Attempts at Internal Reform

1
Attempts at Internal Reform

• Recommended source Earle E. Cairns, Christianity
  Through the Centuries. Grand Rapids Zondervan,
  1996.

2
The Failure of the Clergy

• Between 1309 and 1439, the hierarchical
  organization, with its demands for celibacy and
  absolute obedience to the pope, and the
  feudalization of the Roman church led to a
  decline in clerical morals.
• Many priests took concubines or indulged in
  illicit love affairs.
• Others, especially during the Renaissance,
  enjoyed luxurious living.

3
The Babylonian Captivity

• Clement V, a Frenchmen chosen as pope in 1305,
  was weak, of doubtful morality and dominated by
  strong French kings.
• He moved to Avignon, France in 1309.
• Catherine of Siena (1347-80) strongly urged
  Gregory XI to return to Rome to restore and
  regain prestige for the papacy as an independent
  international authority.
• Early in 1377, he ended the Babylonian
  Captivity.

4
The Great Schism

• Urban VI was elected following Gregory XI.
• His bad temper and arrogant manner led to the
  election of Clement VII (1378).
• Clement moved back to Avignon.
• Both men claimed to be pope.
• Northern Italy, Germany, Scandinavia and England
  followed the Roman pope.
• France, Spain, Scotland and southern Italy
  followed the pope at Avignon.

5
Papal Taxation

• Supporting two papal courts became an onerous
  burden.
• Income came from papal estates tithes, annates
  (payment of 1st years salary by church
  official) the right of purveyance (popes travel
  expenses in ones area) the right of spoil
  (monies of deceased upper clergy) Peters pence
  (paid annually by laity in many lands) the
  income from vacant offices and numerous fees.

6
The Rise of National States

• The king and middle class cooperated.
• The king and his national army gave security
  which allowed the middle class to carry on
  business in safety.
• The middle class gave money so the king could run
  the state.
• This resulted in a strong centralized
  nation-state able to defy the pope and make the
  church subject to national interests.

7
The Mystics

• Scholasticism contributed to the rise of
  mysticism because it emphasized reason at the
  expense of mans emotional nature.
• Nominalism, which denied the real existence of
  universals, led to an emphasis on the individual
  as the source of reality and on experience as the
  way to gain knowledge.
• They were also a reaction to troubled times
  arising from things like the Black Death
  (1348-49).

8
Mysticism

• Latin mystics emphasized mysticism as a personal
  emotional experience of Christ.
• Catherine of Siena fearlessly denounced clerical
  evils.
• Teutonic mystics stressed a more philosophical
  approach to God, sometimes leading to pantheism.

9
Mysticism

• Mysticism entered the Dominican order, likely
  through Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260-1327).
• He believed only the divine was real and taught a
  fusion of the human essence with the divine
  during an ecstatic experience.
• He emphasized the need for Christian service as
  the fruit of mystical union with God.

10
Friends of God

• A group of Dominicans known as the Friends of
  God, headquartered in the Rhine Valley, carried
  on Eckharts teaching.
• John Tauler (ca. 1300-61) emphasized an inward
  experience of God as being much more vital to the
  souls welfare than external ceremonies.
• The little mystical volume German Theology is
  usually associated with the group.

11
Brethren of the Common Life

• This less pantheistic and more practical group
  formed in the Netherlands.
• John of Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), who was
  influenced by Eckhart, influenced the mystical
  movement in Holland.
• He helped Gerard Groote (1340-84) to emphasize
  the NT in the development of the mystical
  experience.
• A group of laymen lived in a house at Windesheim
  under a rule in community and devoted their lives
  to teaching and other practical service.

12
Brethren of the Common Life

• Like the Friends of God, the Brethren of the
  Common Life emphasized the education of young
  people and built large, excellent schools.
• The Imitation of Christ is associated with the
  name Tomas a Kempis (1380-1471).
• It reflects a more practical emphasis.
• It renounces the world and asserts the need of a
  positive love for Christ and service for him in
  humble practical ways.

