God's Story: A Student Guide to Church History by Brian Cosby Read Free Book Online Page B

resisting aggression by the pope’s army? It became a lose-lose situation.
    Another issue related to church authority had to do with how people became priests or bishops. The Church accepted payment for offices or positions (called simony). Some church officials were showing favoritism toward relatives in procuring positions rather than objective evaluation and qualification (called nepotism). All of these factors together weakened the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church’s authority. But these certainly weren’t the only ones.
Moral Corruption and Indulgences
    At the time, the Church expected regular contributions from all their subjects from across Europe, but those subjects didn’t see how their money was being used for good purposes. All they saw was abuse: simony, nepotism, scandal, murder, drunkards, theft, lavish living, clergy concubines, etc. and no accountability or discipline!
    This last point is key. The church didn’t discipline its own ministers, which was scandalous in the eyes of the people. During this time, too, many lay people faced excommunication if they didn’t pay their contribution to the church! Because of this, monastic communities—pledged to poverty—became very popular. Clergy abuse by 1500 wasn’t really any worse than in 1300, but more people became aware of it. By 1500, the church began to outspend itself and desperately needed money for the building of St. Peter’s in Rome. How did the church raise money? Indulgences.
    An indulgence—a remission of sin granted when the sinner pays a certain amount of money to the church—was one of a number of non-biblical duties pushed on the people; others being pilgrimages, superstitious relics, prayers to the Virgin Mary, and Masses.
    To generate money, the church needed to increase awareness of the peoples’ guilt before a God of wrath so that they would do anything —preferably pay a sum of money!—to “pay” for their sins. This led to a ceaseless effort to earn merit before God! Once a sinner confessed his sin, he still needed to pay for an indulgence or do works of penance to earn merit as a way of paying for that sin.
Morning Stars
    Another stream leading into the Reformation River were the voices of several pre-Reformers or “morning stars” of the Reformation, particularly, John Wycliffe (1320-1384) and John Huss (c.1372-1415). An English theologian and lay preacher, Wycliffe took the lead in translating the Scriptures from the Latin Vulgate into English, now known as the Wycliffe Bible . Though brought up on charges several times, he always seemed to escape the penalties of the state (including execution). He suffered a stroke and died in 1384.
    John Huss, inspired by Wycliffe’s teach-ings, became a Bohemian Reformer and preacher in Prague. Both Wycliffe and Huss opposed the church hierarchy of their day, pointing out its many abuses and scandals. Huss believed there to be many people—even the pope himself—who were simply part of the visible, external church while not being a part of the true (“invisible”) church, which is God’s elect. Wycliffe and Huss both emphasized preaching, studying the Scriptures, and eliminating clerical abuses.
    The Roman Catholic Church condemned both men. In 1415 Huss was burned at the stake and, in 1428, Wycliffe’s bones were exhumed and burned as well.
Back to the Sources!
    Like a faster-moving current of water, several other pre-reformation streams started to gain momentum. One of these was the use of the printing press, invented by Johann Gutenberg in the 1450s. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) would later say that the three greatest inventions of “recent history” were gunpowder, the mariner’s compass, and printing.
    It must be remembered that, at the time, books were extremely expensive because they had to be written by hand. The printing press changed that forever. Gutenberg printed the Bible in 1454 and by 1500 there were some 250 print shops across Europe. Over 100 editions of