Europe in the Age of the Reformation

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Religious Issues at the End of the Middle Ages

Introduction

This series of essays paints a somewhat artificial picture of the theology of Roman Catholicism at the end of the Middle Ages, with particular attention to those areas that became issues for the Protestant reformers. In order to understand the arguments and actions of the reformers, it will help to have some idea of the position or doctrine against which they were railing.

I say that the picture is somewhat artificial because I am not going to take the time to go into the variations between different regions of Europe, between individuals, or between decades. Not everyone believed exactly what I set forth in the following pages, nor believed to the same degree. The variations are, however, not so important as to undermine your understand of the events that came after, and that is our real focus here.

So, keeping in mind that Roman Catholic doctrine was not so uniform, nor even so clear, as I'm describing here, you may read on.

Papal Authority

The pope was the supreme authority on matters of Christian doctrine and practice. He was not the supreme authority in everything, nor was his supremacy unchallenged even within the Church. Moreover, that supremacy was merely a theoretical claim. As was the case with kings at the time, there was quite a large gap between what was asserted and what was effected.

Theoretical Power

We'll deal first with the theoretical. It was not the case that anything the pope said was law, not even in matters of religion. There had developed a conventional understanding within the Church (not actually codified until the 19th century) that a papal statement had the effect of sacred law only when "speaking ex cathedra," as the phrase went; literally, only when sitting in the chair. The cathedra was the chair in which a bishop sat (and remember, the pope was a bishop). In other words, the pope had to do something that formally signalled that he was making a ruling on doctrine or practice.

One form that formal action took was the issuing of a papal bull, a document actually signed by the pope. A bull could be about anything, from a general statement of principle to a directive aimed at a specific person. It was simply something that came formally from the pope himself.

In addition to bulla, the pope could act through subordinates, much the same way a modern president does. Various cardinals serving at the direction of the pope, or committees established by either the current or earlier popes, could make judgments, issue orders, and in general set policy and practice. These might have a direct effect, but more often they had a sort of cumulative effect of establishing precedent.

In all this, there were no theoretical limitations to the pope's authority. He was, as one common phrase had it, the Vicar of Christ, the chief worldly representative of God in matters of religion. He was shepherd to the entire flock in the same way a village priest was shepherd to the village faithful. He could rule on any matter touching the Church, and he could overrule the decision of any given bishop or archbishop. The theoretical limits of his authority had indeed been challenged in the 15th century, in the form of the conciliarist movement, but by the time of the Reformation, the councils had not only been put in their place, they'd all but ceased to exist. The pope was supreme.

Bases of Papal Authority

I have written about this elsewhere, so if you aren't familiar with this topic you should go read that essay. I'll wait &hellips; .

The theoretical (and practical) foundations had been laid long before, but as in so many other areas of Church history, the 13th century played a crucial role in elaborating on the general principles. The troubles of the 14th century caused popes to become far more active in administration, and the various heresies of the high and late Middle Ages caused the popes to have to rule on a great many points of doctrine.

The result of this is that the theoretical justifications of papal authority had been articulated in great detail by 1500, and in many areas had been tested and adjusted in response to specific challenges. The popes of the early 16th century not only laid claim to extensive powers and wide-ranging authority, they were also unusually confident in their claims and were backed up by a veritable army of canon lawyers on every point. They had met challenges such as the Hussites, the Spiritual Franciscans, the Gallican Church, the Council of Basel, and even the Italian Wars (which were still going on). Not only the popes but ordinary people throughout Europe believed that they were indeed the vicars of Christ.

Practical Power

Over against this imposing edifice of power and authority it is necessary to set examples of limitations and weakness. In practice, this papal authority ran into all sorts of limits. Some were because of the strength of princes and cities, while others stemmed from long traditions within the Church itself, and still others were due to the plain fact that no one's power is limitless. A few quick examples will have to serve.

Most people would view the Inquisition as a prime example of papal power, but a look at the facts reveals something quite different. First of all, there was no "Inquisition" per se; there was a Spanish Inquisition, a Roman Inquisition, and (later) a Dutch Inquisition. That is, inquisitors were assigned to specific places for specific reasons. The Inquisition in Spain in 1500 was in fact firmly under the control of the Spanish crown, which successfully resisted efforts from Rome to interfere.

