The Historians' History of the World 08

A large amount of worldly power was at this time conferred in most instances, together with the bishoprics; they were held more or less as sinecures according to the degree of influence or court favour possessed by the recipient or his family. The Roman curia thought only of how it might best derive advantage from the vacancies and presentations; Alexander extorted double annates or first-fruits, and levied double, nay triple tithes; there remained few things that had not become matter of purchase. The taxes of the papal chancery rose higher from day to day, and the comptroller, whose duty it was to prevent all abuses in that department, most commonly referred the revision of the imposts to those very men who had fixed their amount. For every indulgence obtained from the datary’s office, a stipulated sum was paid; nearly all the disputes occurring at this period between the several states of Europe and the Roman court arose out of these exactions, which the curia sought by every possible means to increase, while the people of all countries as zealously strove to restrain them.

Principles such as these necessarily acted on all ranks affected by the system based on them, from the highest to the lowest. Many ecclesiastics were found ready to renounce their bishoprics; but they retained the greater part of the revenues, and not unfrequently the presentation to the benefices dependent on them also. Even the laws forbidding the son of a clergyman to procure induction to the living of his father, and enacting that no ecclesiastic should dispose of his office by will, were continually evaded; for as all could obtain permission to appoint whomsoever he might choose as his coadjutor, provided he were liberal of his money, so the benefices of the church became in a manner hereditary. It followed of necessity that the performance of ecclesiastical duties was grievously neglected. In this rapid sketch, we confine ourselves to remarks made by conscientious prelates of the Roman court itself.

In all places incompetent persons were intrusted with the performance of clerical duties; they were appointed without scrutiny or selection. The incumbents of benefices were principally interested in finding substitutes at the lowest possible cost, thus the mendicant friars were frequently chosen as particularly suitable in this respect. These men occupied the bishoprics under the title (previously unheard of in that sense) of suffragans; the cures they held in the capacity of vicars. Already were the mendicant orders in possession of extraordinary privileges, and these had been yet further extended by Sixtus IV, who was himself a Franciscan. They had the right of confessing penitents, administering the Lord’s Supper, and bestowing extreme unction, as also that of burying within the precincts, and even in the habit of the order. All these privileges conferred importance as well as profit, and the mendicant friars enjoyed them in their utmost plenitude; the pope even threatened the disobedient secular clergy, or others, who should molest the orders, more particularly as regarded bequests, with the loss of their respective offices.

The administration of parishes as well as that of bishoprics being now in the hands of the mendicant orders, it is manifest that they must have possessed enormous influence. The higher offices and more important dignities were monopolised, together with their revenues, by the great families and their dependants, shared only with the favourites of courts and of the curia; the actual discharge of the various duties was confided to the mendicant friars who were upheld by the popes. They took active part also in the sale of indulgences, to which so unusual an extension was given at that time, Alexander VI being the first to declare officially that they were capable of releasing souls from purgatory. But the orders also had fallen into the extreme of worldliness. What intrigues were set on foot among them for securing the higher appointments! what eagerness was displayed at elections to be rid of a rival, or of a voter believed unfavourable! The latter were sent out of the way as preachers or as inspectors of remote parishes; against the former, they did not scruple to employ the sword, or the dagger, and many were destroyed by poison. Meanwhile the comforts men seek from religion became mere matter of sale; the mendicant friars, employed at miserably low wages, caught eagerly at all contingent means of making profit.