Late Medieval Background to the Reformation

[Music] it is the 15th century and we are in the Italian Peninsula and here we're meeting a man by the name of Lorenzo Vala and Vala was a scholar he was a humanist he was a linguist in fact inala has gone down in history as one of the greatest linguist and philologists of the humanist era he was born in the Italian Peninsula and he rose up to become a professor and he wandered around from University to University taking different jobs here and there but V's enduring Legacy is that he leveraged and used the tools of the humanist trade which included things like grammar Latin awareness of the classical grammar and syntax and these kinds of things he was an expert in what we call ciceronian Latin and Vala through his studies churned his attention to a number of documents in texts both biblical and non-biblical and he studied them he studied them in an effort to understand their provenance as we say their Origins he didn't take at face value the history that was recorded or that was told about certain texts and he applied the historical tools of the day to understand their Origins instead if one of the most important discoveries that he made involves a document that is known as the Donation of Constantine now the Donation of Constantine we now know has a long history it was technically a forgery it's a document that seems to have been forged sometime around the 8th Century who forged it we don't know what was their purpose we don't know because the document while a forgery was not cited as an authentic document for several centuries and the Donation of Constantine purports to be a last will and testament of Constantine to the church now Constantine had been the great fourth Century Emperor who had converted to Christianity on the eve of the battle of the Milian bridge in the early 4th Century in the dramatic change that Constantine brought coming to the throne to the Pagan Roman Throne as now a Christian brought about dramatic changes in not only Society at large but in the church itself the church moved almost overnight from a position of persecution and marginalization within the Roman world to now having a Advocate and a significant voice at the very top of the echelons of power Constantine supported the church he gave power to the church he gave authority to the priests to decide not only matters of the church which they already did but now they were leaders of society and they could rule over local disputes in the civil government as well well the Donation of Constantine again purports to be something that is written by Constantine in which he bequeaths the temporal authority of the Roman world and particularly the Western Roman world to the papacy the document makes it seem as if Constantine does not wish to leave the temporal government simply to the rulers of the world but rather that he handed over the Reigns of the temporal world to the spiritual world and it was particularly in the 12th century and in the high Middle Ages that the donation of Constantine begins to be leveraged by the magisterium to enact a number of changes in the relationship between the political regimes of Europe and the papacy in particular bonfice VII the great bad boy Pope who claimed to have jurisdiction not only Over The Souls of Europeans and over the church but also over the civil government as well and bonifus as well as others leverage the Donation of Constantine as evidence that Kings and rulers of Europe were not autonomous political rulers but were answerable to the pope now with or without the Donation of Constantine that claim by the papacy was itself somewhat problematic and controversial even in the Middle Ages rulers resisted as much as they could this what they believed to be encroachment of the spiritual realm into the government of their Realms in particular as the papacy began to be ravaged by power seeking corrupt rulers and popes as the centuries Drew closer to the Reformation ERA this claim by the papacy to be over the temporal realm increasingly began to be problematic and so we fast forward now to the 15th century and Lorenzo Vala is studying the Donation of Constantine and using linguistic tools he's able to determine that this could not have been a document written by Constantine now I have students always ask how could he have known that what in the text gives that away and there are a number of features but the main one that vaa noticed is that the language used and the vocabulary used and the style of it in particular and the use of Latin in this document did not comport with the style and the writing and the grammar and the centax used in the 4th Century he notices a number of words that simply either did not exist or that were not used in the 4th Century the way this document used them maybe a modern analogy might help us understand this let's say someone comes to you and says that they have a handwritten letter from Abraham Lincoln and in the document Lincoln begins to use words that are only in existence in the 20th century and in this supposed handwritten letter Lincoln uses all kinds of phrases and turns of words that did not exist in the Civil War era well it's a bit like that Vala being such a great latinist and knowing the classical world and knowing the fourth Century world so well when he studied the Donation of Constantine he immediately spotted a forgery well this document and this discovery by vaa really becomes a microcosm of some of the challenges in the latter Middle Ages that come to a head in the Reformation itself now the Donation of Constantine is no longer used today Catholics and the magisterium today are well aware that this is a forgery it doesn't shock them to know that this was a document that was used at one time one clarification to make right now the papacy wasn't basing its Spiritual Authority on this docum doent rather it was basing its role in temporal Affairs on this document so this document doesn't undermine the papacy itself but it does shed light on the