The papacy had agreed to specific limitations of its authority in France in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438. The papacy had a long history of difficulty imposing its will on various north Italian city-states, including most notably Milan and Venice. In other places, such as England, papal authority waxed and waned depending on who was king at the time. And so on. Effective papal rule always depended on cooperation from the local civil authorities. Remember that when you start reading about the Reformation.

Within the Church, certain areas were recognized as being under papal control. For example, the pope himself was able to select certain bishops, and cardinals were always papal creations. Most monastic orders were under papal authority, as well. The universities of Europe, having evolved at the episcopal rather than the papal level, were largely independent and were sometimes sources of worry and irritation for the popes. In another arena, popular preachers were increasingly being invited (and paid) by cities and princes to preach in local churches and these too were outside papal authority in a practical way. Indeed, these itinerant preachers were one major source of criticism on the eve of the Reformation.

Finally, there was a strong movement in the late Middle Ages in the direction of lay piety; that is, a movement where laymen met together to practice some form of spirituality. This often took the form of Bible study groups, and of acts of charity, but could even go so far as a group of them living together in common, somewhat like monks. In theory, such associations were supposed to be under the authority of the local bishop and, through the bishop, of the pope. In practice, though, popes were almost completely unable to influence these groups.

In short, the claims were broad, but the reality was more circumscribed. Even so, papal power was effective enough that it felt onerous to many across Europe.

Sin and Salvation

The Bible

Who Can Read the Bible

Why should the leaders of the Catholic Church be worried whether average Christians read the Bible? It seems odd to us that Christians should not read their own book, and so we conclude that the only reasons for forbidding such activity must necessarily have been malicious.

That would be a misleading conclusion.

The general opinion in the Middle Ages was that the Bible was a difficult and subtle text that required special training to read properly. Not only was the text itself difficult, but the Devil was ever ready to mislead and confuse the uneducated into false interpretations. And historical events seemed to prove out this fear, though not for quite a long time.

There was plenty of objective evidence to support this position. In many of the heresies of the Middle Ages, the leaders had read the Bible for themselves and come to "erroneous" conclusions. The issue of laymen reading the Bible arose in the twelfth century, when there were enough literate laymen for it to matter. When the issue did arise, it was linked closely to heretical movements.

There was, moreover, a specific method for studying the Bible, known as "exegesis".  This required training beyond mere literacy, and this training was to be had only within the Church.  Churchmen in the Middle Ages no more thought that an amateur could read the Bible and get it right than we today believe a person can engage in surgery without medical training. It was dangerous and presumptuous, and if the untrained persisted in doing it, then they were either fools or madmen. In any event, they could not be allowed to victimize the innocent.

The Bible that the Catholic Church was defending was itself a translation. In the fifth century, St. Jerome had translated the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament into Latin. This version is known as the Vulgate Bible and is the version that was used throughout the Middle Ages.

For many centuries, the only people who were literate were the monks and the priests. A pious laymen might have certain books read to him—the Gospels, for example, or Psalms—but rarely was the layman able to read the Latin for himself. The most common exposure was when priests read out passages in Church, though this was always in Latin and so was merely nonsense to the congregation. The closest laymen got to scripture was when the priest would explain and expound upon some Bible passage.

Still, the translation itself was held to have been divinely guided, and so further translations were not to be trusted. The clergy felt strongly that Jerome's Bible was the one true Bible and any further translation must necessarily incur error to some degree.

By the twelfth century, though, there were increasing numbers of laymen who were literate—not in Latin, but in their own native tongues. We hear of a translation of the Bible into French in this century, a translation done by the Cathars, a group in southern France who were condemned as heretics and largely destroyed in the thirteenth century.

Other translations cropped up in later centuries, but they were always associated with heretics (Wycliffe in England, Hus in Bohemia). Translating the Bible was not in itself heretical, but it was not difficult for Church authorities to make a connection. Reading the Bible was tricky and dangerous, and the example of the heretics seemed to confirm this opinion.

