"It is not the least of the troubles of an infallible church that it cannot decently abandon any position once assumed. Having received the False Decretals as genuine, and having based upon them its claims to universal temporal supremacy, when it was obliged to abandon the defense of the forgeries it was placed in a shockingly false position. To have endorsed a lie, from the ninth to the eighteenth century, was bad enough, but to give up the fruits of that lie, so industriously turned to profitable account, was more than could be reasonably expected of human nature, and accordingly we have been authoritatively informed even within the last few years that the church claims still as its undoubted right all the power and prerogative that it ever enjoyed or exercised.1"Terms
Henry Charles Lea, Studies in Church History: The Rise of the Temporal Power, Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The Early Church and Slavery (first edition 1869) [Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea's Sons & Co.1883] p. 59
"In this remolding of European institutions, so necessary to the interests of Christianity and civilization, one of the most efficient agencies was the collection of canons known as the False Decretals. Forgery was not by any means a novel expedient to the church. From the earliest times orthodox and heretics had rivaled each other in the manufacturer of whatever documents were necessary to substantiate their respective positions whether in faith or discipline, and the student of history finds the difficulty of his task perpetually heightened by the doubtful nature of the evidence adduced by one party or another with all the earnestness of conviction. This tendency to fabrication was conspicuously a characteristic of the papal court, which was constantly under the necessity of manufacturing testimony to prove the antiquity of its continually enlarging pretensions.2"
Henry Charles Lea, Studies in Church History: The Rise of the Temporal Power, Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The Early Church and Slavery (first edition 1869) [Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea's Sons & Co.1883] p. 46
Forgery was not new to the Christian church. From its very beginnings, letters had been written by one person and ascribed to another in an attempt to give the letter more authority. For example, a follower of Saint This-or-that might write a letter and sign it This-or-that as a way of giving the document more prestige. Some of these letters even made it into the Bible; today they are known as the pseudo-Pauline epistles. Another of Gage's sources, Charles Waite's History of the Christian Religion to the Year 200 documents many such forgeries or false attributions.
Forgery of whatever documents orthodox or heretic needed to bolster a claim had long existed in the church. Both the Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals were forgeries.
The Donation of Constantine was a forged decree allegedly by the Emperor Constantine3 who, in gratitude for his conversion to Christianity, awarded the Roman Pontiffs primacy in perpetuity over all other Christian bishops and temporal control over much of both the northern and southern Mediterranean coasts. The Donation of Constantine was accepted as genuine until it was proved a forgery by Lorenzo Valla during the Renaissance. Early drafts of the document probably date in reality to the middle of the eighth century.
In the Donation of Constantine, the Church was given sovereignty over much of the land of western Europe by Constantine and the church, in turn, granted sovereignty over the land to secular rulers. In other words, secular rulers held their crowns as fiefdoms from the church; the church was the feudal overlord of each sovereign. To the mediaeval mind, the feudal overlordship of the church greatly strengthened the power of the church vis-à-vis the secular rulers.
One of the means used to show that the document is a forgery is to note that the document refers to people, places, and events which did not occur until after the document was allegedly written. For example, the document reads "And we ordain and decree that he shall have the supremacy as well over the four chief seats Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Jerusalem, as also over all the churches of God in the whole world.4" When this document was allegedly written Constantinople did not yet exist, so why would Constantine list a non-existent place as a "chief seat" of the church?
False Decretals (The Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore)
In the middle of the ninth century, decrees of synods, papal letters, and other documents were gathered together to compose one of the first collections of canon law. Some of the material was forged; these forgeries have come to be known as the False Decretals5.
The False Decretals were an effective technique for greatly increasing both the temporal and spiritual power of the Church. Two of its principle claims were: Church courts were the courts of last resort and clergy were immune from civil prosecution6 .
Until the time of Charlemagne, indeed even during the reigns of both Charlemagne and his son, the emperor had undisputed power over the church. During the anarchy of the middle of the ninth century, the church dusted off the Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals and when the dust settled, the church was triumphant over the state.
