehand, in order to make the interrogations “less tiresome and more certain.”337 Certainty conveniently guaranteed equal representation, the preservation of the honour of all pedagogies in each linea, and equal access to the grants bonanza afterwards, in an otherwise dangerously “open” competition. Second, the wills of the pious founders had to be modelled into clear-cut and sacrosanct intentions excluding not just Jesuit alumni but also practical solutions to a practical problem. Third, the relationship between educational achievement and access to grants had to be standardised. Other selection criteria such as regional provenance, family relationships with the founder, or the preferences of college presidents and collators of grants remain out of sight in the Gravamina. Procedures differed from college to college, which in turn may shed another light on the positions of the protagonists in the conflict with the Jesuits: in the Pope’s College, Jansonius’ empire, the collations of grants were “free” and academic ranking orders could run their free course;338 grants in Baius’ Savoye college were, for obvious reasons, distributed according to other criteria. In the 1596 memorandum, by contrast, academics sought to make unqualified statements about the fundamentals of their world, the meritocratic principles that (at least according to Jansonius and the likes) had to order academic life. Hiding this normalisation of their rituals helped transform their rituals into the norm.

336 “Reliqui una hisce demum examinibus premissis et ordine ex suffragio octo professorum pro sola doctrina constituto, unus iste a communis omnium promovendorum catalogus coram tota universitate solemniter ad hoc convocata frequentissimoque numero comparere solita per bedellum enuntiatur.” Informatio et judicium universitatis Lovaniensis (. . .), RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 337 “Quo vero minus operosa magisque certa sit linealium designatio, iubentur cuiusque pedagogii professores tres e suis doctissimis ad primam lineam presentare, tres alios qui doctrinam hos proxime assequantur, ad secundam, tres denique ex reliquo numero qui cum his certare posse videantur: qui supersunt ad teriam lineam hoc ipso pertinere censentur.” Informatio et judicium universitatis Lovaniensis (. . .), RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12. 338 “Quandoquidem bursae omnes sunt liberae in Collegio Papae,” Acta Facultatis Theologiae, 5 March 1625, RAL, OUL, 387, 222.

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Graduation ceremonies allowed the academics to get their act together and to articulate a workable definition of the Jesuit Question in terms of a conflict of interests. The lawyers of the Privy Council were not impressed, however. In their eyes, as much as in those of 20th-century scholars, the promotio was merely a ritual whose “social magic” was limited to a specific subculture; it did not engage the watchdogs of Public Interest.339 In line with Füssel’s research into the legalisation of conflicts over academic ritual, this “ritual relativism” was not an invention of enlightened philosophers.340 The emergence of princely tribunals as a venue for conflicts over rank and ritual precedence triggered an inflation of litigation over rituals in the 16th and 17th centuries. Simultaneously, however, legal solutions rendered rituals increasingly inept at devising an unqualified socio-religious order, seeking, as Court rulings did, to produce equity via endless qualifications341 based on the most sybillic arguments of all: historical precedents.342 By allowing the Jesuits to organise their own promotions in the 1595 compromise alongside the common promotio of the four pedagogies, and by leaving the academics the folklore of the primus,343 statesmen in Brussels put into perspective practices that had to put things out of perspective. As a result, opponents of separate promotions became suspicious in the eyes of councillors, while academics denounced the human affections of councillors failing to see their point. There is no evidence that a streamlined promotio could strike a Roman audience with awe. Academics had to redefine the problem 339 It should be noted that, despite my frequent use of the concept, academics themselves never referred to the promotio as a “ritual.” 340 “Die juristische Austragung von Konflikten entsprach bekanntlich der allgemeinen Tendenz dieser Zeit, in der sich die Justiz geradezu zu einem Passe-partout für die Lösng aller möglichen Probleme—sei es konfessioneller, sei es sozialer, sei es politischer Art—entwickelte.” Stollberg-Rilinger, “Rang vor Gericht,” 407. A genealogy of the concept of “ritual” in Buc, The Dangers of Ritual. I do not draw the same conclusions from all this confusion about rituals; captivating insights in this respect in Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur. 341 Cf. Stollberg-Rilinger, “Rang vor Gericht,” 417. 342 In their Responsiones to the Gravamina, the Jesuits indeed did not omit mentioning the precedents at Douai. The documents in RAL, Collèges Jésuites, Louvain, 12, indeed contain a full account (from the Jesuit perspective) of the outcome of the Douai controversies over rituals in the 1580s. Conversely, academics claimed in the Informatio that it had been the clear intention of Philip II that Douai would conform itself to its institutional model, the University of Louvain, in this respect as well. 343 That the primus was not considered fundamental to the promotion by the academics, was informed by their administrative practices. In the promotion lists, the primus was not separated graphically from the next promoti of the prima linea.

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substantially in order to attract support from members of the Sacred College and from the pontiff. They did so by rewriting the script they had been trapped in since 1588 in the context of the Roman Question, but that now fixated their opponents as the authors of lay interference and as insolent clerics who, blinded by ambition, ignored the orders of their own superiors, let alone orders of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. There, the universitas in its entirety as a solid interest group was devised via correspondence. Analogous to the performativity of academic rituals at Louvain, the efficiency (sic!) of letters in transporting a unified body academic to the Eternal City required additional work: in order to pair the argument that they only represented a tiny group of troublemakers, Vossius had to diversify his correspondents.344 Conversely, it was their success in breaching into the Society’s channels of communication that turned the local Jesuits into a quarrelsome lot from which the Roman generalate had to distance themselves. In the 1590s, the performativity of graduation ceremonies was, as a consequence, both orchestrated and situated. That did not prevent the rituals from engineering a configuration with a single cause (Public Interest) leading to an inevitable effect (Jesuits having to suspend their philosophical courses) in subsequent papal briefs. In these briefs, the manipulations of the academics, including their ritual strategies, had all but vanished, and the university figured as a monolithic block whose scholarly peace was under threat. This deletion work could be accumulated (from ritual practice through ritual theory and letter-writing to papal briefs) and was resumed in the 1620s: in the second conflict with the Jesuits over the right to teach theology and philosophy, the briefs in question were displaced from their immediate context, printed, and disseminated among a broader audience.345 Thus academics could re-enact speedily the format of “we” against “them” of the 1590s without having to reinvent the world all over again—and without losing credibility because of ritual/managerial theories that had failed to convince the Privy Council in the 1580s and the 1610s (Douai) as much as in the 1590s (Louvain). However, the promotio did play a role in the 1620s as an identity device within the walls of the Ivory Tower,

344 “Saluto regentem Porcensem qui bene fecit quod scripserit, ne dominus Cuyckius solus scribere videatur et rem Academie agere solus, sicut illi patres huc scripserunt ad generalem cui ego literas domini Bodeni prelegi, satis efficaces [my italicisation].” Vossius to Cuyckius, before 12 December 1595, UAL, Ghent (1958–1959), 157. 345 Prints in UAL, Ghent (1958–1959), 161.

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when they were rallied as a casus belli again, despite the Jesuits having officially abandoned their claims to separate promotions. The reader may conclude from these qualifications that graduation ceremonies are to be considered symbolic practices at best, or a merely s rhetorical device at worst. After all, a much stronger, systematic explanation for the dynamics of decision-making in the conflict with the Jesuits is still on offer. Although it is impossible to stage the protagonists as unproblematic interest groups—the academics versus curialists, or Jesuits against academics—social networks have proven to be ubiquitous in both the Roman and the Jesuit Question: in this scenario, the anti-Jesuit faction could enhance its clout within the university via the protection it enjoyed in Rome and vice versa. In analogy, powerful dons were morally obliged to put the problems of their clients on the university’s agenda in the affair of the privileges. In this scenario, the failure of the academics to capture a confirmation of the privileges until 1616 was blocked by more powerful networks of Liège curialists at the curia, just as much as the academics’ success in the 1590s was the result of patronage rather than of politics of reality. If Verflechtung turns out to be an overarching and external logic structuring academic decision-making and Roman politics, academic concerns (the confirmation of the privileges of nomination) become just an exponent of underlying realities (in casu clusters of clientelistic factions at Louvain and in Rome). In that case, we should abandon our definition of the problem about credibility and all that and should start charting different sorts of solidarity (friendship, clientelism, kinship) in order to understand the dynamics of academic politics. This hypothesis will be verified in the next chapter.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE CITY OF GRACE. ACADEMICS AT THE CORTE DI ROMA 1598–1612

In the last days of November 1599, the university town, a bastion of municipal autonomy and academic privilege, briefly became a theatre of princely power. Albert of Austria had just fetched his bride Isabella from Spain and started, in line with the political mores of the Netherlands, his tour of Joyous Entries in the cities and towns of the loyal provinces. Louvain, the first capital of Brabant, was among the first, amid the ceremonies and theatrical performances that came with the renewal of the constitutional contract between the rulers and the ruled, to hand over the keys to its sovereign princes.1 On the third day, it was the turn of the town’s learned corporations to air their expectations. In a dramatization borrowed from the Metamorphoses, the students in the pedagogy of the Falcon put the chained Andromeda Belgica on the stage falling prey to a three-headed monster (heresy and discord) due to the exuberance of her parents (the rebel provinces). But liberation was near, for Perseus (Albert of Austria), riding the winged Pegasus (Isabella), hew off the monster’s three heads (Albert’s victories over the heretics in Ardres, Calais, and Hulst), released Andromeda, and made her his bride.2 On the same day, the archduke was lectured during a solemn oration by Jacobus Baius on his task to restore Belgium to its ancient splendour.3 In the afternoon, the princes attended a lecture by Lipsius on the political philosophy of Seneca, the commentator of that other dark century in which 17th-century princes and learned pundits could mirror themselves. In his Dissertatiuncula apud principes, the humanist enrolled his monarchs as heavenly bodies that gave life to

1

Captivating insights on the evolving communication between subjects and princes in Arnade, Realms of Ritual. 2 Thomas, “Andromeda Unbound,” 1. 3 Jacobus Baius, Oratio Panegyrica in adventum sereniss. Principum Alberti et Isabellae. Antwerp: s.n., 1600.

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their subjects, comparing them to the great princes of antiquity who had visited the houses of teachers and covered them with glory.4 Focusing on the immediate relationship between rulers and subjects, Lipsius not only managed to delete the constitutional settings of Joyous Entries in which relations with power were mediated by towns and States; for obvious reasons, he also omitted to elaborate on his own success as a broker of princely patronage. From the 1980s onwards, historians have pulled clientelism out of the bottom drawer again as a constitutive element of the early modern territorial state. The ubiquity of patronage has been put in the limelight by the trailblazing studies of Wim Blockmans, Sharon Kettering, and others. Mario Biagioli’s analysis of the pervasive influence of princely patronage on Galileo’s scientific practice suggests that scholars barely differed from other clients who capitalised on the expanding political and financial resources of popes and princes, and that affliliations with power directly affected their cognitive achievements.5 In studies on papal nepotism, the older concept of Realpolitik was revived in Mikropolitik, “the more or less strategic mobilisation of a network of informal, personal relations for political purposes, in which the functions or the rank of position-holders are more decisive than the identification with a specific political programme.” In early modern “face-to-face societies,” abstract notions such as public interest were shallow, rhetorical devices, decision-making being entrenched in networks of friends, patrons, brokers, and clients. Recently, Reinhard and his students have extended the paradigm of Verflechtung to international politics and patronage under Paul V.6 The evidence suggests their findings can be applied smoothly to academic policy at Louvain, Rome, and Brussels. Qualifications are in order. Some of them are complementary: in Chapter 7, the micropolitical relations between Rome and the nor-

4 Iustus Lipsius, Dissertatiuncula apud serenissimos principes Albertum et Isabellam Belgarum Principes extemporanea. Item C. Plinii Panegyricus liber Traiano dictus. Antwerp: Joannes Moretus, 1600. An analysis in Van Houdt, “Justus Lipsius and the Archdukes.” 5 Biagioli, Galilei, Courtier. An assessment in Shank, “How Shall we Practice History.” 6 For the definition, see Reinhard, “Einleitung,” in Idem, Römische Mikropolitik, 4. On Verflechtung, read Reinhard, Freunde und Kreaturen. Cf. Dandelet, Spanish Rome. A discussion in Visceglia, “Vi è stata una Roma Spagnola”; an assessment of German scholarship in Fosi, “Amici, creature, parenti.”

