Reformation

Economic Causes.—During the later centuries of the middle ages, clerical possessions were enormous; churchmen owned a proportion which has been variously estimated at one-fifth or one third of the whole landed property; yet they claimed to be free of taxation by the state. This naturally led to extreme friction; the preamble of Boniface VIII.'s celebrated bull Clericis Laicos (1296), in which he strongly asserted this claim for immunity, runs : "That the laity are bitterly hostile to the clergy is a matter of ancient tradition which is also plainly confirmed by the ex perience of modern times." Equal friction arose from the farther claim, which had gradu ally grown up and was finally fixed by John XXII. (1316-34), that all Church benefices belong to the pope, who may appoint whom he will. This naturally led to a systematic trade in benefices at the Roman court : "Nothing is to be had at Rome without money," wrote Aeneas Silvius, the future pope Pius II. (1458– 64). The popes took from each bishop half of his year's income (annates), and proportionately from abbots of great monasteries. Justice was sold in all the Church courts even more frequently than by secular judges ; from at least the 12th century onwards, it was notorious that the archdeacons derived a large proportion of their income from bribes. These economic causes for reforma tion are most pithily summed up in the Hundred Grievances of the German Nation, laid before Adrian VI. (1522-23) by the German princes.

The Inquisition.

Moreover, the Inquisition itself, by its very constitution, had become a terrible economic burden. It had always paid its way by wholesale confiscations; even "recon ciled" heretics must lose their goods. Therefore, when heresy had been nearly stamped out among rich and conspicuous folk, and the few that remained were such as had procured some sort of illegal protection, then (as we are frankly told by the Inquisitor Eymeric, writing about 135o) princes ceased to take an interest in the In quisition, and it languished for want of funds.

In the later middle ages, the Inquisition directed much of its energies to the suppression of witchcraft ; for an enormous num ber of heathen customs still survived, especially among the peas antry, who formed the overwhelming majority of the population. Many peasants, said Berthold of Regensburg (125o), and espe cially many peasant women, cannot take any step in life without having recourse to witchcraft. Therefore, easy though it was to raise an outcry against some unpopular individual, any general enforcement of severe measures against witchcraft must have been extremely unpopular. The enormous multiplication of witch hunts during the 15th century—for on this side Joan of Arc's fate is quite typical—was both symptom and cause of a deep gulf between the ignorant multitude and the theology of leaders like Aquinas. "Every Inquisitor whom [the Church] commissioned to suppress witchcraft was an active missionary who scattered the seeds of the belief ever more widely" (Lea). A bull of Innocent VIII. in 1484 had the practical effect that thenceforward to ques tion the reality of witchcraft was to question the utterance of the vicar of Christ, "Thus the Inquisition in its decrepitude had a temporary resumption of activity" (Lea). Here again, however, we are to some extent anticipating; for the Inquisition was not only an economic but also a political force.

But, before quitting the economic factors, we must remember that they brought as much weakness as strength into the Reforma tion movement. It is evident that an economically irreproachable Church would have been as impregnable as the earliest Christian society had been; but it is equally true that the purity of reform was very early tainted by greed ; so that, when force was used on both sides, there was little or no moral difference between a de fensive commercialized hierarchy and an aggressive squirearchy eager for plunder.

Political Causes.

The political factor, though by itself it might never have led to actual revolt, came in at the last stage with decisive effect. It was the struggle with Protestantism which evolved the half-way principle of cuius regio, emus religio; "the ruler's choice determines the established religion of his territory"; and this in turn has led to our modern toleration of all creeds. But the mediaeval ideal had been one empire with one religion; and the actual conditions cannot be better described than in the words of the jurist-historian F. W. Maitland (Canon Law in the Ch. of England, p. ioo), "We could frame no acceptable definition of a State which would not comprehend the [mediaeval] Church. What has it not that a State should have? It has laws, law-givers, law-courts, lawyers. It uses physical force to compel men to obey the laws. It keeps prisons. In the 13th century, though with squeamish phrases, it pronounced sentence of death. It is no voluntary society; if people are not born into it they are baptized into it when they cannot help themselves. If they attempt to leave they are guilty of crimen laesae maiestatis, and are likely to be burned. It is supported by involuntary contributions, by tithe and by tax. And, it may be added, it claims to override, all the world over, the power of the secular State." Much of this power came to the Church by a process as legiti mate as that which could be claimed by most of the civil Govern ments. The Church had consciously modelled her organization on that of the Roman empire; and she survived when the empire went to wreck. At first there was no question of serious rivalry with the earthly state. Gregory I., in face of an imperial edict or law which he might have been excused for interpreting as a trespass upon Church privileges, had no doubt about his duty of publishing the edict as he was commanded, even while he pro tested against it ; "What am I," he wrote to the imperial council, "but dust and a worm? . . . a man set under authority." It was only by degrees, and not without many reactions, even under Charles's weak successors, that the popes reached a position which rendered possible the claims of Gregory VII., a man of commanding genius and rare courage. Starting from Augustine's theory of the City of God, founded by Christ, in its contrast with the earthly city, founded by Cain, Gregory insists that the papal power of binding and loosing places him above all earthly sover eigns. It enables him to annul all oaths made contrary to God's will (of which the pope is interpreter) and to absolve all subjects from allegiance to an emperor whom the pope has deposed. Innocent III. (d. 2 6 ) reasserted these claims both in theory and in practice; and at the death of the Emperor Frederick II. in the long struggle between papacy and empire was virtually de cided in favour of the former.