Not only were more commoners literate in the vernacular than in Latin, but French and German and English were not as rich as Latin; they lacked precision and depth, so that any translation into these tongues must necessarily be inferior. And, finally, the Vulgate was the product of a saint, one of the Church Fathers. His work was divinely inspired. Could a modern (medieval) translator dare to place himself on the same level as Jerome?

The example of the Cathars, the Lollards and the Hussites were the practical proof. The Bible ought not be placed into the hands of the common believers, lest they be led astray and lose their souls.

Against this position there arose in the fifteenth century a radically different approach to the Bible. It was articulated best in groups like the Brethren of the Common Life, laymen who came together to try to lead a more pure Christian life. Unable to find spiritual nourishment in their local churches, disillusioned by the moansteries (the traditional haven for the ardent lay Christian), some men and women simply began sharing a common life on their own. Bible study was an important element in this movement.

The Brothers read the Bible and discussed it in study groups, with no priest to guide them. The Brethren stayed orthodox, thereby demonstrating that Bible study was not only possible but was an important part of an active spiritual life.

In the same century, humanists began to discover errors in the Vulgate. Some had crept in over the centuries, and some had been made by Jerome himself. Some humanists began working on new editions, in pursuit of a purer version of the Word.

When the impetus for Bible study joined with humanistic training, the result could be radical. Both Luther and Calvin had received humanistic training, and both were believers in Bible study. And both produced vernacular translations of the Bible.

The printing press gave their work a revolutionary social impact, not so much because the press could turn out thousands of copies, as because the press made each copy affordable. Not only could a German artisan read the Bible for himself, he could own that Bible, and he could be guided in his reading by the many essays and tracts of Luther and others.

So, even as some Christians were becoming persuaded that they did not need the Roman Catholic Church to ensure their salvation, they were discovering that they did not need the priests to teach them their religion. They could read it for themselves and they could teach one another.

Nor did they worry about misinterpretations; for, they argued, God would not allow the true Church to perish or go astray. The truth of the Bible, they said, was simple and open; that it was difficult and hidden was a popish lie.

This was heady stuff, especially for that first generation or two, when people really felt they were liberating their religion from the grip of the Devil, and were seeing their faith for the first time. Much of that feeling stemmed from the fact that they were reading the Bible itself for the first time.

The Eucharist

You would think that the form and significance of the Mass, one of the central ceremonies of Christianity, would have long been settled by 1500, but that was not the case. In fact, disagreements over the form of the Mass was one causal factor in the Hussite Rebellion. Actually, the Mass was indeed settled by 1500, it's just that there were significant groups of people around Europe who disagreed with the official version.

The Ceremony

The form of the Mass was complex and formal. There was a processional, by which the priest and his assistants processed through the church to the altar. Once at the altar there are some prayers and chants sung, then some commemorations, then more songs and chants. This can go on for quite some time, depending on time of year. In modern times a sermon might go here; in the period we are studying there might be no sermon at all, but when you read about this or that preacher speaking at a Mass, this is where that speaking would have happened.

The next major step is the Offertory, where the bread and wine are offered to God. More singing and prayers accompany this. After the ceremonies surrounding the Offertory are completed, the actual Communion began, starting with the priest himself, who partook of both bread and wine. The other celebrants at the altar likewise took communion. Ordinary folk came next, but they got only the bread. The Communion part is the key ceremony.

Once Communion was completed, it was followed by a few more songs, followed by a recessional. That got the priest and his assistants back off the altar, and out of the church. Once they were gone, the congregation could follow. The whole business could last a couple of hours but on special occasions could go even longer. Details of the ritual varied in significant ways depending on the liturgical calendar. For example, ceremonies on feast days, saint days, on special occasions like a visit from a dignitary, all could make a more elaborate event. Easter Mass was by far the most important day of the year.

Transubstantiation

The central event of the Mass was the transformation of the bread and wine. The official teaching of the Church, at least since the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, was that of transubstantiation; that is, that the bread and wine of the ceremony were miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Now, it was obvious to anyone looking that the bread was still bread and the wine was still wine, so the theory gets rather subtle. It states that after the bread and wine are transubstantiated (which happens at a particular moment in the ceremony), all that remains are the appearance of bread and wine. This appearance is real and tangible to human senses, but it has in its essence been transformed.

