The Roman Catholic Church
on the Eve of the Reformation
General Comments
Even though we will often refer to "the Church", by which we mean the Roman Catholic Church, you ought not picture a single, organized entity. There were many churches in Europe, all Roman Catholic but with significant differences between them. The divisions ran along national lines, as you might expect, but they ran along other lines as well: monks and friars, episcopal powers, the papacy itself, and various movements and sects. In this essay I will sketch the more important of these subdivisions, mainly with a view of helping to set the stage for your readings on the beginning of the Reformation itself. I will begin with the countries, in no particular order, then turn to other factors.
The Church in England
This was probably the most internally unified and consistent church in Europe. England had only two archbishops, Canterbury and York, with the former having the superior authority. That authority had been long established by 1500 and was buttressed by the monarchy, which was itself the most centralized of all the European monarchies. The result was a church that was secure in its power and at peace with the secular ruler.
England had had only one significant heresy--the Lollards, who were followers of John Wyclif. They had been a significant factor in southern England in the early 15th century, even managing a couple of revolts. While no longer a political or even much of a religious factor, the tradition of Lollardy was still a strong memory in England.
Of more recent, and probably greater importance, were the English humanists, including John Colet, Thomas Linacre, and Thomas More. They were typical of the Christian humanist movement and raised an English voice on the subjects of education, religious reform, and classical study. Erasmus visited England three times, the third visit lasting for five years (1509-1514). The most significant publication of this first generation of English humanists was Thomas More's Utopia, which appeared in 1516.
Certainly the most significant publication in pre-Reformation England was William Tyndale's Bible (read more about it). It was not the first English translation of the Bible (Wyclif and his followers did that), but it was by far the best and its publication (New Testament, 1525; Old Testament, 1530) attracted the attention of the authorities, and Tyndale himself was eventually executed as a heretic.
In short, the English church was as much stirring with reform sentiments as were churches on the Continent. The significant difference was the high degree of central control, from Canterbury and the crown.
The Church in France
The French Church, often called the Gallican Church, was certainly the most independent of the national churches in 1500 and became even more so in the years that followed. The reason for this derives from the long, close relationship between France and the papacy. The most recent manifestation of that relationship was the fact that popes had resided not at Rome but in Avignon throughout most of the 14th century and into the early years of the 15th century. During that time, too, the College of Cardinals had been dominated by the French.
This close relationship was altered later in the 15th century as the papacy passed into the hands of the Italians and then the Spanish, but French power was often invoked as a counter to that influence and that power had to be purchased at a price; namely, a high degree of autonomy inside the Gallican Church. This was stated formally in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438).
Then came the French invasions of Italy, one high point of which was the Battle of Marignano in 1515, which led directly to the Concordat of Bologna the following year. This document all but made the King of France the ruler of the Gallican Church, except in matters of pure doctrine. This is significant because the French king did not feel threatened by or resentful of papal authority, and so was less inclined to view the Protestant position as being beneficial in practical terms.
If the French crown was somewhat insulated from the persuasive influence of the reformers, the nobility and towns were not. There, especially in the south and west, local authority had a long tradition of resistance to any effort to impose central control. Southern France also had a long tradition of being a source of heresies, most notably the Cathars and the Waldensians. Over the centuries, the people of Aquitaine, Gascony, Poitou and elsewhere had developed a whole array of techniques for evading or defying the authority of Paris. In those territories, when people received the reform message sympathetically, they readily found protection from their nobles and civic officials against royal attempts to quash the new heresy.
In short, the while the French crown and French bishops enjoyed unprecedented freedom from papal influence, so also did the towns and nobles in many French counties enjoy a good deal of independence from royal authority.
The Church in Spain
Spain is, of course, the archetype of a Catholic country, and no serious heresy ever took root there. Yet, you may be surprised to learn that the influence of Rome was perhaps less here than anywhere else, largely due to the efforts of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, along with some outstanding officials in their service. These monarchs, and the ones who followed them (Charles and Philip), were strong-willed and determined that only they should rule in their country. The Spanish church was firmly Catholic because its rulers were firmly Catholic, but it was a firmly Spanish church first and foremost.
The Spanish Inquisition is famous, of course, but here again you should place the emphasis on "Spanish". It was a court that had tremendous influence, but that court was always under the royal hand and did what the king wanted. It certainly had its religious motivations and goals, but it was more another branch of Spanish royal administration than it was a branch of Roman religious control.
There were humanists in Spain, and calls for reform, but this too was fundamentally Spanish in nature. The Spanish church in the late 15th century did such a good job of reforming itself, when most other churches in Europe were stagnant, that many of the abuses criticized by the Protestants were comparatively minor in Spain. This, combined with the strong central control exercised by the Crown, made Spain proof against the Reformation. When Protestantism did stir, an efficient government apparatus moved quickly to contain and defuse it.