evolution and the problems of the Corruptions of the papacy and the challenges of the latter Middle Ages for the church and so in this lecture we're going to be looking at the latter Middle Ages and the context of the Reformation movement we're going to look at some of the abuses some of the challenges and we're going to be looking at some of the theological iCal debates that were going on in the latter Middle Ages that Luther and others pick up in challenge in their own day just several decades after this period of time and I want to start with one caveat here a bit too often when this story is told it makes it sound as if the latter Middle Ages were simply corrupt head to foot within the Catholic Church it makes it sound as if everyone was a scoundrel as if all priests were bad as if everyone was sleeping around or extorting money from the populace and that there was no Health whatsoever in the Catholic church and I want to say right now despite the fact that we're going to look at some of the abuses and we're going to focus in on some areas that in particular had more abuses than others the fact remains is that there were healthy organizations and healthy wings of the Catholic Church throughout Europe you can just look at the country of England England does not really present many or any of the Corruptions that we're talking about here the English church was pretty strong it had good leadership and as it comes into the Reformation the Bishops and the leaders and the priests were relatively well trained and were really strong on disciplining themselves whenever priests relax so what I'm saying here is don't get tunnel vision don't get lost in the idea that just because there were significant problems in the latter Middle Ages and in the Renaissance papacy that what we're saying here is that everything was gone and every Church experienced all of these problems in the exact same way they simply did not and we can begin by noticing just simply how historians come to an understanding of the ethos and the culture of the church because I want to say something about how historians work in this field and again this is another misconception and a problem that we have to clarify when you look at the historian's trade there are really two main focal points as to where they drill down and try to get a sense a bio y you might say of a period of time like the latter Middle Ages and the first approach can be studying what I call official theology or the official proclamations or the official rulers of the church so if we're studying the Middle Ages as a whole we can look at people like aquinus and aam and Gabrielle beel we can look at the papacy itself in Rome or in avenol and we can explore really the leadership and the best books being written during a period of time and this is absolutely a valid way of engaging with the past the problem though is that we're dealing with one fraction of 1% of the people that are in the world at this time so take ainus for example just because aquinus wrote extensive volumes on Theology and philosophy does not mean that the vast majority of the Ley would either be aware of these teachings or really have been impacted by their theology if they are impacted it's indirectly through the formation and the reading of Bishops of aquinus books and then on down to priests that's hardly a direct connection and so increasingly particularly in the 20th century what you see is historians focusing on lay life what was it like in the village what was it like on the farm what was it like in the cities and often when you extrapolate those pieces out you get a far more complex picture you see in other words the difference between what the church is proclaiming to be the practice of the church and times the rich variety of the application of those ideas and that study of lay life is vital to really get a composite and an accurate picture of the periods of time that we're talking about too many books and too many lectures have been given where the entirety of the Middle Ages is simply summed up as the thinking of one person ainus let's say well a peasant farmer out in the boonies of England simply would not have been dramatically and directly impacted by the teachings of aquinus not personally but all that to say about the two stages of historical research what we're going to focus on now is essentially a little bit of a mixture of both but the thing we're going to focus in mostly on is on the official proclamations of the church but what we're going to focus on more is the semiofficial understanding in the middle ages of the doctrines of salvation but we can begin with some of the challenges of the latter Middle Ages for the papacy in the church the first thing we want to say is that the church in the latter Middle Ages was going through structural weaknesses only the most zealous and committed Defenders of papal Authority would have said in the latter Middle Ages that there was not something wrong with the papacy at this point now very few would have said that there was something so corrupt in the papacy that it was beyond repair but just about everybody knew that there was something wrong and the two structural weaknesses in particular that come about involve two crises in the lot of Middle Ages for the papacy the first is the Babylonian captivity of the church or the AOL papacy and the Babylonian captivity of the church as petrarch called it and petrarch is the father really of humanism and he scorned this problem but the Babylonian captivity of the church was a period of time in which the papacy moved from Rome to the city of aanal now the papacy beli that it was moving there to keep an eye on the politics of France and England in France in this day and age was the biggest kid on the Block and there were all kinds of turmoils and wars that were going on up in the Continental region still it was hard to escape at least the impression that the papacy had now been co-opted by France when you move the spiritual head of the church from its