This position was not without its critics, and even its defenders were sometimes at pains with its implications. But the official position was very important, for several reasons. One, the transformation was an actual miracle. It was in fact the one miracle that ordinary Christians could be sure to encounter in their lives. Two, although the transformation was accomplished by the Holy Spirit, the ceremony required a priest. Non-priests could not perform it (unlike other sacraments such as baptism or last rites, which could be done by a layman if no priest were available). So the doctrine of transubstantiation was an important pillar for the maintenance of the Catholic priesthood. Three, the participation in this sacred miracle by laymen formed a powerful point of contact between the priests and their flock.

The reformers had serious, even violent objections to this doctrine, and to the Mass in general. It was one of the most important points of dispute, not only between them and the Catholics, but also between one another. We'll return to that elsewhere; here I only want to emphasize the importance of the ceremony and of its miraculous nature.

Baptism

Baptism is perhaps the most fundamental sacral act in Christianity. It is the one formal act that recognized across Christian sects as marking the entry of the individual into the body of believers. The understanding of the importance of baptism, as well as its form, was little questioned. Some reformers would, however, come to question its timing.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Christians were baptized as soon as practical after birth, usually within the first week or two, as soon as the child was old enough to be transported safely to the church for the ceremony. Infant baptism had not always been practiced, but it had been the common practice in the West for at least a thousand years and was accepted as normal.

No one supposed that a baby understood the meaning of the ceremony, but the unbaptized could not be saved, that much was certain. It seemed cruel and foolish not to baptize a child, especially when the likelihood of death in infancy or childhood was so high. Moreover, by baptizing at infancy, the Christian community ensured that everyone in it was in fact Christian. Church and society were one.

Baptism was so important, in fact, that it could be performed by anyone. Most commonly, a child that was born sickly might be baptized by the midwife or doctor, if a priest could not be found in time, to safeguard its soul.

Predestination

Good Works

Penance and Indulgences

This was a huge issue for the reformers; indeed, it was the selling of indulgences that set off the Reformation. You will read the criticisms, and in any case our modern mind easily finds fault with the whole scheme, so it's worth setting forth here the Roman Catholic position on the subject, as it was promulgated at the end of the Middle Ages. It's a convoluted topic. It simplifying it for this essay I risk over-simplifying, but a detailed discussion is beyond the bounds of this course.

The position of the Church at the end of the Middle Ages was that all humans are burdened with sin, from the moment of birth. All are therefore damned and only the grace of God rescues us from this fate. The sacrifice of Christ was that whoever believed he was the Savior would in fact be saved. This left some awkward areas, such as those who were incapable of belief (e.g., the insane), but the stance covered most people and was generally satisfactory.

Unfortunately, individual people continued to commit new sins during the course of their lives, and for these sins Christians must confess and do penance. Sin incurred two kinds of burden, guilt and debt. Forgiveness for the guilt came only from God and only after contrition, but a debt was still owed. That's what penance was for. Think of it this way: if a boy breaks a neighbor's window, the boy must express regret for the act and may be forgiven by his father. He still owes a debt, however, for the broken window, and typically the father will mete out some sort of punishment.

That was penance. Over the centuries there developed the idea of a place where this penance was paid, and that place was called Purgatory. The purpose of it is in the name: it's where you were purged of your debts incurred from your sins. By our period, the general understanding of common folk was that Purgatory was a place you had to pass through on your way (it was hoped) to Heaven. So taking care of Purgatory business was crucially important, and an elaborate system had grown up in connection with this, including prayers for the dead.

A couple other practices had developed that seem curious to us. First, there was the Treasury of Saints. Briefly put, this was the idea that while ordinary people had their share of merit and fault, a saint had a surplus of merit, was virtuous enough to get into Heaven with room to spare, as it were. People like the Apostles, of course, were even more meritorious, the Holy Family almost infinitely so, and Jesus himself was truly infinitely filled with merit. This merit was thought of almost like currency, like a physical thing, and the Church—and specifically the papacy—was the custodian of this Treasury. It could dip into this infinite supply of merit and use it to ameliorate the sufferings of Purgatory for those who were truly worthy.