The Church in Italy
The popes lived in Italy, but here I wish to speak about the rest of Italy, outside Rome. Southern Italy was Spanish, and was ruled according to Spanish law (see above). In northern and central Italy, the Catholic Church was so tightly bound up with the power structure, especially with the nobility, that there was almost no possibility of a break with papal authority and the episcopal structure.
This was so, despite the fact that Italy was home to any number of strong reformist sects and even heresies. The Spiritual Franciscans were here, for example. Italy was home to Savonarola and countless other popular (and populist) preachers. Waldensian influence was strong in the northwest. In other words, there was no shortage of reformers in Italy, but very little reform. When Luther's message filtered across the Alps, there were a good many sympathetic ears.
The Church in Germany
The case of Germany is the most complex. You will understand this better if you understand more about Germany politics, but essentially Germany had no national church in a formal sense, but it had a strong sense of German identity, based largely on language and culture. In particular, there was a deep-seated perception of "interference" from Italy in German ecclesiastical affairs. The German emperors, and other rulers as well, had a quarrel with the papacy that stretched almost as far back as the Empire itself. Moreover, German emperors had a long history of getting involved in Italian politics, with the Italians being perceived by the Germans as rebellious and treacherous. These sentiments were bubbling right at the surface at the beginning of the 16th century.
One of the chief points of dispute between popes and emperors was control over the German bishops. Not only the emperors, but increasingly since about 1300 the upper German nobility, had exercised a great deal of influence over who became bishop in their lands. Those bishops weren't quite appointed by the German barons, but very often the local bishop was related to the local baron. Church and state were intimately entangled in German politics.
Additionally, a number of political entities--especially the free Imperial cities and the free Imperial knights--long viewed the local bishops as enemies. Indeed, one reason why a city tried for the free Imperial status was to win free of local episcopal control. That local bishop was viewed by the city council as an alien power, under the control either of a powerful duke or margrave, or else under the influence of Rome. Either way, it was a power to be evaded and resisted.
Everywhere in Germany, though for different reasons, the Church was viewed as a power that needed to be brought under control. Where papal influence was strong, that power was viewed as foreign and dangerous.
As elsewhere in Europe, the need for reform was generally recognized in Germany. The tone here was a bit different, though. Reform was often couched in terms of "Germanizing" the Church, of princes exerting control in order to drive out corrupting influences from Rome. This might mean firmer control of the mendicants, for example, many of who were free of any sort of local control. It could be seen in the city councils that hired itinerant preachers to preach the gospel, beyond what was provided by the local Church establishment. It could be seen in attempts to resist papal taxes and regulations. It certainly could be seen in the continuing existence and protection of the Hussite Church in Bohemia. In short, reform could best be accomplished not by reform in Rome, but by local reform, led by the prince or city council.
Beyond that, there's hardly anything that can be said that would apply across the board in Germany. In some areas, episcopal appointments were controlled by Rome. In other areas, they were firmly under noble control. In still others, they were in flux or had some degree of independence. The same was true of monasteries, which were numerous in Germany, and in some places were quite wealthy and influential. The exact situation varied from one place to another: Hesse was quite a different place than were the lands of the Teutonic Knights, and both were very different from Swabia or Württemberg.
The Papacy
The beginning of the 16th century falls at the apogee of the Renaissance papacy, a period of great brilliance in Rome but also of an utter indifference to reform. The Renaissance popes are alternately held up as heroes of art and splendor, and as the very model and definition of corruption.
Papal Authority
Papal authority had gone through a painful series of crises in the 14th and 15th centuries, nor was the crisis in 1500 by any means over. The difficulty took several forms: whether pope or monarch should have the superior authority, whether pope or a general council of the Church should have the superior authority, whether the papacy could preserve the Church safe and whole against heresy and disbelief, and whether or not the papacy could preserve itself safe and whole in the world of practical politics or be swallowed up by one of the great worldly powers.
The struggle between popes and kings was an ancient one, extended at least back to the 11th century, and I won't try to summarize that struggle here. Suffice it to say that the struggle continued. At the level of theory, little progress had been made, and the old Gelasian doctrine continued to be put forward. On a practical level, the papacy had, largely without deliberate choice, come to terms separately with the various kings of Europe. Something of the variations in those settlements is recounted above.
The struggle between pope and council was more recent, deriving as it did from the Great Schism. That struggle was seemingly settled in favor of councils by 1420, but it turned out that in practical terms the popes had won the day, and the popes of the later 15th century had a degree of power and authority unknown to earlier centuries. If there was ever a time that a pope was also a prince of Europe, it would be in the decades around 1500. Even so, the theoretical claims of the councils still lurked in the background, making popes reluctant to call any council unless it could be carefully controlled.
