Catholic Church Corruption and Reform, 1100–1500

Introduction

On October 31, 1517, an event took place that carved a niche of immortality for one of the pivotal figures in religious history and quite literally caused a power shift away from what was, until that time, the dominant religious force in the world. Martin Luther, an ordained Catholic priest, published on that day a series of essays that on the surface challenged the supremacy of the Catholic Church but ultimately crushed the control that Catholic Popes had exercised over Western religion for countless generations (Jourdan, 1914). This action — which became the foundation of the Lutheran faith, named for Martin Luther — was the climax of protest against over 400 years of corruption on the part of the Catholic Church (Mullett, 2000).

This research reflects back upon the original problems created within the Catholic Church that led to this upheaval, examines alternatives that could have been taken, proposes more desirable courses of action, and offers a conclusion that sums up what the research has uncovered — altogether shedding more light on this fascinating chapter in world religious history.

The Problem and Contributing Factors

The problem at the root of the corruption that held court over the Catholic Church for so many years was in fact one of the driving forces that led Luther to originally question his priestly vows — namely, the nature of sin, redemption, and God's ability to redeem the souls of sinners. People gravitated toward organized religion, according to many scholars, as a means of worshipping their God, gods, or whatever they considered to be the Supreme Being to whom they owed their existence — in this life and any that might follow. Therefore, one of the benefits humans ultimately seek through the religious experience is forgiveness of sins and the ability to reach heaven — in the case of Christians — or Valhalla in the case of Norsemen, and so on (Fredericks, 2003).

The Catholic Church, at some point, put forth the idea that God's redemptive powers could not be gained by the individual through direct prayer and repentance, but rather that the Church was the only intermediary capable of making salvation possible (Fredericks, 2003). This placed the individual in a position of total vulnerability and dependence upon the Church for the keys to life itself — both human and heavenly. Modern readers would simply dismiss such a bid for control, arguing that any individual could learn that God is available to all without the help of other human beings. This was all but impossible for the average Catholic in the twelfth century, however, because of a variety of mechanisms through which the Church maintained its monopoly on knowledge.

First and foremost is the concept of education. Educated people today can discern between fact and what someone attempts to make them believe through deception or intimidation. However, the average person of the twelfth century was not well educated, and typically lacked the financial resources to provide schooling for their children. Nor was education generally held in high regard, since teaching a child to perform labor for wages at an early age was considered more immediately valuable than the longer-term benefits of schooling (Jourdan, 1914). Even for those with the ambition and resources to pursue an education, the institutions of the time were sponsored, maintained, staffed, and controlled by the Catholic Church, creating a multi-layered barrier against exposure to alternative religious views. Anyone who showed potential to question Church authority — along with their families and associates — could be denied admission to schools under the thinnest of pretexts. Once inside those schools, even those lucky or wealthy enough to be admitted were subjected to curricula engineered to further indoctrinate impressionable minds in the ways of Catholicism (Ditchfield, 2007). Without access to schools, many people were denied the ability to learn to read, making even the rare books available outside the Church effectively useless — books being extremely rare and expensive in any case, keeping the poor in a shadow of ignorance.

Due to the difficulty in producing books during this period, usually only the most important works were duplicated. One of these was, of course, the Holy Bible, the literary backbone of Christianity. Because the Catholic Church controlled most of the resources used to create Bibles, those that were made available were written in Latin — a language very difficult to learn outside of Church influence. The Catholic versions of the Bible were, moreover, written so as to reinforce the claim that the Church was the only key to heaven for anyone (Mullett, 2000). All of this formed a strong network of what we would today call propaganda and helped the Catholic Church control the masses of people who sought religious satisfaction.

In controlling the people, the Catholic Church was likewise able to accumulate an extraordinarily high level of power. Churches are usually seen as sources of peace and passive behavior, but from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, the Catholic Church had reached a high point of armed power over those who would oppose it. Access to the people meant the ability to collect large sums of money, which the Church also claimed was necessary for obtaining its favors. Money led to the resources needed to take up arms against enemies of the Church — a practice Catholics had been engaged in for centuries by the twelfth century, from the 962 uprising of the Holy Roman Empire under Pope Otto I, to the battles waged by the British Empire in the thirteenth century to strip the Catholic Church of extensive land holdings it had seized in English territories over the years (Stanwood, 2005). In this sense, the early Popes rose to the status of emperors — or more precisely, warlords.

Popes enjoyed unfettered power until the late fifteenth century, when English reformist John Wycliffe boldly attacked the power structure of the Papacy, protesting the monopoly that Catholic leaders claimed over the kingdom of heaven. As a means of reaching common people, Wycliffe translated the Bible into English, interpreted it in a more traditional and less doctrinally distorted way, and held Mass in English rather than Latin, ensuring that even those unable to read could still benefit from its teachings (Jourdan, 1914).

The greed and corruption that Wycliffe and others spoke against in the fifteenth century had been ongoing for centuries by the time it faced its greatest challenges from Church reformers. Popes amassed huge fortunes, ruled over millions of people, and behind the scenes rarely practiced the lives of poverty, chastity, charity, and mercy they imposed upon their church members; rather, the Pope was, once again, more of a king than a priest. Priests themselves were also frequently little better than the Popes in terms of religious faith and obedience. If someone were wealthy enough, he could purchase priestly credentials from the Pope — a kind of religious franchise that allowed the buyer to open a church, collect dues from members, keep a portion, and remit the remainder to the Pope, much as one would operate a franchised business today. This enterprise — the early Catholic Church — sold salvation and favors to the highest bidders (Fredericks, 2003).

By the time the best-known reformers gained a foothold, the Catholic Church was out of control in many respects. In retrospect, however, this did not have to be the case — alternative courses of action were in fact available.

Conclusion

This research has shown the classic struggle for human freedom, the pitfalls of greed, and the fact that there is always a brighter tomorrow if one can take the time to find it. Sadly, the fact that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it has been proven once again as well. Whatever the case, something else is abundantly clear in closing: history is an ever-changing force that can teach about the past and influence the future.

Bibliography

Ditchfield, S. (2007, April). The Roman Catholic Church: An illustrated history. History Today, 57, 65.

Fredericks, J. (2003). The Catholic Church and the other religious paths: Rejecting nothing that is true and holy. Theological Studies, 64(2), 225+.

Jourdan, G. V. (1914). The movement towards Catholic reform in the early XVI century. London: John Murray.

Luther, M. (1885). First principles of the Reformation: Or the Ninety-Five Theses and the three primary works of Dr. Martin Luther (H. Wace & C. A. Buchheim, Eds.). Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society.

Mullett, M. (2000). Counter-Reformation and Catholic Reformation revisited.

Stanwood, P. (2005). John Donne and the Protestant Reformation: New perspectives. Christianity and Literature, 54(3), 440+.