The document that made the formal grant was called an indulgence. The concept was known as remission of sin. It was not forgiveness of sin, for only God could do that; it was remission of the punishment. To go back to my earlier analogy, it was as if the father had a high standing in the community and could call upon his reputation to lessen the punishment of the boy.

Indulgences first came into general use during the Crusades, when Pope Urban VI promised a complete remission of sins, called a plenary (full) indulgence, to the crusaders who set off to recover Jerusalem from the infidel. For, what greater penitential act could there be to risk life and fortune to recover the Holy Sepulchre? The indulgence was given even to those who fell along the way.

It wasn't very long before there were those who took the crusading vow but were unable to go because of circumstances. They fell fatally ill, for example, or lost a leg in an accident, or found themselves in the midst of a war at home. It soon was granted that they could receive the indulgence if they instead outfitted an appropriate number of knights to go in their stead.

The crusading movement lasted over two centuries, plenty of time for a myriad of mitigating circumstances to arrive. After a while, great princes were able simply to give a lump sum of cash so that the papacy could spend it in the most effective way in furthering the crusading goal. By the 15th century, those goals had only the most tenuous connection with crusading. Indulgences were granted even for doing things like funding the remodelling of a church. Even the connection with Jerusalem had broken; a whole host of sacred shrines across Europe had been given (well, okay, had purchased) the right to themselves grant indulgences to pilgrims who went there.

In short, indulgences had become big business. In theory, you still had to be contrite. The boy couldn't just pay off the neighbor without being sorry. In practice, however, there were many times when that's exactly what happened. Those with money could buy a piece of paper that promised to get them out of Purgatory completely. The popes had agents who distributed these documents and collected the associated monies, and it's difficult not to regard these agents as salesmen, pure and simple. When one of those indulgence salesmen was plying his wares near Wittenberg in 1517, the monk Martin Luther was so angry that he posted ninety-five propositions that not only challenged the selling of indulgences but challenged the very foundations on which it was based, including the Treasury of Saints and papal authority to grant such things.

Luther wasn't the only one offended, however. The crass and cynical selling of indulgences, which seems to have peaked in the early 16th century, was an offense to many pious Christians. Where Luther differed as that he attacked not only the practice but also the underlying theory.

Marriage

The stereotypical image of the marriage ceremony places the event in a church. It may come as a surprise, therefore, to learn that the Church was a latecomer to the institution of marriage. For most people in most of the medieval centuries, marriage was a secular event, a legal contract performed before secular authorities.

In fact, you shouldn't think of marriage as a single event, but as a series of events. First was the agreement to marry. This took place between the man and woman, but also between their families. This was the social contract, binding enough that legal action could be instituted on its basis, and binding enough that a child conceived after the betrothal was still considered legitimate.

After the betrothal came the actual marriage; as I have said, this was a civil ceremony. After that, the couple went to the church (often on the same day), where the marriage was blessed by a priest. This was considered important, sort of like blessing the crops, but it was not necessary to make the marriage legal.

In the earlier Middle Ages, the blessing by the priest was rarely sought except among the nobility. The Church repeatedly tried to exert its influence on the institution of marriage, and by the 12th century it was starting to make some strong claims in that direction. Marriage was clearly instituted by God, that much was clear from the Bible, so it seemed plain wrong not to play a role somewhere. By the Fourth Lateran Council the Church was making some fairly detailed statements about minimum age for marriage, grounds for dissolution of a marriage, what kinds of marriage might be prohibited, penalties for infidelity, and so on. By the time of the Reformation, most marriages were being blessed by the priest, even in the countryside, and most people had accepted the rules and regulations the Church had formulated.

Confirmation

Since baptism was performed in infancy, confirmation became the conscious act of being a Christian. It took place around thirteen or fourteen and was supposed to come at the end of a period of religious education known as a catechism. It should be no surprise that for many of the poor, this never happened; indeed, though records are nearly non-existent in this area, it's likely that most Europeans were never confirmed. Since it was so minor, perhaps that's why it never became a reform issue.

