Stephen Hawes.

How far did the pre-Reformation Church meet the

needs of the people?
In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Catholic Church was perhaps
the most important institution in Europe. It operated across national boundaries,
although not without acknowledging them, and had some presence in every level
of society, from rural peasantry to high politics. However, the degree to which
the Church successfully carried out its numerous functions is questionable. In this
essay I shall argue that the Church as an institution failed to adapt to the
changes and challenges that were forced upon it. This occurred for several
reasons and its consequences are observable in various contexts. The Church's
structure became ineffectual as Europe transitioned from being a Mediaeval to
an Early Modern society; the width of the range of functions which it had
previously tried to monopolise in society was no longer tenable. In addition, the
credibility of papal authority was damaged by the legacy of the crises it had
faced in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries -- the Great Schism of
1378-1417 and the concliarist challenge, which undermined one of the
fundamental tenets of Church unity: that of, at least theoretical, cohesion under
papal rule. This unity was further questioned by the development of national
identities within the Church and the increase in strength of secular rulers. Due to
these changes, the Church's basic functions -- the administration of the
sacraments to the laity, the care of the dead and the pursuit of asceticism -were impaired. Some attempts were made to criticise the Church and
anticlericalism was present, if not prevalent, in society. The Church therefore was
weakened at a time when the needs of some Europeans was changing:
individualist and nonconformist approaches to religion, whilst not commonplace,
were beginning to emerge. The Church was therefore less able to fulfil the needs
of its congregations.
The Church's structure, and who staffed it, did not successfully adapt to the
bureaucratisation of the Early Modern period, damaging the ability of the Church
to carry out its functions but importantly also affecting its credibility as a moral
and spiritual authority. In the High Middle Ages, the Church had carried out vital
administrative, as well as spiritual functions, such as the keeping of records and
the maintenance of civil law in the form of marriages and wills. After the Black
Death of the fourteenth century, the population of Europe was significantly
reduced and redistributed, leading to a fall in Church revenues through tithes
and the need to drastically reorganise the parish system, the success of which
remains debatable.1 Although the Church continued to fulfil the roles it had held
prior to this, it did this at the expense of funding to parish priests, who carried
out the Church's core spiritual functions. 2 Other financial strains emerged from
1 R. N. Swanson, 'The Pre-Reformation Church' in The Reformation World, edited
by Andrew Pettegree. London and New York, Routledge: 2000, p 15.
2 Euan Cameron, 'The European Reformation'. Oxford, Clarendon Press: 1991, p
22.

the developments of the Early Modern period. These included the increased
complexity of legal and diplomatic proceedings, largely centred around conflicts
between secular rulers who sought to establish autonomy within their own state
and the Church who wished to maintain control over what they considered to be
their functional domain. The right to appoint to benefices had been an area of
dispute between lay and spiritual rulers throughout the Middle Ages and was
usually resolved with some form of compromise. One example of the way in
which diplomatic complexity increased is the Concordat of Vienna, signed in
1448, which divided the year into alternating months in which, if a benefice
became vacant in them, the papacy would have a different level of influence in
filling it.3 This new level of complexity required the employment of a greater
number of people.4 The Church was therefore badly in need of new revenue.
Although Swanson argues that complaints about unfairly-high tithes were
exaggerated by secular rulers in order to be able to negotiate their own cut, he
proposes that the sale of indulgences was perceived as mercenary by
contemporaries.5 Perhaps worse, both economically and for the Church's image,
was the deliberate 'inflation' of bureaucracy initiated by popes after the Great
Schism. This practice reached its peak in the late fifteenth century with Calixtus
III and Pius II and involved the sale of administrative positions -- such as that of
high-ranking notaries -- to wealthy buyers. This led to a short term gain in
revenue but this was more than negated by the long term burden of paying vast
numbers of unnecessary salaries.6 This practice is, of course, linked to the
corruption that was perceived to be endemic to the Church at the time.
Corruption occurred at all levels of ecclesiastical society, from the abuse of
canon law in order to allow parish priests to trade without joining guilds to the
role of politics in influencing papal decisions, such as the denial of a marriage
dispensation by Clement VII to Henry VIII for fear of Emperor Charles V. 7 Corrupt
practices, such as simony, pluracy and concubinage remained inherent to the
structure of the Church.8 However, what was of greater significance was the
perception of corruption. This was again influenced by the structure of the
Church, which created great disparity in wealth between those who worked with
and were members of local communities -- i.e., parish priests -- and higher
3 Ibid, p 31.
4 Ibid, p 20.
5 R. N. Swanson, 'The Pre-Reformation Church', p 13.
6 Euan Cameron, 'The European Reformation', pp. 29-31.
7 Ibid, p 28.
8 Bruce Gordon, 'Conciliarism in Late Mediaeval Europe' in The Reformation
World, p 39.

