The Reformation

by Will Durant

  It is not surprising, when the highest ranks of the clergy were in such a state, that among the regular orders and secular priests vice and irregularities of all sorts should become more and more common. The salt of the earth had lost its savor.... But it is a mistake to suppose that the corruption of the clergy was worse in Rome than elsewhere; there is documentary evidence of the immorality of the priests in almost every town in the Italian peninsula.... No wonder, as contemporary writers sadly testify, the influence of the clergy had declined, and in many places hardly any respect was shown for the priesthood. Their immorality was so gross that suggestions in favor of allowing priests to marry began to be heard.51

  In fairness to these lusty priests we should consider that sacerdotal concubinage was not profligacy, but an almost universal rebellion against the rule of celibacy that had been imposed upon an unwilling clergy by Pope Gregory VII (1074). Just as the Greek and Russian Orthodox Church, after the schism of 1054, had continued to permit marriage to its priests, so the clergy of the Roman Church demanded the same right; and since the canon law of their Church refused this, they took concubines. Bishop Hardouin of Angers reported (1428) that the clergy of his diocese did not count concubinage a sin, and that they made no attempt to disguise their use of it.52 In Pomerania, about 1500, such unions were recognized by the people as reasonable, and were encouraged by them as protection for their daughters and wives; at public festivals the place of honor was given as a matter of course to priests and their consorts.53 In Schleswig a bishop who tried to outlaw the practice was driven from his see (1499).54 At the Council of Constance Cardinal Zabarella proposed that if sacerdotal concubinage could not be suppressed, clerical marriage should be restored. The Emperor Sigismund, in a message to the Council of Basel (1431), argued that the marriage of the clergy would improve public morals.55 Aeneas Sylvius was quoted by the contemporary historian Platina, librarian of the Vatican, as saying that there were good reasons for clerical celibacy, but better reasons against it.56 The moral record of the pre-Reformation priesthood stands in a better light if we view sacerdotal concubinage as a forgivable revolt against an arduous rule unknown to the Apostles and to the Christianity of the East.

  The complaint that finally sparked the Reformation was the sale of indulgences. Through the powers apparently delegated by Christ to Peter (Matt. 16 :19), by Peter to bishops, and by bishops to priests, the clergy were authorized to absolve a confessing penitent from the guilt of his sins and from their punishment in hell, but not from doing penance for them on earth. Now only a few men, however thoroughly shriven, could rely on dying with all due penances performed; the balance would have to be paid for by years of suffering in purgatory, which a merciful God had established as a temporary hell. On the other hand, many saints, by their devotion and martyrdom, had earned merits probably in excess of the penances due to their sins; Christ by his death had added an infinity of merits; these merits, said the theory of the Church, could be conceived as a treasury on which the pope might draw to cancel part or all of the temporal penalties incurred and unperformed by absolved penitents. Usually the penances prescribed by the Church had taken the form of repeating prayers, giving alms, making a pilgrimage to some sacred shrine, joining a crusade against Turks or other infidels, or donating money or labor to social projects like draining a swamp, building a road, bridge, hospital, or church. The substitution of a money fine (Wehrgeld) for punishment was a long-established custom in secular courts; hence no furore was caused by the early application of the idea to indulgences. A shriven penitent, by paying such a fine—i.e., making a money contribution—to the expenses of the Church, would receive a partial or plenary indulgence, not to commit further sins, but to escape a day, a month, a year in purgatory, or all the time he might have had to suffer there to complete his penance for his sins. An indulgence did not cancel the guilt of sins; this, when the priest absolved a contrite penitent, was forgiven in the confessional. An indulgence, therefore, was the remission, by the Church, of part or all of the temporal (i.e., not eternal) penalties incurred by sins whose guilt had been forgiven in the sacrament of penance.

