The two centuries preceding the Reformation were a time of rapid change and material progress. Towns and cities were growing and multiplying. Commerce and industry were developing and opportunities for education increasing. New universities were being founded in Europe; the rigid feudal social order was changing, and opportunities for men to rise from the lower ranks of society to the higher were increasing. Among the upper classes it was a time of fashion and ostentation; the clerical class had become very wealthy; the Church indeed owned a very large proportion of Europe’s riches. Magnificent churches, cathedrals and other religious buildings were arising. But if material conditions were improving, moral conditions remained very low. Greed, robbery, violence and immorality were rampant. The professing Church, instead of setting an example of righteous and holy living, was thoroughly corrupt. Of the clergy of that time, a contemporary historian says, “These were held to be holy people ... yet they live so shamefully and filthily one could not find a worse people in the world. ... They could not be reined in nor punished, because they were under the jurisdiction of the Pope alone.”
The masses were blinded by superstition, which was cunningly exploited by the Church. Its power lay in its hold over men’s consciences. The day of judgment and the everlasting torments of hell were kept before their eyes. Such things were pictorially represented on the walls of the churches and elsewhere. True, the cross and the Saviour’s death were also portrayed, but little or no effort was made to bring the truth of free pardon in virtue of that death before men. Between the Saviour and men were a host of mediators: the Virgin Mary, the innumerable saints, the Pope, the priest and the father confessor. The Scriptures were deliberately withheld and were a closed book even to most of the clergy. The services were in Latin, and that mostly attended by the people was the mass, a ceremony which they did not understand because it was in a foreign tongue, and, if they did, it was an awful perversion of the truth; the simplicity of the Lord’s supper had been converted into an idolatrous ceremonial. When the priest uttered the sacred formula in Latin, the wafer was said to be changed into the very body of Christ and became an object of worship. Men were taught that absolution lay in the power of the priest and, above all, in the power of the Pope. This was the plenitude of papal power. From his lofty throne he claimed authority over the rulers of the world. As the vice-regent of God on earth he was over all and subject to none. His word was law. If kings refused, he could wield the awful power of excommunication. Should they, as in the case of King John, challenge the Pope, his subjects were absolved from their oaths of fealty, his kingdom was handed over to rival monarchs, and his country was laid under interdict, which meant the consolations of religion, such as they were, were refused to men; even the dead were denied Christian burial. In a day of superstition and ignorance, the masses were thus terrorized.
The popular preachers were the friars, whose object was to amuse rather than instruct. Loose jokes and even obscenities were mixed with the public sermons. The Festival of Fools, which was held in the churches in many places, was a profane burlesque of religion. It was, however, so popular that when it was prohibited in 1444, the inferior clergy rebelled against the prohibition. The Festival of Asses was celebrated throughout Europe for centuries. During the proceedings, an ass was brought into the church and all manner of vulgar antics indulged in. Some have tried to palliate all this and pretend that matters were not so bad as they have been painted. Lest it be thought we are exaggerating, let the words of a Roman Catholic opponent of the Reformation be cited. Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621) wrote:
“Some years before the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies broke out, according to the testimony of contemporary writers, there was no strictness in the ecclesiastical courts, no discipline in regard to morals, no knowledge of theology — there was hardly anything of religion remaining.”
Had Christianity indeed died out? No! Real Christians were, for the most part, with the Waldenses, the Lollards, or other so-called heretical sects. We have already given a glimpse of these faithful and persecuted folk in a previous chapter. Yet doubtless here and there in Rome itself were secret believers who had tasted the water of life. D’Aubigné tells of a monk named Arnoldi who every day offered up in his quiet cell this fervent prayer: “O Lord Jesus Christ! I believe that Thou alone art my redemption and my righteousness.” He also tells of a Carthusian friar, who having written a truly Christian confession, in which he based his salvation solely on the work of Christ, placed it in a box and hid it in a hole in the wall of his cell where it was found centuries afterwards — a touching tribute to living faith in an age of darkness.
We hesitate to burden the reader with the shameful record of the Papacy at this time, and yet if a true picture is to be drawn of the times, some brief details must be given. At times during this period there were two or even three popes. Each cursed and excommunicated his rival. During the great schism that lasted from 1378 to 1409, there were always two popes, one at Rome and one at Avignon. The countries of Europe were divided by their allegiance to one or the other. From 1409 to 1415 there were three popes. From 1415 to 1417 there were again two. The Council of Constance recognized Martin V, but there was still an anti-pope till 1429. Two of the rival popes, Urban VI and Clement the VII, waged war against each other. Alexander the VI (1492) obtained the papal chair by bribery. He was given up to every species of vice. Head of a system which demanded celibacy of its clergy, he lived himself in unholy alliance with a celebrated beauty and employed his influence to promote to lucrative posts his five illegitimate children. An Italian historian says of him, “By his shameful vices, his cruelty, his treachery, his sensuality and his unheard of avarice, he poisoned the world like a venomous snake.” He perished by drinking a poisoned draught which he had had prepared for others. Julius II, who followed him shortly after (1503-1513), was a bloodthirsty soldier, spending much of his time in camp with his troops. He devoted all his energies to the reestablishment of the papal sovereignty and the extinction of foreign domination in Italy. His successor, Leo X, 1513-1522, is described as a clever politician, a spendthrift and a voluptuary. He was the pope against whom Luther stood up. To find money for his extravagances, he encouraged the abominable traffic in indulgences.
