THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
CONFRATERNITIES, RELIGIOUS.
Origin and Development (§ 1).
The Modern System (§ 2).
In the Nineteenth Century (§ 3).
By this term are now usually understood organizations of men and women in the Roman Catholic Church which are formed under ecclesiastical sanction, often with a definite rule of life, for the purpose of devotion to some special good work, doctrine, or saint, or merely of obtaining a special grace.
They seem to have derived their
I. Origin initial impulse (under a form which and Devel- has no historical continuity with the
opment. present) from England, where, it appears, there were as early as the beginning of the eighth century associations for mutual intercession among the members of one monastic community, or of two or more together, sometimes including outsiders. St. Boniface introduced this custom on the Continent. A variant of it appears in the undertaking of the bishops and abbots at national and provincial synods to unite their chapters and monasteries for this purpose; the first documentary evidence of this is from the Synod of Attigny in 762, though the custom is doubtless earlier. It was not long before the laity sought to have a share in the spiritual advantages of these systematic intercessions, those of the monks being especially valued. The reception of laymen into these confraternities was the return for notable gifts or services. The names of members were inscribed in what was often called the " book of hfe " (see Liber Vit^), which took in a manner the place of the ancient diptychs as lists of the living or dead Christians for whom the Holy Sacrifice was offered. The system spread throughout the whole Western Church, and seems to have attained its greatest strength under the influence of the Cistercian order. As the number of members of a confraternity increased into the thousands, the advantages of special prayer for the individual (whether in life or after death) decrea;sed in proportion; and the old confraternities, though in some cases they maintained their existence, gradually lost their importance for the religious life.
The modern brotherhood system dates from the period of the rise of the cities and their industries — the trade gilds, though serving an 2. The Mod- economic purpose, were usually under ern System, the patronage of some saint — and of the almost simultaneous development of the mendicant orders. Bonaventura is said to have founded (1267) the Confraternity of the Gonfalonieri in Paris, for the purpose of ransoming Christians held in captivity among the Mohammedans. Others attribute it to St. Dominic; but the establishment of the Confraternity of the Rosary is wrongly ascribed to the latter, and the most that can be said with certainty is that the first real development of the more modern confraternities took place under the influence of the mendicant orders. Their special aim was the union of people living in the world for some definite spiritual purpose not already of universal obligation. It is possible that the Carmelites were the first to crystallize this general tendency, by forming those who
wished to unite with them in devotion to the Virgin Mary and to receive the scapular supposed to have been revealed in a vision to St. Simon Stock (at Cambridge, 1251) into the Confraternity of the Scapular of our Lady of Mount Carmel. Tradition names the Servites as the next to follow this pattern, with their Confraternity of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. Similar confraternities attached to numbers of houses of mendicants were soon striving, under the leadership of the friars, to attain greater holiness, and were attracted by the expectation of many graces in accordance with the papal indulgences. How widely they had extended by the second half of the fourteenth century is shown by Wyclif's sharp attacks on them; he scourges the hypocrisy, the self-seeking, the commercial spirit of expecting a quid pro quo from heaven, which had already crept into them. They had their real popular development in the fifteenth century, when nearly every mendicant house had its special association, with a special altar in the church, before which the members assembled at least once a month, often once a week. In return for their prayers and alms, they were entitled to rich indulgences and to a share in the prayers and good works of the friars; in case of death masses were said for them, and the brotherhood followed them to the grave, sometimes paying the expenses of the funeral. The particular feasts of the confraternity were celebrated with much pomp, and as an additional attraction a social meal was held, which in places led to great disorders before the close of the century. The services of the saints were now for the first time specialized, as patrons in various kinds of danger or necessity; and nothing helped so much to make a new saint popular as the foundation of a brotherhood in his honor. The entrance fee — to say nothing of other payments — ranged from one to twenty florins in G£;rmany for example, or at the present value sf money say from four to eighty dollars; from which it may be seen both how highly the people valued these religious privileges and what vast sums must have passed through the hands of the directors. Luther sternly rebuked their abuses, and pointed men to the real confraternity of Christ's Church in their place; and in a short time they disappeared from all places which were conquered by the Reformation, except a few which were recast in a Protestant shape or served secular purposes. Even in the Roman Catholic countries their influence decayed. The Jesuits recognizing the service they could render to the Counterreformation, infused fresh life into them. The confusion of the seventeenth century was unfavorable to the growth of brotherhoods, though the great League of the Sacred Heart arose toward the end of it, and in the rationalizing eighteenth they seem to have had but a precarious existence. Still, Vienna had in the year 1779 no less than 116 confraternities, with property valued at nearly 700,000 florins. In the early part of the nineteenth century, partly through the recovered power of the Jesuits, they took a fresh start, and ultimately reached a height never before attained. They have learned some things from Protestant polemics; whereas in the Middle Ages the chief duty of the members was to pay