first location in Rome up to the city of Aon suddenly there seems to be something strange a foot and from 1309 to 1377 the papacy resided in southern France in aanal in the crisis at this point wasn't so much that people doubted that the pope was the spiritual head of the church rather they debated just how spiritual the pope was there was lured politics controversies and stries and all these kinds of things going on during this period of time well the Babylonian captivity was exacerbated just a year after it ended in 1377 as the papacy moves back after a certain amount of pressure is put on the papacy to return to Rome within several months of returning back the who brought the papacy back to Rome died he died of natural causes there was nothing Sinister a foot here however when the College of cardinals gets together to elect the next Pope it is said that the Italian populace rioted that they were sick of so many French popes and that they demanded an Italian Pope and lo and behold the College of cardinals elected Italian under duress some would say well the next stage of the crisis within the latter Middle Ages is the great papal Schism that comes as a result of this pressure put on the College of cardinals to elect an Italian Pope because the vast majority of the College of Cardinals at this time was French and the rump of the College of cardinals returned to Aenon declared that the first election was now invalid and they elected a new pope and so you have this rather tense moment where at least the majority of the same College of cardinals has elected two different men in quick succession and of course the first guy isn't going to step down he has the power he's in Rome and and the second one now in Aenon is certainly not going to step down as well and so for a period of time from 1378 to 1417 you have a series of crisis of of schism within the church where at times you have two popes and then at a later date after a series of events you actually have three popes elected and ruling one from Pisa one from Rome and one from avenol now the crisis here is more profound than the avenol papacy though it comes right on the the hills of the Avenal papacy so it is often seen as a composite problem and the problem here is if you're a king of England just who are you going to be accountable to who are you going to ask for pardons or for edicts for your country if you need a bishop restored or certain offices filled within your country who are you going to ask and so all the way down to 1417 now notice that date exactly 100 years before the posting of the 95 thesis by Luther up until this point you have a series of real t crises within the church that structurally again didn't destroy the papacy but for a real significant period of time called into question the moral and Spiritual Authority of the people that were holding the office and obviously given the importance of the papacy in the Catholic church to have a bozo on the throne or to have three bozos on the throne or two doesn't make for a very sunny outcome in a number of historians have noted that a tone of anti-clericalism as it's called generally gets going because of the result of these structural problems now anti-clericalism is equally as driven by moral Corruptions which we'll talk about a second but there arose in the philosophical and Theological Arenas some challenges to the idea of more or less unlimited Authority by the pope people began to believe that councils somehow had authority over the pope because there are more people at a council the pope is just one fella and if he is not the person with moral or spiritual Vigor that a council can check him now none of these stru changes lead de facto to the Reformation but they create a context and a culture in which the Reformation makes more sense because Luther isn't speaking criticism into a vacuum significant numbers of the intelligencia of the theologians and the leaders of the world were simply stunned on the one hand and overtly critical of the state of the church at this point in fact by and large when Luther comes on the scene he is initially read as yet another complainer of the issues of to the latter Middle Ages the second issue we want to talk about is the moral Corruption of the church now if there's any issue we have to be careful about getting Tunnel Vision on it's this one when we look at some of these issues that we're going to talk about here again let's stress these are not systemic in every part of the Catholic church in every country full stop however there are countries and these are countries that eventually are touched most by protestantism there are countries in which the moral turpitude of the clergy at Large had simply become almost unbearable in some areas again when Luther comes on the scene with his criticisms not a few people think that he is just another one of the voices that is decrying the moral failures of the priesthood well we can list five sort of General Trends in certain areas of Europe that gave rise to a tone of anti-clericalism and the first is simony simony is the buying and selling of church offices the name derives from Simon Mages in the book of Acts who when he sees Peter and Paul performing Miracles he offers money if only they can give him a little bit of the good stuff that allows him to be able to have magic hands and so the name over the centuries became simony the idea that when there's a particularly lucrative office that is opened particularly if you're part of a noble family let's say you're a lesser ranked son in a Noble House well a father could either spend his own wealth or he could borrow money and he could place one of his sons in a seat of power that would be quite lucrative and the problem of simony was decried by the papacy and by the church at large Council after counsel addressed at least verbally the issue of simony and it was not legal and it was not to be practiced in the Catholic Church nevertheless saying that simony should not be practiced and enforcing it was not