A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume I

by Henry Charles Lea

The papal legate, Cardinal Henry of Albano, in his Encyclical letter of 1188 to the prelates of Germany, is equally emphatic though less eloquent. The triumph of the Prince of Darkness is to be expected in view of the depravity of the clergy—their luxury, their gluttony, their disregard of the fasts, their holding of pluralities, their hunting, hawking, and gambling, their trading and their quarrels, and, chief of all, their incontinence, whence the wrath of God is provoked to the highest degree and the worst scandals are created between the clergy and the people. Peter Cantor, about the same time, describes the Church as filled to the mouth with the filth of temporalities, of avarice, and of negligence, so that in these points it far surpasses the laity; and he points out that nothing is more damaging to the Church than to see laymen superior, as a class, to the clergy. Gilbert of Gemblours tells the same tale. The prelates for the most part enter the Church not by election, but by the use of money and the favor of princes; they enter, not to feed, but to be fed; not to minister, but to be ministered to; not to sow, but to reap; not to labor, but to rest; not to guard the sheep from the wolves, but, fiercer than wolves, themselves to tear the sheep. St. Hildegarda, in her prophecies, espouses the cause of the people against the clergy. “The prelates are ravishers of the churches; their avarice consumes all that it can acquire. With their oppressions they make us paupers and contaminate us and themselves.... Is it fitting that wearers of the tonsure should have greater store of soldiers and arms than we? Is it becoming that a clerk should be a soldier and a soldier a clerk?... God did not command that one son should have both coat and cloak and that the other should go naked, but ordered the cloak to be given to one and the coat to the other. Let the laity then have the cloak on account of the cares of the world, and let the clergy have the coat that they may not lack that which is necessary.”[42]

One of the main objects in convoking the great Council of Lateran, in 1215, was the correction of the prevailing vices of the clergy, and it adopted numerous canons looking to the suppression of the chief abuses, but in vain. Those abuses were too deeply rooted, and four years later Honorius III., in an Encyclical addressed to all the prelates of Christendom, says that he has waited to see the result. He finds the evils of the Church increasing rather than diminishing. The ministers of the altar, worse than beasts wallowing in their dung, glory in their sins, as in Sodom. They are a snare and a destruction to the people. Many prelates consume the property committed to their trust and scatter the stores of the sanctuary throughout the public places; they promote the unworthy, waste the revenues of the Church on the wicked, and convert the churches into conventicles of their kindred. Monks and nuns throw off the yoke, break their chains, and render themselves contemptible as dung. “Thus it is that heresies flourish. Let each of you gird his sword to his thigh and spare not his brother and his nearest kindred.” What was accomplished by this earnest exhortation may be estimated from the description which Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, gave of the Church in the presence of Innocent IV. and his cardinals in 1250. The details can well be spared, but they are summed up in his assertion that the clergy were a source of pollution to the whole earth; they were antichrists and devils masquerading as angels of light, who made the house of prayer a den of robbers. When the earnest inquisitor of Passau, about 1260, undertook to explain the stubbornness of the heresy which he was vainly endeavoring to suppress, he did so by drawing up a list of the crimes prevalent among the clergy, which is awful in the completeness of its details. A church such as he describes was an unmitigated curse, politically, socially, and morally.[43]

This is all ecclesiastical testimony. How the clergy were regarded by the laity is illustrated in a remark by William of Puy-Laurens, that it was a common phrase “I had rather be a priest than do that,” just as one might say “I had rather be a Jew.” It is true that the priests had the same contempt for the monks, for Emeric, Abbot of Anchin, tells us that a clerk would never associate with any one whom he had once seen wearing the black Benedictine habit. But priest and monk were both comprehended in the general detestation of the people. Walther von der Vogelweide sums up the popular appreciation of the whole ecclesiastical body, from pope downward:

“St. Peter’s chair is filled to-day as well
As when ’twas fouled by Gerbert’s sorcery;
For he consigned himself alone to hell,
While this pope thither drags all Christentie.
Why are the chastisements of Heaven delayed?
How long wilt thou in slumber lie, O Lord?
Thy work is hindered and thy word gainsaid,
Thy treasurer steals the wealth that thou hast stored.
Thy ministers rob here and murder there,
And o’er thy sheep a wolf has shepherd’s care.”[44]

Walther’s echo is heard from the other end of Europe in the Troubadour Pierre Cardinal, who enlarges on the same theme in a manner to show how popular were these invectives and how completely they expressed the general feeling:

“I see the pope his sacred trust betray,
For, while the rich his grace can gain alway,
His favors from the poor are aye withholden.
He strives to gather wealth as best he may,
Forcing Christ’s people blindly to obey,
So that he may repose in garments golden.
The vilest traffickers in souls are all
His chapmen, and for gold a prebend’s stall
He’ll sell them, or an abbacy or mitre.
And to us he sends clowns and tramps who crawl
Vending his pardon briefs from cot to hall—
Letters and pardons worthy of the writer,
Which leave our pokes, if not our souls, the lighter.

“No better is each honored cardinal.
From early morning’s dawn to evening’s fall,
Their time is passed in eagerly contriving
To drive some bargain foul with each and all.
So, if you feel a want, or great or small,
Or if for some preferment you are striving,
The more you please to give the more ’twill bring,
Be it a purple cap or bishop’s ring.
And it need ne’er in any way alarm you
That you are ignorant of everything
To which a minister of Christ should cling,
You will have revenue enough to warm you—
And, bear in mind, that lesser gifts won’t harm you.

“Our bishops, too, are plunged in similar sin,
For pitilessly they flay the very skin
From all their priests who chance to have fat livings.
For gold their seal official you can win
To any writ, no matter what’s therein.
Sure God alone can make them stop their thievings.

’Twere hard, in full, their evil works to tell,
As when, for a few pence, they greedily sell
The tonsure to some mountebank or jester,
Whereby the temporal courts are wronged as well,
For then these tonsured rogues they cannot quell,
Howe’er their scampish doings may us pester,
While round the church still growing evils fester.

“Then as for all the priests and minor clerks,
There are, God knows, too many of them whose works
And daily life belie their daily preaching.
Scarce better are they than so many Turks,
Though they, no doubt, may be well taught—it irks
Me not to own the fulness of their teaching—
For, learned or ignorant, they’re ever bent
To make a traffic of each sacrament,
The Mass’s holy sacrifice included;
And when they shrive an honest penitent,
Who will not bribe, his penance they augment,
For honesty should never be obtruded—
But this, by sinners fair, is easily eluded.