The saint who opposed Luther

Catholic Herald ^ | August 7, 2012

[NYer]

St Cajetan (1480-1547) was, like his contemporary Martin Luther, deeply concerned by the worldliness and decadence he saw among the clergy. He, however, sought to reform the Church from within, founding the Order of the Theatines.

This was the first congregation of regular clergy. Its aims were to preach sound doctrine, to tend the poor and the sick, to restore frequent use of the sacraments and to inspire better priestly conduct.

Born into the nobility of Vicenza as Gaetano dei Conti di Tiene, Cajetan lost his father at two. His mother brought him up to be both studious and devout.

After becoming a doctor in civil and canon law at Padua in 1504, he was protonotary to Pope Julius II in Rome from 1506 to 1513. Ordained in 1516, he returned to Vicenza two years later.

In Rome he had been associated with a group of zealous clergy styling themselves the Oratory of Divine Love. Back in Vicenza, he entered the Oratory of St Jerome and founded a hospital for incurables.

“In the Oratory,” he said, “we try to serve God by worship; in our hospital we may say that we actually find Him.” He went on to create hospitals in Verona and Venice.

Distressed by what he saw of the clergy, Cajetan returned to Rome in 1523 to confer with his friends in the Oratory of Divine Love. These included Pietro Carafa, Bishop of Chieti, a fiercely intransigent prelate who would be elected Pope Paul IV in 1555. With Carafa, Cajetan established in 1524 a new order, naming them the Theatines, after the Latin name for Chieti (Theate Marricinorum). There was particular emphasis on poverty and on thorough biblical training.

Carafa became the first superior-general, though Cajetan filled that office from 1530 to 1533. Perhaps due to Carafa’s uncompromising nature, the order did not immediately flourish. Moreover, it had to flee to Venice when the Emperor Charles V sacked Rome in 1527.

After 1533 Carafa sent Cajetan first to Verona, and then to Naples, where the Theatines gradually became respected for their stand against the city’s corruption and indifference to the poor. Cajetan established pawnshops which were run purely for the benefit of their users.

Among the Theatines at Naples from 1547 was the Englishman Thomas Goldwell, who had fled from Henry VIII’s regime. In 1555, under Queen Mary, he was appointed Bishop of Asaph, before once again being obliged to leave England under Queen Elizabeth. From 1561 Goldwell was briefly superior-general at Naples. He would live to be the last survivor of Mary’s bishops.

For 250 years the Theatines flourished in western Europe, as well as conducting foreign missions. In the 19th century, however, they fell into decline. In 2005 they numbered only some 200 religious, mainly in Spain and South America.

[spunkets]

Re: The Gutenberg Bible was being printed from 1454 on in Mainz, Germany.

"And yet people hand copied Bibles until. . . well, today. People in the last few centuries did it whe they had little money or as an act of devotion. The Brethren - a modern day cult - copies NTs by hand, for instance.

The contention was that Bibles were not available to be read by folks, because of their rarety caused by the limitations imposed by being a large handwritten article.

[Salvation]

**large handwritten article.**

Would not that have been a large handwritten scroll in the beginning?

[Salvation]

http://www.ideafinder.com/features/everwonder/won-printbook.htm

The first mass produced printed book was the Bible, a version based on the Latin edition from about 380 AD.. The Bible was printed at Mainz, Germany by Johannes Gutenberg from 1452 -1455.. Although German bibliographers claim that it was may also have been finished and perfected by Johann Fust, a wealthy financier who gained Gutenberg’s share of the business in a lawsuit; and Peter Schöffer, Gutenberg’s assistant.

The oldest surviving Bible printed with movable type is often called the Gutenberg Bible (named after its printer Johannes Gutenberg), or the 42-line Bible (so called because with few exceptions, each page has 42 lines of print), or the Mazarin Bible (because the first copy to recapture attention in 1760 was found in the library of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, in Paris).

[spunkets]

"Wycliffe was dead for more than 40 years (of a stroke) when his bones were burned. He was never charged with, tried for, or burned for translating the Bible since that wasn’t a crime.

Translating the Bible w/o permisssion was a crime. It was heresy. Pope Martin V ordered his Bibles, books, writings, and bones burned for the crime of heresy.

[spunkets]

I think a large book would be a collection of many scrolls.

[Natural Law]

"I am not going to pretend the persecutions, Inquisition, and burnings at stakes etc. did not happen."

Your errors are in pretending to know something of them and insinuating that they were a uniquely Catholic phenomenon. You would do yourself a great favor to stop getting your history from the internet.

Peace be with you.

[Natural Law]

"As to the Blessed Henry Newman, and his observations about learning from history, I recommend to him Foxe’s Book of Martyrs..."