always an easy task and if the person holding the papal office was particularly corrupt he himself would certainly to look the other way for a little bit of money if someone wanted to pay him for a church office the second major issue in many ways stemming from the problem of simony is the problem of pluralism it only stands the reason that if owning one Church office that is lucrative is a good thing well owning two of them is a better thing and so there arose a practice in this period of time again not officially allowed not to be tolerated technically on the books but still it was practiced in several countries of Europe but the problem of pluralism is when people begin to acrew priesthood over here a deanship over here a bishopi over here and an Archbishop over here compounding the money and obviously not carrying one wit for the spiritual Vitality of all of the people under the charge of these offices the third moral abuse that we have to deal with is absenteeism in absenteeism is in some ways the culmination of both simony and pluralism in the name is obvious absenteeism is whenever someone holds an office and does not live or reside within the area or the dases or the lands that are under the charge of that office in this case the most egregious abuses would be those who held multiple offices had bought these offices and then for whatever reason had not set foot in these churches some of the more scandalous abuses were people that held multiple offices and they would hire out a Lackey usually someone for a low price who would conduct the duties of that office on their behalf so let's say someone held a bishop work in Germany and they had bought the office as well as several others and they were absentee well in some cases again not always but in the most egregious cases it would be possible to Simply hire someone else to do the duties of the bishop on your behalf and you keep the majority of the money and you pay a little bit out and you receive a net profit so those three moral abuses simony pluralism and absenteeism form kind of a microcosm of the church's Dianes with the world or with the political regimes it certainly stands a reason that your average lay person wouldn't be buying Church offices so we're dealing with the Upper Crust or the higher rungs of power and wealth and influence in Europe and again though the church officially ruled against these three actions the fact that in some lands like the Netherlands and Germany and in some ways in France that there was such widespread abuse of these practices meant that the entanglement of the church and the political regimes had grown to such a level that the church was now in a manner of speaking prey to those who wanted to Avail themselves of the power the wealth and the influence of the church for their own gain two other abuses just needed to be cited in general in many of the European lands and the Continental lands there was in general a pretty widad spread breakdown of celibacy at the level particularly of the priesthood throughout much of again Germany the Netherlands and parts of France now obviously the ideal is that the priest is celibate that he is an unmarried man who does not engage in any sexual relationships and there were certain levels of punishments for this should you be caught doing so well at some point there was an accommodation made for those who were found to be living as it was said in that day with a concubine now in a number of cases a concubine for a priest would be somewhat equivalent to the modern common law marriage obviously the priest could not marry but let's say a priest fell in love store across lovers meet and they cannot contain their emotions and they succumb to their desires to be with one another well the late medieval Church rather than simply toss every priest out who was found guilty of this instituted something called a concubinage fee and a concubinage fee again was not necessarily used widespread but it was in place and it was a fee that one could pay if you were a priest and you had succumbed to the desires of the flesh simply pay the fee and keep the concubine there have been estimates it's hard to tell at some point but there have been estimates that as many as a quarter or a third of the priests in places like Germany and the Netherlands were engaging at some point in this type of activity again while this is salacious and a scandal particularly at the lay level to see your priest openly at times living with a concubine or knowing that the priest is not living up to the moral standards of his office we shouldn't read into this again the idea that abuse of the church's power in the structures somehow caused widespread dissatisfaction to the point that people were essentially giving up on the church more often than not when people got up in arms about these kinds of moral Corruptions they often called for reform from within not a rejection of the church per se lastly in just just briefly a lot of priests and clergy in the latter Middle Ages were more widespreadly accused of greed now there are a number of layers to this we can't go into all of them it was enormously frustrating in particular in the lands of Germany to know that so much of the tithes and the rents and the payments owed to the church from all levels of society were carded off to Rome in fact during Luther's early Reformation one of the leverage points that he has with with the nobility of Germany is that they are equally frustrated with the Catholic Church though for different reasons not for theological reasons but for political and economic reasons there was this tone with some again mostly in areas like Germany that the priests were an unchecked undisciplined lot there were other rules in place that became frustrating one of the big ones was that a priest or anyone in the clergy could not be rung up in civil court if they did did something that was particularly heinous the only place that could be tried was in the church courts and as you can imagine it' be very difficult