668 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1204-1517.
and St. Mary's, the king Maximilian looking on. Preachers, like (jreiler of Strassburg, cried out against the moral dangers which beset persons taking the monastic vow.^ The cloistral life came to be known as the " the compulsory vocation." As the time of the Reformation approached, there was no lessening of the outcry against the immorality of the clergy and convents, as appears from the writings of Ulrich von Hutten and Erasmus.
The practice of priestly concubinage, uncanonical though it was, bishops were quite ready to turn into a means of gain, levying a tax upon it. In the diocese of Bamberg, a toll of 5 gulden was exacted for every child born to a priest and, in a single year, the tax is said to have brought in the considerable sum of 1,500 gulden. In 1522, a similar tax of 4 gulden brought into the treasury of the bishop of Constance, 7,500 gulden. The same year, complaint was made to the pope by the Diet of Niirnberg of the reckless lawlessness of young priests in corrupting women and of the annual tax levied in most dioceses upon all the clergy without distinction whether they kept concubines or not.^ It is not surprising, in view of these facts, that Luther called upon monks and nuns unable to avoid incontinence of thought, to come forth from the monasteries and marry. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that no plausible charge of incontinence was made against the Reformer.
If we turn to England, we are struck with the great dearth of contemporary religious literature, 1450-1517, as compared with Germany.^ Few writings have come down to us from which to form a judgment of the condition of the clergy. Our deductions must be drawn in part from the testimonies
1 Die juncjen Monchlein, he said, nnd Xonnlein die du mnchest, die loerden Huren und Buben. The young monks and nuns will become harlots and rascals. I have not spoken of that custom of mediiieval lust, the jus primce noctis or droit de marqnette as it was called, whereby the feudal lord had the privilege of spending the first night with all brides. Spiritual lords in Southern France, having domains, did not shrink, in cases, from demanding the same privilege. Lea : Celibacy, I. 441.
2 Lea, II. 59.
* Gee and Hardy: in Documents, etc., gives only two ecclesiastical acts between 1402-1532.
§ 73. THE CLERGY. 669
of the English Humanists and Reformers and from the records of the visitations of monasteries and also their suppression under Henry VIII. In a document, drawn up at the request of Henry V. by the University of Oxford, 1414, setting forth the need of a reformation of the Church, one of the articles pronounced the " undisguised profligacy of the clergy to be the scandal of the Church." ^ In the middle of the century, 1455, Archbishop Bourchier's Commission for Reforming the Clergy spoke of the marriage and concubinage of the secular clergy and the gross ignorance which, in quarters, marked them. In the latter part of the century, 1489, the investigation of the convents, undertaken by Archbishop Morton, uncovered an unsavory state of affairs. The old abbey of St. Albans, for example, had degenerated till it was little better than a house of prostitution for monks. In two priories under the abbey's jurisdiction, the nuns had been turned out to give place to avowed courtesans. The Lollards demanded the privilege of wedlock for priests. When, in 1494, 30 of their number were arraigned by Robert Blacater, archbishop of Glasgow, one of the charges against them was their assertion that priests had wives in the primitive Church. ^ Writing at the very close of the 15th century, Colet exclaimed, " Oh, the abominable impiety of those miserable priests, of whom this age of ours contains a great multitude, who fear not to rush from the arms of some foul harlot into the temple of the Church, to the altar of Christ, to the mysteries of God." 3 The famous tract, the Beggars' Petition^ written on the eve of the British Reformation, accused the clergy of having no other serious occupation than the destruction of the peace of family life and the corruption of women.*
iWilkins: Concil., III. 360-365.
2 Capes : Engl. Ch. in the 14lh and 15th Ceritt., p. 259, says that many of the clergy were actually married.
^ Seebohm, p. 76. For Hutton's summary of the Norwich visitation, see Traill: Social Engl., II. 407 sqq. He concludes that "if the religious did little good, they did no harm." But see same volume, p. 565, for the charge against the priests of Gloucester.
* Froude puts the composition of this tract in 1528. The 16th complaint runs : " Who is she that will set her hands to work to get 3 pence a day and