The Late-Medieval Church

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The Late-Medieval Church

Complexities.

The late-medieval church was vast and complex, the single largest and most diverse political institution of the Renaissance. In theory, the church's governmental structure was a pyramid in which the papacy sat at the top. The pope and his officialdom at Rome supervised the activities of scores of bishops and archbishops throughout Europe, who, in turn, oversaw thousands of priests and their parishes. Numerous religious orders of monks, nuns, and friars scattered throughout Europe often stood outside the structure of the provinces of the church known as diocese. Over the centuries, these orders had amassed significant wealth, and many enjoyed exemptions from the control of Europe's bishops and archbishops. Most owed allegiance to their order, which the papacy ultimately supervised; that tie could be tenuous when hundreds of miles separated an abbey or a monastery from the church's capital. The administrative complexities of the Roman Church may have been considerable, but so were the numerous roles the institution fulfilled in society. In the spiritual realm, the church provided a necessary link between God and humankind by virtue of its performance of the sacraments and rituals. For the orthodox, there was no salvation outside the church. In the political realm, the institution was an international force that jealously maintained its power against the encroachment of kings and princes. And locally, the church performed numerous practical functions in society. It administered an effective and sophisticated judicial system to which, in theory, all Europeans could bring cases. As Europe's largest landholder, it was a financial powerhouse, levying taxes and collecting revenues that were the envy of many princes. Its monasteries and convents produced rich storehouses of agricultural goods that were sometimes sold on the urban market; many of these institutions ran breweries and distilleries that could compete more successfully against private concerns because of the church's widespread exemption from local taxation. And finally, religious orders like the Carthusians and the Cistercians were important breeders of sheep and livestock who influenced the international market in wool.

Anticlericalism.

Its worldly wealth and power, though, subjected the church to criticism. Little evidence exists to suggest that corruption was more widespread within the Renaissance church than it had been in previous centuries, but high-profile crises like the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism made the church more vulnerable to critics. A more general anticlerical spirit, motivated by the hatred of the clergy's special rights and privileges, grew as well. The corruptions people identified—sexual immorality among the clergy, the holding of multiple offices by clerics, and the selling of dispensations from church law, to name just a few—had long existed. Rising dissatisfaction with these centuries-old problems, though, can be seen in the attacks on the wealth and sexual immorality of the clergy that litter great works of Renaissance literature like Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron or Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. These criticisms also came from famous preachers like St. Bernard of Siena (1380–1444) and St. John of Capistrano (1386–1456), who rode a high tide to popularity, in part, by criticizing the immorality of the church. And more generally, an anticlerical spirit rested just below the surface of late-medieval society, where political circumstances might bring it to life. In the frequent peasant revolts that erupted in Europe after the Black Death, hatred of the clergy sometimes boiled over to produce spectacular attacks on priests, bishops, and archbishops. In 1381, for example, English peasants seized and decapitated the archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury who, as England's Lord Chancellor, fulfilled both important clerical and secular functions. Anticlerical violence seems always to have been most pronounced in those places where, as in the case of Sudbury, clerics exercised both important secular and religious powers, proof that the mingling of worldly and religious power so in evidence within the Renaissance church could be an uneasy mix for Europeans.

Avignon.

For most of the fourteenth century both the possibilities and limitations of papal power were brilliantly displayed, not in Rome, but in the city of Avignon, just inside the southern borders of France. The period in which the papacy ruled from Avignon lasted from 1309 until 1378 and was known even in the fourteenth century as the "Babylonian Captivity," a phrase that likened the papacy's relationship to France with Israel's bondage in Babylon. It was not a very accurate portrayal of the Avignon Papacy. It is true that Pope Clement V (r. 1305–1314) moved there at the instigation of the French king, but the city was not technically a French possession. It belonged to the kingdom of Naples, and the church purchased it before setting up its capital there. The town did lie within France's boundaries, but the king was still several hundred miles to the north, unable to exert day-to-day influence over church administration. Instead France's dominance over the church was more subtle. All seven of the Avignon popes were French, and the College of Cardinals—the body charged with electing the pope—had a large contingent of Frenchmen, too. Still, except for the first Avignon pope, Clement V, the pontiffs elected in the city were bright and energetic, and they administered the church more effectively than it had been for some time. During this period the cost of papal government steadily rose. To create sufficient revenue to meet their expenses, the popes moved to centralize their administration of the church and to identify new sources of revenue. The papacy, for instance, reclaimed its rights of reservation, that is, the power to appoint clerics to key offices in the church. While vacant, the income from these offices flowed to the popes, and the papacy began to levy fees on those who wished to be appointed to them. To manage this system, a large bureaucracy developed in Avignon, and bribes became commonplace. For these reasons, Avignon became synonymous in the minds of Europe's rulers with corruption. Such feelings produced measures like the Statutes of Provisors (1351) in England, an act of Parliament that prohibited the pope from appointing non-English subjects to church offices. At Avignon, the church's dependence on revenues from the sale of indulgences grew, too. All these innovations in papal finance and government caused a decline in papal prestige and a growing distaste for the rising flow of wealth into the church's coffers.

