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of the Church, was justified in interfering in the internal affairs of particular states. Unfortunately, most matters could be viewed from both a secular and religious standpoint; and even in purely secular affairs the claims of the pope to at least indirect control were practically unlimited. The specific nature of the abuses which flourished in the papal monarchy, the unsuccessful attempts to remedy them, and the measures taken by the chief European states to protect themselves will become apparent as we hastily review the principal events of the 14th and 15th centuries.

As one traces the vicissitudes of the papacy during the two centuries from Boniface VIII. to Leo X. one cannot fail to be impressed with the almost incredible strength of the ecclesiastical state which had been organized and fortified by Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III. and Gregory IX. In spite of the perpetuation of The papacy
in the 14th century. all the old abuses and the continual appearance of new devices for increasing the papal revenue; in spite of the jealousy of kings and princes, the attacks of legists and the preaching of the heretics; in spite of seventy years of exile from the holy city, forty years of distracting schism and discord, and thirty years of conflict with stately œcumenical councils deliberating in the name of the Holy Spirit and intent upon permanently limiting the papal prerogatives; in spite of the unworthy conduct of some of those who ascended the papal throne, their flagrant political ambitions, and their greed; in spite of the spread of knowledge, old and new, the development of historical criticism, and philosophical speculation; in spite, in short, of every danger which could threaten the papal monarchy, it was still intact when Leo X. died in 1521. Nevertheless, permanent if partial dissolution was at hand, for no one of the perils which the popes had seemingly so successfully overcome had failed to weaken the constitution of their empire; and it is impossible to comprehend its comparatively sudden disintegration without reckoning with the varied hostile forces which were accumulating and combining strength during the 14th and 15th centuries. The first serious conflict that arose between the developing modern state and the papacy centred about the pope’s claim that the property of the clergy was normally exempt from royal taxation. Boniface VIII. was forced to permit Edward I. and Philip the Fair to continue to demand and receive subsidies granted by the clergy of their realms. Shortly after the bitter humiliation of Boniface by the French government and his death in 1303, the bishop of Bordeaux was elected pope as Clement V. (1305). He preferred to remain in France, and as the Italian cardinals died they were replaced by Frenchmen. The papal court was presently established at Avignon, on the confines of France, where it remained until 1377. While the successors of Clement V. were not so completely under the control of the French kings as has often been alleged, the very proximity of the curia to France served inevitably to intensify national jealousies. The claims of John XXII. (1316–1334) to control the election of the emperor called forth the first fundamental and critical attack on the papal monarchy, by Marsiglio of Padua, who declared in his Defensor pacis (1324) that the assumed supremacy of the bishop of Rome was without basis, since it was very doubtful if Peter was ever in Rome, and in any case there was no evidence that he had transmitted any exceptional prerogatives to succeeding bishops. But Marsiglio’s logical and elaborate justification for a revolt against the medieval Church produced no perceptible effects. The removal of the papal court from Rome to Avignon, however, not only reduced its prestige but increased the pope’s chronic financial embarrassments, by cutting off the income from his own dominions, which he could no longer control, while the unsuccessful wars waged by John XXII., the palace building and the notorious luxury of some of his successors, served enormously to augment the expenses. Various devices were resorted to, old and new, to fill the treasury. The fees of the Curia were raised for the numberless favours, dispensations, absolutions, and exemptions of all kinds which were sought by clerics and laymen. The right claimed by the pope to fill benefices of all kinds was extended, and the amount contributed to the pope by his nominees amounted to from a third to a half of the first year’s revenue (see Annates). Boniface VIII. had discovered a rich source of revenue in the jubilee, and in the jubilee indulgences extended to those who could not come to Rome. Clement VI. reduced the period between these lucrative occasions from one hundred to fifty years, and Urban VI. determined in 1389 that they should recur at least once in a generation (every thirty-three years). Church offices, high and low, were regarded as investments from which the pope had his commission.

England showed itself better able than other countries to defend itself against the papal control of church preferment. From 1343 onward, statutes were passed by parliament forbidding any one to accept a papal provision, and cutting off all appeals to the papal curia or ecclesiastical courts in cases involving benefices. Nevertheless, England and the papacy
in the 14th century. as a statute of 1379 complains, benefices continued to be given “to divers people of another language and of strange lands and nations, and sometimes to actual enemies of the king and of his realm, which never made residence in this same, nor cannot, may not, nor will not in any wise bear and perform the charges of the same benefice in hearing confessions, preaching or teaching the people.” When, in 1365, Innocent VI. demanded that the arrears of the tribute promised by King John to the pope should be paid up, parliament abrogated the whole contract on the ground that John had no right to enter into it. A species of anti-clerical movement, which found an unworthy leader in John of Gaunt, developed at this time. The Good Parliament of 1376 declared that, in spite of the laws restricting papal provisions, the popes at Avignon received five times as much revenue from England as the English kings themselves. Secularization was mentioned in parliament. Wycliffe began his public career in 1366 by proving that England was not bound to pay tribute to the pope. Twelve years later he was, like Marsiglio, attacking the very foundations of the papacy itself, as lacking all scriptural sanction. He denounced the papal government as utterly degraded, and urged that the vast property of the Church, which he held to be the chief cause of its degradation, should be secularized and that the clergy should consist of “poor priests,” supported only by tithes and alms. They should preach the gospel and encourage the people to seek the truth in the Scriptures themselves, of which a translation into English was completed in 1382. During the later years of his life he attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and all the most popular institutions of the Church—indulgences, pilgrimages, invocation of the saints, relics, celibacy of the clergy, auricular confession, &c. His opinions were spread abroad by the hundreds of sermons and popular pamphlets written in English for the people (see Wycliffe). For some years after Wycliffe’s death his followers, the Lollards, continued to carry on his work; but they roused the effective opposition of the conservative clergy, and were subjected to a persecution which put an end to their public agitation. They rapidly disappeared and, except in Bohemia, Wycliffe’s teachings left no clearly traceable impressions. Yet the discussions he aroused, the attacks he made upon the institutions of the medieval Church, and especially the position he assigned to the Scriptures as the exclusive source of revealed truth, serve to make the development of Protestantism under Henry VIII. more explicable than it would otherwise be.

Wycliffe’s later attacks upon the papacy had been given point by the return of the popes to Rome in 1377 and the opening of the Great Schism which was to endure for forty years. There had been many anti-popes in the past, but never before had there been such prolonged and genuine doubt as to which of two lines The Great Schism. of popes was legitimate, since in this case each was supported by a college of cardinals, the one at Rome, the other at Avignon. Italy, except Naples, took the side of the Italian pope; France, of the Avignon pope; England, in its hostility to France,