Ordination

Ordination is the formal ceremony by which a man is made a priest. It is the one sacrament that was given not to everyone but only to a few. As such, it hardly touched the lives of the common people, but it had great significance, nevertheless.

It was significant in the first place because it was a sacrament; that is, something sacred occurred. In this case, it was the laying on of hands, by a bishop and by fellow priests. By the physical act, a sacred power and trust was invested, an act that found precedent in the actions of the apostles (e.g., Acts 6:6).

The consequence of ordination was a matter of heated, even violent disagreement among Christians across the centuries. The most notable dispute came early, with the Donatist controversy, which raised the problem of whether the efficacy of priestly acts (e.g., offering communion or hearing confession) depended on the moral character or even on the orthodoxy of the man performing them. Other issues, though, also came up, including what exemptions and protections from secular law were conferred priests. By 1500, those priestly privileges were bitterly resented in many parts of Europe by intellectuals and common people alike. The Church believed it could not yield those privileges without jeopardizing the independence of the priesthood from worldly pressures, and it fought long and hard to defend them.

Extreme Unction (Last Rites)

This was a final cleansing ceremony before death. In the early years of Christianity it was not uncommon for believers to put off baptism until they were on their deathbed, for baptism washed away their sins. As infant baptism became the norm, last rites performed something of the same function. It was a final confession (if the dying was able) and a final absolution.

This ceremony was performed by a priest, for only a priest could hear confession. Since there was no biblical precedent for extreme unction, it was rejected out of hand by most reformers. Since it was sanctioned by Church councils and by long usage, it was preserved and defended by the Roman Catholic Church.

Saints

Most religions have their holy men and women. These are people recognized as being not only particularly wise or kind or pious, but as people who have in one sense or another an element of divinity within them. They are not like ordinary virtuous people, they are holy. In Christianity, these people are called saints.

As in so much else, for centuries there was no real system associated with this. People became known as saints because other people called them saints. Across Europe there were scores of "local saints"; that is, people whom the locals called saint but who were unknown elsewhere and unrecognized by Rome. This bothered no one.

Again as in so much else, this changed beginning in the 12th and especially in the 13th century, as the Church was able finally to begin to exert some level of authority and consistency. In the case of sainthood, Rome tried to develop some rational system by which someone could become a saint. Certain tests were to be applied. The evidence for sainthood had to be reviewed by an authorized person or group. A report had to be submitted to Rome and finally no one became a saint unless approved at Rome (or at Avignon!).

Much of the formalization and especially the institutionalization came later, even later than the Reformation. But the outlines were clear enough by 1500. Rome still ignored the existence of many local saints and, conversely, many locals continued to venerate their local saint despite the lack of any formal recognition by the papacy.

Saints played in important role in the spiritual life of individuals and communities. People were often named after saints and it was believed that that saint would serve as a protector during the person's life. Saints could be prayed to, either individually or collectively. They were venerated in ceremonies and feast days, and even in small ways such as wearing a charm or pin. In return, saints worked miracles on behalf of individuals and communities: rare miracles like healing someone, but also mundane miracles such as bringing in good crops, turning away storms, or protecting the troops.

Saints could do all these things because saints were semi-divine and served in a way as God's lieutenants. Even though God is omnipotent and omniscient, it was as if people believed that God relied upon a whole host of administrative assistants. There were layers to this, so that a local saint was local and familiar, but was restricted in scope. Praying to an apostle, on the other hand, was effective in any location or circumstance. Praying to Mary, as the mother of God, was extremely popular in the late Middle Ages. Praying directly to God was not actually all that common, at least judging from the prayers that were written down and have survived. We also have the evidence of shrines, which were almost never to God but were to saints.

This whole system was based on the idea of intercession. You don't talk to the father, you talk to someone friendly, who will intercede with the father on your behalf. Christianity has a strong tradition against idols and sacrifices to God, but saints could have statues and icons, and saints would accept offerings. This allowed individuals, families, and communities to develop a vast complex of ceremonies that helped reassure them that they were in a proper relationship with the divine.