13
Developments in England

• English people resented sending money to a pope
  in Avignon, France.
• The royal and middle class resented money lost to
  the English treasury.
• Statute of Provisors (1351) banned appointment by
  the pope of clergymen to offices in the Roman
  church in England.
• Statute of Praemunire (1353) forbade the practice
  of taking cases concerning clergymen out of the
  English courts for trial in papal court.
• Payment of the annual tribute of 1,000 Marks,
  which was started by John, was stopped by
  Parliament.

14
John Wycliffe

• Studied and taught at Oxford.
• Until 1378, he wanted to reform the Roman church
  by elimination of immoral clergymen and stripping
  it of property, which he felt was the root of
  corruption.
• In Of Civil Dominion (1376) he asserted a moral
  basis for ecclesiastical leadership.
• God gave the use and possession of property, but
  not the ownership, to church leaders as a trust
  to be used for His glory.

15
John Wycliffe

• Failure on the part of ecclesiastics to fulfill
  their proper functions was a sufficient reason
  for the civil authority to take the property from
  them and to give it to someone who would serve
  God acceptably.
• John of Gaunt championed Wycliffe so the Church
  of Rome did not dare touch him.
• Disgusted with the Captivity and the schism, he
  attacked the authority of the pope in 1379 by
  insisting in writing that Christ and not the pope
  was the head of the church.

16
John Wycliffe

• He asserted the Bible instead of the church was
  the sole authority for the believer and the
  church should model itself after the NT pattern.
• Wycliffe made the Bible available to the people
  in their own tongue.
• Complete NT manuscript in English by 1382
• Nicholas of Hereford completed the translation of
  most of the OT in 1384.

17
John Hus

• Students from Bohemia came to England to study
  when Anne of Bohemia married Richard II.
• John Hus read and adopted Wycliffes ideas upon
  their return.
• He proposed to reform the church in Bohemia along
  lines similar to Wycliffe.
• He was ordered to go to the Council of Constance
  under a safe-conduct from the emperor.
• Hus refused to recant and was burned at the
  stake, but his book De Ecclesia (1413) lived on.

18
Followers of John Hus

• The Taborites, the more radical of Hus
  followers, rejected all in the faith and practice
  of the Roman church that could not be found in
  Scripture.
• The Utraquists took the position that only that
  which the Bible actually forbade should be
  eliminated and the laity should receive both
  bread and wine in the Mass.

19
Followers of John Hus

• Some of the Taborite group formed what was known
  as United Brethren (c. 1450).
• The Moravian church developed out of this group
  in Germany.
• One of the most missionary minded groups in
  church history.
• Helped lead Wesley to the light in London.

20
Girolamo Savonarola

• In 1474, he became a Dominican in Bologna.
• He began work in Florence 8 yrs. later.
• After a slow beginning, he began to speak with
  immense popular effectiveness which was
  heightened by the general conviction that he was
  a divinely inspired prophet.

21
Girolamo Savonarola

• The French invasion of 1494 led to a popular
  revolution against the Medici and Savonarola
  became the real ruler in Florence.
• He sought to transform it into a penitential
  city.
• A semi-monastic life was adopted by many of the
  inhabitants.
• At the carnival season of 1496 and 1497, masks,
  indecent books and pictures were burned.

22
Girolamo Savonarola

• He denounced the evil character of Pope Alexander
  VI.
• The pope excommunicated him and demanded he be
  punished, but his friends were able to shield him
  for a time.
• In April, 1498, the fickle populace turned
  against him and he was arrested, cruelly
  tortured, hanged and his body burned by the city
  government (Williston Walker, p. 285).

23
The Great Schism of 1378

• In 1378, Urban VI and Clement VII each claimed to
  be the legitimate successor to Peter, which
  resulted in the Great Schism.
• Europe began to be split ecclesiastically and
  politically.
• Both men had been chosen by the college of
  cardinals.

24
Proposing a Council

• Leading theologians of the University of Paris
  proposed a council of the Roman Catholic church
  should decide the matter.
• Marsilius of Padua (ca. 1275-1342) and John of
  Jandun set forth a rationalization for reform
  through a council in Defensor Pacis (1324).
• They supported Louis of Bavaria against the pope.