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thernmost component of the Spanish world will briefly pass review; and the data in this book indicate that micropolitics was by no means the reserve of princely dynasties and the high Roman nobility. Other qualifications are more troubling. Scholarship has questioned the teleological notion of clientelism compensating for institutional weakness in an incomplete process of state formation.7 And the paradigm is just another example of historians building supposedly strong matters of fact (political systems or dynamics of decision-making) while keeping at bay the annoyingly contingent and slippery matters of concern (political programmes) that were the object of all these streneous efforts to assemble the body politic. In this chapter, we will gradually abandon Realpolitik and turn to real politics.8 In the first section, academics will still be presented as experts of Micropolitics at the papal court. Via their brokers, shifting networks within the university continued to seek, after 1598, the patronage of the occupant of Peter’s chair, the ultimate source of grace. The section “Efficient Grace” will focus on the achievements of the academics in their role as humble clients of the Vicars of Christ. Inevitably, religious and intellectual interests alternated with more prosaic concerns, networks blurring the boundaries between heaven and earth in the early 17th century. Delving into these affairs, however, comes with a price. It is not just that they will prove difficult to reduce to micropolitical constellations. Despite academics “being covered with (papal) favour,” the Roman Question over benefices in the Principality of Liège remained unresolved, although it had been the university’s public cause in Rome par excellence. This conundrum will call into question the notion that political systems are to be privileged over political programmes when accounting for decision-making at Louvain, Brussels, and Rome in the early modern period.

7 In late medieval Tuscany, in 16th-century Rome, and in 17th-century Spain, clientelist practices sided with, or replaced, established forms of government that were more bureaucratic and rational. E.g., Molho, “Lo stato e la finanza pubblica”; Partner, “Papal Financial Policy”; and Benigno, L’ombra del Re. On clientelism and modernity, see Bricquet, Clientelismi. 8 Cf. Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik.”

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5.1. “Quod nihilominus Lovanienses per favores Satagant.” Patrons, brokers and clients in the Rome of Clement VIII and Paul V By the end of 1597 and in the beginning of 1598, bad news poured in from Rome. In a few months’ time, the devastating verdicts of the Rota against Danielis and Clarius reached Louvain, and academics became fully aware that other papal providees had started to copy the dreadful practices of their opponents.9 It is in this context that the defense of the faculty’s privilege, and the university’s jurisdictional autonomy, became a public cause again, and that the academic senate decided to send another delegate to the Eternal City. 5.1.1. Upgrading the alliances. Academic mobilisation, 1597–98 The decision itself—that the choice eventually fell on Peter Lombard—and its ramifications—that the Irishman would become the pivot of academic policy in Rome for more than a decade—had not been evident from the start. Several other options had been on offer. Not surprisingly, Vossius continued to enjoy a lot of credit among members of the Arts faculty. He was to be assisted in his task by Henricus Costerius, the dean of Saint Gudula in Brussels and a favourite of Didacus de Campo, a cubicularius secretus of his Holines.10 Costerus had offered his services to the university before leaving for Rome and would indeed oversee the university’s Public Relations with the pontiff while his star at the curia was still rising.11 Support for Roman solicitors was assured in the Habsburg Netherlands too: with the embarrassing Jesuit Question now off the table, academics and officials of

9

See p. 251. Didacus de Campo, a canon of the cathedral of Cambrai who figures as a papal providee for the abbacy of Saint-Aubert in Cambrai in ASV, Dataria Ap., Per Obitum, 8, 51r (1596), was a Familiaris Sanctissimi since 1593; see Vaes, “Les curialistes belges,” 117. On the colourful personality of Costerius, see Harline and Put, A Bishop’s Tale. Both are mentioned in Acta Universitatis, 24 May 1597, RAL, OUL, 61, 220v. 11 Instructions from Clement VIII to Frangipani to remedy the shortage of priests in the South Netherlands via an assertive educational policy involving the University of Louvain were based on a report submitted to him by Costerius. Clement VIII to Frangipani, 19 October 1599, ASV, Secr. Brevium, 357, 228r–234v. 10

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the Councils in Brussels were keen to resume contacts again. They had been plotting, with the support of Assonleville, a central figure of the Privy Council who entertained a cordial relationship with the university, to involve Sessa, the Catholic king’s ambassador to the Holy See.12 Clarius and Weyms, who figured as the university’s delegates to Brussels for this occasion, had not neglected to visit another patron of the academics, Frangipani (who was obliged to Weyms for having taken his secretary Sandrino under his wings at Louvain). The latter had been most benevolent, had expressed his satisfaction that the academics knew their true friends, and had seemed confident that the affair in Rome could be resolved quickly.13 Meanwhile, the nuncio had been trying, since 1596, to convince another Louvain divine to pack his books and cross the Alps. After the death of Cardinal Allen in 1594, Hovius’ absentee predecessor at the chair of Mechlin, English Catholics had been without a representative in the Eternal City.14 On the lookout for a successor, Rome’s gaze had fallen upon Allen’s protégé Thomas Stapleton, who had succeeded Michael Baius as regius professor of Scripture in 1588. The Englishman had actively sought the pope’s favour by dedicating his Antidota Evangelica against Beda and Calvin to Clement VIII, and in

12 Craesbeke, Breugels, Canis, and the advocate fiscal of the Council of Brabant were mentioned, alongside Assonleville and Houst of the Privy Council. Report of Clarius and Weyms in the academic senate, Acta Universitatis, 13 October 1597, RAL, OUL, 61, 255r. Drafts of supplication letters to the pope were approved by the Privy Council and by the Council of Brabant in late 1597. Theodorus Le Roij, registrar of the Council of Brabant, to Clarius, alluded to in Acta Universitatis, 21 October 1597, RAL, OUL, 61, 260v. 13 The university to Frangipani, 9 October 1597, ed. Van der Essen, Correspondance, 101. “Molestissime tuli, quod a vestris legatis audivi, sed illud magne michi fuit consolationis Academiam istam ad meam fidem, quam habet spectatam iam et diu cognitam confugere, auxilium sibi per me petere.” Frangipani to the university, 12 October 1597, copy in Acta Universitatis, 13 October 1597, RAL, OUL, 61, 255r. On the triangle Sandrino-Weyms-Frangipani, see p. 249. Clarius was in the favour of the nuncio as well, at the occasion of his promotion to the deanery of Hilvarenbeek in 1599: “ha inteso volontieri Nostro Signore che ne sia stato provista persona meritevole, come ella dice esser il Clario publico lettore di Theologia in Lovanio.” Aldobrandini to Frangipani, 2 January 1599, ASV, Fondo Borghese, III, 40, 39v. Clarius had obtained a canonship in Den Bosch via a papal provision in 1597, despite his image as an ennemy of ecclesiastical liberty. ASV, Dataria Ap., Per Obitum, 9, 25r. 14 On the intrigues surrounding Stapleton’s lukewarm candidacy, see Stewart, “Thomas Stapleton’s Call.”

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return got, in the second half of the 1590s, several offers from the cardinal-nephew Pietro Aldobrandini to join his famiglia or to accept a teaching position at the Sapienza. Stapleton was wavering: his other patrons—the archduke, and Assonleville—were not amused, and he felt too old for the trip.15 While the Englishman was making up his mind, Weyms and other law professors started to introduce the divine, by the end of 1597, into the legal subtleties of the Louvain privileges of nomination, for that was of course the academics’ stake in his much anticipated departure to the Eternal City. Supplication and recommendation letters were drafted in which the poor scholars of Louvain implored the pontiff ’s mercy for Clarius, who was still waiting for the Rota’s verdict.16 Lombard only entered the picture after a series of events that allowed other circuits to take over the initiative. In line with the models of patronage developed by early modern pundits, death took its toll. Thomas Stapleton embarked on his last journey in the first months of 1598. With the blessing of Assonleville and of the academic senate, his posthumous Vera miranda seu de magnitudine ecclesiae Romanae, which was dedicated to Clement VIII, did cross the Alps in 1599 in order to be handed over to the Supreme Pontiff by his student Philippus Slins.17 In Rome, Slins was appropriately compensated for the loss of his academic patron, but the young theologian, who would return quickly in order to take up a teaching assignment in the Arts faculty, could not fill in the gap left by Stapleton.18 A few months 15 Cf. Van der Essen, Correspondance, 66, 94, 96, 99, 100, 107, 115, 161; Louant, Correspondance, 121, 181, 196, 202, 215, 233, 243, 251; and ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 95r. 16 Acta Universitatis, 30–31 August and 18 September 1597, RAL, OUL, 61, 248r–v and 250v–251r. 17 Thomas Stapleton, Vera Miranda seu de Magnitudine Ecclesiae Romanae Libri Duo. Antwerp: Joannes Moretus, 1599. 18 “Ben potra Vestra Signoria Ill.ma assicurare la Santita di nostro Signore d’un grand’utile et ornamento che dall’opera di quel buon dottore defuncto risultara alla Sedia Apostolica tanto nel spirituale che nel temporale principalmente in questi tempi travagliati.” Assonleville to Aldobrandini, ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 105r. Assonleville to the university, 27 April 1599, in Acta Universitatis, 1 May 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 312v–313r. A supplication and a resulting brief in favour of Slins from Clement VIII to Frangipani dated 17 July 1600, in Dessart et al. Inventaire analytique, 143. Before 1600, Slins was back in Louvain, cf. Catalogus Baccalaureorum, RAL, OUL, 505, 12r. A recommendation from Aldobrandini to Frangipani for a canonship at Maastricht, 25 February 1600, regest in Louant, Correspondance, 645.

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earlier, in September 1597, Mattheus Boden, the combative regent of the pedagogy of the Pig had been swept away by the plague. Jansonius, the enigmatic president of the Pope’s College, withdrew from the university’s public scene for almost a decade. Cuyckius, for his part, had been kicked upstairs to the episcopal see of Roermond and had left the university in late 1596. During his visitatio ad limina in 1599– 1600, he would provide the university with excellent press and would assist Lombard in stalling the efforts of the Belgian Jesuits to organise a course of Dialectics at Liège.19 His correspondence reveals, however, how academic micropolitics had shifted. According to Cuyckius, Vossius, “paulo remissior” in academic affairs, had been complaining to the bishop’s familiares about the ingratitude of university men who had failed to involve him, after 1597, in their Roman schemes. Obviously, the patrologist’s status as the university’s champion at the curia had crumbled in the late 1590s in tandem with the dismantling of his networks at Louvain.20 As far as official minutes allow us to draw conclusions, this was the outcome of an internal battle over the representation of the university; a struggle that can also be considered a contest between the Arts faculty and the Faculty of Divinity. It was Jacobus Baius who had abruptly put forward Lombard as the university’s future agent in Rome in the congregation of 29 May 1598, one month after the academic senate had decided to send a representative to the curia despite Stapleton’s passing.21 Baius was the university’s rector in the first half 19 Cf. Lombard to the university, 18 December 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 382r–384r and Gysens, Gerardus Vossius. 20 “Scio illum [=Vossius] dixisse uni e meis cum litteras vestras ad eum perferret universitatem Lovaniensem parum memorem esse accepti ab ipso beneficii et videbatur innuere nulla se remunerationem consequutum esse que tamen isthic existente communi academie et facultatis voluntate decreta erat.” Cuyckius to the university, 25 December 1599, Acta Universitatis, 15 January 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 382r–384r. At his return to the Low Countries one year before his death in 1607, it was his nephew Leonardus who had to prod the academics into honouring him as their patron in Rome. “Proposuit etiam decanus . . . qua ratione cum domino Gerardo Vossio preposito Tungrensi agendum esse videbatur enim is conqueri de facultate artium quasi parum grata dum ne quidem litteris domini prepositi respondisset . . . maxime cum a suo in Belgium adventu non fuerit aliquo honorario donatus, et ob legationem Romam antea decretam satis offensus fuerit.” Acta Facultatis Artium, 12 October 1606, RAL, OUL, 714, 335. 21 Acta Universitatis, respectively 17 April and 29 May 1598, RAL, OUL, 61, 282v and 285v–286v.