  This ingenious and complicated theory was soon transformed by the simplicity of the people, and by the greed of the quaestiarii, or “pardoners,” commissioned or presuming to distribute the indulgences. As these purveyors were allowed to retain a percentage of the receipts, some of them omitted to insist on repentance, confession, and prayer, and left the recipient free to interpret the indulgence as dispensing him from repentance, confession, and absolution, and as depending almost entirely upon the money contribution, About 1450 Thomas Gascoigne, Chancellor of Oxford University, complained that

  sinners say nowadays: “I care not how many evils I do in God’s sight, for I can easily get plenary remission of all guilt and penalty by an absolution and indulgence granted me by the pope, whose written grant I have bought for four or six pence, or have won as a stake for a game of tennis [with the pardoner].” For these indulgence-mongers wander over the country, and give a letter of pardon, sometimes for two pence, sometimes for a draught of wine or beer... or even for the hire of a harlot, or for carnal love.57

  The popes—Boniface IX in 1392, Martin V in 1420, Sixtus IV in 1478—repeatedly condemned these misconceptions and abuses, but they were too pressed for revenue to practice effective control. They issued bulls so frequently, and for so confusing a variety of causes, that men of education lost faith in the theory, and accused the Church of shamelessly exploiting human credulity and hope.58 In some cases, as in the indulgences offered by Julius II in 1510 or by Leo X in 1513, the official wording lent itself to the purely monetary interpretation.59 A Franciscan friar of high rank described with anger how chests were placed in all the churches of Germany to receive payments by those who, having been unable to go to Rome for the jubilee of 1450, could now obtain the same plenary indulgence by money dropped in the box; and he warned the Germans, a half-century before Luther, that by indulgences and other means their savings were being drained off to Rome.60 Even the clergy complained that indulgences were snaring into papal coffers contributions that might otherwise have been secured for local ecclesiastical uses.61 Again a Catholic historian sums up the matter with admirable candor:

  Nearly all abuses connected with indulgences rose from this, that the faithful, after frequenting the sacrament of penance as the recognized condition for gaining the indulgence, found themselves called on to make an offering of money in proportion to their means. This offering for good works, which should have been only accessory, was in certain cases made into the chief condition.... The need of money, instead of the good of souls, became only too often the end of the indulgence.... Though in the wording of the bulls the doctrine of the Church was never departed from, and confession, contrition, and definitely prescribed good works were made the condition for gaining the indulgence, still the financial side of the matter was always apparent, and the necessity for making offerings of money was placed most scandalously in the foreground. Indulgences took more and more the form of a monetary arrangement, which led to many conflicts with the secular powers, who were always demanding a share of the proceeds.62

  Almost as mercenary as the sale of indulgences was the acceptance or solicitation, by the clergy, of money payments, grants, legacies, for the saying of Masses supposed to reduce a dead soul’s term of punishment in purgatory. Large sums were devoted to this purpose by pious people, either to relieve a departed relative or friend, or to shorten or annul their own purgatorial probation after death. The poor complained that through their inability to pay for Masses and indulgences it was the earthly rich, not the meek, who would inherit the kingdom of heaven; and Columbus ruefully praised money because, he said, “he who possesses it has the power of transporting souls into paradise.”63

  A thousand other grievances swelled the case against the Church. Many of the laity resented the exemption of the clergy from the laws of the state, and the dangerous lenience of ecclesiastical
courts to ecclesiastical offenders. The Nuremberg Diet of 1522 declared that no justice could be had by a lay plaintiff against a clerical defendant before a spiritual tribunal, and warned that unless the clergy were subjected to secular courts there would be an uprising against the Church in Germany;64 the uprising, of course, had then already begun. Further complaints alleged the divorce of religion from morality, the emphasis laid on orthodox belief rather than on good conduct (though the Reformers were to be in this particular greater sinners than the Church), the absorption of religion in ritual, the useless idleness and presumed sterility of monks, the exploitation of popular credulity through bogus relics and miracles, the abuse of excommunication and interdict, the censorship of publications by the clergy, the espionage and cruelty of the Inquisition, the misuse, for other purposes, of funds contributed for crusades against the Turks, and the claim of a deteriorated clergy to be the sole administrators of every sacrament except baptism.