to have good checks and balances when you're policing yourself so there were some moral Corruptions at all various levels of society at times it felt as if everyone in certain areas was engaging in some sort of salacious activity and even if we take into account the proper historical interpretation of these things as present but not overwhelmingly present still there was sort of a poll over certain groups within the church in particular certain lay folks and the Civil leaders of Europe at some of the issues that were going on with the papacy by this time of the Reformation now all I to say all these issues that we've talked about are important to note because they speak to problems within the church that existed before Luther and we have to understand Luther in his context he is not the first and he's certainly not the last person to complain about the Catholic Church it is telling that it took years before Luther was actually excommunicated even though from relatively the very beginning it was clear that Luther was driving a hard Edge against the Catholic magisterium but in this day and age as well as all throughout most of church history believe it or not the Catholic Church usually just sort of absorbs the criticism it does not frequently crack down in a very aggressive way and in particular when you look at a period of time like the 1500s the early 1500s since very few could look with rose-colored glasses at the Catholic church and just about everyone admitted that there were problems when Luther comes on the scene it was somewhat okay that he was criticizing some things but here's the important thing Luther does not stand his Reformation up on the issue of moral or structural problems within the Catholic church and so even if this context this backdrop of the Reformation is that there are a number of people who are dissatisfied with with the Corruptions of the church Luther simply focuses on the theological issues of his Reformation breakthrough and so we want to outline just one quick thing about the Catholic faith in the latter Middle Ages that will have a dramatic impact on Luther and his Reformation breakthrough and that is the Catholic understanding of Salvation in the Catholic system there is a process of what we might call cooperation with the grace that God gives you through the sacraments and through the church it is a misnomer in a manner of speaking to say that Catholics believe in justification by works now Luther knows this very very well what Luther says about the Catholic system is not that they do believe in justification by works rather what Luther alleges is that the system that we're about to describe here amounts to justification by works well what do I mean well prior to Luther there had not yet been an official Proclamation on the issue of justification or sanctification in the the entirety of the church's history now if you just stop and think about that that is quite startling of all the things the church had issued proclamations on the Divinity of Christ the Trinity the full humanity and Divinity of Christ and a number of other issues the fact that there had not yet been a single major eruption of controversy over the issue of justification by faith is actually quite startling in the church's history so while there's no official Proclamation yet on the books when Luther is born there will be after the Reformation in many ways the Reformation pushes or forces the Catholic Church to issue once and for all their declaration as to the order and the process of Salvation and they do this in the 1560s at the Council of Trent but prior to Luther there was a majority consensus opinion about how salvation was to be worked out in the church and it goes like this a child is born and within s days they are baptized and in many cases a child takes his or her name from the saint of the day that they're born so Martin Luther for example his name actually comes from the fact that he was baptized on the Feast of St Martin but the baby is baptized after seven days and in the Catholic system the baby is regenerated that is a technical term the phrase here baptismal regeneration means that at baptism without any regard for the child's works or worthiness because they are being baptized by the Catholic rights and by the sacraments the Holy Spirit de facto in every case comes into the infant original sin is washed away there is actually language of exorcism at the beginning of the baptismal service casting the devil out before the Holy Spirit comes in this kind of thing and so at baptism original sin is washed away and the child enters into the Journey of the Christian Life and so at baptism with the washing of original sin it is said that the child enters into a state of grace now this state of grace is in a manner of speaking washed clean yet not fully resurrected redeemed as they will be in the escaton but the State of Grace is as perfect as one can be as clean as one can be in this life well of course Catholics do believe in sin they don't believe that you are perfect and that simply because you've been baptized Catholic that you therefore go straight to heaven and so the goal of the Christian life is to work out your baptism and to own the faith that has been given to you through the process of the Christian Life and the process of the Christian Life is they believe Grace Centric and the system is that of course everyone sins and so over the course of an ordinary year a person will sin any countless number of times and it is the responsibility of all Christians in the Catholic system to confess your sins now you can't simply confess to your neighbor and you simply can't confess to Christ you need to Avail yourself of the sacraments and the authority of the church and so what sin has done is pulled you out bit by bit from the State of Grace it's tarnished you it's corroded you it's added dirt and muck to this pristine nature of your soul after its baptism and so what a Christian must do is first of all feel Contrition they have to