HERETICAL CRITICISM

introduction: John Wycliffe was among many medieval heretics who denied transubstantiation, the notion that in communion the bread and wine is changed into the actual body and blood of Christ through the priest's consecration. This belief was later to be rejected as well by sixteenth-century Protestants. His Trialogus was a discussion between the figures Alithis, Pseudis, and Phronesis in which Wycliffe pointed out the illogicality of transubstantiation, because the bread used in the Eucharist could not be in the same place as the Body of Christ at the same time.

Alithis: I must request you, brother, to show still farther, from reason or Scripture, that there is no identification of the bread with the body of Christ … For I am no means pleased with the spurious writings which the moderns use, to prove an accident without a subject, because the church so teaches. Such evidence should satisfy no one.

Phronesis: As to identification, we must, in the first place, agree on what you mean by the term. It signifies God's making natures which are distinct in species or number, one and the same—as though, for instance, he should make the person of Peter to be one with Paul… For if A is identical with B, then both of them remain; since a thing which is destroyed is not made identical, but is annihilated, or ceases to be. And if both of them remain, then they differ as much as at first, and differ consequently in number, and so are not, in the sense given, the same …

Pseudis: In the first place, you cannot escape from this expository syllogism: First, This bread becomes corrupt, or is eaten by a mouse. Second, The same bread is the body of Christ. Third, Therefore the body of Christ does thus become corrupt, and is thus eaten;—and thus you are involved in inconsistency.

source: John Wycliffe, Trialogus, in Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe. Ed. Robert Vaughan (London: Blackburn and Pardon, 1845): 150, 152.

The Great Schism.

These problems paled in comparison to the dilemmas that arose after the papacy's return to Rome in 1378. Soon after he re-established papal government in the city, Pope Gregory XI died, and the College of Cardinals elected an Italian to assume the office as Urban VI. Within months, Urban's attacks on the worldliness and corruption of the church's cardinals had alienated many, and a faction of the college met to depose him. In his place they elected Cardinal Robert of Geneva who took the name Clement VII. Urban, for his part, refused to resign, and instead he excommunicated the rebel cardinals and their pope. He created a number of new, mostly Italian cardinals to replace them. Clement VII now refused to step down, and he left Rome for Avignon, where he and the majority of the original College of Cardinals set up a rival papal court. For almost forty years this Great Schism prevailed in the European church, with international politics determining which pope a specific nation recognized. England, Ireland, parts of Germany, and most of Italy remained loyal to the pope at Rome, while France, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Scotland recognized Avignon. The resulting confusion eroded the notion of the church as the sacred instrument of God on earth. Instead more and more people saw the church as a human institution. The schism thus helped to create an audience for the teachings of figures like John Wycliffe in England and John Huss in Bohemia, both of whom attacked the wealth and secular power of the church and instead insisted that Rome would do better to concentrate on its spiritual mission.

MILESTONES
in the Renaissance Papacy

1309:
The papacy moves to Avignon.: 1350:
A Jubilee is celebrated at Rome after the disaster of the Black Death.: 1378:
Gregory XI returns the papacy to Rome; after his death in the same year, the Great Schism begins.: 1415:
The Council of Constance deposes rival popes and resolves the crisis of the Great Schism.: 1450:
The first humanist pope, Nicholas V, founds the Vatican Library.: 1492:
Pope Alexander VI is elected pope. One of his three children will die suspiciously. His daughter, Lucrezia, will be married off to a series of important noblemen, and his son, Cesare, will conduct wars of conquest for the pope.: 1503:
Alexander VI dies and Cesare Borgia tries to take over the papal territories in central Italy; Julius II is elected pope and captures him.: 1506:
Pope Julius tears down St. Peter's Basilica and makes plans for a larger and more splendid building.: 1513:
Leo X, a member of the Medici family, assumes the office of the pope and continues construction of the Vatican.: 1520:
Leo X denounces Luther's teachings as heresy.: 1527:
Rome is sacked by imperial forces of Charles V. The destruction of the city is widespread and sends shock waves through Europe.: 1541:
The papacy grants official recognition to the Society of Jesus or Jesuits.: 1545:
Pope Paul III convenes the Council of Trent to reform the church and consider Protestant doctrines.: 1559:
Pope Paul IV establishes the Index of Prohibited Books, an organ of censorship in the Catholic Church.: 1575:
The pope pronounces a Roman Jubilee at Rome that is widely attended by Catholics from throughout Europe and symbolizes the resurgence of Catholicism following the Reformation.: 1585:
Sixtus V ascends to the papal throne. During his brief five-year reign, a number of major public works and church construction projects will be completed, including the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, the Lateran Palace, and the new acqueduct, the Acqua Felice, which provides the city with a secure source of water. These projects will help to prepare the way for the great age of Rome's expansion that occurs in the Baroque era.

