FACTORS LEADING TO (CATHOLIC) REFORMATION - The condition of the Catholic Church in the early C16th

THE NEED FOR CHANGE
1. 1500-Catholic Church was the universal faith
2. Canon law touched the lives of everyone
3. Pope claimed to be the first apostle St Peter & representative of Christ on earth
4. Traditional view of the early church; abuses so widespread & deep & it failed to carry out it's functions
5. ABUSE THEORY CHALLENGED:
  1. Church always has been criticised. There have been worse periods of corruption (scandal where there were several popes at a time) but the Church has always been able to adapt itself
  2. Reformers not only attacked the abuses - they attacked the fundamental teachings
  3. One of the abuses they targeted, celibacy (remaining unmarried) - there are no accurate & reliable statistics to back it up
  4. The things they complained about (ignorant priests, idle (lazy) monks, methods of receiving money) were not worse or as widespread as they were 100 years ago. It shows that the Church was capable of reforming itself.
RENAISSANCE POPES
1. Popes claimed their authority from the promises Christ made to Peter - Petrine Promises - They are St Peters successors
2. C15th-16th - Popes authority was in decline
  1. Growing anti-papal feeling (Mainly in Germany)
3. FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES -Popes were businessmen
  1. Fees to collect Annates, First Fruits, provide exemption from some of the rules in Church, benefice
    1. Required administrators (costly)
  2. Some states were beginning to reduce the flow of funds (England) & there were increased costs
  3. New ways had to be found to raise money - unpopular
    1. Simony (buying/selling church jobs) & Pluralism (holding more than one job)
      1. E.G. Archbishop of Salzburg was charged 10,000 guilden to become an archbishop
    2. Showed Pope as greedy than caring for the needy
      1. 'The Church charged its members for all its services-for marriages, baptisms, confessions & burials' - J.A.P. Jones
4. PRESSURE ON POPE TO BE A SECULAR RULER
  1. Wordly power instead of religious power
  2. In control of papal states in central Italy (He had to govern & defend these areas)
  3. 1494 Italian wars began, so the Pope became more involved in worldly affairs
5. LEADERSHIP CRISIS
  1. Some Popes claims to spirtitual leadership was odd as scandals occurred - including in the papal court (Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X)
  2. Visitors to Rome (Erasmus/Luther) were shocked to see luxury & a causal attitude to practicing the Catholic faith
  3. In Germany - anti papal & growing sense of nationalism ( because of foreign papal interference & increasing Church tax)
  4. May have been exaggerated on the scandalous lives of the papacy - the public lapped it up by descriptions, cartoons which spread because of the printing press. These gained more importance after 1517
  5. Crisis of leadership did not always weaken the peoples faith. It must also be remembered some Popes tried to enforce reform - Previously, (last 200 years) European rulers had decreased the papal authority, meaning it was hard for them to enforce change
IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY
1. HIGHER CLERGY
  1. Bishops/archbishop tended to come from the nobility, so when given their job, they came into it with the same attitude as if they were still nobility (eating to excess, wearing rich garments, large numbers of servants, building grand houses)
    1. IGNORANCE as they did not show a true example to the public
  2. ABSENTEEISM (not living in your diocese) - e.g. Archbishop of Sens only entered his own cathedral once - his funeral
    1. PLURALISM (holding more than one job)
  3. NOT all ignorant - good level of education, there are records to show bishops who visited their parishes who improved discipline & faults
    1. Absenteeism could be caused by the monarch using them as ministers/diplomats
  4. Supply of high quality/educated bishops were limited
2. MONASTERIES & CONVENTS
  1. Spiritual decline
    1. Records show that there was a lack of discipline, ignorance of daily routine prayer, inability to read, breaking vows of celibacy, not living lives of poverty
      1. cannot carry out the rules of monastic life
  2. Admission to monasteries was too easy (no education required)
  3. Wealthy convent could receive daughters of the noble class who were unmarried. They could live comfortably but have little interest/ignorance in religious life
  4. Some signs of reform; stricter groups of monks created - Franciscians (Spain) & Augustians (Germany)
3. LOWER CLERGY
  1. Parish priests/clergy condemned for their ignorance
    1. Visitations to Italy show that some could not read service books or say basic prayers
    2. Ignorance increasing as bursaries were becoming harder to access for the poorer priests
    3. Entry was so easy all you really needed was basic education
  2. Did not wear separate clerical clothes, joined in activities of the parish church, gamed/quarreled with their neighbour
  3. Received tithes, fees from marriages/burials/baptism. Sometimes gained free labour
  4. Church producing too much priests
    1. Poor, young, unemployed, little education - a dangerous combination that could affect the standards of the Church
  5. Celibacy (remaining unmarried) hard to enforce - easy to spot - ideal for criticisms

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FACTORS LEADING TO (CATHOLIC) REFORMATION - The condition of the Catholic Church in the early C16th

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