The heresy matter I treat in the following section. Here I only point out that the papacy by 1500 regarded itself as the chief protector against heresy, just as the emperor regarded himself as the chief protector against the infidels. Not everyone thought the popes were doing a good job, and the popes themselves displayed varying fervor on the subject, but there was no question that defense of the Church against wrong beliefs was regarded as one of the duties of the Bishop of Rome.
The matter of practical politics came to occupy much of the attention of the papacy towards the end of the 15th century. It began as early as the Peace of Lodi in 1450 and grew steadily thereafter. It began with the papacy, only recently restored to Rome without rivals, seeking to re-assert its authority over its own dominions, the Papal States. Once these were secured, thanks to the Borgia popes (who were Spanish), they at once had to confront the prospect of dangers to the Papal States from the north and south. Popes in earlier centuries had faced similar problems, but popes in earlier centuries had not had the financial and military resources of the Renaissance popes.
So, in the decades after 1450, the popes waded deeper and deeper into the waters of European politics. Their particular pool was northern Italy. They wound up calling in French armies, who were so successful that they then called in Spanish armies. Who were so successful that the popes again turned to the French. They were still in this mess up to their hips in 1517, and would not really be free of the business until 1530. They weren't being frivolous. If a single power gained too much control in Italy, it might be able to dictate policy to Rome. This would be as much a danger to the true Church as any heretic, so it justified fighting back. The trouble was, in the fighting back, a given pope (and his court) might become so preoccupied with the practical politics as to neglect the care of souls. It was a delicate balancing act, and frankly, some of the popes at this time weren't at all balanced.
All of these factors should be kept in mind as you read about Martin Luther and the rest of them. The doings of an Augustinian monk in far-off Germany (which Italians tended to dismiss contemptuously anyway), seemed awfully remote when viewed in the context of earlier and much more serious heresies, of struggles with kings and popes and councils, and of armies marching up and down the length of Italy.
Heresy
It should be noted that the 15th century had seen a veritable parade of heretics of a very serious nature. The most notable of these was that of Jan Hus, who was executed for heresy in 1416 at the Council of Constance. After his execution, the Bohemian people rebelled against their king and a long civil war ensued. At the height, in the 1430s, the Hussites had invaded Poland and controlled large sections of central Europe. The papacy was actually forced to compromise and only in Bohemia could the faithful receive both the cup and the bread at communion. The Bohemian Church was essentially its own church, in a kind of alliance with Rome.
Other heresies had less political impact but were still influential. The Spritual Franciscans had been condemned as heretics in the 14th century, yet they continued to exist in Italy and continued to exert influence by virtue of their piety.
The Lollards of England continued to practice their somewhat modified Roman Catholicism, surviving by being discreet in practice and by no longer challenging public authority (the last troubles had been under Henry VII).
The Cathars in Languedoc had been largely eradicated by a series of crusades in the 13th century, followed by steady inquisitorial work in the 14th century, yet they persisted in remote mountain towns. Much the same was true of the Waldensians, though they had a sort of enclave created by royal order down in the Valtelline.
All of these entities were eventually subsumed by the Reformation, either Protestant or Catholic. Last to disappear officially was the Hussite Church in 1609. More to our point here, the threat of heresy was for the local episcopacy as well as for Rome itself a real and present danger. Heretics could be identified all around. In Bohemia and the Valtelline, they could even by identified by a specific region. Heresy was not an abstraction and it was not merely an ideology. It was a dangerous game that required uncompromising attention, and civil authority felt this no less that did ecclesiastical authority.
The Church in the early 16th Century
The fortunes of the Church in the various nations is narrated elsewhere. Here I want only to make a few comments about the popes during this period.
Pius III, 1503
Reigned only twenty-six days. Sometimes the College of Cardinals would get deadlocked and would vote for a third party to whom none objected (or supported). Often this sort of person would be elderly. It was a way to postpone the real battle, to let all parties re-negotiate and realign for the next election.
Julius II, 1503-1513
Most famously known as the warrior-pope because he led troops in battle and wore armor, though he did not actually fight. The Italians called him pontifice terribile. This coincides nicely with Michelangelo, who was also famous for his terribilità, and who worked for Pope Julius on multiple commissions, the most famous of which was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Much of Julius' campaigning was directed against Venice, which had nabbed a number of important cities from the northern parts of the Papal States. Once he'd come to terms with Venice, he led an effort to drive the "barbarians" from all of Italy (by barbarians he meant any non-Italian powers, but especially the French).
