In 1512, in a series of sermons1 preached in Frankfurt-on-the Main, the Franciscan Thomas Murner satirically pointed out the worldliness and greed present among many clergy members: “When the lay lord has shorn the sheep, the priest comes in and fairly disembowels it, the begging friar follows and gets what he can and then the pardoner.”2 Indeed, it was an age plagued by supposed shepherds fleecing the flock.

Of course, Europeans in the late medieval period were blessed with many excellent ministers as well. Desiderius Erasmus, Jan Hus, Thomas Bradwardine, Johann von Staupitz, and others exalted the Bible and championed God’s grace to the masses. In fact, their faithfulness hastened needed Church reforms in the centuries to follow.3 Still, despite these lighthouses of godliness, it was an era of notorious corruption among the clergy—which led Erasmus to quip that there was no greater insult among the laity than to call a man a priest or a monk.4

Finance, law, and sexual morality occasioned some of the worst offenses. On the financial side, a succession of corrupt popes exploited their office to blackmail the laity into paying a multitude of clerical dues and taxes. A chief weapon in the tax-raising powers of the papacy was the belief that the Pope had power to forgive sins and exempt individuals from ecclesiastical legislation in such matters as sexual morality and marriage. The result was that the Church was able to raise huge sums of money throughout Europe from tithes, annates,5 and “Peter’s Pence,”6 as well as from the sale of pardons, indulgences, and dispensations to guilt-ridden or unscrupulous individuals.7 Then, instead of using the money to advance God’s kingdom, some popes spent it lavishly on wars, political intrigues, the enrichment of relatives, magnificent palaces, clothes, and banquets.8

Such financial corruption was accompanied by large-scale perversion of justice. As early as 992, Arnoul of Orleans denounced the Church as a place where justice was auctioned to the highest bidder,9 and as time wore on things only got worse. One historian has written that in Roman ecclesiastical courts, “pleaders… were reduced to poverty, and rightful claims were set aside in favour of those whose greater cunning or larger means enabled them to profit through the frauds rendered possible by the complexities of the papal graces.”10 Indeed, Church courts became notorious in much of Europe.

There was also hypocrisy concerning the so-called celibate priesthood. Murner’s allegation that “in the nunneries the sister who has the most children is made the abbess”11 was obviously an exaggeration, but many clergy did keep concubines and both “bishops and local priests alike flaunted their illegitimate children.”12

While all ministerial sin does not rise to such egregious levels, God’s servants in every era have faced temptation to use their flocks to advance their own selfish ends. And these medieval examples illustrate the terrible lengths to which such temptations can progress if allowed to grow and fester.

Footnotes:
1
Many of the sermons were rhymed in German.

2
Quoted in Henry Charles Lea, “The Eve of the Reformation,” in The Renaissance, vol. 1 in The Cambridge Modern History, ed. A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero, and Stanley Leathes (New York: MacMillan and Company, 1903), 675. Half a century earlier, in 1458, the Bishop of Torcello had lamented: “The morals of the clergy are corrupt, they have become an offence to the laity, all discipline is lost. From day to day the respect for the Church diminishes; the power of her censures is almost gone” [Ibid., 674].

3
See Heiko A. Oberman, ed., Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1966).

4
Lea, 676.

5
Annates represented the first year’s income of every bishopric or living, and were typically levied whenever a new incumbent was installed. See C. A. Alington, Christianity In England: An Historical Sketch (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), 61.

6
Peter’s Pence was a tax of a penny on each person’s hearth. Ibid.

7
Aeneas Sylvius, before his election as Pope Pius II in 1458, had no hesitation in declaring that everything was for sale in Rome and that nothing was to be had there without money. Lea, 670.

8
Pope Paul II, for example, so managed his finances that on his death in 1471, he left behind him an enormous treasure in money, jewels, and costly works of art. There were pearls valued at 300,000 ducats, gold and jewels of two tiaras appraised at 300,000 more, and other precious stones and ornaments at 1,000,000. Similarly Julius II spent freely on wars and magnificent architecture, yet still left huge amounts of money and jewels. See ibid., 666-667.

9
Ibid., 669-670.

10
Ibid., 671.

11
Ibid., 675.

12
Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, vol. 2 (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1985), 7.

article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located one and a half miles east of Rt. 222.