The Charges Brought by Loyal Catholics
The charges laid against the Church in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries came largely from faithful and pious Catholics. The first and most painful was that the Church loved money and accumulated too much of it. Later writers, including Catholic historians, have repeatedly noted that the Church's immense wealth stirred public envy and resentment on one side and damaged the character of its own officials on the other.
The Wealth of the Church
In 1522 the Diet of Nuremberg compiled a list of complaints against the Church known as the Hundred Grievances. It claimed that the Church owned half of the wealth of Germany. Catholic historians usually estimate a third of the property in Germany and a fifth in France, while one fully empowered parliamentary delegate in 1502 reckoned that three quarters of all French wealth belonged to the Church. No reliable statistics exist to test these figures. What is certain is that a third of the land of Italy formed the Papal States, and that elsewhere the Church also held valuable estates.
The book adds a general observation. In every society most talent ends up concentrated in a minority, and sooner or later most property and power gather in the same hands. In the Middle Ages wealth was concentrated in the Church because it performed vital services and was served by capable men. In this view the Reformation was, among other things, a redistribution of wealth that the Church had gathered through its control of property, land, and revenue.
How the Church Acquired Its Land
Six causes explain how so much land came under church ownership:
- Many people who left property in their wills set aside a share for the Church as a kind of fire insurance. Since the Church helped draw up and validate wills, its officials could encourage such bequests.
- Church property was safer from thieves, soldiers, and governments, so some owners placed their estates under church protection and received them back at death. Others handed over all or part of their land on the condition that the Church would support them in old age, so the Church acted as a form of old-age insurance.
- Crusaders sold, mortgaged, or entrusted their lands to the Church in order to raise money for their expeditions.
- Hundreds of thousands of acres of wasteland were cleared and cultivated by the monastic orders and then belonged to the Church.
- Land that came into church hands could not be transferred, or could be transferred only with great difficulty.
- Church property was usually exempt from taxation. Some kings ignored excommunication and taxed it anyway or seized part of it by legal devices.
Rulers in northern Europe did not object so strongly to church wealth when the income from estates and donations was spent inside their borders. What angered them was seeing northern gold flow toward Rome in thousands of small streams.
Why the Church Needed Money
The Church regarded itself as the main guardian of moral order, social stability, education, literature, scholarship, and art, and states depended on it for all of these. Meeting those expectations required a vast and expensive organization, and the Church paid for it through taxes and collections.
Bishops, Cardinals, and the Worldly Clergy
A church could not be governed by prayer alone. Many bishops were both civil and spiritual rulers of their territory. Most were appointed by secular authorities and came from aristocratic families used to luxury and lax in morals. They levied taxes and spent like princes, and sometimes put on armor and led armies, which degraded the image of Christian saints. Cardinals were rarely chosen for piety. They were selected for wealth, for ties to a political power, or for the ability to manage a political office. They saw themselves less as monks bound by religious vows than as politicians and senators of a rich and powerful state. In many cases they were neither priests nor spiritual leaders, and they did not let the red hat deprive them of life's pleasures. The Church had sacrificed Christian poverty to power, and its servants, absorbed in worldly affairs, often became as petty and money-minded as the agents of contemporary governments.
Corruption at the Roman Court
Corruption lay partly in human nature and partly in the habits of the age. Secular courts yielded shamelessly to money, and no election was as heavily bribed as that of Charles V as emperor. Apart from that single exception, the largest bribes were paid at the court of Rome. Fixed and reasonable fees existed for the business of the papal administration, but the greed of officials raised them to as much as twenty times the lawful amount. Almost any prohibition could be lifted and almost any offence, even any sin, could be pardoned if the motive offered was sufficient.
Aeneas Sylvius wrote, before he became pope, that in Rome everything was for sale and nothing could be obtained without money. A generation later Savonarola called the Roman Church a harlot who sells her favors for gold, and a generation after that Erasmus remarked that the shamelessness of the papal court had reached its peak. Ludwig von Pastor, himself a Catholic historian, wrote that deep corruption pervaded the officials of the papal administration, that the amounts demanded in gifts and bribes were beyond measure, and that officials altered and even forged documents. He concluded that complaints about bribery rose from every part of Christendom.
