RELIGIOUS CRISIS AND HERESY, Religion, College Term Papers.com


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RELIGIOUS CRISIS AND HERESY

RELIGIOUS CRISIS AND HERESY The Church had held sway over medieval society for centuries, but it began to lose its grip in the fourteenth century. It was not only that it could not explain nor prevent the calamities that swept through the century, it was enduring its own calamities. The Church was at its strongest in the thirteenth century, but within a few years of entering the fourteenth it entered a series of crises that would all but destroy it (and certainly destroyed its hold over the minds and hearts of many Europeans). This is something that forms part of the plot of The Nameless Day. One of the great medieval popes, Boniface VIII, died in 1303. For many years he had been engaged in a power struggle with the French King, Philip IV. When Boniface died, Philip seized the opportunity to influence the subsequent papal election so that his own man, Clement V, took the papal throne (there was a brief interval when someone else was elected, but he lived less than a year). Clement promptly removed the entire papacy from Rome to the French-controlled town of Avignon, where the papacy remained for over 70 years. All Europe believed that during this time the papacy was controlled by the French monarchy - indeed, the majority of papal officials, including the cardinals (from among whom a new pope was always elected), were Frenchmen. The era when the popes lived in Avignon is known as the Babylonian Captivity, and the papacy lost a great deal of respect during this time as most people believed the pope the mouthpiece of the French monarchy rather than of God. Worse was to follow when Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377. No-one knows whether Gregory meant to this to be a permanent move back 'home', but he fortuitously died while in Rome, and a papal election was held in the Hall of Conclave attached to the Vatican Palace. The Roman mob, determined to see an Italian elected, surrounded the hall and threatened to kill the cardinals if they did not do what the mob wanted. Terrified, the cardinals elected an Italian, Urban VI. However, for centuries there had been a clause that if a papal election came under undue influence it was to be declared null and void ... and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Urban's election had come under undue influence. Besides, Urban was a vulgar man and few liked him. So the majority of the cardinals, all Frenchmen, departed back to Avignon where they promptly held another papal election and put another pope on the throne. The problem was, however, that Urban refused to resign. Thus for decades Christendom laboured under two popes (and sometimes three), the French and its allies supporting the pope in Avignon, the English and their allies supporting the pope in Rome. Two popes, two papal courts, two archbishops or abbots likely to turn up to fill a vacancy ... the entire thing was a farce, and seen as such by all Europe. By the end of the century the Roman Catholic Church was becoming the laughing stock of Europe, and many no longer believed that the Church spoke the will of God. How could it, when it was so beset by corruption? The final problem was one that had bedevilled the church for centuries - corruption. Any Church or historical scholar could write about this for several book lengths, but I shall just sum it up here: · few clerics took any notice of their vows of celibacy, and many parish priests kept wives or mistresses; · most of the high Church offices (abbots, bishops, archbishops etc.) were bought and sold,and thus tended to be held by less than devout, but very rich men. Meanwhile, the humble parish priest was rarely paid, and often had to take a second job in order to survive. · there were many other orders of clerics who lived like parasites on society: wandering friars, for example, who lived off what they could steal from honest folk. · few priests ever 'taught', or preached instructive sermons: 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 movement. Bibliography:

Word Count: 1040