25
Proposing a Council

• Marilius believed the people in a state and
  Christians in the church were the repository of
  sovereignty and they could through representative
  bodies elect the emperor and the pope but the
  emperor was over the pope.
• The church in general council guided by the New
  Testament alone could proclaim dogma and appoint
  its officials.

26
The Council of Pisa (1409)

• The council was called to end the schism in the
  leadership of the Roman church, to reform the
  church from within and put down heresy.
• Benedict XIII was safely in control of Avignon
  and Gregory XII held the papal chair in Rome.
• The council, called by the cardinals, stated that
  the cardinals had the authority to call it and
  that it was competent even to call the popes to
  account for the Great Schism.

27
The Council of Pisa (1409)

• It deposed both Benedict XIII and Gregory XII and
  appointed as rightful pope the man who became
  Alexander V.
• The other two refused to step down.
• John XXIII was elected when Alexander died.

28
The Council of Constance(1414-18)

• Called by Sigismund, the emperor of the Holy
  Roman Empire, and John XXIII to end the Great
  Schism, end heresy and reform the church in head
  and members.
• To frustrate Johns attempt to control the
  council, over 350 high officials agreed to vote
  as national groups of clergymen.

29
The Council of Constance(1414-18)

• Each national group was allotted one vote and a
  unanimous vote of the five nations represented
  was necessary for binding action by the council.
• The council declared its legality and its right
  to supreme authority in the Roman church.
• This decree which substituted conciliar control
  of the Church of Rome for papal absolution was
  given the title Sacrosanct.

30
The Council of Constance(1414-18)

• Gregory XII resigned and, after some negotiation,
  both Benedict XIII and John XXIII were deposed by
  1415.
• Martin V was elected by the council as the new
  pope.
• They dealt with the problem of heresy by
  condemning the ideas of Wycliffe and burning Hus
  at the stake.

31
The Council of Constance(1414-18)

• A decree of the council, called Frequens,
  provided for the meeting of general councils at
  stated times in the future to keep order in the
  Roman church (after 5 years, after 7 years and
  then once a decade).
• They would deal with the problems of schism,
  heresy and reform.

32
The Councils of Basel and Ferrar/Florence
(1431-49)

• Unrest in Bohemia after the martyrdom of Hus and
  the need for continued reform brought about the
  Council of Basil (1431-49).
• Eugenius IV was deposed by the council in 1439,
  just one year after the rival council, which he
  had called, met at Ferrara.
• Because of the plague, the rival council was
  moved to Florence in 1439.

33
The Councils of Basel and Ferrar/Florence
(1431-49)

• The Council of Florence made an unsuccessful
  attempt to reunite the Greek and Roman Catholic
  churches.
• Unrest in Bohemia after the martyrdom of Hus and
  the need for continued reform brought about the
  Council of Basil (1431-49).
• Eugenius IV was deposed by the council in 1439,
  just one year after the rival council, which he
  had called, met at Ferrara.

34
The Councils of Basel and Ferrar/Florence
(1431-49)

• Because of the plague, the rival council was
  moved to Florence in 1439.
• The Council of Florence made an unsuccessful
  attempt to reunite the Greek and Roman Catholic
  churches.
• They declared the seven sacraments to be accepted
  by the Roman church.
• This was promulgated by Eugenius IV in a papal
  bull in 1439.

35
The Councils of Basel and Ferrar/Florence
(1431-49)

• The Council of Basel acknowledged defeat by
  dissolving in 1449.
• The papacy thus reverted to the despotism it had
  followed for centuries.
• Pius II in a papal bull entitled Execrabilis
  (1460) condemned any appeals to future general
  councils.

36
The Councils of Basel and Ferrar/Florence
(1431-49)

• The French clergy concurred with the French ruler
  in the proclamation of the Pragmatic Sanction of
  Bourges in 1438, which made the French church
  independent of the pope, but which in turn put it
  under the power of the state.
• The reforming council had saved the church from
  the disorder of the Great Schism.
• The lack of success in securing effective reform
  destroyed the last chance of reform of the Roman
  Catholic church from within.
• The Protestant Reformation became inevitable.