The Sale of Offices
In the fifteenth-century Church there was little room for the virtue of poverty. Almost every appointment, from the small payment needed to become a priest to the huge sums cardinals paid for promotion, required greasing the palms of superiors. One method by which popes raised money was selling offices in the church administration, or appointing to church posts, even the cardinalate, people willing to contribute heavily to church expenses. The book gives these examples, with its own dollar equivalents:
- Alexander VI created 80 new offices and received 760 ducats ($19,000) from each person appointed.
- Julius II created a college or office of 101 secretaries and earned a total of 74,000 ducats from selling its posts.
- Leo X named 60 chamberlains and 141 squires of the papal court and received 202,000 ducats from them.
The salaries paid to these officials worked, for both giver and receiver, like the yearly advance payment on a contract. Luther considered this the most corrupt form of trade in church positions.
Pluralism and Absentee Holders
In thousands of cases the holders of a benefice, whether a parish, abbey, or bishopric whose income paid for their pleasures, lived far away from it. One man was often an absentee pensioner of several posts, a practice known as pluralism. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, the future Alexander VI, drew an annual income of 7,000 ducats ($1,750,000) from his various offices. His rival Cardinal della Rovere, the future Julius II, was at one time archbishop of Avignon and bishop of Bologna, Lausanne, Coutances, Viviers, Mende, Ostia, and Velletri, as well as abbot of Nonantola and Grottaferrata.
Through this system the Church supported its main officials and, in many cases, scholars, poets, and scientists. Petrarch, a sharp critic of the Avignon popes, lived on the income of a post without duties that they gave him. Erasmus, who mocked the follies of the Church, regularly drew a fixed income from it. Copernicus, who struck the deadliest blow at medieval Christianity, lived for years on the income of church posts that demanded little time and left him free for scientific research.
Decay in the Monasteries and Religious Orders
A heavier charge than pluralism was the moral failure of individual clergy. Bishop Torcello said in 1485 that the morals of the clergy were corrupt and that they had become a burden and a nuisance to the public. Of the four orders founded by the late thirteenth century (Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians), all except the last had abandoned virtue to a shameful degree.
The rules of religious life had been written in a time of fervent belief. Now they weighed too heavily on human nature, which was steadily freeing itself from fear of the supernatural. Thousands of monks and friars, whose shared wealth freed them from manual labor, neglected their religious duties, left their cloisters, wandered, drank in taverns, and went in search of love affairs. The Dominican John Bromyard wrote of his fellow friars that men who should be fathers of the poor had grown greedy for rich food and for sweet sleep, that very few came to morning prayers or Mass, and that religious houses were now called brothels and places for entertainers. A century later Erasmus repeated the charge: many monasteries of men and women differed little from public brothels.
Exceptions and Official Reports
There were exceptions. Petrarch gave a favorable and fair picture of the discipline, piety, and devotion of the Carthusian monastery in which his brother lived. Some houses in Holland and eastern Germany still kept the spirit of piety and study that had produced the Brethren of the Common Life and the book The Imitation of Christ. Even so, Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim around 1490, accused the monks of that part of Germany in strong and probably exaggerated language. He said they ignored their vows as if they had never sworn them, spent the day in coarse talk and idle chatter, gave their time to games and gluttony, openly kept private property and lived in private houses, and neither feared nor loved God.
A papal adviser named Guijono went to France in 1503 to reform the Benedictine houses and came back with a sad report. Many monks gambled, swore, crowded the taverns, carried daggers, hoarded money, committed adultery, and lived like revelers. He said that if he were to describe all he had seen, the account would be very long. As discipline collapsed, many monks stopped doing the good works that had earned them public trust: helping the poor, caring for the sick and travelers, and teaching. In 1516 Pope Leo X himself said that the lack of discipline in French monasteries and the unruly conduct of the monks had reached the point where neither king, nobles, nor people showed them any respect.
A recent Catholic historian, probably speaking too strongly, summed up the situation around 1490 this way: the chronicles, the reproaches of moralists, the satires of poets, papal bulls, and synod decrees all say the same thing, namely the decay of monastic life and the loss of order, discipline, and morality. Judicial inquiries into the larger monasteries showed constant disorder, the Carthusians' bad reputation was widespread, and houses of prayer were turning into centers of revelry and disorder.
The Secular Clergy and the Question of Celibacy
Judged with some tolerance, the secular clergy stood better than the monks and friars. The main fault of parish priests was ignorance. Their pay was so small and their work so heavy that they had neither savings nor time to study, and, to judge by the devotion of ordinary people, they were generally treated with respect and affection.