By making the Church courts the courts of last resort, the power of the church increased enormously at the cost of justice for many people. Whenever a dispute arose in a civil court which could not be settled to the satisfaction of both parties, the one who was unhappy with the secular court's findings could always appeal the case to the church courts. In this way, if the contestants in the lawsuit had enough money to cover the costs of the appeals process, the church always had the final disposition on any case. Eventually, dispensing justice would become a large source of revenue for the church. If the church was one of the parties in the case, the church never lost its case. No king or emperor, however powerful, could win a case in an ecclesiastical court if he was contending against the church. Commoners fared no better. The church always won its case.
During the peak of the Inquisition, any disagreement with any ecclesiastic, especially an inquisitor, could lead one to the stake. To question the authenticity of either the Donation of Constantine or the False Decretals was to risk going to the stake. Both of those documents were accepted as genuine for, at least, 500 years. Pope after pope perpetrated the biggest fraud and the biggest hoax in the history of mankind by claiming that these forged documents were genuine. Long after the church fell from the pinnacle of its power, indeed, to this very day, the popes claimed the rights and immunities which the church once had, "rights" and immunities which were originally derived only from these forged documents.
The practice of allowing ecclesiastics to be tried in church courts and of exempting clergy from secular law became known as the benefit of clergy. Eventually, the term "clergy" was extended to include almost any person who was able to read and any person who worked almost exclusively for the church, such as painters, enamelers, and embroiderers7.
Laws regarding the benefit of clergy began to enter European jurisprudence in the ninth century. In addition to the increase in veneration which the people felt for the clergy on this basis, the church gained enormous power in all contests with civil power. By setting churchmen apart from the law, the statutes of emperors and kings were of naught to ecclesiastics, while they could issue their dreaded anathemas without fear of reprisal.8 (Remember, to be excommunicated for a year was to be automatically condemned as a heretic and, when captured, relaxed to the secular arm for punishment.) The church was so completely emancipated from all subjection to civil authority that even as late as 1491, on the eve of the Protestant Reformation, a synod of Bamberg issued a decree "threatening with excommunication and deprivation of the fruits of his benefice any ecclesiastic who should obey in any way a summons from the secular courts in either civil or criminal cases.9"
If a clergyman committed any crime, even murder, he could be tried only in ecclesiastical courts. Often such criminals were treated with such lenity as to be essentially immune from prosecution.10 In addition to making the church a safe haven for the riffraff of Europe, clergy who were uncorrupted when they entered orders eventually became corrupt. A clergyman could order a penitent to make a contribution to the church as penance for a sin. Often, the money found its way into the clergyman's pocket instead of into church coffers. At other times, clergy men, unrestrained by any law, used the confessional to extort sex from women. The clergy were unrestrained since they could not be accused by the laity and they would not accuse each other11.
The power of excommunication to force a man to bend to the will of the church, the power of the confessional to pry into the most intimate and private aspects of the life of every man, no matter how humble or exalted, the power of the benefit of clergy to exempt clergy from the rule of law, and the power that came from holding the keys to heaven and hell to frighten the superstitious with the torments of eternity lead to some of the grossest crimes and greatest injustices the world has ever known. Together the unrestrained abuse of these powers lead to the complete corruption of the church. As the Protestant Reformation neared, the church knew that it must reform itself because Europe was on the verge of rebellion against it. Council after council was called and the church admitted to its own corruption. Yet, rather than give up some of its most cherished prerogatives, the church decided to endure the scandal instead12 and to clamp down on dissent by empowering the inquisitors to use ever more monstrous tactics.
