A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [67]
IT WAS PRECISELY four years away, and the spark which ignited it was the sale of indulgences—specifically, the conduct of the quaestiarii, or pardoners, commissioned to distribute them, and the avarice of the papacy. Thomas Gascoigne, chancellor of Oxford, noted in 1450 that “sinners say nowadays: “I care not how many evils I do in God’s sight, for I can easily get plenary remission of all guilt and penalty by an absolution and indulgence granted me by the pope, whose written grant I have bought for four or six pence.” The “indulgence-mongers,” as Gascoigne scornfully called the quaestiarii in his account, “wander all over the country, and give a letter of pardon, sometimes for two pence, sometimes for a draught of wine or beer … or even for the hire of a harlot, or for carnal love.”
John Colet, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the early sixteenth century, concluded that the commercialization of indulgences had transformed the Church into a “money machine.” He quoted Isaiah: “The faithful city is become a harlot”—no one could doubt which city he meant—and then Jeremiah: “She hath committed fornication with many lovers. … She hath conceived many seeds of iniquity, and daily bringeth forth the foulest of offspring.” He said, “Covetousness also … has so taken possession of the hearts of all priests … that nowadays we are blind to everything but that alone which seems able to bring us gain.” In effect, the practice of indulgences was a form of religious taxation, and its weight bore heavily on those who could least afford it. Informed Christians deeply resented the gulf between Europe’s hungry masses and Rome’s greed. In 1502 a procurer-general of the Parlement estimated that the Catholic hierarchy owned 75 percent of all the money in France; twenty years later, when the Diet of Nuremberg drew up its Centum Gravamina—Hundred Grievances—the Church was credited with owning 50 percent of the wealth in Germany.
Peter and Saul (later Paul) had lived in penury. The popes in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries lived like Roman emperors. They were the wealthiest men in the world, and they and their cardinals further enriched themselves by selling holy offices. An ecclesiastical appointee had to send the Curia half his income during the first year of his appointment, and a tenth of it each year thereafter. Archbishops paid huge lump sums for their pallia, the white bands which served as the insignia of their rank. When Catholic officeholders died, all their personal possessions went to Rome. Judgments and dispensations rendered by the Curia became official when the applicant sent a gift in acknowledgment, with the Curia fixing the size of the gift. And every Christian was subject to papal taxes.
Even before he bought his pontificate, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia’s income had been 70,000 florins a year. But an occupant of Saint Peter’s chair could do much better than that. Pope Julius
The traffic in indulgences
II formed a “college” of 101 secretaries who each paid him 7,400 florins for the honor. Leo X, more ambitious, created 141 squires and 60 chamberlains in his papal household, and, in return, received 202,000 florins.
Archbishops, bishops—even lower orders of the clergy—grew fat and frequently supported concubines on their fees and tithes. The laity had first protested their systematic impoverishment in the fourteenth century. Germans had seized tax collectors