When the reformers came along and rejected the idea of saints, and particularly of intercession, they threw out much more than just sainthood. They removed a network of practices that defined community, and they very quickly found that communities needed something with which to replace that. Watch for that, as you read how the Reformation worked out in practice.

The Priesthood

The Greek for priest is presbyter. That's the word that appears in the New Testament. Very early on, priests were simply those who led the commemorative meal of the Eucharist. Through a process that isn't well documented but which was perfectly natural, these people gradually acquired not only a special standing within the Christian community, they also acquired a special status that set them apart from ordinary believers.

During the Middle Ages, priests acquired

Pastoral Care

What were the duties of a priest? To care for his flock, of course, but what precisely were those duties? I would divide them into two areas: those prescribed by the Church, and those prescribed by the community.

In the first area, the most important duty was to administer the sacraments; that is, to baptize, confirm, ordain, bless marriages, hear confession, administer last rites, and so on. In addition, the priest was to administer his parish. This meant collecting tithes and donations, supervising deacons, acolytes and other underlings, keep the sanctity of the church building, manage the church graveyard, and so on. Further up the Church hierarchy, some priests had no pastoral duties at all but were administrative functionaries on the staff of a bishop or cardinal, or even in the service of a prince.

In the second area, the priest was God's representative on the ground, and as such he was often expected to do things that were well outside the bounds of standard Christian dogma. In times of crisis he was to pray to God for help or mercy. He was expected to bless the crops at planting time, to order the ringing of the church bell when a storm approached, or to drive out a suspected demon from a barn or person or nearby forest. These non-orthodox duties varied greatly by community, but most communities had at least some expectations that would not be called Christian by an educated theologian. The expectations were real, though. We have recorded examples of a new priest being attacked by his villagers when he refused to bless the crops on the grounds that it was mere superstition.

It's worth noting a couple of things that a priest generally was not, at the end of the Middle Ages. First, he was not a preacher. Sermons were not part of the usual church service. The priest recited chants and formulae (not always correctly!), and performed ceremonies, but he did not teach or admonish from the pulpit. Second, he did not supervise morals. If a person was a gossip, or violent, or was a drunkard, this was not the business of the priest. Blasphemy was, and in some areas infidelity, but in general the moral life of the community was regulated by the community, not by the priest. I note this because the Reformation changed that dynamic.

Monks and Friars

Monks were people (men or women) in a monastery. Friars were monks who were not in a monastery; they took vows of poverty and chastity and obedience, but they lived their lives and did their work in the community rather than withdrawing from it as monks did. There were many monastic orders in 1500: Benedictine, Cistercian, Premonstratensian, Carmelite, Capuchin, and more. There were two orders of friars: the Franciscans and the Dominicans.

Bishops

Bishops go all the way back to the beginnings of the Church. The Greek term is episcopos and it's found in the New Testament (Timothy, for example, was a bishop). Bishops were always associated with cities, and this persisted all through the Middle Ages. There's no such thing as a bishop without a town. There's also no such thing as a bishop without a cathedra, which is the Greek word for the throne on which a bishop sits when he is acting in an official capacity. The building that holds the chair is therefore called a cathedral.

Bishops were always priests, so they received the same special legal and social status accorded to any priest. In theory, any priest could become a bishop, and ordinary men sometimes did. Indeed, ordinary men (or, rather, the sons of ordinary men) even occasionally became popes. By our period, though, the episcopacy was overwhelmingly in the hands of the nobility. They had gained influence (the story is long and complex) so that they were able to nominate candidates, and they had the money and position to have their candidate approved most of the time. Official approval consisted of election by the canons of the cathedral.

A bishop had both secular and religious tasks, same as a priest, but of course on a much broader scale. The bishop was the real source of authority in both areas. In some places, the pope might be able to override local episcopal decisions, but in other areas the bishops were all but independent. They gathered not only religious taxes but they also gathered regular income, for most bishoprics had their own estates. When there were secular disputes and issues arising from those estates, the bishop acted in the exact same capacity as any duke or count. Moreover, sometimes those possessions got bishops entangled in wars, and powerful bishops not only had estates but also had armies.