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of 1598. But his own interests in sending Lombard must have been many. He had, after all, learned the hard way that having a man of trust in the heart of Christendom who could act as the university’s agent was a prerequisite for successful policy. Lombard was fit for the job. An Irishman, he had found shelter at the Pope’s College under the presidency of Michael Baius. A poor student who lived on grants and could not afford to leave the university in the disastrous 1580s, he was one of Baius’ few remaining loyals at Louvain. After the latter’s passing, Lombard remained firmly embedded among the Baius dynasty’s academic clientele, surfacing again as Jacobus’ candidate for the doctorate in faculty registers in 1594.22 References in the Acta to his private correspondence with Baius after 1598 bear testimony to their enduring relationship. Interestingly, the representatives of the Faculty of Arts in the academic senate had insisted that Lombard was to be sent to Rome as Vossius’ assistant.23 With the benefit of hindsight, it is telling that Joannes Dillenus, the other heavyweight who had been accredited in 1587, alongside Boden, with “contacts in Rome,” refused to write a recommendation letter for Lombard to Vossius. The outgoing regent of the pedagogy of the Falcon,24 Dillenus had entered the picture as one of the opponents of the Jesuits in the previous years. He must have felt that Lombard’s mission inevitably would hurt Vossius’ visibility as the university’s representative in Rome and would reverse the position of his remaining friends at Louvain.25 However, Lombard, 22 Cf. the beadles’ registers of the Theological faculty, 1580–81, RAL, OUL, 504, 60r–60v, where he graduated as Baccalaureus Biblicus, Sententiarius, and Formatus under Michael Baius; he became a Doctor under Jacobus Baius in 1594. Ibidem, 126r. A recommendation letter from the university to Girolamo Mattei, the cardinal-protector of the Irish nation (cf. p. 322), 8 November 1597 (regest in Jadin, Relations des Pays-Bas, 3–4) mentions him as a regent of the Theology faculty and a teacher in Divinity. Lombard never occupied a public chair, however, which suggests that he was a private professor/tutor at one of the resident colleges. 23 Acta Facultatis Artium, 5 and 6 June 1598, RAL, OUL, 714, 19r–20r. 24 Dillenus moved on in 1598 to reside in his canonship at Lille. Reusens, Documents relatifs, 4, respectively 93–94 and 371–72; nomination by the faculty in Liber secundus nominationum, 5 January 1597, RAL, OUL, 4752, 261r. There is no evidence that the reversal of clientelist alliances at Louvain was the reason of his departure. 25 “Placere litteras [to Vossius] et simul iudicare dominos esse adiungendas alias nomine facultatis ad easque scribendas rogandum esse dominum Dilenum regentem falconis quas postea illo sese excusante scripsit rogatus . . . doctor Stephanus Weyms.” Acta Facultatis Artium, 10 June 1598, RAL, OUL, 714, 20v–21r.

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a former teacher at the Falcon and a prominent faculty member until 1594, must have been an acceptable candidate for most members of the Arts faculty as well. The faculty board agreed to contribute two thirds of Lombard’s salary of 600 florins, which were to be assembled via a general raise of matriculation, graduation, and nomination fees; it asked Weyms to instruct its future representative on the legal aspects of the privileges; and installed a committee of the four regents, the “natural protectors of poor scholars,” to monitor Lombard’s activities in Rome with the same powers as the late Boden had wielded in other Roman “solicitations.”26 The academic senate commissioned a parallel committee of the rector—the Law professors Philippus Zuerius (who had succeeded Wamesius as dictator of letters)27 and Weyms, and the notary of the university Conrardus Sylvius—for the same purposes.28 Arguments were pruned; a letter of supplication was drafted in which the pope was implored to confirm the 1593 censura of the Congregatio Germanica;29 and Zuerius and Weyms were sent to Brussels in order to muster the support of the archduke, the nuncio, and high ranking state officials for a university that was now hampered in its glorious resurrection by greedy benefice hunters, after having suffered so much because of its staunch loyalty to King and religion.30 Lombard’s Roman adventure could begin.

26

Acta Facultatis Artium, 11 August 1598, RAL, OUL, 714, 34v–35r. “Die lune 16a augusti . . . convocatio ad edes eximii D.M.N. Clarii eorum qui ad conceptum instructionis erant commissi.” Ibidem, 35v. The appointment of the four regents (“presertim quod obligatio spectet in sublevamen docentium pauperum in pedagogiis”) in the minutes of 31 August 1598, ibidem, 36r. 27 Reusens, Documents relatifs, 1, 315. 28 Acta Universitatis, 7 September 1598, RAL, OUL, 61, 295v–296v. 29 See p. 244–46. Supplication of the university to Clement VIII, 14 October 1598, ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 13r; in dorso 20r: Al Card. Aldobrand. 30 “Sed excutiunt plene restitutionis spem, quidam beneficiorum aucupatores, qui ab annis iam decem, ex urbe, circumvento (ut opinamur) Pontifice, usum fructumque duorum precipuorum privilegiorum, quae a Sacrosancta Sede Apostolica ad principum Belgicorum intercessionem eidem Academiae concessa sunt, sic turbant.” Letter of supplication to the Archdukes, 31 August 1598, Correspondance du gouvernement avec Laurent du Blioul (. . .), AGR, Audience, 1468/12.

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5.1.2. Louvain academics and Irish martyrs in Spanish Rome, 1599–1600 Lombard’s blitzcareer reflects to the support he would enjoy during the quarter of a century he stayed in Rome. Under the pontificate of Gregory XV (1622–23), the Irishman figured in the Ruoli of the Apostolic Palace as a member of the papal household a tutto vitto, a position that he had held in the previous pontificates.31 The divine would serve in several papal commissions as one of the closest advisors to the pontiffs: in the Congregationes de Auxiliis (cf. below) but also as the president of a committee of theologians preparing the condemnation of Galileo’s cosmology as heretical in 1616. In the 1620s, he became involved in the controversy over the methods used to convert the natives in Madura and chaired a commission that had to examine Jesuit accomodations of Christianity to Brahmin customs. He pops up in the Decreta Sancti Officii as a censor and a controversialist in the 1610s, as a qualificator in 1621, and as a lobbyist for clerics who needed special faculties for their missionary work in Ireland.32 It is especially his meddling in Irish and English affairs that has attracted the attention of historians. In 1599, he already acted as the agent in Rome of the earl of Tyrone Hugh O’Neill, the leader of the rebellion in Ireland against the English crown in the Nine Years’ War (1594– 1603). In his Commentarius, submitted in 1600 to Pope Clement VIII, Lombard, a witness of Farnese’s successes in Flanders in the 1580s, revealed himself as a supporter of foreign (read: Spanish) intervention in his fatherland, in order to turn the island into a cornerstone of the Catholic offensive.33 The Irishman could rely on the protection of Sessa and of Cardinal Mattei, the protector of Ireland, but in turn had to back down with a pontiff reluctant to raise the profile of Monarquía in a military solution to the Irish Question, a project that did not

31

Famiglia di NS Gregorio XV, BAV, Manoscritti Chigiani, 1794. For instance in ACDF, SO, Decreta SO, 1609, 526; 1610, 31 and 325; he has not been registered in ACDF, SO, Juramenta SO, 1575–1655, although he was identified as a qualificator theologus of the Holy Office in ACDF, SO, Decreta SO, 1621, 104r. For his biography, see Clavin, “Lombard, Peter.” 33 More on the De Regno Iberico Commentarius in O’Connor, “A Justification for Foreign Intervention.” 32

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match well with Roman policy favouring peace and a balance of power between Spain and France.34

Plate 5.1. Portrait Peter Lombard from Waterford, Archbishop of Armagh Peter Lombard from Waterford (c.1555–1625). Copy of a 17th-century portrait that perished in the Flames of Louvain of 1914. [House of the Archbishop, Armagh]

It is difficult to isolate Lombard’s Irish policies at the curia from the mission that had been the immediate cause of (or pretext for) his journey to Rome in the Autumn of 1598, even though he never referred to Irish affairs in his official correspondence. In 1600, the Irishman was still identified primarily as the university’s agent in Rome by third parties.35 The bags he had when leaving for the Eternal City carried 34 On Lombard’s wavering affiliation with O’Neill, read Silke, “Later Relations”; with respect to the international dimension, see also O’Connor, “Diplomatic Preparations.” 35 “Que esta dada al Doctor Lombart, que reside a qui por la universidad de Lovanio a un negocio particular.” Dublioul to the Archdukes, Négociations de Rome, 16 April 1600, RAL, OUL, 438, 96r.

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recommendation letters not only to the pope and to Vossius but also to the cardinal-nephew Pietro Aldobrandini, to the cardinals Girolamo Mattei and Ascanio Colonna, who had succeeded his uncle Marcantonio as protector of Flanders, and to other old acquaintances of the Louvain doctors in the Sacred College: Baronio, the honorific Louvain doctor who had recently obtained his cardinal’s hat; Montalto, the nipote of the late Sixtus V who still commanded widely ramified clientelist networks at the curia; and to Cardinal Francesco Maria Tarugi. Another letter was directed at the duke of Sessa, while instructions had been sent from Brussels to Sessa’s assistant Laurens Dublioul, the agent of Flanders.36 An answering letter from Aldobrandini to the nuncio in the beginning of 1599, in which the cardinal-nephew declared he had recommended the university’s cause to his pontifical uncle with the same fervour as Frangipani had done, and that he would see to it in person that this bulwark of Catholicism would not be deprived of papal favour, indicates that the diplomat in Brussels had been involved as well.37 By then, Lombard had already been residing for several months near the Ponte Sant’Angelo, in the house of Gerard Hornkens, a Belgian notary of the Rota, an alumnus of the university himself and the uncle of one of the young clerics who had accompanied Lombard to the Eternal City, Nicolaus Micaultius.38

36 Letter of recommendation for Lombard from the university to Clement VIII, 23 August 1598, ASV, Segr. di Stato, Fiandra, 10, 12r; decisions on the other addressees in Acta Universitatis, 20 August 1598, RAL, OUL, 61, 291v–292r. Instructions for a letter to Laurent Dublioul, the royal agent for the Netherlands in Rome, 4 September 1598, Correspondance du gouvernement avec Laurent du Blioul (. . .), AGR, Audience, 1468/12. 37 “Me li sono offerto prontissimo a protegerle presso Nostro Signore favoritamente, et in particolare mi adoprerò per la conservatione dei privilegii, che questa Santa Sede li ha concessi per il merito, de questa università si ha acquistato per la difesa della religione cattolica.” Aldobrandini to Frangipani, 27 March 1599, ASV, Fondo Borghese, III, 40, 42v–43r. Cf. Frangipani to Aldobrandini, 2 September 1598, ed. Louant, Correspondance, 377. 38 Hornkens (Horcheus, Huerkens) had been an employee of the Rota since 1580 and was the brother of the deacon of Lier near Antwerp; member of a fief-holding family, cf. Vaes, “Les curialistes belges,” 112. Micaultius (Nicolas Michout), from Brussels, was a student in the pedagogy of the Falcon—he ended up in the Linea prima of the promotion list—and obtained his degree of Master in the Arts as one of Lombard’s students on 2 May 1591 (Acta Facultatis Artium, RAL, OUL, 713, 319v). He became a Sacrae Theologiae Licentiatus in 1598. Catalogus promotorum, RAL, OUL, 507.