To insinuate that the Blessed John Henry Newman was ignorant of Foxes' work is preposterous. The Blessed John Henry Newman (1801 - 1890) was originally an evangelical Oxford academic and priest in the Church of England. In 1845 he left the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church where he was eventually granted the rank of cardinal by Pope Leo XIII.

I am very confident that the Blessed John Henry Newman saw Foxes Book of Martyrs for what it was, a highly distorted and one sided piece of Reformation propaganda. It has all of the agenda and veracity of "The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk".

Peace be with you

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“Quite right, I briefly confused Tyndale (murdered for his Bible translation and distribution) with Wycliffe.”

Uh, no, your confusion is apparently longterm and not brief. Tyndale was not executed for translating anything. All reputable historians agree on that point. Just read David Daniell’s biography of Tyndale. I did. Hence, I don’t make the mistake you’re making.

“Here was Wycliffe’s fate, also indefensible:”

Actually it was quite defensible.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“The contention was that Bibles were not available to be read by folks, because of their rarety caused by the limitations imposed by being a large handwritten article.”

And yet the evidence shows that contention to be silly at best. Yes, there were fewer books and they were very expensive because the materials used and time they took to make. Yet, by the late Middle Ages, books were being produced in huge quantities - even by hand.

Ever hear of Uwe Neddermeyer’s Von der Handschrift zum gedruckten Buch, Schriftlichkeit und Leseinteresse im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit,
Quantitative und qualitative Aspekte (Buchwissenschaftliche Beiträge aus dem deutschen Bucharchiv München 61, Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1998)? Ever? No, probably not. I bet no Protestant here ever has. He demonstrates that there were many more mss. Bibles than we realize today.

Ever hear of Andrew Gow’s articles “Challenging the Protestant Paradigm. Bible Reading in Lay and Urban Contexts of the Later Middle Ages.” in: Thomas Heffernan, ed., Scripture and Pluralism. The Study of the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Leiden: Brill, 2005, 161-191 ? or
“The Contested History of a Book: The German Bible of the Later Middle Ages and Reformation in Legend, Ideology, and Scholarship,” in: The Journal of Hebrew Scripture 9,13 (2009), 1-37?

Ever? I bet not.

Maybe those works are too new for you. How about Erich Zimmermann’s 1938 monograph which showed clerical, noble and commoner ownership of Bibles and books of the Bible in the fifteenth century. He shows, for instance, that the scribal workshop of Diebold Lauber in Hagenau, active 1427–1467, produced a large number of Bible manuscripts. Many of the clients were city merchants and artists. The book was called Die deutsche Bibel im religiösen Leben des Spätmittelalters (Potsdam, 1938).

Ever hear of it? Ever? Even once?

The simple fact is I know what I am talking about while the Protestants here seem to never have read even one single serious, reputable work on the subject. Not one.

[Natural Law]

"Actually it was quite defensible."

The error comes when we presume to judge historical characters and events, not in the context of their times, but in the context of our delicate, first world, 21st century sensibilities.

Peace be with you

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“Translating the Bible w/o permisssion was a crime. It was heresy.”

False. No action is heresy other than to hold to an erroneous doctrinal belief after being formally corrected by proper religious authority. That, and that alone, is heresy. No act of translation is heresy nor can it be heresy. An act of translation might be an example of someone spreading heresy if what is translated is heretical, but the act of translating itself cannot be heresy. In other words, drinking a class of water because you’re thirsting cannot be heresy. Changing a flat tire because it is flat cannot be heresy. Putting on a suit for a job interview cannot be heresy. Translating a document, even a sacred one, into the vernacular, cannot be heresy in itself. It just can’t be and it never once.

“Pope Martin V ordered his Bibles, books, writings, and bones burned for the crime of heresy.”

Yes, because he believed and spread heresies such as dominion and false theories about the Eucharist. When you read through some of the works of
J. Loserth (especially what he edited) you will have a better idea of what Wycliffe believed and taught.

Most likely, just like every other Protestant I have ever encountered who claimed he knew something about Wycliffe, you have probably never read anything Wycliffe ever wrote. Is that right? Which of the following books have you read?:

De actibus animae, De civili dominio, De ecclesia, De ente in communi and De ente primo in communi, De ente praedicamentali, De eucharistia, De materia et forma, De officio regis, De potestate papae, De scientia Dei, Purgans errores circa veritates in communi, Purgans errores circa universalia in communi, De intelleccione Dei, and De volucione Dei, Summa insolubilium, Tractatus de logica, Tractatus de universalibus, De Trinitate, Tractatus de universalibus, De veritate Sacrae Scripturae,
Trialogus.