Since the laity were largely illiterate while the clergy were, at least, somewhat educated, by the middle of the fourteenth-century, the ability to read became the test of churchmanship and the benefit of clergy was extended to all who were literate. Taking advantage of this policy, jailers began to teach their prisoners to read as preparation for their trial13
Only after the Protestant Reformation would the lands that remained predominantly Catholic be sufficiently emancipated to ignore the orders of the Pope. Hardly had the Catholic counter-reformation begun when in 1565 the Polish Diet enacted a law which declared that any clerk charged with a criminal offense would be tried in a secular, not an ecclesiastical, court.14
Yet, the church was not ready to give up its pretensions. In 1627, Pope Urban VIII reissued the Bull In Coena Dimini, wherein all officials who are connected with trying an ecclesiastic in a secular court or passing a law that ecclesiastics should be so tried was ipso facto excommunicated15. Indeed, in a Bull of Oct. 12, 1869, Pope Pius IX excommunicated ipso facto all who are directly or indirectly involved in subjecting ecclesiastics to secular courts and expressly forbids all prelates from giving such offenders absolution16.
As early as the writings of St. Paul, asceticism had been a part of the Christian church. Those who forswore the lusts of the flesh were held in high esteem among Christian and heathen alike. Each local bishop created the rules under which the believers in his district lived. As long as the Christian religion remained a persecuted religion, there was no danger in the special sanctimony accorded to those who chose celibacy. When Constantine the Great (about AD 274-337), the first Roman emperor (306-37) to embrace Christianity, issued his edict of tolerance for Christians (313), then sponsored the first ecumenical council, the Nicaean Council of 32518, the Christian religion moved from a radical fringe religion to a major state protected religion
Almost at the same time, two things happened. First, Constantine demanded a single creed for the church so that he could tell the true Christians from the impostors. Second, with the change in status of the church from a persecuted fringe group to a major player in the power game, the church came to attract those who sought wealth, influence, and power, often with little regard for the Christian church or the Christian faith. The church had long been the beneficiary of the wealth of many of its adherents, wealth that now became both a temptation to the greedy and power-hungry and a concern to ecclesiastical authorities. Some ecclesiastics believed the wealth was in danger of being alienated from the church by married clergy giving it to their children or using it to support their families.
By about 380 the church understood that it had a major problem in attracting the kind of people to its ranks that it wanted to attract and in keeping its wealth from being alienated. So in 385 Pope Damaus issued the first instructions for all clergy to remain perpetually celibate and for those who were married to put aside their wives. Later that year his successor Pope Siricius strengthened the orders of Damasus for all clergy to remain perpetually celibate19.
For the next 500 years, clergy throughout Christendom continued to take wives with impunity. Indeed, their flocks often demanded that they take wives so that the priests would leave their wives and daughters alone.
Yet, human nature will not be cheated and the morals of the clergy continued to deteriorate. As Lea notes, "As for the morals of monastic life, it may be sufficient to refer to the regulation of St. Theodore Studia, in the ninth century, prohibiting the entrance of even female animals.20" Later, Lea iterates the depravity of the secular clergy when he writes, "As regards the secular clergy, even darker horrors are asserted by Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, and other prelates, who forbade to their clergy the residence of mother, aunt, and sister, in consequence of the crimes so frequently perpetrated with them at the instigation of the devil; and the truth of this hideous fact is unfortunately confirmed by the declarations of councils held at various periods21."
In his quest to make the Catholic church the supreme power in Europe, the great church reformer Hildebrand (circa 1020-85), as Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), was determined to enforce the restrictions on priestly marriage22. By the twelfth century, married clergy were attempting to keep their marriages a secret and the number of married priests was on the decline.
The story of Abelard and Heloise dates from this time, about 1120. Both Abelard and Heloise understood that it was better for his career for people to believe that he was a sexual libertine and that she was his mistress rather than for him to acknowledge that he had done the honorable thing by marrying her when she became pregnant with their child.
Nonetheless, the clergy continued to take concubines with impunity. Since the penalty of marriage was loss of benefice and deposition, only the most moral of the clergy continued to take wives23 and remain true to them in spite of the opposition of the church.
