ns: thus very few medieval people actually understood anything about their religion. In the sixteenth century a survey was taken through a thousand German villages: no-one could name all ten of the commandments and many people had no idea who Jesus was. the Church exacted massive taxes from ordinary people. There was the tithe that all had to pay each year (between 10 and 20% of annual income); a mortuary tax (when the head of a household died then the local priest took the second best beast he had owned ... the lord took the first); and dozens of fees ... if parents wanted to have their baby baptised, then it cost them; if they wanted someone buried, then it cost them; if they wanted to hear mass, then that cost them, too. For a sum, anyone could break Church law, or even buy a deceased loved one's time out of Purgatory. Non-Romans particularly resented the fact that so much of the wealth that the Church collected was siphoned off to Rome rather than being kept in their own country, but all were aware of the corruption and greed evident at all levels of the Church hierarchy. After the Black Death in 1348, something had to snap. Heresies (a heresy was any deviation from accepted Church belief) had always been a problem for the Church, but during and after the latter fourteenth century they flared out of control, resulting finally in the Protestant Reformation of the early sixteenth century. When people sought religious comfort in order to cope with the chaos of the physical world they encountered a Church that was, to all intents and purposes, in chaos (and the pestilence had struck the Church as badly as secular society). People began to look elsewhere for spiritual comfort ...As there were tremendous and violent social revolts in Europe post the Black Death, so there were some extremely strong and extremely dangerous heresies. the one I want to discuss here, again because it has such a bearing on THE CRUCIBLE, is the English Lollard m...