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His first official report dates from 12 December 1598, one month after his arrival.39 The dozens of letters he wrote to the academic senate in the next years provide lively information on high-ranking officials of the papal curia; on Belgian clerical networks in Rome; on the channels via which Roman solicitors and hopefuls in the Low Countries could raise money for their endeavours; and on the political culture of the Gran Teatro del Mondo in general. They also reveal that Lombard’s networking strategies mirror those he deployed in Irish affairs, and probably were entangled with them. Spanish-Habsburg support emerges in Lombard’s correspondence as vital to the success of the university’s programme in the first years. Archducal recommendation letters identifying the university’s cause with the fortunes of the afflicted Netherlands served as a stepping stone for Lombard’s career in Rome. The intervention of Archduke Albert in Ferrara had already created, according to Lombard, very promising circumstances to push through the academic claims, but floods in the beginning of 1599 had turned Rome into a disaster area and delayed its desired effect—among others because part of Lombard’s precious files had disappeared in a swirling Tiber.40 In his letter of 7 April 1599, Lombard reported that—at last!—Sessa had returned from Ferrara to the afflicted city. The ambassador had promised Lombard not only to perform as a “fautor,” but even as a sollicitator and recommended the university in person to Clement VIII. Sessa’s commitment sheds a light on Lombard’s insistence on the university sending letters of recommendation to Cardinal Madruzzo, an old acquaintance of the academics; the protector of Germany; and a prominent member of the Habsburg faction in Rome.41 One year later,

39 Lombard to Conrardus Sylvius, university notary, 12 December 1598, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. 40 “Superveniens illa quam audistis, toti Urbi, et vicinis locis ferocissima inondatio tum propter communem quam attulit tristitiam, in qua parum erat oportunum, vel Summum D.P. (quem tristicia illa precipue affecit), vel alios principes sollicitare.” Lombard to the university, 7 April 1599, Acta Universitatis, 8 May 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 313v–314r. Lombard to Baius, attested in Acta Universitatis, 16 February 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 306r–v. New copies and instruments were sent by the academics. 41 Lombard to Sylvius, 12 and 30 December 1598, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. Cf. the remarks on the hereditary loyalty of the Madruzzo family when a new cardinalprotector had to be appointed in 1607: “Semblablement fuis je recherche de la part du Cardinal Madruzzo, les ancestres duquel se sont tousiours employez au service . . . de la serenissime maison daustriche.” Herman d’Ortembergh, archducal resident in Rome, to the Archdukes, Négociations de Rome, 17 May 1608, AGR, Audience, 443, 97r.

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the Irishman would call on the university to write letters to Cardinal Farnese at the occasion of the wedding of his brother, the duke of Parma and the successor of the Monarchy’s former general in Flanders, Alessandro. Ascanio Colonna figures in Lombard’s accounts alongside Aldobrandini as one of the cardinals who had excelled as protectors of the university.42 In an answering letter from the cardinal, protector of Flanders (1597–1607) “quasi jure hereditario” since the death of his uncle Marcantonio, the cause of the university had become the cause of God. The famous Academy was an unassailable fortress in the midst of the Germanic tides, and it was a matter of dynastic pride, the university being founded by the Colonna Martin V, to defend its privileges. Meanwhile he urged the academics to display obedience and reverence towards their new princes,43 seizing the opportunity to reaffirm the Colonna’s loyalty to the Most Serene House of Austria.44 On 18 June 1600, Nicolaus Micaultius, who had returned to the Netherlands, reported to the academic senate that Colonna had declared in public the interests of the university his own.45 Lombard could report already in April 1599 that he had been introduced by Aldobrandini to Clement VIII. In a private audience with nobody else present but the Irishman and the nipote, the Vicar of Christ had been most benign: instead of remitting the Louvain case to the Rota or to another regular office of the curia, which had proved to be disastrous in the Clarius and Danielis affairs, His Holiness had proposed to charge a committee of cardinals with the examination of the Louvain privileges, an external consultancy bureau of sorts that would purify the university’s image from abuse.46 Lombard immediately 42 “Ex cardinalibus ad quos habui litteras qui alacrius me iuvant, sunt Ascanius Colunna et Petrus Aldobrandinus.” Lombard to the university, 7 April 1599, Acta Universitatis, 8 May 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 313v–314r. On Farnese, see Lombard to the university, 18 December 1599, Acta Universitatis, 13 January 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 279v–381r. 43 Colonna to the university, 20 December 1599, Acta Universitatis, 16 March 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 395v–396r. 44 “These men and others, such as Colonna, Sforza and Madruzzo, were described as generally attached and obligated “as vassals” of the king, and also were praised for their role in gaining other servants for him.” Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 140. See also von Thiessen in Reinhard, Mikropolitik, 136. 45 Report of Micaultius to the academic senate, in Acta Universitatis, 18 June 1600, RAL, OUL, 62, 1v–2v. 46 “Quod ut fiat convenientissima ratione ordinavit eius Sanctitas tres cardinales cum quibus conferam familiarius, et particularius de omnibus eo spectantibus, nempe de remedio contra gravamina que hactenus passi sumus, de expurgandis nobis ab abusibus qui pretenduntur vel putantur admissi, et de illo confirmationis modo statu-

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urged the academics to write an informatio and letters of recommendation to the three cardinals: Camillo Borghese, Pompeo Arrigoni, and Lorenzo Bianchetti, prominent members of the Sacred College and of the Holy Office.47 At least two of them—Borghese and Arrigoni—had performed as brokers in the Monarchy’s interests in Rome before and figure in the list drawn up for the archduke by Dublioul, the agent of Flanders, as cardinals “de crédit et bien affectionez a vostre Altèze.”48 Bianchetti, for his part, had gradually moved towards the Spanish faction after his promotion to the cardinalate in 1598.49 The three of them were beneficiaries of pensions on benefices in Spanish kingdoms and/or sought to secure habitos of Spanish chivalric orders for family members.50 Lombard, the agent of a pro-Spanish policy in Irish affairs, did not hesitate to call the cardinals of the committee “our cardinals” by the end of 1599, and in turn hired legal councillors who were into their favour.51 Meanwhile, another intervention of the duke of Sessa (and of Peña) had made the committee a venue for the examination not just of the privileges but also of Roman writs against Louvain nominees. Lombard reported, not without pride, that the fresh Uditore del papa, Marcello Lante, had been most compliant when the agent of the university had handed over, in the Summer of 1599, the pope’s orders

endo.” Lombard to the university, 7 April 1599, Acta Universitatis, 8 May 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 313v–314r. 47 Arrigoni in 1598 (De Caro, “Arrigoni, Pompeo,” 320), Borghese succeeded Santori as Secretary of the Congregation of the Holy Office in 1602. Bianchetti’s intervention in the Congregationes de Auxiliis reveals that he was a member of the Inquisition as well. 48 Borghese had functioned as a special papal envoy to Spain in the first half of the 1590s, which had earned him the cardinal’s hat; Arrigoni, for his part, had been a key lawyer of Philip II before he was appointed auditor for the Crown of Aragon in the Sacra Romana Rota by Sixtus V. Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 89. “Et plus les lettres generales de credit ie diz a vostre Alteze a Milan quil estoit necessaire daultres plus particulieres pour certains cardinaulx de credit et bien affectionnez a vostre alteze comme les cardinaulx Salviate, Sainct Severin [Santori], Rusticucce, Burgese, Arigone, Montelbero, Aldobrandin” Dublioul to the Archdukes, Négociations de Rome, 10 October 1599, AGR, Audience, 438, 57r. 49 Caccamo, “Bianchetti, Lorenzo,” 51. 50 Cf. Von Thiessen, in Reinhard, Mikropolitik, 109. 51 He mentions the advocate Incoronato, as a replacement of the consistorial advocate Planca, who died quasi immediately after being hired by Lombard. Anthonius Marca Coracius, Planca’s procurator, would compensate for the loss, however, as he was “doctus atque probus et utroque nomine commendatus ipsi pontifici quam nostris cardinalibus [my Italicisation].” Chances were odd that he would succeed Planca. Lombard to the university, 20 November 1599, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102.

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to suspend all cases running against Louvain nominees, as the official had heard that the privileges would be confirmed soon.52 While Liège patricians were worrying about the favours the university was being covered with in the Eternal City,53 the Irishman managed, moreover, to redeem his credit at the curia in a papal brief, dated 4 December 1599, to the university in which Clement VIII encouraged the academics to keep up their struggle for Catholic religion and the Christian res publica; and in which he stressed his favourable disposition towards Lombard.54 This brief became, in return, an important argument in renewed lobbying in Brussels towards Richardot, the president of the Privy Council, Van Schoore of the Council of Brabant, and the papal nuncio.55 Already in August 1599, Lombard had called for a new supplication that was to be supported by letters of recommendation of the archduke, the latter having returned from Spain, in order to keep up the pressure and to remind the pontiff that a confirmation of the privileges was in the interest of the entire Low Countries.56 The Joyous Entry of the Archdukes at Louvain provided an excellent occasion to

52

“Quo mei intimato auditorem assumpto mecum optimo D. Borrio [unidentified] adii et is . . . promisit quod imposterum supersederet eo magis quod intelligeret resolutum iam esse de confirmandis nostris privilegiis.” Lombard to the university, 28 August 1599, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. Lante was promoted to the cardinalate in 1606, and probably resigned his office at the Auditorate by then. He belonged to a noble family of patrician descent which counted many cardinals until the beginning of the 19th century. See Weber, Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, 2, 551–53. The archives of the family Lante-Della Rovere in the ASR do not list materials related to their activities as officials of the Holy See. 53 “Secundo quod Lovanienses nihilominus per favores satagant atque sperent se obtenturos illam confirmationem etiam quoad patriam Leodiensem.” Paraphrase of the supplication of the Liège mayors (“consules”) Georgius Goswinus and Bernardus a Tollet to Ernest of Bavaria, in Lombard to the university, 20 November 1599, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. 54 “Vera ad vos scripsit Lombardus vester de nostro erga vos paterno amore et voluntate nos enim vos et insignem Academiam istam tanquam domicilium virtutis et bonarum artium unde multi pietate et doctrina prestantes viri prodierunt complectimur in visceribus Christi itaque et littere vestre grate nobis fuerunt et Lombardum ipsum libenter vidimus et vestris commodis semper quantum cum Domino licebit animo libenti suffragabimur Vos autem Deo bene iuvante pergite in studiis vestris ut patrie et Christiane Reipublice et fidei Catholice propagande his presertim luctuosis temporibus usui esse possitis.” Clement VIII to the university, 4 December 1599, Acta Universitatis, 13 January 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 379v–382r. 55 Acta Universitatis, 13 January 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 379v–382r. 56 “Consultum ut nunc in reditu serenissimi principis . . . renovetis memoriam nostre hic cause quin potius vero ipsorum et totius patrie et supplicetis ut ambo velint eam commendare.” Lombard to the university, 28 August 1599, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102.

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attract the attention of the princes to academic grievances.57 Letters were sent to the pope and to Aldobrandini to thank them for their “singulari studio ac amore” and to celebrate themselves, Lombard, and the papacy with the help of tested rhetorical strategies.58 Last but not least, in 1599, Oranus, the auditor of the Rota and the self-acclaimed author of the academics’ troubles, had died, and was buried between his countrymen, not far from Gravius’ modest epitaph, in the Santa Maria Dell’Anima. In the light of all these events, it is not surprising that Lombard grew with self-confidence in the course of 1599. This resonates in the proposals he made to the university, “in line with the advice of prominent members at the curia,” for the new supplication. In order to counter traditional claims, that Liège clerics could not access the beneficial stock of the Habsburg Netherlands and that therefore academic job hunters should be excluded from the Principality, the university’s agent suggested moving boldly forward. According to him, the academics had to obtain an explicit declaration from the Privy Council that the 1531 Concordat did not extend to territories outside the Habsburg Netherlands (and that Liège nationals could apply for nominations in the Principality); second, he suggested asking for an extension of the university’s privilege of nomination to the Principality too, in order to improve the chances of Liège graduates.59 All this indicates that Lombard and his friends in Rome were not on the defensive; to the contrary. In the Summer of 1600, Nicolaus Micaultius, while reporting on the Roman mission in the academic senate on his return to the Netherlands, announced the return of a triumphant Lombard and urged the university men to hire a permanent agent at the curia—preferably (his uncle) Hornkens, whom Lombard had already recommended to the academics.60 In October

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Damant (the chancellor of Brabant), and Assonleville and Richardot, respectively councillor and president of the Privy Council, were honoured with a visit. Report of Clarius, Acta Universitatis, 25 November 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 338r–339r. 58 The name of Lombard, which apparently was worth mentioning, surfaces several times in these letters. Drafts, 27 January 1600, in Acta Universitatis, 16 January 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 384v–385v. No specific issues were recommended. 59 Lombard to the university, 28 August 1599, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. 60 Report of Micaultius, Acta Universitatis, 18 June 1600, RAL, OUL, 62, 1v–2v. Lombard had already insisted that the university should air its gratitude via Hornken’s brother, the deacon of Lier: “constitit mihi in his et in aliis omnibus subsequatis, et in ipsa principali serio et syncere adest, dominus Gerardus Horcheus Belga, . . . cui preterquam quod ego plurimum sum devinctus ob insignem commoditatem honeste