Ever even heard of any of them? Any at all?

[spunkets]

Re: The contention was that Bibles were not available to be read by folks, because of their rarety caused by the limitations imposed by being a large handwritten article.”

"And yet the evidence shows that contention to be silly at best. Yes, there were fewer books and they were very expensive because the materials used and time they took to make. Yet, by the late Middle Ages, books were being produced in huge quantities - even by hand.

That was Salvation's contention. Nevertheless, printing presses allow a larger volume of books to be printed with a much lower cost in man hours. The books therefore are cheaper and are more available with printing tech.

[spunkets]

Re: Translating the Bible w/o permisssion was a crime. It was heresy.

" False. No action is heresy other than to hold to an erroneous doctrinal belief after being formally corrected by proper religious authority.

You're right; I was just being stupid.

"Most likely, just like every other Protestant I have ever encountered who claimed he knew something about Wycliffe... Is that right?"

No it is not. I never claimed to know anything about him. What I said was that his bones were ordered dug up and burned by Pope Martin V. Now I'll say something about his work. He preached Calvinist type doctrines.

"he believed and spread heresies such as dominion and false theories about the Eucharist.

Heresy according to who?

[Alamo-Girl]

Let’s see if the discussion can become a little more objective and substantive ... and honoring of Him who is, indisputably, head of the Church, Jesus Christ.

Amen. Praise God!!!

Thank you for your encouragements, dear Belteshazzar!

[Alamo-Girl]

Seems to me there's always been a lot of information "out there" - good, bad, ugly, fraudulent, etc. Some of it was written, some word of mouth.

But I trust God to look after His own words to accomplish His own will.

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper [in the thing] whereto I sent it. - Isaiah 55:11

The words of the LORD [are] pure words: [as] silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. - Psalms 12:6-7

And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers. - John 10:4-5

Jesus is the Good Shepherd. We hear His voice.

Peace be with you

And you.

[boatbums]

It is very sad to see, but you are experiencing right now what some of those genuine Christians did back then when they DARED to face off with the ruling religious power of their day. Fortunately for us, this power is no longer theirs to wield and they have failed to obliterate or rewrite all of history to hide the many UN-Christian acts done ostensibly FOR the name of Christ. The truth will ALWAYS win.

It is plain to see that God always kept a remnant that did not bow the knee to idols and false gods. It was true in ancient Israel's day and is still true all the way through to today. What matters MOST to God is the heart of man and a "broken and contrite heart He will not despise" (Psalm 51:17). What God requires of us has NEVER changed - because HE never changes - and what does He require of us?

He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

We can look at how the Lord Jesus behaved while physically here on earth, how his disciples behaved, to know how he would have his church, his body, behave on earth as we physically represent him to the world. Those who acted and still act without humility, gentleness, goodness, mercy and love do NOT truly represent him. He wants us to walk in truth because He IS truth, but he would never bully or force someone to believe on him. Those who did so and those who still act that way now are NOT representing Him but their own self-interests and pride. When pride rules the heart, no amount of truth can penetrate.

All we can do is to pray for them and not allow their negativity and anger to effect us in our walk with the Lord.

[Just mythoughts]

Where is it Written that flesh beings are in charge of declaring anybody a ‘saint’? What does the word ‘saint’ literally mean in the first original usage? Would Catholics refuse to enter heaven IF they were greeted by Luther at Heaven’s gate? I thought we are told to NOT judge, lest we be judged...

[boatbums]

You mean THIS Catejan:

Writing prior to the canon decision at the Council of Trent, Cajetan wrote:

"Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage." -Cardinal Cajetan (16th century)

Cajetan recognized that though the deuterocanonicals may be called canonical, they were not recognized as canonical in the same sense as the other Old Testament books. (http://thesearewritten.blogspot.com/2007/08/cardinal-cajetan-on-biblical-canon.html

It appears to me that WRT the genuine canon of the Bible, Catejan actually AGREED with Luther. It should be plain that, contrary to the legend, Luther did NOT remove books from the Bible after all - he placed the Apocryphal books in a seperate section of his German translation as did the Septuagint. He was closer to orthodoxy than Roman Catholicism was and is.

[Persevero]

“Actually it was quite defensible.”

Exhuming a man’s body and burning it is quite defensible?

You and I are not speaking the same language.

[Persevero]

” a highly distorted and one sided piece of Reformation propaganda.”

I am very discouraged and disappointed to read that. If you can not accept the historical record of the martyrdom of these precious saints, I can’t really discourse with you anymore. How anyone can trample their testimony and sacrifice is absolutely beyond me.