  All the foregoing factors entered into the anticlericalism of Roman Catholic Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century. “The contempt and hatred of the laity for the degenerate clergy,” says Pastor, “was no mean factor in the great apostasy.”65 A London bishop complained in 1515 that the people “be so maliciously set in favor of heretical pravity that they will .. k condemn any cleric, though he were as innocent as Abel.”66 Among laymen, Erasmus reported, the title of clerk or priest or monk was a term of bitter insult.67 In Vienna the priesthood, once the most desired of all careers, received no recruits in the twenty years preceding the Reformation.68

  Throughout Latin Christendom men cried out for a “reform of the Church in head and members.” Passionate Italians like Arnold of Brescia, Joachim of Flora, and Savonarola of Florence had attacked ecclesiastical abuses without ceasing to be Catholics, but two of them had been burned at the stake. Nevertheless, good Christians continued to hope that reform might be accomplished by the Church’s loyal sons. Humanists like Erasmus, Colet, More, and Budé dreaded the disorder of an open break; it was bad enough that the Greek Church remained resolutely apart from the Roman; any further rending of “the seamless robe of Christ” threatened the survival of Christianity itself. The Church tried repeatedly, and often sincerely, to cleanse her ranks and her courts, and to adopt a financial ethic superior to the lay morality of the times. The monasteries tried again and again to restore their austere rules, but the constitution of man rewrote all constitutions. The councils tried to reform the Church, and were defeated by the popes; the popes tried, and were defeated by the cardinals and the bureaucracy of the Curia. Leo X himself, in 1516, mourned the utter inefficacy of these endeavors.69 Enlightened churchmen like Nicholas of Cusa achieved local reforms, but even these were transient. Denunciations of the Church’s shortcomings, by her enemies and her lovers, excited the schools, disturbed the pulpits, flooded the literature, mounted day by day, year by year, in the memory and resentment of men, until the dam of reverence and tradition burst, and Europe was swept by a religious revolution more far-reaching and profound than all the political transformations of modern times.

  CHAPTER II

  England: Wyclif, Chaucer, and the Great Revolt

  1308–1400

  I. THE GOVERNMENT

  ON February 2 5,1308, Edward II, sixth king of the house of Plantagenet, in a solemn coronation before the hierarchy and nobility assembled in Westminster Abbey, took the oath that England proudly requires of all her sovereigns:

  Archbishop of Canterbury: Sire, will you grant and keep, and by your oath confirm, to the people of England, the laws and customs to them granted by the ancient kings of England, your righteous and godly predecessors, and especially the laws, customs, and privileges granted to the clergy and people by the glorious King St. Edward your predecessor?

  King: I grant them and promise.

  Archbishop: Sire, will you keep toward God and Holy Church, and to clergy and people, peace and accord in God, entirely, after your power?

  King: I will keep them.

  Archbishop: Sire, will you cause to be done, in all your judgments, equal and right justice and discretion, in mercy and truth, to your power?

  King: I will do so.

  Archbishop: Sire, do you grant to hold and to keep the laws and righteous customs which the community of your realm shall have chosen, and will you defend and strengthen them to the honor of God, to the utmost of your power?

  King: I grant and promise.1

  Having so sworn, and being duly anointed and consecrated with holy oils, Edward II consigned the government to corrupt and incompetent hands, and devoted himself to a life of frivolity with Piers Gaveston, his Ganymede. The barons rebelled, caught and slew Gaveston (1312), and subordinated Edward and England to their feudal oligarchy. Returning in disgrace from his defeat by the Scots at Bannockburn (1314), Edward solaced himself with a new love, Hugh le Despenser III. A conspiracy of his neglected wife, Isabella of France, and her paramour, Roger de Mortimer, deposed him (1326); he was murdered in Berkeley Castle by Mortimer’s agent (1327); and his fifteen-year-old son was crowned as Edward III.