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1600, Lombard himself expressed his hopes of returning soon before the winter could keep him in Rome, as he did not expect to obtain “aliquam conditionem” there—which sheds an interesting light on his own expectations for his Roman mission.61 Academics started to deliberate on the way in which financing had to be organised to foot for the bill of the new bulls.62 Eight months later, the Irishman urged his friends in Louvain to write to Hornkens, who could help him “to add the finishing touches to the affair.”63 In a letter of 3 November 1601 to Philippus Goudt, a former colleague from the pedagogy of the Falcon, Lombard was already less confident, despite the trust he still put in the pontiff and the cardinals of “his” committee: the pope had promised that the bulls would be issued quickly, but the Irishman had no idea when he could finally come back to the Netherlands.64 In May 1602, his way of putting things had changed profoundly: Lombard was retained in Rome because the pope wanted to keep him in the Eternal City, but this enabled him to continue the good work for the academics in Louvain.65 Indeed the Irishman did not show up in the university town on the banks of the river Dyle, nor did the confirmation bulls. A tentative answer to this conundrum may come down to this: in the course of 1600, references to the support of diplomats employed by Rome (Frangipani), by the Archdukes (Jean Richardot Jr., the son of the president of the Privy Council and archducal resident in Rome

immo honorifice habitationis etiam universitas nostra, . . . Rogo igitur ut quam vobis mihique grata hec officia intelligat per opportunitatem eiusdem notarii frater isthic D. Decanus Lyranus quem ex animo saluto.” Lombard to the university, 9 October 1599, Acta Universitatis, 27 October 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 351r–354r. 61 Lombard to the university, 14 October 1600, Acta Universitatis, 2 November 1600, RAL, OUL, 62, 12r–14r. 62 Acta Universitatis, 3 November 1600, RAL, OUL, 62, 14r–v. 63 “Nunc repeto ut amanter scribatis dominum Gerardum Hornkens notarium Rote ac petatis ut sicut hactenus ita nunc ad ultimam manum imponendam amice michi assistat, quod etsi alioqui facturum sciam, decet tamen ut saltem isto modo intelligat grata vobis sua officia.” Lombard to the university, 30 June 1601, 24 July 1601, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. 64 “Non dubito ut me deiiciant animo ab ulteriore prosecutione. Sed non facient tamen cum certus sum ut premisi de animo in nos pontificis et cardinalium, quod iterum repeto quia petitis ut perscribam quid sit michi spei in cause.” Lombard to the university, 30 June 1601, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. Idem to Goudt, 3 November 1601, Acta Universitatis, 30 November 1601, RAL, OUL, 62, 69v–70v. 65 “Certe deterius multo eadem res haberet nisi quod hic diutius adhuc ex voluntate Sanctisimi Domini, prout alias prescripsi herendum michi sit, ubi et ubique ad obsequia vestra paratus semper inveniar.” Lombard to the university, 19 May 1602, Acta Universitatis, 29 June 1602, RAL, OUL, 62, 95r–v.

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in between 1600 and 1603) or by the Catholic king disappeared from Lombard’s correspondence.66 Qualifications are in order. It remains a moot point whether or not the decision of the Council of Brabant in March 1600 to launch an investigation into the summons from Rome was followed up.67 Yet, with respect to benefices situated in the Habsburg Netherlands, the judicial machinery in Brussels and in the provinces still provided for a locus in which academic interests could flourish: the 1606 verdict of the Privy Council in the lawsuit of Aegidius Baius (the nephew of ) over a canonship in Saint-Amé at Douai, for instance, beefed up, via a favourable interpretation of the Placet of 1531, Louvain claims to benefices coming under the Gallican regime.68 Outside these highly disciplined, legalistic contexts in which academics felt at home, however, they were remarkably reluctant to draw their princes’ attention to their claims or to beat the constitutional drums in order to rally their friends in the Privy Council or the Council of Brabant against Roman summons. On several occasions, they avoided disturbing the relations between the archduke and Ernest of Bavaria, the prince-bishop of Liège, over several related disputes to benefices in the collegiate church of Our Lady’s at Maastricht, a Brabant-Liège condominium, and boosted (internal) pressure on the duped nominees to drop their cases “in order to avoid discord between the princes.”69

66 No letters of recommendation could be traced, after 1600, in the Négociations de Rome or in the dispatches of the nunciature. A delegation of the academics had recommended the university’s cause to Richardot before he left for the Eternal City, without any results, however. Acta Universitatis, 4 April 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 398r–v. The last reference to Sessa is in Lombard’s letter written in February 1600, in which he confirmed the arrival of arrival of archducal letters of recommendation to Sessa sent by the Law Professor Corselius. Lombard to the university, February 1600, Acta Universitatis, 9 March 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 392r. 67 “Souden geciteert zijn te compareren tot Roomen directeleck teghen die notoire privilegien des landts ende hertochdoms van Brabant ende in prejudicie vande vonnisse hier ten hoven in materie possessoir gewesen ende dat directelijk der selver die vander voorscreven universiteijt alrede zouden gedacht weesen aldaer te compareren directeleijck tegens de Blyde Incompste vande voorscreven lande van Brabant.” Minutes of the Council of Brabant, 1 March 1600, RA Anderlecht, Raad van Brabant, Griffies, 4887, 330r. 68 Acta Facultatis Artium, 15 September 1606, RAL, OUL, 714, 323. Letters of recommendation to Dasseriers and Engelbert Maes, the commissioners of the Privy Council, 26 October 1605, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 53r–v. A Motivum Juris by Gerardus Corselius in RAL, OUL, 4760. 69 Guilielmus Vande Velde commented on the specific regime under which the collegiate church of Our Lady in Maastricht fell: “Itaque si beneficium situm est in Brabantia . . . aliisve ditionibus transmosanis, . . . agendum est in cancellaria Brabantie prout etiam super beneficia S Servatii Traiecti ad Mosam iuxta donationem Philippi

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In 1604–05, support for another nominee, Stephanus Strecheus, against the papal providee Verlaye, had been initially lukewarm, as the university had forbidden the unfortunate nominee to pursue his case, or to mobilise the archducal resident in Rome in the university’s name. Another fight over apostolic, Brabantine, or episcopal jurisdiction probably was not what university men needed. They had applied the same rigour when discussing the desirability of a general confirmation of their privileges by the Archdukes after the example of Charles V and Philip II. In 1602, the university men decided to wait for a more “opportune” moment, “donec sua celsitudo alibi haereat.”70 They had very good reasons to do so. First, academics did appeal to the prince as the protector of “his” university. A lot of effort went into keeping the university town and the colleges free from garrisons, a programme that was enthusiastically taken up by a city magistrate weary of unruly soldiery within its walls. In addition, academic correspondence and minutes bear testimony to the academics’ (vain) attempts to uphold their exemption from the Aids that were granted on a yearly basis by the States of Brabant to the Archdukes in order to foot for the bill of the war effort.71 This secundi imperatoris de anno 1204 factum Hendrico 1° duci Lutharingie et Brabantie licet interim ipsa civitas indivisim spectet ad episcopum Leodiensem et ducem Brabantie et hinc ecclesia S Maria ibidem regitur iure Leodiensi.” Guilielmus Vande Velde, De nominationibus Lovaniensium, c.1630, KBR, Manuscrits, 22191, 54r. E.g., the cause of Joannes Hermanni Oppiterus, with respect to a canonship accepted by virtue of the university’s privilege of nomination; letters of Ernest of Bavaria and Carondelet, the chancellor of Liège, to the university, respectively 3 December 1601 and 26 February 1602, Acta Universitatis, 3 March 1604, RAL, OUL, 62, 84v–86v; deliberations on the answer to the prince-bishop on 9 March 1604, ibidem, 87v; ongoing troubles with the chapter of Maastricht, which refused to respect Oppiterus’ privilege de fructibus percipiendis in absentia in a letter of recommendation to the chapter, 12 October 1603, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 12r–13r; and disputes with the chapter over the right of nominees to accept benefices in ordinary months in Acta Universitatis, 23 and 25 March 1604, RAL, OUL, 62, 185v and 190v. 70 “Conclusit placere quidem privilegiorum universitatis confirmationem a principibus nostris peti sed nunc temporis importunum, et exspectandum donec sua celsitudo alibi hereat, et in tempus magis oportunum, interim preparanda in eam rem necessaria.” Acta Universitatis, 28 November 1602, RAL, OUL, 62, 112r. In November 1600, a similar proposal had been delayed until the expected confirmation in Rome had been granted: a princely charter would then be sollicitated under the guise of a placet. Acta Universitatis, 18 November 1601, RAL, OUL, 62, 15v–16v. 71 Several attestations in the 1590s in the Acta Universitatis concern delegations to trusted councillors in Brussels and the gift exchange with officials (e.g., Stephan Craesbeke, member of the Council of Brabant; Philip Maes, registrar of the States of Brabant). Recommendations to the duchess of Ceda (the Archduchess’ wet nurse) and to the Archdukes at the occasion of a visit at Louvain in Acta Universitatis, 8–10

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suggests that university men had to manage their “economy of grace’; that they had to make sure that they did not overheat their patronage networks at the Brussels court; and that they were, as a consequence, compelled to list their priorities. But there is more. Turning their Negotium Romanum into a constitutional stake in order to rally the legists and the prince’s diplomatic channels for their cause would have bolstered the status of the university as a Brabantine institution subject to Brabant laws and fiscal practice—which was exactly the straightjacket academics sought to avoid in the first years of the 17th century.72 Academics did value the virtues of identitary imprecision, but in this context, lobbying for princely support in Rome would have backfired. Second, of the approximately 600 letters in the Négociations de Rome concerning the universities of Louvain, Dole, and Douai during Albert’s reign, only one had been written between 1601 and 1604.73 With respect to the affairs of the churches in the Netherlands in general, the young Richardot was confronted with the proverbial laboriousness of curial practice, as is revealed in an answer from a desperate legate to his alarmed father, the president of the Privy Council.74 It is obvious that, after the festivities in Ferrara in which the pope had

October 1603, RAL, OUL, 62, 149r and 154v; letter of recommendation to the Archdukes, 11 November 1603, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103; thanking letters to the marquis of Havré, to Vendegies of the Council of Finances, to the treasurer of Brabant Drinckwaert, and to the archbishop of Mechlin Matthias Hovius for their support, 20 November 1603, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 19r–20r; countless references in the Acta Universitatis, 1601–1604, RAL, OUL, 62; see also, for instance, Résolutions Magistrales, 27 January 1604, SAL, Oud Archief, 305. 72 Compare, by contrast, p. 431–86. 73 It was an answer to Cardinal Terranova of the Congregation of the Index, who complained that censorship was too lax in the South Netherlands—an assessment which would become an ever recurring post in the general instructions sent to the papal nuncios of Fiandra. The Archdukes to Don Pedro de Toledo, Jean Richardot’s successor as archducal resident, in Négociations de Rome, 19 December 1603, AGR, Audience, 439, 203r. In between 1 January 1605 and 31 December 1611, c.60 letters concerning academic affairs were registered in the Négociations de Rome. Of those letters, 34 were somehow related to the University of Louvain, as opposed to 10 for Douai, and 29 for Dole. 74 “Je suis quasi honteux de vous escripre si souvent de ce peu daffaires que iai entre mains, . . . mais croijes sil vous plaict, que ce nest pas ma faulte, sed stilus curiae, ie dis la longueur quil fault que ie confesse, m’ennuije et me desplaict assez, or i’ij feraij tousiours mon debvoir, et de lindult ie ne scaij en ai que c’en serat, aijant le dataijre tant imprime a sa sainctete es clauses restrictives, qu’ie lij voijs tousiours fort opiniastre” Richardot Jr. to Richardot Sr., Négociations de Rome, 22 September 1601, AGR, Audience, 438, 409r.

