Intro
Throughout this paper, we will look into the disappointing church corruption of the middle ages, more specifically, the unbiblical practices, serious problems, hypocritical popes, and finally, the people trying to fight the corruption!
Problems
To begin, there were two major problems with the church in the middle ages. Firstly, the bible was not easily accessible to the general public, due to the fact that it was written in latin - a language that only scholars, high church leaders, and elites could speak, read, or understand. Because of this, many of the common people simply had to believe whatever was told to them by their priest, which gave the priest an abundance of power and liberty to convince the people of anything he believed
…show more content…
or wanted them to believe. (Terry Noble “How Did We Get Our First English Bible?”) In addition, the Catholic Church started forcing the people to stay away from secular ways of teaching, and only allowed them to learn from the church. This way they could teach the people whatever benefited the church most, and they could prevent the people from learning enough that they would doubt what the priest told them. (Richard Hoffman “Education As Heresy In the Middle Ages) During this time, the people turned to the church for everything.
The church taught them everything they needed to know; they told them right from wrong, they were the gateway to the afterlife, and they even taught them that boiling an egg took as long as a prayer! They relied on the church for everything, so whenever the black plague hit, people ran to the church. The people assumed the plague was God’s punishment, but they had hope because they thought if they were saved by the church they would be cured. However, the church had no idea how to cure the disease, thus losing a lot of the reputation and trust they had been building for the past centuries. Many people turned to God during this time, but just as many people believed that since the church had broken their trust, there was nothing left to live for, and so they turned to sin and wickedness. Doctors stopped treating patients and told them to go to a priest and confess before they died, only to have the priests reject them or not properly execute the procedure. These people legitimately thought they were going to go to hell because their priests would not complete the procedure, and so people turned even further away from the Catholic Church and all of its beliefs. (“Black Death and Church”) Worse even than many churches turning away people, some churches grew rich off of many sinful practices such as Simony or selling of indulgences. This brings us to our next …show more content…
point. Practices Throughout history, there has always been corruption in the church, but the sinful practices happening in the middle ages escalated further than ever before. One of the most prominent ones was selling of indulgences: a monetary payment of penalty which, supposedly, absolved one of past sins and/or released one from purgatory after death. (PBS “Reformation) The bible is very clear about the fact that selling of indulgences is a sin. (2 Peter 2:19) - “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.” We see in the Catholic Church many popes promised people freedom from their sins in exchange for money, knowing full well that this would not save their souls or pardon their sins. The money was enticing to the popes and the allurement of being rich overcame their beliefs. They ended up choosing money over salvation. (Lawrence G. Duggan “Indulgence”) Similar to this sin, is Simony: the selling of church offices or positions.
The word Simony comes from a man named Simon in the bible, who tried to buy they power to gift the holy spirit. (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica “Simony”) (Acts 8:18-23) - “When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!”” In Dante’s inferno, there was an entire section of hell dedicated to the church leaders who practiced Simony! (Dante Alighieri “Dante’s Inferno”) When the church leaders become inauthentic, the church members are lead astray.
Another sin of deceit is the worship and selling of relics. Similar to selling of indulgences, priests would make people pay money to see or touch relics. The priest would tell the people some sort of lie, for example, that if they touched the ‘skull of John the Baptist’ they would be healed. People trusted the priests, and so they would make long pilgrimages to go and see these great relics. In (Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales “The Pardoner’s Tale”) the Pardoner speaks about how he fools his audience into paying loads of money to look at and touch his
relics: “Than shewe I forth my longe cristal stones, Y-crammed ful of cloutes and of bones; Reliks been they, as wenen they echoon. Than have I in latoun a sholder-boon Which that was of an holy Iewes shepe.” Throughout the middle ages, there were many different priests and nuns who were sexually immoral. It was widely known that you should not let your wife alone with the priest. Think about that… the priests could not be trusted. In the Nun’s Priest’s Tale (Chaucer “The Canterbury Tales”) we see a lot of the priest’s characteristics shown through Chanticleer the rooster: “This gentil cok hadde in his governaunce. Sevene hennes, for to doon al his plesaunce,” This is a direct reflection of what the Nun’s Priest, along with many other church leaders were actually like. Perpetrators So who were the people heading up all of this corruption? There were not many corrupt priests soon after Jesus’ death - it took time for the priests to fall so deep into their sinful nature. There were a few main popes that lead church leaders down the dangerous path of simony, selling of indulgences, worship of relics, and sexual immorality in the church. First, and probably most well known, was Pope Boniface VIII. In (Dante Alighieri’s) Dante’s Inferno, Boniface is shown in a despicable way. He is written as Dante’s enemy. The following section from the book shows what Dante thinks of Boniface: “I stood as does the friar who confesses the foul assassin who, fixed fast, head down, calls back the friar, and so delays his death; and he cried out: "Are you already