Breaking the vow of celibacy was common. Church court records from England show how common:
- In Norfolk in 1499, 15 of 73 recorded cases of unchastity involved priests.
- In Ripon, 24 of 126 cases involved priests.
- In Lambeth, 9 of 58 cases involved priests.
Priests, who made up less than two percent of the population, therefore accounted for a share of offenders far out of proportion to their numbers. Some confessors made improper demands of penitent women. Thousands of priests kept concubines, and in Germany almost all did. In Rome priests kept several concubines, and according to some reports there were six thousand prostitutes in a city of a hundred thousand people.
Again the Catholic historian is cited. When the highest ranks of the clergy are in such a condition, it is no surprise that all kinds of disorder spread among monks and secular priests, and the salt of the earth had lost its savor. It would be a mistake to think that corruption was worse in Rome than elsewhere, since documents show the same corruption in every city of the Italian peninsula. Contemporary writers lamented that the clergy had lost their influence everywhere and in many places were valued by no one. The moral decay was so great that there were calls to allow priests to marry.
Concubinage as a Protest Against Celibacy
In fairness to these priests, the book argues that their concubinage should be seen less as plain licentiousness than as a general revolt against the law of celibacy that Pope Gregory VII had imposed on the clergy in 1074 against their wishes. After the schism of 1054, the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches let their priests marry, and Roman clergy now wanted the same right. Because their own church law forbade it, they turned to concubinage. The record shows how widely this was accepted:
- In 1428 Bishop Ardouin of Angers reported that the clergy of his diocese did not consider concubinage a sin and made no attempt to hide it.
- Around 1500 in Pomerania people regarded such unions as unobjectionable and even encouraged them to protect their own wives and daughters. At public festivals the best seats were given, as usual, to priests and their partners.
- In Schleswig a bishop who tried to stop the practice was driven from his seat in 1499.
- At the Council of Constance, Cardinal Zabarella suggested that if priests could not be stopped from keeping concubines, they should be allowed to marry.
- Emperor Sigismund, in a message to the Council of Basel in 1431, said that giving priests the right to marry would purify public morals.
- Platina, a contemporary historian and Vatican librarian, quotes Aeneas Sylvius as holding that celibacy was good but marriage of priests was better.
The Sale of Indulgences
The grievance that finally set off the revolution of the Reformation was the sale of indulgences.
The Theory Behind Indulgences
According to the doctrine of the Church, Christ gave Peter the power to bind and loose on earth (Matthew 16:19), Peter passed it to the bishops, and the bishops to priests. Priests could therefore absolve penitents who confessed their sins, but they set a penance and could not remove it. Very few penitents completed their assigned penance before death, so after death the soul still had to spend time in purgatory, which a merciful God had set up as a temporary hell to cleanse souls.
Many saints, through holiness and martyrdom, had earned merits more than sufficient to cover their own failings, and Christ's death had added an endless supply. In the Church's theory these merits formed a treasury of merits whose key was held by the pope, who could draw on it to cover all or part of a repentant sinner's penance. Penances usually consisted of many prayers, alms, pilgrimages, taking part in crusades against the Turks or other unbelievers, donating money, and doing public works such as draining swamps or building roads, bridges, hospitals, and churches.
From Penance to Payment
Paying a fine in place of punishment was an old tradition in secular courts, so when the Church adopted it for penance it caused no protest. A penitent who confessed and was forgiven could pay money toward church expenses and receive a partial or full exemption. This exemption was not permission to commit future sins. It shortened the soul's time in purgatory by a day, a month, or a year. An indulgence did not remove the guilt of sin, which the priest forgave in confession. It remitted all or part of the temporary, not eternal, penalties of sins whose guilt had already been forgiven through confession and penance.
Soon this subtle theory took a different form, through the naivety of the public and the greed of the pardoners who distributed indulgences. These agents were allowed to keep a percentage of the money, so some stopped stressing repentance, confession, and prayer and let buyers treat the indulgence as an exemption from everything, tied only to the money they paid. About 1450 Thomas Gascoigne, chancellor of Oxford, complained that sinners now said they did not care how much evil they did, because a confession and a papal indulgence bought for four or six pence would clear them. He added that pardoners were scattered across the country and sold indulgences for two pence, sometimes for two drinks of wine or beer, or even as payment to a prostitute.