members of the clergy who enjoyed great wealth. When priests were
incompetent or lived in poverty whilst the laity continued to pay taxes to the
Church, it was easy for them to perceive the Church as a corrupt institution,
particularly as actual abuses did occur.9 Therefore the structure of the Church
undermined its 'authority' and 'sanctity', which prevented it from carrying out its
spiritual functions.10
The legitimacy of the Church and its ability to meet the needs of the European
population in a complete and uniform way was also challenged by the
developments that threatened the authority of the pope. The two major papal
crises, the Great Schism of 1378-1417 and the threat of conciliarism to the
absolute authority of the pope had implications for the Church throughout the
pre-Reformation period. The Great Schism, in which two rival popes claimed
legitimacy, left secular rulers with a unique negotiating position against the
papacy as they could offer support to one pope or threaten to withdraw in favour
of the rival pope unless concessions were made to them, a precedent that went
on to influence papal relations with lay rulers permanently -- the beginning in the
resurgence of secular power against the Church. 11 From the emergency of the
Great Schism emerged the idea of conciliarism, which, in its purest sense,
believed that the 'Power of Keys' to 'bind and loosen' given by Jesus to Saint
Peter was therefore afforded to the Church as a whole, rather than purely to
Saint Peter and those who inherited the papacy. 12 The implication of this belief
was that the cardinals -- or a representative council of cardinals -- had the power
to compel the pope and even to remove him. Conciliarism also distinguished the
divinity of the office of pontiff with the humanity and venality of the pope
himself, a view that was first put forward by Jean Gerson, one of the key figures
within the movement.13 Conciliarism was naturally opposed by the popes of the
fifteenth century, with particular vehemence by Pope Eugenius IV, for example,
and was eventually stamped out in 1447. However, it continued to be an
ideological threat, led to a wider questioning of the authority of the pope and
was linked to the national divisions within the Church as voting in councils
occurred in national blocks.14

9
10 Euan Cameron, 'The European Reformation', p 35.
11 Ibid, p 54.
12 Bruce Gordon, 'Conciliarism in Late Mediaeval Europe', p 31.
13 Ibid, p 34.
14 Ibid, p 31.

National division is linked to the inability of the Church to meet the needs of the
people as it represents a dynamic change in Early Modern Europe as separate
identities became more established and the Church principle of international
unity became much less applicable. Cameron identifies three major ways in
which the division between and international Church and national secularism
became blurred. Firstly, the increasing pressure on priests to be able to
communicate religious ideas in the vernacular and high ranking Church officials
to be loyal to the nation in which they held office. Secondly, the ownership by
high ranking clergy of temporal as well as spiritual property. Finally, he also
refers to roles in political society that encompass both a religious and nationalist
element, such as prince-bishops or cardinal protectors. 15 Although these facts
cannot be disputed, Cameron places undue emphasis on them as they were all
features of Mediaeval politics. Swanson and Gordon argue that new
developments after the Great Schism, the papacy became increasingly
concerned with Italian politics and maintaining their territories throughout the
region, leading to an increase in the power of the cardinals to that of near papalstatus, an example of which being the influence of Cardinal Wolsey during the
early sixteenth century. The 'reclusiveness' of the papacy damaged the
coherency of the Church structure, although it is debatable to what degree this
influenced the daily operation of the Church. 16
What is clear is that the Church could not adapt to changes in the way in which
people thought about religion and their relationship with God, linked to the rise
of individualism in the Early Modern period. This rise in individualism manifested
itself in several ways which, if not representative of the population as a whole, at
least represent the questioning of religious ideas in by many groups.
Anticlericalism was perhaps not widespread, but existed in several different
forms. One of these forms was the growth of polemical literature, such as Ulrich
Wiest's 'The arrogance of spiritual princes'. 17 Of course, literature, vernacular,
printing and reform movements are all linked, as MacCulloch illustrates by
attributing the failure of Lollardy in part to a lack of ability to disseminate ideas
in print.18 However, other forms of anticlericalism existed, such as the
anticlericalist abortive revolts organised by Joss Fritz in the late fifteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. Cameron links anticlericalism with an increased
religious awareness by the laity, who sought to increase their control over the
religious aspect of their lives rather than reject it. 19 This is similar to the reform

15 Euan Cameron, 'The European Reformation', pp. 52-5.

16 'The Reformation World,' edited by Andrew Pettegree, passim.
17 Euan Cameron, 'The European Reformation', p 56.
18 Diarmaid MacCulloch, 'Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700'.
London, Penguin: 2003, p 36.

movements and 'heretical' movements which existed within the period, which
sought to

19 Euan Cameron, 'The European Reformation', pp. 58-60