standing, already standing there, o Boniface? The book has lied to me by several years. Are you so quickly sated with the riches for which you did not fear to take by guile the Lovely Lady, then to violate her?" And I became like those who stand as if they have been mocked, who cannot understand what has been said to them and can’t respond.” (Dante’s Inferno Canto XIX, lines 49-60) Dante in the story calls Boniface out, and Dante the author makes a special place for Pope Boniface in hell. Some of the worst Popes include Pope Alexander VI, Pope Gregory XI, and Pope John XXIII. However, there were tenacious and resolute protesters against these Popes that fought hard for what they believed in: the bible. Protesters There are four people that really headed up the protest against corrupt church leaders: Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Wycliffe, and John Huss. I’ll begin by talking about the two who fought with their words and vigorous knowledge of the bible. John Wycliffe and John Huss both lived in the 1300s and proclaimed themselves as protestant. Wycliffe chided the selling of indulgences saying: "It is plain to me that our prelates in granting indulgences do commonly blaspheme the wisdom of God." In addition, he rebuffed the idea of confessions: "Private confession … was not ordered by Christ and was not used by the apostles." (Donald L. Roberts “John Wycliffe”) John Huss was born in 1369, and grew up with the plan of becoming a priest so that he would be deemed as important. When he began to study the scriptures, however, he abandoned those thoughts and devoted his life to Christ. Huss was inspired by John Wycliffe’s ideas about the Catholic church, and so Huss decided to become a reformer. In 1414, John Huss was arrested, to which he replied: "I appeal to Jesus Christ, the only judge who is almighty and completely just. In his hands I plead my cause, not on the basis of false witnesses and erring councils, but on truth and justice." John Huss was sentenced to death. They tortured him and put him on a stake where he began to recite the Psalms, and he continued to speak the Psalms until he died (Christianity Today “John Huss”). Both men were extremely intrepid and always stood up for what they believe in, much like the writers we are about to discuss. Geoffrey Chaucer, writer of the Canterbury Tales, used his entire book to mock the corrupt people of the church. The main way he did this, was by creating personas for each of the characters that reflected a different sin, for example: The Nun’s Priest is sexual immorality, the pardoner is greed, so on and so forth. Chaucer died in 1400 in London, England, but his Canterbury Tales are still being read today (Biography.com “Geoffrey Chaucer”)! Finally, probably the most well known of all of the protesters is Dante Alighieri. Dante is the writer of the famous Divine Comedy, which includes three sections: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. In Inferno, he places many different corrupt churchmen in hell, describing their different sins and shortcomings. Inferno was a big wake up call to many people who were just blindly following the corrupt popes, and it caused the people to join the reformation of the church. Dante’s Divine Comedy significantly influenced the reformation which pulled the church out of the corrupt whole it had dug for itself (Biography.com “Dante”). Conclusion To conclude, throughout the middle ages there was prodigious amounts of corruption and malfeasance. There were problems rooted in the illiteracy of the masses and the plague, there were practices like simony and selling of indulgences happening frequently, and there were Popes solely focused on selfish gains, withal, there were countless brave people fighting back.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century church theologian, Martin Luther, wrote the 95 Theses questioning the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. In this essay I will discuss: the practices of the Roman Catholic Church Martin Luther wanted to reform, what Martin’s specific criticism of the pope was, and the current practices Pope Francis I is interested in refining in the Roman Catholic Church today.
From the Middle ages, the church faced many problems such as the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism that hurt the prestige of the church. Most of the clergy lived in great luxury while most people were poor and they set an immoral example. The clergy had low education and many of them didn’t attend their offices. Martin Luther had witnessed this himself, “In 1510 he visited Rome and was shocked to find corruption on high ecclesiastical places”
Corruption in the church was a huge reason why people left Catholicism, they did not want to be involved in an organization that allowed such awful things
The tithes from the people were what made the Church so wealthy (“The Medieval Church”). With wealth and power, and the fear of damnation, the Church was able to be as corrupt as it wanted because there was no one to stop them. Because of this corruption in the Church, a man by the name of Geoffrey Chaucer bec...
Roles of the Catholic Church in Western civilization has been scrambled with the times past and development of Western society. Regardless of the fact that the West is no longer entirely Catholic, the Catholic tradition is still strong in Western countries. The church has been a very important foundation of public facilities like schooling, Western art, culture and philosophy; and influential player in religion. In many ways it has wanted to have an impact on Western approaches to pros and cons in numerous areas. It has over many periods of time, spread the teachings of Jesus within the Western World and remains a foundation of continuousness connecting recent Western culture to old Western culture.-
The Church’ power was extremely great in the Middle Ages, as they had the most influence over the people, kings and knights. The Church had the ability to stop laws and change laws to their benefit and controlled the religious beliefs of the people. They had the power to sway the kings and send knights to war which sends the message that they were one of the most important institutions in all of Medieval Europe.