By the Renaissance, sexual immorality among the largely unmarried Catholic priesthood up to the Pope was a widely acknowledged scandal throughout Christendom. The sexual peccadilloes of the priesthood were so flagrant that licentious priests and nuns became a favorite topic of late mediaeval satirists and story tellers such as Chaucer (Canterbury Tales) and Boccaccio (The Decameron). Convents were widely regarded as little more than brothels for priests24. As the ban on the marriage of clergy became more strictly enforced, the restrictions on clergy sharing his residence with any woman, even his mother or sister, became more and more frequent25.
With the rise of the inquisition, the church became somewhat more successful in enforcing the bans on the marriage of the clergy. To be a married priest was to disobey the pope, a certain heresy guaranteed to send one to the stake. So in the later part of the inquisition it became much safer for a priest to live in licentiousness with a concubine and to abandon his children than to take a wife and live up to his responsibility to provide for his children26. But the depravity of the clergy continued to increase. On April 14, 1561 Pope Pius IV issued a bull that "empowered the Inquisition, throughout the Spanish dominions, to investigate and punish all confessors who solicited women in the act of confession, even to the extent of degrading and relaxing them to the secular arm for punishment at its discretion. As before, all exemptions of the monastic Orders were withdrawn.27"
In the areas where the Reformation took hold, married priests had the choice to leave the Catholic church to become a minister in a Protestant church or to remain in the Catholic church and to go to the stake. In those areas, the issue of marriage among the clergy slowly died away. Yet, even today one occasionally hears of a small group of priests and their supporters wanting to eliminate the ban on priestly marriage. Today the Catholic church tries very hard to cover-up both its heterosexual and homosexual scandals involving both children and adults. Yet, as in times past, as long as a priest does not marry or make too big of a public scandal, ecclesiastical officials overlook non-celibacy among the priesthood.
Simony: the buying and selling of church offices. All ecclesiastical positions, including the papacy itself, were routinely sold during this period. Often, prelates used their position more to recoup their purchase price and to raise funds to procure a promotion than to minister to the needs of their flock. Consequently, the priesthood was widely viewed as worldly, corrupt, and uninterested in the welfare of their flock. The spiritual needs of their flock languished, clearing the way for heretics, who would respond to the spiritual needs of the flock.
First published in 1559 under Pope Paul IV as part of the Catholic CounterReformation's response to the Protestant Reformation, the Index of Forbidden Books, listed books considered by the church to be dangerous to faith and morals. To possess, read, sell, or transmit any item listed on the Index was heresy, and as with other forms of heresy, could lead to excommunication and to the stake. Periodically for the next 400 years, new editions of the Index would be published, the last in 1948. In 1966, the church announced that the Index was no longer binding and would not be reissued and the penalty of excommunication for reading listed books was lifted.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was on the Index, as were translations of each book of the Old and New Testaments in the vernacular.
End Notes:
"And on these churches for the endowing of divine services we have conferred estates, and have enriched them with different objects; and, through our sacred imperial decrees, we have granted them our gift of land in the East as well as in the West; and even on the northern and southern coast;-namely in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, Africa and Italy and the various islands: under this condition indeed, that all shall be administered by the hand of our most blessed father the pontiff Sylvester and his successors."
"False Decretals is a name given to certain apocryphal papal letters contained in a collection of canon laws composed about the middle of the ninth century by an author who uses the pseudonym of Isidore Mercator, in the opening preface to the collection. For the student of this collection, the best, indeed the only useful edition, is that of Hinschius, "Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianæ" (Leipzig, 1863). The figures in parenthesis occurring during the course of this article refer the reader to the edition of Hinschius. The name "False Decretals" is sometimes extended to cover not only the papal letters forged by Isidore, and contained in his collection, but the whole collection, although it contains other documents, authentic or apocryphal, written before Isidore's time."
References:
Henry Charles Lea, Studies in Church History: The Rise of the Temporal Power, Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The Early Church and Slavery (1869) [Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea's Sons & Co.1883]
Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (1867) [City Not Given: University Books, 1966]