Julius is a good example of how Rome could fool itself into thinking that it was exercising leadership in Christendom. The pope had finally re-established the Papal States, after centuries of outside interference. This made the popes independent of secular influence (or so he thought; in fact, he'd called in Spanish troops and they would prove even more dangerous than the French). He also managed to leave the papacy with a budget surplus, no small accomplishment given his almost constant warfare.
The usual portraits of Julius end there, or perhaps go on to talk about his patronage of the arts. But the pope was a reformer, at least as Rome understood it. He called the Fifth Lateran Council, the first genuinely papal general council since 1274. He instituted monastic reforms, tried to end simony in connection with papal elections, and created a school in Rome for local priests. These were, however, relatively minor efforts. The Council had potential, but he called it late in his life (1512) and it actually accomplished very little.
Leo X, 1513-1521
A Medici pope who notoriously was more interested in art and architecture than in church reform. When he first heard of Martin Luther, he dismissed him and the ruckus as just another of the squabbles that burbled out of Germany in an endless stream.
Leo is a very symbol of the problems with the papacy. He was created a cardinal at the age of thirteen by Pope Innocent VIII, who bowed to the incessant pressure from Lorenzo de' Medici of Florence. He was taught by the greatest humanists of his day, including Marsilio Ficino. He would have made a memorable secular prince. He loved to live well, to spend lavishly, and had excellent taste. As a pope, however, these qualities were not at all what were needed at the time.
Not only was Leo faced with religious heresy in Germany, he was faced with political dangers at home. The French had a new king (Francis I) and they were determined to win back what they'd lost at the hands of Julius II. Leo had no taste for war and no understanding of it. He pleaded for peace and wrung his hands and chose his allies poorly. The result was the Concordat of Bologna, at which Leo basically surrendered all papal control over the Church in France.
He also exerted little positive influence over the Fifth Lateran Council, allowing it to stumble to a close with little to show for it. Indeed, the Council issued any number of admirable decrees, but these needed a pope who would enforce them, and enforcement did not fit Leo's temperment. He was capable of issuing dramatic statements, but not of doing the politicking needed to back them up.
Leo was not a bad man. He was one of the greatest of the patron of arts of his day. He was, however, not much of a pope. In quieter times, he likely would have been famous for all the buildings and paintings and sculptures and literature that flourished under his hand. As it was, he's famous for all the things that escaped his grasp.
Hadrian VI, 1522-1523
Hadrian had been the tutor of Emperor Charles V and upon his election there was great hope for cooperation between Empire and Papacy. Unfortunately, Hadrian did not live long enough for much to develop, one way or the other.
Clement VII, 1523-1534
Also a Medici, cousin to Leo X, Clement was a better politician, but he was preoccupied with defending the fortunes of his family, which had fallen on hard times. This brought him into conflict with the Emperor, and between the two political crises, Clement paid very little attention to the growth of Luther's cause in the rest of Europe.
Clement was pope when Imperial troops sacked Rome in 1527. While this was not done on Charles' orders, the sack pretty much set the tone for relations between pope and emperor. Clement might work to undermine imperial plans, but he could not oppose Charles openly. It's important to remember that it was this pope who sat in Rome when the matter of King Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine came up. Catherine was Charles' aunt and he was determined there should be no divorce. Clement might well have granted the divorce under other circumstances, but he could not so openly defy Charles. But he could delay and delay, and that's what he did.
Delay was not, however, what was needed in Germany. Yet there, too, Clement could do little that was not in accordance with Charles' wishes.
Paul III, 1534-1549
This is the pope who finally called the Council of Trent. This brings us full circle, for like Julius and Leo, Paul came from a great family (the Farnese, an ancient Roman family), was at heart a great noble, and won fame as a patron of the arts.
Those who would put too much blame on the popes themselves would do well to compare Paul with his predecessors. He was not much different.
He tried to convene a council almost from the start, but political issues forced delays for over a decade. Certainly one difference between Paul's day and earlier times was that both Spain and France were exhausted and were coming to terms with each other, at least for a while. This meant the pope did not need, and was not tempted, to participate in wars up and down Italy.
In addition to the Council of Trent, Paul promoted the new Catholic orders: the Jesuits, the Theatines, the Capuchins, and others. These were as important to the Catholic Reformation as was the Council itself.
Summary
The popes of the early 16th century were quintessential Renaissance popes. They were sincerely religious men who were sure that being pope also meant dealing with the political world around them. Each of them had their personal strengths and personal weaknesses, but all of them operated within the mental framework of Rome and Italy and family. They sincerely wished for reform, but they sincerely believed the papacy must lead that reform and remain the supreme head of the Church. The Catholic Church without a pope was as unthinkable as was an England or France without a king. That was, of course, exactly what was so objectionable to Luther and Calvin.