Life in the “Dark Ages” was unimaginably rough and horrendous for the people in Europe. Men, woman, children, and animals were cursed with diseases, plagues, and war. It is known that the most people would bathe was once a year if, they could. The Medieval Period sounds bad, and it was very but, good things also came out of that period that we still use today. While the poor and needy suffered plagues, the rich laughed and dined while drinking their wine. The life span for women was at most 24 years to live due to sickness and lifestyle of un-nourishment. When Rome fell, so did Catholicism. People thought that Christianity couldn’t have different types of Christianity. For example: Mormons, Lutheran’s, and Baptist’s. It was either you are a Christian or you aren’t a Christian at all. Many people died for believing in something as simple as believing that the Earth was round and not flat, for believing that you should eat or act a certain way. The lifestyle and morals of the British were so ruined and mixed up that they believed that prostitution and adultery was O.K or normal. In the beginning when confusion was striking at every doorstep, the Church made Christians pay money in order for them to hear their sins, and absolve them.
In times of need the church and religion provided hope for people in trouble, eventually creating feudalism. Many things such as feudalism depended on the Great Chain of Being, such as most of the peasants in the middle ages. The Great Chain of Being says that not all things are created equal and that everything has its own place that cannot be changed. Feudalism is based off of the Great Chain of Being where it is unfair but every layer depends on every other layer. In times of need, people looked to religion for help. Because of their role as a religious place, they could provide comfort to families such as ones with a loved one who got sick, but they could never cure the person (Richardson). The church was outside of the feudalism system, having social mobility. Anyone
The Catholic Church has long been a fixture in society. Throughout the ages, it has withstood wars and gone through many changes. It moved through a period of extreme popularity to a time when people regarded the Church with distrust and suspicion. The corrupt people within the church ruined the ideals Catholicism once stood for and the church lost much of its power. In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer primarily satirizes the corruptness of the clergy members to show how the Catholic Church was beginning its decline during the Middle Ages.
Before the 16th century Protestant Reformation, Christianity it Europe was in a questionable and somewhat corrupt state. During the mid 15th century central and western Europe was set up in the form of a hierarchy, which was headed by the pope. At this period in time the pope claimed all spiritual authority over Christians, as well as political authority over all inhabitants of the Papal States. In addition to the claims the pope made, the church also owned close to one-fourth of the land in Europe that lead to a strong centralization of papal authority. Close to all of the Europeans at this time were Christian and would pay taxes directly to the church as a result of this ownership. European Christians were taught in their upbringing that without the guidance and rituals of the priests and the church, there would be no path for them to salvation. Despite the church attempting to teach morality among members, the clergy started to become greedy and full of corruption that fueled their desire for ...
She examines 6 popes between 1470-1530 who she claims lead in a way similar to politicians. They lost touch with the common people both emotionally and intellectually. A little known cleric led the revolution challenging papacy that culminated in the reformation of the church. In that context, Barbara outlines that the popes were venal, immoral, and their power politics was calamitous. The faithful were distressed by their leadership, which ignored all the protests and the signs that a revolt was coming. In the end, the papal constituency lost almost half of its followers to Protestants. Barbara says that these people were driven by the greed and the urge to create a family empire that would outlive them. This chapter sums up the essence of folly in these major failures, lack of a fixed policy, over extravagance, and the illusion that their rule was
In the Catholic Church, priests are the moral authority. When one has questions with his faith he is taught that he can go to his priest for informed answers. In this paper I also hope to deal with how these priests failed their flock. They took advantage of men who came to them for help when in trouble and preyed on the little boys who came to the church for guidance. In addition to the tacit feeling that as a priest they will only do what is right, these men told their victims that they would deal with the moral implications.
Why is the Catholic Church so corrupt in its teaching? They have found ways to control the knowledge that their followers contemplate on. The control of knowledge and power is the foundation for every successful religious organization. The Catholic Church have acquired this power through strategic control on the mind of its follower. The Catholic Church propagate their ideals as righteous in order to be accepted; for without this acceptance, they are faced with the task of initiating this power through force. So to beguile their followers, they present themselves in “sheep clothing” (KJV, Matt 7:15). They are accepted as blameless, peaceful, loving and harmless but in actuality, “they are ravening wolves” (KJV, Matt. 7:15).
The Roman Catholic Church had complete influence over the lives of everyone in medieval society, including their beliefs and values. The Church’s fame in power and wealth had provided them with the ability to make their own laws and follow their own social hierarchy. With strong political strength in hand, the Church could even determine holidays and festivals. It gained significant force in the arts, education, religion, politics as well as their capability to alter the feudal structure through their wealth and power. The Church was organised into a hierarchical system that sustained the Church’s stability and control over the people and lower clergy, by organising them into different groups.
During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was the major power and influence over the European continent. The kings, queens and other leaders allied with the church to gain more power. Normal citizens in Europe had to give up 10 percent of their earnings each year to the Church which in effect made the church even more powerful and rich. Those who spoke out against the Church were accused being crazy. They were often punished. The church would burn them at the stake in front of the townspeople.