feel sorry for their sin next they go to a priest and they make confession those of you who are not raised Catholic of course might have in your mind any number of Hollywood depictions of people entering into the confessional and usually there's some mob guy in there or something suspenseful that's about to happen or something but we've all seen confessionals and the confessional is a place where the Christian is to unburden themselves they can say anything they can confess anything they're supposed to confess everything if possible and after confession the priest announces that the person is absolved that is to say they apply Grace at this point and they say you are absolved of this however and this is the sticky point for Protestants even though you're absolved of it even though you have been given grace even though you've not been thrown out of the church which is probably what you do the Christians still must make satisfaction for the penalty of sins that they've committed and so it is at this point after the absolution by the priests that they assign a number of penances and a Penance can be any number of things giving alms to the church and an Al is anything above and beyond your tithe doing good works of all kinds praying praying the rosary praying a certain number of our fathers going on pilgrimage any number of things and pendence really is something like training the soul it both pays in a satisfaction sense the penalty for the sin it's making restitution but also ideally it's strengthening the Christian so that next time when sin presents itself they might be more equipped to resist it so the Christian and the Catholic system must enact something they must do something at this point to really participate in the sacrements in the grace of the church to be restored to the State of Grace now historians have always noted this is a Grace saturated system the sticking point and we'll get to this in more detail later is the issue of satisfaction and the repaying of the penalty itself even after the Absolution of the priest at the end of one's life should you have more deductions than deposits so to speak on your spiritual Ledger than before Heaven you enter into one last Phase One Last Time of the purgation of your soul through Penance and hence the name you go to Purgatory again let's say you've made confession and you were unable to do all the penances that were assigned well in the Catholic system you have the opportunity to make up time after your death and after Purgatory you finally Ascend to heaven and have the beatific Vision one last piece to this medieval system is the concept of indulgences and of course indulgences will play heavily in Luther's initial break with the Reformation well an Indulgence is not a buying of Heaven it's not buying your salvation rather an IND Ence is a process whereby the person doesn't have to perform all of the Penance that is assigned to them so let's say I've done something particularly heinous let's say I've robbed a bank or something and I feel Contrition for this I go to the priest I confess he absolves me and he gives me 100 million hail Maries let's just be hyperbolic here well obviously I'm not going to say all these hail Maries and with that number on my head if Purgatory awaits that is a lot of time in purgatory to really work out the satisfaction that I owe well in the late medieval system I could actually pay the church to do prayers and penances in this cycle of restoration on my behalf now this again is seen as Grace it's seen as the church buoying up those who were unable to do all of their penants so what I can do is offer a sum of money to the church and say monks priests you are doing Mass daily you are praying throughout the day with the seven offices you are doing all this work how about you do some for me let me fund you in your ministry and your prayers and your satisfaction and that will count as my Penance so again an Indulgence is not the breaking of the system but rather the suspension of penance itself and when we fast forward to tetel and Luther and all these issues indulgences Were Meant to function in a particular way but they were also right for abuse for those who simply wanted to extort people through fear of purgatory and the fires of damnation in the end it is this Catholic system this Catholic majority opinion of Salvation that is the most important backdrop of the Catholic Church prior to the Reformation because as we progress to the next couple of lectures and we look at young man Luther and Lutheran the monastery what gives rise to his doubt in his crisis is that his sort of latent Neurosis his taking the Catholic system deadly seriously actually drives him to Despair and the one little wrinkle that he cannot get out of is the fact that God requires something of him and the entire process is short circuited Luther knew if you don't feel full Contrition and sorrow and in a manner of speaking it took a neurotic like Luther to to break the system he worried incessantly have I felt sorry enough he also wondered did I do my Penance well enough and he drove frankly his Confessor stalets half mad always running about trying to make sure that he was doing it the right way now Luther is not alone in this there was actually a lot of stuff in the Middle Ages and we'll get into this later where people were confused as to the level of effort that was required of Christians again because there was no Clarity and nothing on the books per se there was a lot of confusion and there was a lot of opportunity for abuse but it is important to note all of these issues and all of these things in the context of late medieval life are important but none is as important as the issue of penance and indulgences in the seeking of the Christian after the state of grace and so as we progress through the early years of Luther's life and we get to Luther as the monk it is this issue in this issue alone that will become the preeminent problem that will spark the [Music] [Music] Reformation [Music]