Simony And The Selling Of Indulgences example essay topic

Decades past and present have been plagued by corruption all the way from the time of Moses to the Nixon presidency. Out of all the corruption that has occurred it seems that one of the most fraudulent is that of the Catholic Church. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the dominating factor that motivated thousands of Catholic clergy, from the lowest friars to the pope, was money. It started out with the occasional small sin but escalated until it was out of control. Bishops were committing the sin of pluralism; cheating the people by not having ample time to travel and minister to individual towns. Simony became a stench in the noses of reformists because clergy were selling positions in the church to anybody regardless of the person's knowledge of the church.

Luther, as well as other Protestants, strongly disputed the use of indulgences to fund for the rebuilding of St. Peter's Cathedral saying, "Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God. While the secular and political leaders strongly opposed Luther and his teachings saying, .".. like a madman plotting the manifest destruction of the holy Church, He (Luther) daily scatters abroad much worse fruit and effect of his depraved heart and mind... ". , the church was very corrupt and guilty of the sins of pluralism, simony, and the selling of indulgences. The first reason for the protests against the Catholic Church was the practice of pluralism. This form of corruption was made manifest in Albert of Brandenburg who at an early age acquired the bishoprics of Halberstadt and Magdeburg and aspired to be the archbishop of Mainz. When he ask his people to fork over the money to pay for his induction fee they flatly refused having paid the fees for his previous two titles. Albert then went to the pope to talk things over and made a deal with him stating that Albert would pay 10,000 ducats to the pope on top of the regular induction fee.

Then the pope sanctioned the inductions to enable Albert to reimburse himself and to fund for the St. Peter's Cathedral. Pluralism brought protests because it showed the greed of the bishop in that he would get more money from the sacraments while the people suffered because they would have to travel great distances to see their top religious leader. The second reason that the Protestants revolted against the rule of the Catholic Church was the practice of simony. The clergy were selling positions in the church to anybody who had enough money regardless of the persons knowledge, or lack of it about the church and / or being a minister. Dietrich Vrie, a German, describes simony stating, "The once accepted proverb, ' Freely give for freely ye have received,' is now most vilely perverted: 'Freely I have not received, nor will I freely give, for I have bought my bishopric for a great price and must (repay) myself'...

". In this satirical dialogue Vrie speaks the truth about the corruption within the church. An example of simony in the church is found in the person of pope Leo the tenth. J. McCabe, the author of Rationalists Encyclopedia, wrote, .".. he bribed his way to the Papal chair through friends and settled down to a life of vulgar display and sensuous enjoyment". Leo the tenth played an immense part in bringing about the Protestant reformation, not only through his way of living and his unawareness of church protocol, but through his corrupt methods of earning capital namely through the St. Peter's Indulgences. The Indulgences for St. Peter's basilica represented the third reason for the Reformation. To fund the work being done to the church, Leo the tenth approved the selling of indulgences to the surrounding population.

The official appointed to conduct the sale of indulgences in Germany, Johann Tetzel, would march into a city with a cross bearing the papal arms and would have messengers going before him, announcing, "The grace of God and of the holy father is at your gates". He would then preach a sermon in the city square saying, "Listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends beseeching you saying, 'Pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance. ' Hear the father saying to his son, the mother to her daughter, 'We bore you, nourished you... Will you let us lie here in flames Will you delay our promised glory' " He would end with his ever famous: "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings The soul from purgatory springs". When some of Luther's followers bought indulgences from Tetzel and asked Luther why he wouldn't accept them he told the people to repent from their former lives.

Perplexed, they went back to Tetzel and openly demanded their money back. Tetzel was enraged and declared that he "had received an order from the pope to burn all heretics who presumed to oppose his most holy indulgences". Luther's attack on the indulgences came in the form of the 95 Theses stating that the Catholic Church should abolish the selling of the indulgences saying, "Every Christian who truly repents has full forgiveness, even without letters of pardon". Whereas the powerful leaders in society disagreed with Luther's ideas and teachings, writing, "Since... the authority of the Popes is disregarded, and doubtful, or rather erroneous opinions are alone received, it is bound to occur that those... (who follow Luther) should be lead astray... ". , the church was responsible for most of the things Luther said about them and guilty of simony, pluralism, and condoning indulgences.

Corruptness has played a part in history in the secular and religious world especially as seen in the Catholic church at the time of the Protestant Reformation. This can be distinguished clearly from a letter written by Luther in 1535 saying, "A German, making his confession to a priest at Rome, promised, on oath, to keep secret whatsoever the priest should impart unto him, until he reached home; whereupon the priest gave him a leg of the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem, very neatly bound up in silk, and said: This is the holy relic on which the Lord Christ corporally did sit, with his sacred legs touching this ass's leg. Then was the German wondrous glad, and carried the said holy relic with him into Germany. When he got to the borders, he bragged of his holy relic in the presence of four others, his comrades, when, lo! it turned out that each of them had likewise received from the same priest a leg, after promising the same secrecy. Thereupon, all exclaimed, with great wonder: Lord! had that ass five legs" 32 a.