Conciliarism.

The way out of the crisis of the Great Schism gradually appeared in the form of a new political theory that developed within the church known as conciliarism. The conciliarists taught that the decisions of a church council could override those of the popes. In the past the popes had convened church councils, but neither the Avignon nor the Roman popes could be expected to call a council that might depose them of their office. Thus conciliar theorists at the University of Paris began to make the convincing case that a church council might be convened independently of the pope under extraordinary circumstances. In 1409, representatives of both papal governments and church officials from throughout Europe met in the Italian city of Pisa to consider ways of healing the breach in the church. After deliberating, the council decided that both papal governments were invalid and it called for the resignations of the Avignon and Roman popes. When neither would resign, it declared them antipopes and elected a new pope, Alexander V. For a time both Avignon and Rome held out against the new Pisan pope, and factions throughout Europe supported each of the three papal governments. Thus the Council of Pisa, which had been called to heal the breach, inadvertently worsened the crisis for a time. In 1413, a second council convened at Constance in Germany. There church officials successfully obtained resignations from the Pisan and Roman popes, and deposed the Avignon pope when he refused to resign. They elected Martin V to serve as the indisputable leader of the church, who now enjoyed loyalty from all parts of the church. In the decades that followed, many conciliarists continued to argue that the church needed a permanent resident council to advise and supervise the activities of the pope, an innovation that, had it been established, would have transformed the church into something similar to a constitutional monarchy. Although conciliarists remained powerful in the first half of the fifteenth century, one tenet of their teachings—that church councils were superior to the judgments of the pope—was declared heretical by Pope Pius II in 1460. After that date, conciliarism declined rather rapidly as a challenge to papal authority.

Indulgences.

Indulgences were an important feature of the late-medieval church. They had first been used to encourage soldiers to participate in the Crusades, but by the fourteenth century, they were being applied to all kinds of good works in the church. The theological definition of indulgences was subtle. They were not licenses to sin, nor did they release souls automatically from purgatory. They were instead pardons that substituted for penances, those penitential acts assigned by priests at confession. In practice, though, the indulgence's popularity developed from the growing importance of purgatory in the later Middle Ages. Purgatory was believed to be that realm of the afterlife where Christians would be purged of the unconfessed sins they had committed in life. By the fourteenth century, most Europeans believed that only the saints, those sinless Christians, would go immediately to Heaven after their deaths. Others would have to spend some time in purgatory suffering for their sins. Indulgences substituted for this penance in the afterlife by granting a specific number of days off the time that would be spent in purgatory. There were many ways to attain indulgences. Contributing to church building projects, making pilgrimage to certain shrines, venerating a saint's relic, or saying certain prayers were just a few of the many good works that Christians could perform to gain access to the indulgence's pardon. In the fifteenth century the evidence shows that the market in indulgences went into an "inflationary spiral." At Rome, local church officials lobbied and bribed church officials to secure indulgence letters, which they often sold at home in exchange for mere money payments. The funds indulgences generated became a vital source of revenue, both at Rome and in the church's provinces. Toward the end of the fifteenth century the market for indulgences expanded once again, when the church began awarding the documents, not only to the living, but also for the benefit of the dead already suffering in purgatory. Certainly, these abuses in the indulgence trade were one of the most glaring ills of the late-medieval church, and they inspired the sixteenth-century reformer Martin Luther to speak out against the church's teachings on salvation. But both Protestant and Catholic reformers criticized these glaring abuses. The custom of granting indulgences as pardons would play no role in Protestantism. Among Catholics, though, a reformed notion of indulgences continued to serve as an accompaniment to good works after the Council of Trent.