Repeated Condemnations and Continued Abuse
Boniface IX in 1392, Martin V in 1420, and Sixtus IV in 1478 repeatedly condemned these abuses and misreadings, but they needed revenue too badly to take effective action. They had issued so many bulls for so many occasions that educated people lost confidence in them and accused the Church of shamelessly exploiting simple faith and hope. In some cases, such as the indulgences issued by Julius II in 1510 and Leo X in 1513, the official wording could be read only as a financial transaction.
A senior Franciscan friar described with anger how chests were placed in all German churches so that people who could not travel to Rome for the Jubilee year of 1450 could put money in them and receive the same indulgences. Half a century before Luther, this friar warned the German people that Rome was draining their savings through indulgences and other means.
The Catholic historian explains how the abuse arose. Believers who made their usual confession and accepted the assigned penance as the sure means of forgiveness were often asked for a cash donation according to their means. This gift was meant for good works and was only secondary, but in some cases it became the main condition of pardon, and financial need replaced goodness of soul as the real aim. Although the wording of papal bulls did not depart from Church doctrine and confession, repentance, and good works remained the essential conditions, the financial side was plain, and the need for cash donations was placed first in the most shameless way. Indulgences gradually became financial deals and led to disputes between the Church and the secular powers, who always wanted a share.
Masses for the Dead and the Complaint of the Poor
Priests also accepted fees and gifts for celebrating Masses that were believed to reduce the suffering of souls in purgatory, and this became as commercial as the sale of indulgences. Devout people paid large sums to release the soul of a friend or acquaintance, or to lighten their own suffering in the afterlife. The poor complained that since they could not afford indulgences or pay priests to pray, wealth, not richness of spirit, must be what wins the kingdom of God. Christopher Columbus, while regretting it, praised money and said that whoever has it can send souls to heaven.
Other Grievances
Many other complaints added to the indictment:
- Clergy were exempt from civil laws and obligations, and church courts were lenient with, or ignored, the crimes of priests. In 1522 the Diet of Nuremberg declared that sending a clerical criminal to a church court would not produce justice. It warned that if the clergy did not submit to secular courts, the people would soon rise against the German churches, and that uprising was in fact already beginning.
- Religion was separated from morality, and stress was placed on ritual rather than good conduct, although the reformers were more guilty of this than the Church.
- Religion was drowned in outward ceremony and formality.
- Monks were lazy and idle.
- Simple people were deceived with false miracles and false relics.
- The powers of excommunication and interdict were abused.
- Clergy censored publications.
- The Inquisition spied on people and acted harshly and unjustly.
- Money collected for crusades against the Turks was misused for other purposes.
- Corrupt priests claimed to be the only agents able to perform all the sacraments except baptism.
Anticlerical Feeling and the Failure of Reform
All these factors fed the anticlerical mood of Catholic Europe at the start of the sixteenth century. Pastor wrote that the hatred and contempt of the people for corrupt clergy was no small factor in the great apostasy. In 1515 a bishop of London complained that people had sunk so deeply into hostile unbelief that they would curse a priest even if he were as innocent as Abel. Erasmus reported that among ordinary people the words priest, monk, and cleric were among the worst insults. In Vienna, the priesthood, once one of the most sought-after positions, found no applicants in the twenty years before the Reformation.
Throughout Christendom the cry for reform, from head to members, was loud. Passionate Italians such as Arnold of Brescia, Joachim of Fiore, and Savonarola of Florence attacked the Church's abuses without leaving the Catholic faith, and two of them were burned alive. Even so, sincere Christians kept hoping the reform would come from the Church's own loyal sons. Humanists such as Erasmus, Colet, More, and Budé feared the chaos that open revolt against the Church might unleash. The break of the Greek Church from Rome had already done great damage, and any further tear in the seamless robe of Christ would endanger Christianity itself.
The Church tried repeatedly, often in complete good faith, to purify its members and courts and to accept moral standards higher than those of the masses. The monasteries struggled many times to restore their discipline. But human nature overcame all of this. General councils tried to reform the Church and were defeated by the popes. Popes took up reform and were defeated by the cardinals and the habits of their own administration. In 1516 Leo X himself lamented the futility of all such attempts. Enlightened churchmen such as Nicholas of Cusa achieved local reforms, but even these did not last.
The attacks of friends and enemies on the Church's failings stirred the schools, shook the pulpits, and flowed like a flood through literature. Year after year anger and thought rose until they broke the barrier of respect and tradition, and a religious revolution, wider and deeper than any political change of the modern world, swept across Europe.