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handed over a sword to Albert charging him to slay the heretics, the archduke’s Roman honeymoon was over. By the end of 1601, Richardot implored his correspondents to send him good news on the siege of Ostend, the last bulwark of the rebels in the South Netherlands. The four-year siege of “the New Troy” (1601–04), which held Catholic and Protestant Europe in its spell,75 had become Albert’s litmus test; and this court of Rome, the archducal resident did not omit to point out, had no mercy for losers, including princes.76 A few days later, he called again for “good news” from Ostend, if the archduke ever wanted to obtain his indults, and other appeals would follow during the next two years of his Roman legacy.77 This suggests that the room for manoeuvre of the Archdukes in Rome (and their gusto to support academic claims at the curia) was fairly limited until the Truce. In this scenario, Lombard’s base of support in Rome must have unravelled quickly. 5.1.3. In the shadow of the Aldobrandini. The pontiff, his cardinals, and the academics, 1598–1605 Qualifications are in order. Again, they are related to Lombard’s involvement in Irish affairs. It is not unthinkable that his favourable reception in the Eternal City aimed at weakening his affiliation with the Spanish faction. The Mattei family being long allied with the Monarchy via pensions, encomiendas, and abitos,78 the newly arrived Anglo-Irishman may actually have been welcomed by the entourage of the pontiff as a potential counterweight to the cardinal-protector’s influence on Irish policy.79 In 1600, it was Roman diplomacy that

75 With the Siege of Breda in 1625, the Siege of Ostend was one of the eye-catching events of the Guerra de Flandes, the Academy of War of Europe. Read Thomas, “De val van het nieuwe Troje.” 76 “Cette prise donnerat beaucoup de credit et reputation a Son Alteze pardeca, et noz affaijres ne sen pourront aussij que mieux porter, se gouvernant ceste court princpalement par la prosperite et le bonheur, et ceux quil accompagne, y sont les bienvenuz, et par le contre des disgraciez, on nen faict compte, ie dis mesmes iusquaux princes.” Richardot to the Archdukes, Négociations de Rome, 8 September 1601, AGR, Audience, 438, 389r–v. 77 “J’attens a proposer de nouveau lindult avec la bonne nouvelle que iespere dOstende.” Richardot to Prats, Négociations de Rome, 15 September 1601, AGR, Audience,438, 389r–v. 78 Visceglia, “Fazioni e lotta politica,” 82. 79 Inherited affiliations such as those of the Mattei with Spain were considered the most stable and predictable “inclinations” of decision-makers. Cf. Visceglia, “Fazioni e lotta politica.”

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secured the possession of the provostship of the Cathedral of Cambrai for him, despite the opposition of the Brussels Habsburgs and their noble candidate for the job.80 One year later, Roman ambivalence towards O’Neill’s designs led to a compromise that accomodated all parties involved, including Lombard himself: in 1601, he was consecrated archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland by Cardinal Camillo Borghese, a creatura of the Aldobrandini pope.81 After the defeat of the Spanish-Irish coalition at Kinsale in 1603, and after the accession to the throne of James I, Lombard would align his policy with the interests of the loyalist, but nonetheless staunchly Catholic Anglo-Irish, communities in Ireland in which he had his roots; with Roman designs; and with the peace policy of the Monarquía towards the new dynasty on the English throne that had to isolate the rebels in the Low Countries. Henceforward, the archbishop of Armagh would advocate a more peaceful arrangement in which a revitalised Catholicism of a Roman-Tridentine bent could florish under a “pagan” but legitimate king under natural law. The English monarchy, for its part, allowed considerable room for manoeuvre for Lombard’s eyes and ears in Ireland, his vicar David Rothe,82 as Lombard, despite recurrent projects to reside in his diocese until 1619,83 would never leave the Eternal City. Meanwhile, the archbishop remained in close contact with the Irish diaspora in Spain, France, and in the Habsburg Netherlands. All

80 Cf. p. 147. “A yier recevi una de V.A. para su Sanctidad escritta en favor del hermano del Conde d’Essenghien, paraque se le confiera la prepositura de Cambraij, los cortisanos de Roma son mas diligentes, q’esso por q’ha mas d’un mes, que esta dada al Doctor Lombart, . . . tengo pro necessario, q’ V.A. escriva muy encarecidamente a su Sanctidad y al Card. Aldobrandini, que quando se offrecen se megantes beneficios que no los provean tan presto, mas que tengan consideracion y aguarden a las personas, q’ V.A. encomiendare, q’ d’ssa manere podra V.A. remuner algunos de sus criados.” Dublioul to the Archdukes, Négociations de Rome, 16 April 1600, AGR, Audience, 438, 96r. 81 A discussion of Irish matters in Lombard to Richardot, president of the Privy Council in Brussels, Négociations de Rome, 6 October 1601, AGR, Audience, 438, 420r. 82 Details on Lombard’s position and writings in Silke, “Primate Lombard and James I.” He briefly returned to his previous sympathies during the Flight of the Earls to Rome in 1607. On the introduction of a restyled Catholicism, read Lotz-Heumann, Die doppelte Konfessionalisierung. More on Habsburg policy towards England from a Brussels point of view in Croft, “Brussels and London.” 83 “Finita congregatione [of the Holy Office] Illustrissimi domini Cardinales Millinus, et Verallus retulerunt, sanctissimus concedere facultates solitas archiepiscopo Armacano redituro in Hiberniam ad Septennium.” Congr. Feria V Coram Sanctissimo, 5 September 1619, ACDF, SO, Decreta SO, 1619–1620, 124v.

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this enhanced his credibility in Rome as a councillor to the Holy See in the appointment of bishops for Ireland. A similar pattern also emerges in Lombard’s correspondence with the university and with individual academics in the course of 1600 and 1601. Archducal and Spanish support in the Eternal City dwindled as it was gradually eclipsed by the patronage of Pietro Aldobrandini, who did not conceal his interest in drawing both Lombard and the university into his orbit. This evolution should not be considered a strategic “renversement des alliances”—it was never mentioned in these terms in academic minutes or in Lombard’s reports—nor had the university’s orientation on papal patronage been unilaterally orchestrated by the entourage of the pontiff. The divine had never put his eggs in one basket. Already in his first reports from Rome, Lombard mentioned he had been welcomed warmly by the secular priests of the Congregation of the Oratory, “the congregation His Holiness was most affected to among the City’s religious communities.” They had offered him their assistance, and in return the agent of the university urged his colleagues at Louvain to write recommendations to Tomaso Bozio, Baronio’s successor as the president of the Oratory and the librarian of the Vallicella.84 It was Bozio who introduced Lombard to the learned cardinal in January 1599 and who gave him the opportunity to hand over the letter of recommendation from the university to its honorific doctorturned-cardinal. The fresh Prince of the Church had displayed his favourable disposition, assured that the university “would not lose control” over its case, and promised to deal in person with the nipote,85 who, a former student of Baronio and of Filippo Neri,86 had provided Lombard with the opportunity to kiss the feet of the pontiff without any interference from Sessa or from other members of the Spanish faction. Bozio, for his part, continued to play a heroic role in Micaultius’

84 Interestingly, no references were made to the late Gravius, who had frequented the circles of the Oratorio as well. Lombard to Sylvius, 12 December 1598 and 30 January 1599, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. 85 Lombard to Baius, fragments in Acta Universitatis, 16 February 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 306r–v. 86 Jaitner, Die Hauptinstruktionen, 1, xcvii. The relationship between the nephew and his tutor was not always characterised by piety, as Baronio was a competitor in the battle over the pope’s favour. But the first open conflict arose only in March 1599, two months after Lombard had been introduced to Baronio. Pincherle, “Baronio, Cesare,” 473.

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report to the academic senate in June 1600. When dedicating his book De iure status sive de iure divino to Clement VIII,87 the erudite, who had been granted honorary membership of the university in July 1599 after the example of Erasmus, Arias Montano, and Baronio, had asked nothing in return but the confirmation of the privileges of the University of Louvain.88 Bozio, who had intensified via Baronio his relations with the papal family,89 had revealed himself an intransigent promoter of direct papal power who may have revelled in Lombard’s uncompromising Commentarius.90 An advocate of the ordo ecclesiasticus, of ecclesiastical liberty and of the Church’s temporal and spiritual jurisdiction, he was the best proof the university could produce that a confirmation of its apostolic privileges was in the interest of the Holy See. The Roman Oratory was not marked by a well-defined membership that cultivated a specific doctrinal programme.91 It is its relative openness, combined with an organisational weakness, and the variety of religious and political programmes that could flourish in its folds, that turned the Oratorio in Papa Aldobrandini’s favourite laboratory of religious reform in Rome.92 As a consequence, it became a venue for prelates, officials, and members of the Sacred College (among whom de’ Medici, Sfondrati, the nephew of the first pope-benefactor of the Oratorio, and Colonna) who sought to deepen their religious life; to 87 Tomaso Bozio, De iure status sive de iure naturali et diuino ecclesiasticae libertatis et potestatis. Rome: Bonfadini, 1599. 88 Report of Micaultius in Acta Universitatis, 18 June 1600, RAL, OUL, 62, 1v–2v; decision to thank Bozio for his support in Acta Universitatis, 22 August 1600, RAL, OUL, 62, 3v. The decision to co-opt Bozio as a member of the university under the Faculty of Theology was taken “ob summa ipsius in eximium (. . .) Lombardum et causam dicte universitatis . . . officia” after the arrival of letters from Bozio to the university. Copy of the act of co-optation, 8 July 1599, in Acta Universitatis, 12 July 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 323r–v. Compare Lanoye, “Benito Arias Montano.” Cf. p. 568. 89 Craveri, “Bozio, Tomaso.” 90 Mastellone, “Tomaso Bozio,” 228. O’Connor, “A Justification for Foreign Intervention,” suggests that Lombard’s treatise was influenced by Bellarmino’s ecclesiological work. Because of its anti-Macchiavellian and “constitutional” character, the Commentarius merits a comparison with Bozio’s work as well. 91 Frajese, “Tendenze dell’ambiente oratoriano,” 58–59. A common sense of identity among the Oratorians was fostered by practical religious exercises and charitable initiatives, as well as by the reform of the Roman churches. Compare Quattrone, “Accounting for God.” 92 “Der Geist der katholische Reformation, der damals in Filippo Neri seinen schönsten Ausdruck fand, durchdrang den Papst so sehr, dass man gesagt hat, dieser Heilige selbst habe mit ihm gleichsam den Stuhl Petri bestiegen.” Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste, 11, 3.

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legitimise their position by displaying their piety; and to add lustre to public religious acts in the presence of the pope.93 Interestingly, the three cardinals recruited by Clement VIII among the Oratorians were courted by the academics and their agent: in 1598, Lombard had carried letters of recommendation to Cardinal Tarugi, one of Neri’s earliest companions;94 and to Baronio; in 1600, the agent implored his colleagues at Louvain to recommend their cause to Silvio Antoniano, an Oratorian and a former teacher and rector at the Sapienza university who had recently been elevated to the cardinalate.95 The university’s letter of recommendation may have functioned simultaneously as an acknowledgement of previous favours as well, Antoniano being, as the head of the Secretary of Briefs and one of the closest collaborators of the pontiff, the author of the 1599 brief of Clement VIII to the academics in which Lombard had received such a good press.96 That the university’s contacts with the Oratorio, mediated by Gravius in the beginning and by Lombard by the end of the 1590s, should not be considered an exponent of proto-Jansenist partisanship is revealed by Lombard’s suggestion to write to Bellarmino too. According to the Irishman, the cardinal was more or less obliged by public opinion in Rome to advocate the interests of the university in which he had

93 “La partecipazione alla messa, la frequentazione della Chiesa Nuova [the church of the Oratorians in Rome] o all’adorazione pubblica delle Quarantore dei gesuiti, erano atti che il collegio [the Sacred College] compiva in modo simmetrico, o piuttosto a corona, agli atti di pietà e devozione del papa.” Fattori, Clemente VIII e il Sacro Collegio, 318. 94 It remains unclear why Tarugi figures among the list of adressees of Louvain recommendations. Somehow, Louvain academics must have been in contact with him. Tarugi was a friend of Baronio and had become member, in 1595, of the Congregation for the Examination of the Bishops as well as the Congregation for the Regular Clergy. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1596. Tarugi only surfaces in Lombard’s letter of 28 November 1598, registered in Acta Universitatis, 24 December 1598, RAL, OUL, 61, 301r, as one of the cardinals whose arrival from Ferrara he was impatiently waiting for. On Cusani († 1598), see p. 230. 95 On Antoniano and his quest to sublimate humanism in Catholic Theology, a programme that he shared with many Louvain divines, read Godman, The Saint as Censor, 78; see also Motta, Bellarmino, 106. 96 “Scriptum fuit ex mandato S. Sanctitatis ab illustrissimo cardinale Sijlvio Antoniano est vir bene literatus et humanus totus eumque de Oratorii congregatione assumptum S. Sanctitas per diversa officia promovit tandem ad purpuream et eius utitur opera in eiusmodi secretis brevibus, etiam ad reges et principes unde omnino expedire iudico, et etiam expecto ut universitas ad eum scribat quod sciam id gratissimum ipsi fore et nobis in quacumque re usui futurum.” Lombard to an unknown correspondent, 25 March 1600, extract in Acta Universitatis, 18 April 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 401r–v.

