The Decline of the Church

²¹⁴ The gradual improvements of arts, manufactures, and commerce which destroyed the power of the great barons destroyed the whole temporal power of the clergy in Europe.

Like the great barons, the clergy found something in the manufactures and commerce which they could exchange their rude produce.

• They discovered ways of spending their whole revenues on their own persons without sharing with other people.
  • Their charity became gradually less extensive.
  • Their hospitality became less profuse.
  • Their retainers dwindled away.

Like the great barons, the clergy wanted to get more rent. But this could only be done by granting leases to their tenants, who became independent.

In this way, the ties of interest which bound the lower class to the clergy gradually dissolved even faster than those which bound the lower class to the great barons.

This is because most church benefices were much smaller than the estates of the great barons.

• The possessor of each benefice was able to spend its revenue on himself much sooner.

During the 14th-15th centuries, the great barons were in full vigour in most of Europe. But the clergy’s temporal power and spritual authority over the people was very much decayed.

The poor no longer looked on the clergy as:

• the comforters of their distress and
• the relievers of their indigence.

They were provoked and disgusted by the richer clergy’s vanity, luxury, and expence.

²¹⁵ The European sovereigns tried to recover the influence they once had in the disposal of the church’s great benefices.

They restored the ancient right of:

• the deans and the chapters of each diocese in electing the bishop.
• the monks of each abbacy in electing the abbot.

The re-establishment of this ancient order was the object of several statutes enacted during the 14th century.

Particularly, it was the object of:

• the statute of provisors in England, and
• the Pragmatic sanction established in France in the 15th century.

To render the election valid, the sovereign should consent to it beforehand and approve of the person elected.

The election was still free. But he had all the indirect means of influencing the clergy.

Before the Reformation, the Pope’s power in the collation of the great church benefices was restrained in France and England.

In the 16th century, the Concordat gave French kings the absolute right of presenting to all the consistorial benefices of the Gallican church.

²¹⁶ Since the establishment of the Pragmatic sanction and of the Concordat, the French clergy were shown less respect to the decrees of the papal court than the clergy of any other Catholic country.

In all the disputes between their sovereign and the pope, they have almost constantly sided with the sovereign.

This independence of the French clergy on the Roman court was principally founded on the Pragmatic sanction and the Concordat.

In the earlier monarchies, the French clergy was as much devoted to the pope as any foreign clergy. Robert was the second prince of the Capetian race. When he was most unjustly excommunicated by the Roman court, his servants threw the victuals to the dogs. They refused to taste anything he touched. The clergy presumably taught them to do so.

²¹⁷ The claim of collating to the great benefices of the church was a claim frequently shaken and sometimes overturned by the Roman court.

In this way, some of the greatest Christian sovereigns were restrained, modified, or given up in Europe even before the reformation. The clergy had now less influence over the people, so the state had more influence over the clergy. The clergy had less power and inclination to disturb the state.

²¹⁸ The Roman church’s authority was declining when the disputes which gave birth to the reformation began in Germany and soon spread throughout Europe.

The new doctrines were very popular everywhere. They were propagated with all that enthusiastic zeal which commonly animates the spirit of party when it attacks established authority. The teachers of those doctrines were perhaps not more learned than the divines who defended the established church.

They generally were better acquainted with:

• ecclesiastical history, and
• the origin and progress of the opinions on which the authority of the church was established.

They thereby had some advantage in every dispute. Their austerity gave them authority with the common people. The people contrasted the strict regularity of their conduct with their own clergy’s disorderly lives.

They had more popularity and arts in gaining proselytes than their adversaries. The church had long neglected those arts as useless. The reason of the new doctrines recommended them to some people.

Their novelty recommended them to many people. The hatred for the established clergy recommended them to even more people. The zealous, passionate, and fanatical, though rustic, eloquence recommended them to the most people.

²¹⁹ The success of the new doctrines was almost so great that the princes who were on bad terms with the Roman court were able to overturn the church in their own dominions.

The church lost the respect and veneration of the inferior ranks of people. It could not resist.

The Roman court was disobliged with the smaller princes in northern Germany. It probably considered them too insignificant to be worth managing. The princes universally established the reformation in their own dominions.

The tyranny of Christiern 2nd and of Troll, the Archbishop of Upsala, enabled Gustavus Vasa to expel them both from Sweden.

The pope favoured them. Gustavus Vasa easily established the reformation in Sweden. Christiern 2nd was afterwards deposed from the Danish throne where his conduct made him as odious as in Sweden. The pope still favoured him.

Frederic of Holstein took the throne and followed the example of Gustavus Vasa. The magistrates of Berne and Zurich had no quarrel with the pope.

They established the reformation in their respective cantons very easily. Some of the clergy in those cantons rendered the whole order odious and contemptible.

²²⁰ In this critical situation, the papal court was at pains to cultivate the friendship of the powerful French and Spanish sovereigns.

Back then, the Spanish king was the Emperor of Germany. With their assistance, they were able to suppress the reformation’s progress in their dominions with great difficulty and bloodshed.

It was well enough inclined to be complaisant to the king of England. But it offended a greater sovereign, Charles V, king of Spain and emperor of Germany. Henry 8th did not embrace most of the reformation’s doctrines.

Yet the prevalence of the reformation enabled him to:

• suppress all the monasteries, and
• abolish the authority of the Roman church in his dominions.

The patrons of the reformation were somewhat satisfied that he went so far but not any further. They possessed the government in the reign of his son and successor. Without any difficulty, they completed the work which Henry 8th begun.