662 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
JiJTERBOCK, etc. Much material is given by W. Kohler : Dokumente zum Ahlassstreit, Tiib., 1902, and A. Schultk: D. Fugger in Rom, 2 vols., Leipz., 1904. Vol. II contains documents. — The authoritative Cath. work is Fu. Bkuinger : Die Abliisse, ihr Wesen m. Gebrauch, pp. 860 and 64, 13th ed., Paderb., 1906. — Also Nic. Faulus : J. Tetzel, der Ahlassprediger^ Mainz, 1899. — Best Prot. treatments, H. C. Lea: Hint, of Auric. Conf. and Indulgences in the Lat. Ch., 3 vols., Phil., 1896. — T. Buieger, art, Indulgemen in Herzog, IX. 76-94, and Schaft'-Herzog, V. 485 sqq. and D. Wesen d. Ablasses am Ausgange d. MA, a university address. Brieger has promised an extended treatment in book form. — Sciiaff: Ch. Mist., V., I. p. 729 sqq., VI. 146 sqq.
§ 73. The Clergy.
Both in respect of morals and education the clergy, during the period following the year 1450, showed improvement over the age of the Avignon captivity and the papal schism. Clerical practice in that former age was so low that it was impossible for it to go lower and any appearance of true religion remain. One of the healthy signs of this latter period was that, in a spirit of genuine religious devotion, Savonarola in Italy and such men in Germany as Rusch, Thomas Munier, Geiler of Strassburg, Sebastian Brant and the Benedictine abbot, Trithemius, held up to condemnation, or ridicule, priestly incompetency and worldliness. The pictures, which they joined Erasmus in drawing, were dark enough. Nevertheless, the clergy both of the higher and lower grades included in its ranks many men who truly sought the well-being-of tlie people and set an example of purity of conduct.
The first cause of the low condition, for low it continued to be, was the impossible requirement of celibacy. The infraction of this rule weakened the whole moral fibre of the clerical order. A second cause is to be looked for in the seizure of the rich ecclesiastical endowments by the aristocracy as its peculiar prize and securing them for the sons of noble parentage without regard to their moral and intellectual fitness. To the evils arising from these two causes must be added the evils arising from the unblushing practice of pluralism. No help came from Rome. The episcopal residences of Toledo, Constance, Paris, Mainz, Cologne and Canterbury could not be expected to be models of domestic and religious order when
§ 73. THE CLERGY. 663
the tales of Boccaccio were being paralleled in the lives of tlie supreme functionaries of Christendom at its centre.
The grave discussions of clerical manners, carried on at the Councils of Constance and Basel, revealed the disease without providing a cure. The proposition was even made by Cardinal Zabarella and Gerson, in case further attempts to check priestly concubinage failed, to concede to the clergy the privilege of marriage. 1 In the programme for a reformation of the Church, offered by Sigismund at Basel, the concession was included and Pius II., one of the attendants on that synod, declared the reasons for restoring the right of matrimony to priests to be stronger in that day than were the reasons in a former age for forbidding it. The need of a relaxation of the rigid rule found recognition in the decrees of Eugenius IV., 1441, and Alexander VI., 1496, releasing some of the military orders from the vow of chastity. Here and there, priests like Lallier of Paris at the close of the 15th century, dared to propose openly, as Wyclif had done a century before, its full abolition. But, for making the proposal, the Sorbonne denied to Lallier the doctorate.
In Spain, the efforts of synods and prelates to put a check upon clerical immorality accomplished little. Finally, the secular power intervened and repeated edicts were issued by Ferdinand and Isabella against priestly concubinage, 1480, 1491, 1502, 1503. So energetic was the attempt at enforcement that, in districts, clerics complained that the secular officials made forcible entrance into their houses and carried off their women companions. ^ In his History of the Spanish Inquisition^ Dr. Lea devotes a special chapter to clerical solicitation at the confessional. Episcopal deliverances show that the priests were often illiterate and without even a knowledge of Latin. The prelates were given to worldliness and the practice of pluralism. The revenues of the see of Toledo were estimated at from 80,000 to 100,000 ducats, with patronage at the disposal of its incumbent amounting to a like sum. A sin-
^ Lea : Cler. Celibacy, II. 25. Gerson : Dial, naturae et sophice de castitate ecclesiasticorum. Du Pin's ed., II. 617-636. 2 Lea : Inq. of Spain, I. 15 sqq.