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earned his spurs, and to imitate the late Toledo, his predecessor as a former Jesuit in the divine Senate, who in Rome as much as at Louvain was remembered as a champion of the university.97 The appointment of the cardinals Borghese, Bianchetti, and Arrigoni as members of a special committee should be situated in the same context. They did indeed figure on Spanish payrolls; few “friendly” or “neutral” cardinals did not. However, they cannot be classified as members of the Spanish faction, despite Bianchetti’s later attempts to position himself more independently from the faction of the cardinal-nephew. Pundits identified them primarily with the collegio nuovo, those members of the Sacred College recruited from among social climbers in Roman officialdom or in the lower nobility who, in contrast with the old nobility in the collegio vecchio (Farnese, Colonna, Mattei), were unambiguously considered the creatures of the pontiff himself.98 Members of the Holy Office (Arrigoni and Borghese) or of the Segnatura di Grazia (Bianchetti), bodies over which the pope presided in person on a weekly basis, they had ample occasion to discuss matters in private with him.99 By honouring recommendations from the Oratorians, Baronio, and Bellarmino,100 and by installing a committee of three cardinals who belonged to the inner circuits of the Aldobrandini empire, the pontiff and the cardinal-nephew turned Lombard’s Roman mission into a vehicle to weaken his, and the university’s, association with the Spanish and Habsburg faction.

97

“Cui [= Bellarmino] grata memoria quod apud nos aliquando vixerit. Immo et hic habetur tanquam ex universitate nostra prediisset nec putetur quod occasione prioris instituti munus favebit nobis ubi gratificandi occasio occurrerit sed cogitetur potius [my italicisation] quod in toto collegio cardinalium nullus fuerit qui universitati nostre ostenderit se favere magis quam D. Toletus.” Lombard to an unknown correspondent, 25 March 1600, extract in Acta Universitatis, 18 April 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 401r–v. Letter of recommendation of the university to Bellarmino, 2 May 1600, AGREG, Fondo Tromp, Epistolae S. Roberti Bellarmini ab initio cardinalatus eius, 1, 88. 98 Fattori, Clemente VIII e il Sacro Collegio, passim. Bianchetti was the son of a Bolognese patrician and senator; Weber, Die Päpstlichen Referendare, 2, 452; on Borghese’s origins in the urban patriciates of Central and Northern Italy (i.e., Siena), the social background of most papal families in the 16th and 17th centuries, read Emich, Bürokratie und Nepotismus, 2. 99 Visceglia, “Fazioni e lotta politica,” 65–66. The detailed diaries kept by Santori (cf. p. 243) bear testimony to this practice. 100 “Acceperam iamdudum ex domino Petro Lombardo privilegia quaedam Academiae Lovaniensis in dubium revocari, et tunc quidem diligenter commendavi causam vestram illustrissimo Domino cardinali Aldobrandino, tum delectis iudicibus a sanctissimo pontifice.” Bellarmino to the university, 28 July 1600, AGREG, Fondo Tromp, Epistolae S. Roberti Bellarmini ab initio cardinalatus eius, 1, 107.

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The cardinal-nephew himself, Pietro Aldobrandini, had lobbied for the job of Louvain’s patron in Rome by the end of 1599, making public, in the presence of bishop Cuyckius and many others, his wish to support the university in all its endeavours.101 In order to express his gratitude for the 1599 papal brief to the university, Lombard had addressed Aldobrandini as the “conservator of the university”: Rome’s most powerful cardinal “had been most pleased.”102 He had fetched Aldobrandini a letter of recommendation from the great Justus Lipsius: a gesture that (suggested discretely by the nipote himself ) had struck the right notes. In 1601, Lombard managed—in the absence of tangible results in the Roman Question—to acquire another brief displaying the pope’s favour for the academics and their representative;103 in 1602, he made another coup by engaging the cardinal-nephew, after Santori’s death, as the cardinal-protector of the university.104 One year later, it was a Louvain divine whom Aldobrandini sought to recruit when his uncle wished to call another scholar versed both in theology and in philosophy to the Eternal City;105 in 1604–05, in the midst of

101 “Illustrissimus Aldobrandinus in ea promovenda adeo noster factus est ut illa que particularius novi de eius in nos voluntate nuper presente reverendissimo domino Cuyckio in convivio publico professus sit ita sibi propositum esse nostre universitati gratificari ut in hac eius causa etiam se pro ea supplicem constituerit.” Lombard to the university, 18 December 1599, Acta Universitatis, 13 January 1599, RAL, OUL, 61, 379v–382r. 102 “Eum suorum privilegiorum conservatorem hunc etiam ego illi titulum detuli quod ei gratissimum fuisse et adverti tunc et interim sum expertus fovenda omnibus modis et nominatim officio scriptionis eius in nos benevolentia cuius authoritas et nunc maxima et diuturna ut apparet ea futura clarissimo Lipsio multum afficitur eiusque frequentissimam et honorificentissimam mentionem facit.” Lombard to the university, 18 December 1599, Acta Universitatis, 13 January 1600, RAL, OUL, 61, 379v–382r; a minute for a letter of gratitude, dated 27 January 1600, from the university to Aldobrandini is registered in ibidem, 385r–v. 103 Registered in Pasture, “Inventaire de la Bibliothèque Barberini,” 23, dated 15 September 1601. Somehow, the document did not make it to the records preserved at Louvain. 104 The commission to write letters to Aldobrandini had been given on 29 June 1602. A replacement for Santori was never discussed in the university or faculty minutes. Acta Universitatis, 29 June 1602, RAL, OUL, 62, 95r–v. Aldobrandini to the university, 24 August 1602, Acta Universitatis, 17 September 1602, RAL, OUL, 62, 103r–104r; “quod in illius locum potissimum te delegimus in cuius clientelam academiam hanc nostram pre ceteris omnibus ecclesie Romanae cardinalibus coniiceremus . . . [universitas] iam decreto publico te in patrocinium ac protectorem peculiarem recepit, et monumentis publicis pro tali consignavit.” Acknowledgements from the university to Aldobrandini, 4 November 1602, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 1v–2r. 105 “Di questi se ne sogliono talvolta ritrovare nelle università più celebri nelle quali leggono et danno saggio di loro con particolare nome di uscire dalla mediocrità . . . onde

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the Strecheus affair, he pops up in academic minutes as the academics’ champion in Rome. In the light of his blitzcareer and the support he enjoyed at the curia, it is not surprising that the Irishman’s relations with the academics were drawn into a different format too. In the course of 1604, Lombard was no longer addressed by the Arts faculty as an agent on the university’s payroll. Instead, they appealed to their “unicus mecenas” in the capital of the world, whom the humble supplicants reluctantly disturbed in his “occupationes rebus gravibus consecratas” in order to settle an affair on which the Public Interest, and the survival of the university, depended; and in return for which he could be assured of eternal gratitude.106 In the following years, Thomas White, Lombard’s nephew who joined his uncle after completing his studies at Louvain,107 would become a directly approachable broker between the academics and their Irish patron in the Eternal City. General letters of recommendation were sent to the archbishop of Armagh, while White had to deal with more prosaic, and less honourable, aspects of the Louvain mission in Rome. In 1609, when academics sought to

mi ha ordinato di scriver a Vestra Signorìa che facci diligenza per intendere se nell’università di Lovanio . . . fosse qualch’uno di tal dottrina et sapere.” Aldobrandini to Frangipani, 1 November 1603, ed. Louant, Correspondance, 715. The nuncio’s choice was Jacobus A Castro from Amsterdam, the future successor of Cuyckius in the diocese of Roermond (1610–39). A former teacher in the pedagogy of the Pig, he had obtained his Doctorate in Divinity together with Lombard in 1594 and had taught Theology at the Praemonstratensian abbeys of Averbode and Park, a career path that was followed by several future professors of the university. A Castro’s conditions “com ‘homo non uscito mai fuori, dubitando di gente di nation’ esterna nelli paesi lontani dalla sua patria” were considered exaggerated; Frangipani to Aldobrandini, 29 November 1603, ASV, Fondo Borghese, III, 110b–c–d–g, 35r–v. “Et ha inteso [Nostro Signore] ancora le conditioni . . . si corrà un poco di tempo a deliberare.” Aldobrandini to Frangipani, 3 January 1604, ASV, Fondo Borghese, III, 40, 123r–v. The divine was never called to Rome; there is no evidence of Lombard’s involvement in the affair. 106 “Audet iterum occupationes tuas rebus gravioribus consecratas interpellare petens obnixe non gravetur Illustrissima Tua Dominatio negotii urgentis a quo bonum commune et universitatis vita pendet, curam et patrocinium suscipere promittens vicissimum se curaturam pro vice ne ingrata et immemor reperiatur deinde rogans te, Illustrissime Reverendissime domine universitatis nostre mecenatem unicum diu salvum incolumemque preservet.” Faculty of Arts to Lombard, no date, draft in Acta Facultatis Artium, 6 October 1604, RAL, OUL, 714, 224r–v. All this had not inhibited Lombard from cashing in his yearly stipend of 600 florins, 400 of which were paid by the Arts faculty. 107 Thomas White Lombard (licentiate in Theology in 1601, Catalogus baccalaureorum, ARA, OUL, 505, 46r), had followed his uncle to the Eternal City in 1602, when Lombard openly had stated that he would stay for a while in Rome “ex voluntate pontificis.” At that occasion, he had offered his services to the university. Acta Universitatis, 4 November 1602, ARA, OUL, 62, 99r.

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revive the slumbering Roman Question, the Faculty of Arts contacted White first, before reaching out to the archbishop of Armagh and to the pontiff.108 What had happened in the affair on which the survival of the university and of Catholic religion in the Low Countries depended? The writ against Stephanus Strecheus issued by Marcello Lante, the Uditore del papa, in December 1603 had been at the heart of renewed efforts to have the Roman Question solved once and for all in the course of the following year. It is probably in this context that the university engaged Sandrino, its man in the nunciature, to rally Frangipani for its cause, while recommending simultaneously the nuncio’s secretary, who was bound to return to Rome and who had been asked to deliver the university’s and the faculty’s letters of supplication, to his superior.109 Lombard received, in addition, letters to hand out to Aldobrandini, Baronio, Don Pedro de Toledo (the new archducal resident in Rome), and Joannes de Parisiis from Mons, a famigliare of Vestrio, the Datario of the uditore del papa, both of whom had been recommended by Lombard to the university.110 The agent had faith-

108 See also p. 346 and 421–22. Faculty of Arts to White, 19 February 1609, Acta Facultatis Artium, 15 February 1609, RAL, OUL, 714, 224r–v. White would refuse with reference to his status, except if he was constituted officially as the university’s agent in Rome, he was not prepared to meddle in the vicissitudes of papal bureaucracy. “Duo etiam alia virtualiter includunt, nempe ut agam sollicitatorem seu procuratorem pro ipsis, quod certe statui meo non convenit, et ut exponam futura pro tali effectu liberaliter refundenda, quod similiter nequeo prestare, quia non sum bancarius pene me habens pecunias octrosas.” White to Malderus, 18 April 1609, fragment in Acta Facultatis Artium, 18 May 1609, RAL, OUL, 714, 431. 109 Supplication of the Faculty of Arts, 29 July 1604, Acta Venerandae Facultatis Artium, 27 July 1604, RAL, OUL, 714, 197–203. Previous letters to Frangipani and Sandrino, dated 20 November 1603 (Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 21r–v), probably sought to align the nuncio and his secretary with the university’s resistance against taxation by the States of Brabant. A first letter, dated 2 November 1603, recommended the university in general terms to Sandrino and explicitly made reference to Lombard; on the same day, Lombard had been warned about Sandrino’s return to Rome in the foreseeable future. Sandrino had, via Weyms, asked in return for letters of recommendation from the university, to Cardinal Farnese, among others (reference in the university to Sandrino, 18 December 1603, ibidem, 28v–29r); to Aldobrandini; and to an unspecified auditor of the Rota (d’Ortembergh or Peña?). The two last letters, dated 2 December 1603, are registered in ibidem, 25r–26r. It should be noted that none of the recommendation letters for Sandrino (except when Lombard was involved) passed the review in the academic senate. 110 The university to Lombard, Aldobrandini, Baronio, de Parisiis, and De Toledo, 12 December 1603, Liber Dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 26v–28v. De Parisiis was a canon of Saint Peter’s in Cassel (County of Flanders) who, as Lombard pointed out, was well disposed to the university even though he had not studied at Louvain.

