At Avignon the popes were naturally deprived of some of the revenue which they had enjoyed from their Italian possessions when they lived at Rome. This deficiency had to be made up by increased taxation, especially as the expenses of the splendid papal court were very heavy. The papacy was, consequently, rendered still more unpopular by the methods employed to raise money, particularly by the granting of benefices throughout Europe to the pope's courtiers, by the heavy contributions which were demanded for dispensations, for the confirmation of bishops, and for granting the pallium to archbishops, as well as the high fees for the trial of law suits.
Pope's control of church benefices.
Many of the church offices, such as those of the bishops and abbots, insured a more than ample revenue to their holders. It was natural, therefore, that the pope, in his endeavor to increase his income, should have tried to bring as many of these appointments as he could into his own hands. He did this by reserving to himself the filling of certain benefices so soon as they should become vacant. He then chose some one to whom he wished to do a favor and promised him the benefice upon the death of the one then holding it. Men appointed in this way were called provisors and were extremely unpopular. They were very often foreigners, and it was suspected that they had obtained these positions from the pope simply for the sake of the revenue, and had no intention whatever of performing the duties connected with them.
Statute of provisors, 1352.
The papal exactions met with the greatest opposition in England because the popes were thought to favor France, with which country the English were at war. A law was passed by Parliament in 1352 ordering that all who procured appointments from the pope should be outlawed, that any one might injure such offenders at will, and that the injured should have no redress, since they were enemies of the king and his realm.[202] This and similar laws failed, however, to prevent the pope from filling English benefices to the advantage of himself and his courtiers. The English king was unable to keep the money of his realm from flowing to Avignon on one pretext or another. It was declared by the Good Parliament, held in 1376, that the taxes levied by the pope in England were five times those raised by the king.
John Wycliffe.
The most famous and conspicuous critic of the pope and of the policy of the Roman Church at this time was John Wycliffe, a teacher at Oxford. He was born about 1320; but we know little of him before 1366, when Urban V demanded that England should pay the tribute promised by King John when he became the pope's vassal.[203] Parliament declared that John had no right to bind the people without their consent, and Wycliffe began his career of opposition to the papacy by trying to prove that John's compact was void. About ten years later we find the pope issuing bulls against the teachings of Wycliffe, who had begun to assert that the state might appropriate the property of the Church if it was misused, and that the pope had no authority except as he acted according to the Gospels. Soon Wycliffe went further and boldly attacked the papacy itself, as well as indulgences, pilgrimages, and the worship of the saints; finally he even denied the truth of the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Wycliffe's 'simple priests.'
He did not, however, confine his work to a denunciation of what he considered wrong in the teaching and conduct of the churchmen. He established an order of "simple priests" who were to go about doing good and reprove by their example the worldly habits of the general run of priests and monks.
Wycliffe the father of English prose.