  The noblest event of this age in English history was the establishment (1322) of a precedent that required the consent of a national assembly for the validity of any law. It had long been the custom of English monarchs, in their need, to summon a “King’s Council” of prominent nobles and prelates. In 1295 Edward I, warring at once with France, Scotland, and Wales, and most earnestly desirous of cash and men, instructed “every city, borough, and leading town” to send two burgesses (enfranchised citizens), and every shire or county to send two knights (minor nobles), to a national assembly that would form, with the King’s Council, the first English Parliament. The towns had money, which their delegates might be persuaded to vote to the king; the shires had yeomen (freeholders), who would make sturdy archers and pikemen; the time had come to build these forces into the structure of British government. There was no pretense at full democracy. Though the towns were—or by 1400 would be—free from feudal overlordship, the urban vote was confined to a small minority of propertied men. The nobles and clergy remained the rulers of England: they owned most of the land, employed most of the population as their tenants or serfs, and organized and directed the armed forces of the nation.

  The Parliament (as it came to be called under Edward III) met in the royal palace at Westminster, across from the historic Abbey. The archbishops of Canterbury and York, the eighteen bishops, and the major abbots sat at the right of the king; half a hundred dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons sat on his left; the Prince of Wales and the King’s Council gathered near the throne; and the judges of the realm, seated on woolsacks to remind them how vital the wool trade was to England, attended to advise on points of law. At the opening of the session the burgesses and knights-later known as the Commons—stood uncovered below a bar that separated them from the prelates and lords; now for the first time (1295) the national assembly had an Upper and a Lower House. The united houses received from the king or his chancellor a pronunciatio (the later “speech from the throne”) explaining the subjects to be discussed and the appropriations desired. Then the Commons withdrew to meet in another hall—usually the chapter house of Westminster Abbey. There they debated the royal proposals. These deliberations ended, they delegated a “speaker” to report the result to the Upper House, and to present their petitions to the king. At the close of the sessions the two houses came together again to receive the reply of the sovereign, and to be dismissed by him. Only the king had the authority to summon or dissolve the Parliament,

  Both houses claimed, and normally enjoyed, freedom of debate. In many cases they spoke or wrote their minds vigorously to the ruler; on several occasions, however, he had a too audacious critic jailed. In theory the powers of Parliament extended to legislation; in practice most of the statutes passed had been presented as bills by the royal ministers; but the houses often submitted recommendations and grievances, and delayed the voting of fund
s till some satisfaction was obtained. The only weapon of the Commons was this “power of the purse”; but as the cost of administration and the wealth of the towns grew, the power of the Commons rose. The monarchy was neither absolute nor constitutional. The king could not openly and directly change a law made by Parliament or enact a new one; but through most of the year he ruled without a Parliament to check him, and issued executive decrees that affected every department of English life. He succeeded to the throne not by election but by pedigree. His person was accounted religiously sacred; obedience and loyalty to him were inculcated with all the force of religion, custom, law, education, and ceremonious oath. If this might not suffice, the law of treason directed that a captured rebel against the state should be dragged through the streets to the gallows, should have his entrails torn out and burned before his face, and should then be hanged.2

  In 1330 Edward III, eighteen, took over the government, and began one of the most eventful reigns in the history of England. “His body was comely,” says a contemporary chronicler, “and his face was like that of a god”;3 till venery weakened him he was every inch a king. He almost ignored domestic politics, being a warrior rather than a statesman; he yielded powers to Parliament amiably so long as it financed his campaigns. Through his long rule he bled France white in the effort to add her to his crown. Yet there was chivalry in him, frequent gallantry, and such treatment of the captured French King John as would have graced King Arthur’s court. After building the Round Tower of Windsor with the forced labor of 722 men, he held a Round Table there with his favorite knights; and he presided over many a chivalric joust. Froissart tells a story, unverified, of how Edward tried to seduce the lovely Countess of Salisbury, was courteously repulsed, and staged a tournament in order to feast his soul on her beauty again.4 A charming legend tells how the Countess dropped a garter while dancing at court, and how the King snatched it up from the floor, and said, Honi soit qui mal y pense—” Shame to him who evil thinks of it.” The phrase became the motto of that Order of the Garter which Edward founded toward 1349.