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fully complied with the requests from his clients in Brabant: in a letter from White to the abbot of Saint-Gertrudis, who, in his quality of conservator of the privileges, had been summoned in the wake of the Strecheus affair to appear in person before the prefects of both the Signaturae, the archbishop was said to be negotiating on a daily basis with Borghese. He had not been entirely unsuccessful: the writ against the conservator was quickly annulled, and in White’s account the favourable disposition of the pontiff, Borghese, and the other cardinals was likely to result in a confirmation of the Louvain privileges of jurisdiction and nomination.111 In the Netherlands, a diplomatic offensive was simultaneously launched towards the powers that be and resulted in the appointment of a commissioner of the Council of Brabant, via whom the academics could send instructions to the archducal legate in Rome.112 New supplications and recommendations from the Arts faculty, adjusted to Lombard’s technical suggestions, were sent to the pope and Aldobrandini in the middle of 1604. A letter from Aldobrandini, who had called the Uditore del papa on the carpet, seemed to confirm White’s optimism: Rome’s most powerful cardinal expressed his good faith in the outcome.113 By the end of the year, the academics were playing the game according to their own rules again, having revived successfully the regime of grace that sidelined regular curial offices.114 In the first months of 1605, however, bad news reached

111

“Et D. Armacanus quotidie tractat de privilegiis, eorumque sensu et explicatione cum Burghesio . . . sibi addictissimo . . . ita ut pro iustitia causae nostre, cardinalium sinceritate et affectu in nos non dubitemus de felici per dei gratiam successu.” White to the abbot of Saint-Gertrudis at Louvain, 21 August 1604, extract in Acta Universitatis, 11 October 1604, RAL, OUL, 62, 205v–206r. 112 The councillors who were visited are Houst and Assonleville of the Privy Council and the chancellor of Brabant, Nicolas Damant. The members of the delegation were Jacobus Baius, Petrus Gudelinus (a law professor and the assessor of the curia conservatorialis), and Weyms, who had been hired by the Arts faculty (Acta Facultatis Artium, 10 July 1604, RAL, OUL, 714, 196–97). Report by Baius and Weyms, Acta Universitatis, 22 July 1604, RAL, OUL, 62, 198r. 113 Lombard to the university, announcing the death of Clement VIII, 5 March 1605, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. “Ceterum cum novissimis vestris litteris certior factus essem de monitorio facto per D. Camere Auditorem conservatori vestro ipsum statim Auditorem ad me accivi, cumque eo egi, ut cum memorato conservatore vestro mitius ageretur, prout ipse Auditor michi est pollicitus, ut minime iam necesse sit eum hic Rome se sistere sed per procuratores commode omnia agi poterunt.” Aldobrandini to the university, 4 October 1604, Acta Universitatis, 30 October 1604, RAL, OUL, 62, 209v–210r. Decision to send letters of gratitude in order to thank the cardinal for his bonus affectus. 114 By the end of 1604, Sylvius, the university’s notary, was charged with writing additional letters to Borghese, Arrigoni, Sandrino, White, and Lombard. Acta Universitatis, 13 October 1604, RAL, OUL, 62, 207r–v.

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Louvain. Clement VIII, the supreme builder of bridges between God and Man, was no more. 5.1.4. “Nam Pontifices initio solent esse liberaliores.” The capriciousness of Grace in the Rome of Paul V, 1605–12 The death of Clement VIII had not undermined Lombard’s position in Rome, despite the shocks in the market of patronage an elective monarchy could bring about. One of the “Louvain cardinals” in the Sacred College, Baronio, had been among the favourites, but was blocked by the Spanish faction in two subsequent conclaves because of his pro-French stance in the controversy over the absolution of Henry IV. After the ephemeral pontificate of Leo XI de’ Medici,115 Camillo Borghese was elevated to the chair of Saint Peter as a compromise between the factions of Aldobrandini and of Montalto, the nipoti of the two previous pontificates who had lasted long enough to stabilise the respective families’ clout, via their numerous creature, in the Sacred College.116 As far as curialist politics entered the picture at Louvain, the pool of patronage the university could tap into had remained intact. Moreover, the Catholic Church was now headed by a pontiff who, a “learned man,” was “most affected to the university and to Lombard.”117 During Lombard’s first private audience, the new pontiff had expressed his inclination to confirm the university’s privileges; the return of Frangipani to Rome in a general reshuffle of the papal diplomatic personnel offered new opportunities to recommend the university’s cause; and another cardinal, Pamfili, was appointed as Borghese’s substitute in the commission charged with the exami-

115

“Nam et illustris tue gentis Medicee precipua illa laus, amoris et studii in litteras et bonas artes, . . . et Leonis decimi Clementisque Septimi, gentilium tuorum quorum eximia fuit in hoc nostrum Gijmnasium munificentia [i.e., the bulls Admonet Nos and Rationi Congruit] beata memoria spe propensioris in nos tue paterne voluntatis, nos implevit.” Congratulation letter from the university, with explicit reference to Lombard, to Leo XI, 22 April 1605, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 48v–49r. Additional letters to Lombard, Borghese, Arrigoni, and Bianchetti, 28 April 1605, ibidem, 50r–51r. 116 Visceglia, “Fazioni e lotta politica,” 77. 117 With respect to Arrigoni and Borghese, White to the abbot of Saint-Gertrudis at Louvain, 21 August 1604, extract in Acta Universitatis, 11 October 1604, RAL, OUL, 62, 205v–206r.

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nation of the privileges.118 In the same year, the academics had their privileges collected in a book dedicated to Paul V. On its frontispiece, effigies of Peter and Paul, the princes of the apostles and the patrons of Rome, emphasised the papal origin of all academic privileges, while the solemn bulls themselves bore witness to the unremitting protection of the Roman pontiffs over their most loyal bulwark across the Alps.119 The grand finale of the year 1605 was a brief of Paul V, sent to the Faculty of Arts via the papal nuncio, in which the pope expressed his paternal love and urged the poor scholars, with explicit reference to the confirmation of its privileges, to have confidence in his caritas.120 Outbursts of joy resounded in the session of the faculty’s congregation “after all the disappointments the academics had gone through in the previous years,” and “many hailed the Holy Father, wishing him a long pontificate.”121 Nothing happened, despite alarmed calls in the course of 1606 from Louvain that Lombard had to seize the moment, “pontiffs being more generous in the beginning of their pontificate, as the experience with Gregory XIII reveals.”122 The committee of cardinals never moved into action. For the enthusiasts of micro-politics, it is not difficult to explain why the academics still did not secure a confirmation of the privileges: Baronio joined his friend Gravius in the grave in June 1607;

118 Cf. Lombard to the university, 14 January 1606, Correspondance, RAL, OUL, 102. Interestingly, the recommendation letter from the university to Pamfili, in which the latter was hailed as a patron of doctrine and letters, is dated 23 September 1605, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 53r–v, which suggests the news of Pamfili’s appointment had reached the university already via other, private, channels of communication. A letter of gratitude to the pope, over his favourable disposition to the university via Lombard, the university to Paul V, 23 September 1605, ibidem, 51v–52r. 119 It probably was an adaptation of the print of 1597 (Privilegia Academiae Lovaniensi, ab apostolica sede (. . .) concessa, Louvain: Joannes Masius, 1597, reprinted again in 1644) which may have served similar purposes. 120 Copy of the letter from the nuncio, 3 November 1605, and brief from Paul V to the Faculty of Arts, 26 September 1605, Acta Facultatis Artium, 5 November 1605, RAL, OUL, 714, 293–298. 121 Acta Facultatis Artium, 5 November 1605, RAL, OUL, 714, 298. Letters from the Arts faculty to the nuncio, Lombard and White, 15 November 1605, Acta Facultatis Artium, 6 November 1605, RAL, OUL, 714, 295–298. 122 The university to Lombard, 23 September 1605, Liber dictatoris, RAL, OUL, 103, 52r–v. “Veremur ne forte nostri memoria excidat, et res sola consenescat. Ideoque iam plane urgendum ducimus, et urgere deinceps decrevimus, maxime tam recenti pontificatu: novos sequidem pontifices ad liberalitatem esse proniores et magni viri testimonio, et certa sub Gregorio decimo tertio experientia compertum habemus.” Faculty of Arts to Lombard, 3 August 1606, Acta Facultatis Artium, same date, RAL, OUL, 714, 321. Memorandum submitted to Sandrino, 22 September 1606, ibidem, 325.

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in the same year, Aldobrandini, who had failed to consign himself to his new role as ex-nipote, fell in disgrace and was exiled to his diocese in Ravenna. Frangipani, for his part, spent, after his return to Italy, the last years of his life far from Rome as a reformer of the churches of his diocese in the Mezzogiorno.123 Seen from this perspective, it is not surprising that the members of the Arts faculty were wondering, in 1609, to whom they should turn. Interestingly, Lombard himself was no longer an evident choice. An answering letter from White, for a start, did not bode well: after having been sounded out by the theologian Zoenius and by the Arts faculty, Lombard’s nephew wrote to the divine Malderus that he balked at offending his friends among the Liège curialists, and that the job of sollicitator did not fit his status.124 Application letters from Roman professionals arrived in Louvain, but their candidacies were not considered.125 By the end of the year, the faculty eventually decided to contact Lombard again, as the university’s former agent was likely to be commissioned by the pope with the examination of their requests anyway and was not to be offended.126 In their first letter, the artists implored him to advance their cause, “sine strepitu et irritatione adversariorum,” “because of his familiarity with His Holiness and with others who are likely to intervene”; and

123 Pincherle, “Baronio, Cesare,” 475. Fasano Guarini, “Aldobrandini, Pietro,” 112. He only returned to Rome in 1621, after the death of Paul V, whom he would follow into the grave one month later. 124 “Sunt hic quidam Leodienses mihi noti et affecti, contra quos, aut eorum patronos, non possum salvo decore tanquam privata persona procedere, neque apud cardinales cum quibus agendum valeat mea tanquam privati hominis autoritas aut assertio.” White to Malderus, 18 April 1609, extract in Acta Facultatis Artium, 18 May 1609, RAL, OUL, 714, 431. 125 Acta Facultatis Artium, 25 April and 11 June 1609, ibidem, 430 and 435. Bertrandus Vervianus, a Liège cleric who would return as an abbreviator of the nunciature of Flanders in 1615–16 (cf. ASV, Dataria Ap., Per Obitum, 15, 339r), was the agent of individual nominees in 1610 and 1611; cf. the Arts faculty to Lombard, 29 June 1610, Ven. Fac. Artium acta quaedam (. . .), RAL, OUL, 746, 31r–32r; the same applies to Joannes Jacobi Corselius/De Courcil (not in Vaes, “Curialistes belges,” or ASV, Dataria Ap., Per Obitum, 1–42); cf. Lombard to the university, 25 December 1612, ibidem, 20v–21r. Corselius was mentioned as a correspondent of Franciscus Dralantius, regent of the pedagogy of the Pig, in White to Dralantius, 26 May 1607, Correspondance échangée entre le régent du Porc F. Dralantius, la Fac. Des Arts et l’Université et leurs amis à Rome (. . .), RAL, OUL, 1114, 26v. 126 “Tamen quia reverendissimus dominus armachanus adhu