It seems incredible that reasonable men could tolerate such enormities and give any respect to the barefaced hypocrites who masqueraded as heads of the Church. As a matter of fact, the Papacy did lose the respect of decent-minded people in Europe. A continual outcry for reform finally found its answer in the Council of Constance, but the wily papists succeeded in avoiding anything of value in the way of reform.
The powers of darkness prepared new forces to support the decaying fabric of the Papacy and maintain its hold upon the deluded masses. In the year that King John signed the Magna Carta, the order of the Franciscans was instituted by Innocent III, and a few years later his successor instituted the Dominican order. The idea did not originate with the Pope, nor was it a carefully premeditated plan of the cardinals. One day, as Innocent was sunning himself on the terrace of the Lateran, a haggard figure approached him, clothed in rags. It was St. Francis of Assisi. He laid hurriedly before the Pope his scheme to form an order of monks vowed to abject poverty. These would retrieve the reputation Rome had lost through the profligacy and extravagance of her present clergy and monastic orders, which were bursting with wealth and luxury. These men were not to be tied to monasteries; they would perambulate Christendom and become a mighty buttress of strength to the papal edifice. At first the Pope dismissed the man and his message. But as he thought about it, the value of the idea grew upon him. St. Francis was found and commissioned to put his plan into execution. Followers multiplied at an amazing rate. Before the death of their founder, there were already twenty-five hundred Franciscan convents — the single enthusiast had multiplied into an army. The poverty of the Franciscans appealed to the masses on whose charity they lived as beggars, and they became a popular force in Christendom, for they performed many works of charity, especially at the beginning of their history. They were subservient directly to the Pope and became serious rivals everywhere to the local clergy.
St. Dominic approached the Pope also with a similar plan. His followers, too, were to be devoted to poverty and live on alms, thus costing the church nothing. Their object was to counteract heresy. They penetrated the homes of high and low, rich and poor, to seek out heretics and uphold the teachings of Rome.
The friars or mendicant orders, whose institution has just been referred to, arose at a time when that great movement of the Spirit of God already described in our account of the Waldenses was spreading all over Europe. These simple believers commended themselves to men, especially at the beginning, by their simple, godly lives, their charity and their unworldliness. Peter Waldo had sacrificed all his wealth and devoted himself to preaching and teaching, and many followed his good example. The advent of the friars was Satan’s imitation of this divine movement, and the Dominican order was expressly designed to counteract it. The enthusiasm of St. Francis and the strange dream of the Pope were part of a spiritual movement — not of God, but of Satan. Long since had the Apostle warned of this, when he wrote:
“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:11-1211Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:11‑12)).
The whole Romish system is a masterpiece of Satanic craft. There we see in operation the three principal means that the devil uses: (1) imitation, namely, man-made ceremonies, dogmas and creeds taking the place of “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 33Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. (Jude 3) JND), (2) corruption — the pure teaching of Christianity garbled, adulterated or wholly corrupted and overlaid by human inventions so that the truth is lost, buried in the rubbish of superstition, men themselves corrupted by lust and wickedness, and (3) violence — terror, persecution, torture and the fire and sword for those who cling to the truth.
Few of our readers are ignorant of the Inquisition, that diabolical system carried on in the name of Christ, which had for its object to search out and destroy His most devoted followers. The Inquisition was established by Innocent III and was placed in the hands of the Dominicans.
Waddington says, “The success of the Dominicans encouraged the profession of beggary, and the face of Christendom was suddenly darkened by a swarm of holy mendicants in such manner that about the year 1272 Gregory X endeavored to arrest the growing evil. To this end, he suppressed a great multitude of those authorized vagrants and distributed the remainder, still very numerous, into four societies — the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites and the Hermits of St. Augustine.”
The Pope had conferred on them the right of shriving men, and they gave absolution on such easy terms that evildoers of every description flocked to them for pardon. Their access to the homes and private lives of the masses gave them a wonderful opportunity for acquiring wealth. This was contrary to their vow of utter poverty, but some acute mind discovered that if they could not own wealth, they could be stewards, and stewards of immense wealth they soon became. A papal decree in 1279 sanctioned this subtle distinction. Before long their convents rivaled the palaces of nobles and kings.
The wealth of Europe at this time was drained away into the papal treasuries. Direct impositions, such as Peter’s pence, and charges and fees of all kinds were demanded by the popes to support their pomp and glory and their wild extravagance, not to mention their wars. The world groaned under these burdens, and men complained bitterly. By the sale of Church offices to the highest bidder, more revenue was acquired. The jubilee pilgrimages to Rome were made more frequent, and hordes of pilgrims flocked to Rome to be fleeced of their wealth — to enrich the papal city and the papal See. Thereby they secured “forgiveness” of their sins from the great sinner who wore the triple crown. For those who did not wish to travel — and it had its dangers and inconveniencies — the papal indulgence could be obtained on payment of the cost of the pilgrimage.
In England, the constant exactions caused trouble between Edward III and the Pope, and this brought Wycliffe into public notice, but this is a large and important subject which deserves a separate chapter.