On the religious side, the bishop saw to the appointment of priests as well as certain other appointments, including delegations to Rome or to the royal court. The bishop was the source of judgment in matters of heresy and disputes over doctrine or practice. He could annul a marriage or grant a divorce. He imposed penance. If it were an important personage he might officiate at a baptism or marriage, but in general he left such matters to subordinates. Many a bishop spent his career acting exactly like any secular lord, attending court, going off on hunts, and even participating in wars personally (normally only as a commander, not as a combatant).

In short, while the priest was the most important personage in day-to-day religous life, it was the bishop who was the most influential in terms of the religous life of a whole region. If "the Church" could be personified in any one individual, it wouldn't be the pope, it would be the bishop.

Church and State

The theoretical relationship between Church and state was stated quite simply in the Gelasian Doctrine, named after Pope Gelasius who first formulated. It's also called the Doctrine of the Two Swords. There are two powers divinely ordained in the world, the religious and the secular. Each has its sphere and in its own sphere that power is the superior. In matters pertaining to the kingdom, therefore (or to the city, duchy, etc.), the secular ruler has the final say, and this is divinely sanctioned. That's why there are kings in the Old Testament. In matters pertaining to faith, and this includes management of the clergy as well as the physical possessions of the Church, the bishop rules supreme and the pope rules over the bishops.

The Devil, as they say, was in the details. Not a year passed without disagreement between the two as to exactly where the boundaries lay, the exact nature of the authority, or how some previous precedent might applied in a current case. The famous conflicts are easily recalled: the Investiture Struggle, the imposition of papal authority in England under King John, the famous quarrel between the Hohenstaufen emperors and the papacy, the equally famous quarrel between Pope Innocent VIII and King Philip IV of France, the disputes in the 14th century between emperors and popes. But for every titanic struggle between monarch and pope, there were dozens and scores of disputes between bishops and princes, bishops and towns, monasteries and dukes, and so on. Even if both parties agreed on where the boundaries lay, that was no guarantee each would stay on its own side.

By 1500, the balance of power had shifted somewhat in favor of secular rulers, largely as a result of the long crises in the papacy that began in 1305 and did not end until 1416 (or even later). Those crises not only undercut papal authority, if anything the impact on church authority at the episcopal leve was even greater. There were still great prelate-princes, especially in Germany, but the popes of the late 14th and early 15th centuries were preoccupied with politics in Italy and had not tried very hard to recover papal authority elsewhere in Europe.

Within a given kingdom, principality, or municipality, church authority was pretty circumscribed. Powerful bishops were nominated by the monarch, who mostly got his way. In the towns, the bishops had mostly been run out long before. In fact, in many places the town council was actually taking on roles you might consider rightly belonging to the clergy, such as bringing in (and paying) itinerant preachers. They also were restricting the privileges of the monasteries, which were the last real bastion of clerical independence within urban communities.

Particularly in Germany, but felt strongly elsewhere as well, one aspect of Church influence was especially resented: papal taxes. Princes and towns alike were more and more regarding taxes that went to Rome not so much as a religious obligation as payment of tribute money to a foreign power. People at every level of society were regarding the pope as a foreigner, with little or no connection to their lives or their interests, who yet siphoned off rivers of money to the benefit only of Rome. The reformers were able to tap this nationalist sentiment quite effectively.

Most of all this concerns negative aspects of church-state relations, but there was much that was positive as well. Church feast-days were communal events, of great importance for forging local solidarities. Church blessing of important undertakings was still regarded as vital. Physical churches and other shrines were buildings of great civic pride, and the cathedral in a town was nearly always the grandest building, as much a civil as a religious edifice. Surplus wealth went heavily into pious donations and charitable acts that were sponsored, defined, and even administered by the Church. Nearly all welfare activities, inclding care of the poor and the sick, charity to the imprisoned, help to widows and orphans, were in the hands of Church institutions. So, too, was most education, though non-Church schools were popping up all over the place.

In short, the Church played key roles in the daily lives of most Europeans, even if they rarely actually attended church services. When the Reformation came along, communities had to figure out who would take over those traditional roles.