Church Politics

²⁰⁹ In the Christian church’s ancient constitution, the bishop of each diocese was elected by the joint votes of:

• the clergy, and
• the people of the episcopal city.

The people did not long retain their right of election.

When they had it, they almost always acted under the clergy’s influence. The clergy soon grew weary of managing them.

They found it easier to elect their own bishops themselves in the same way as the abbot was elected by the monks of the monastery. All the inferior ecclesiastical benefices comprehended within the diocese were collated by the bishop.

He bestowed them on such ecclesiastics as he thought proper. In this way, all church preferments were in the church’s disposal. The sovereign might have some indirect influence in those elections. But he had no direct means of managing the clergy. The ambition of every clergyman naturally led him to court his own order more than the sovereign.

²¹⁰ Through most of Europe, the Pope gradually drew to himself:

First, the Consistorial benefices These were a collation of the territories of bishops and abbies Afterwards, most of the inferior benefices within each diocese. The bishop was given only what was barely necessary to have decent authority over his own clergy. This arrangement worsened the condition of the sovereign than before. The European clergy formed into a spiritual army which could be now be directed by one head on one plan.

The clergy of each country was a detachment of that army. Its operations could easily be supported by other detachments around it. Each detachment was independent of the sovereign who maintained it. Each depended on the foreign sovereign in the Pope. He could at any time turn it against each sovereign, supported by the other detachments.

²¹¹ Those arms were most formidable.

Before the establishment of arts and manufactures in ancient Europe, the clergy’s wealth gave them the same influence over the common people as those of the great barons had over their vassals, tenants, and retainers.

The mistaken piety of princes and private persons bestowed on the church the great landed estates. With those estates came the same jurisdictions as those of the great barons, and for the same reason. In those great landed estates, the clergy or their bailiffs, could easily keep the peace without the king’s support. No one could keep the peace without the clergy’s support. The clergy’s jurisdictions in their particular baronies were equally independent.

They were equally exclusive of the authority of the king’s courts, as those of the great temporal lords.

The clergy’s tenants were like the tenants of the great barons. They were=

• almost all tenants at will, and
• entirely dependent.

They could be called out to fight in any quarrel which the clergy engaged them in.

In addition to the rents of those estates, the clergy had a very large portion of the rents of all the other estates in every European kingdom in the tithes.

Most of the revenues from both rents were paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle poultry, etc. The amount greatly exceeded what the clergy could themselves consume.

There were no arts nor manufactures which they could exchange for their surplus. The clergy could only derive advantage from this immense surplus by employing it in the most profuse hospitality and extensive charity.

The ancient clergy’s hospitality and charity was very great.

They maintained:

• the poor of every kingdom, and
• many knights and gentlemen who travelled from monastery to monastery for subsistence under the pretence of devotion.

The retainers of some prelates were as many as those of the greatest lay-lords.

There were perhaps more retainers of all the clergy combined than those of all the lay-lords. There was always much more union among the clergy than among the lay-lords. The clergy were under a regular discipline and subordination to the Pope. The lay lords were not. They were always jealous of one another and the king. The union of the clergy’s tenants and retainers would have made them more formidable than those of the great lay lords even if they were fewer.

The clergy’s hospitality and charity gave them the command of a great temporal force. It very much increased the weight of their spiritual weapons.

Those virtues procured the clergy the highest respect and veneration of the poor who were fed by them. The possessions, privileges, doctrines of the clergy appeared sacred to the common people that their violation became the most wicked act. The sovereign frequently found it difficult to resist the confederacy of a few great nobles.

He found it more difficult to resist the clergy’s united force in his own dominions when they were supported by the clergy of neighbouring dominions.

We may wonder how he was able to resist the clergy in such circumstances.

²¹² The clergy’s privileges in those ancient times were most absurd. For example, they were totally exempted from the secular jurisdiction in England.

The sovereign could only let an erring clergyman be tried by the ecclesiastical courts which would restrain their members in order to protect their own order’s honour.

²¹³ Around the 10th-13th centuries in Europe, the Roman church was the most formidable combination ever formed against the government.

It is also against mankind’s liberty, reason, and happiness. These can only flourish where civil government can protect them.

The grossest superstitions were supported by the private interest of the Roman church.

• This kept them safe from the assault of human reason which might have been able to unveil some of the delusions of superstition.
  • But it could never have dissolved the ties of private interest.
  • If the Roman church had been attacked only by the feeble efforts of human reason, it would have endured forever.

But that immense and well-built fabric which could never be shaken by all human wisdom and virtue was naturally weakened and then destroyed in some parts. It is now likely to crumble entirely perhaps within a few more centuries.