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Updated: May 16, 2025
The legates sent sometimes thither from the Court of Rome, for urging the payment of annats, or directing other Church affairs, represented the inhabitants as a savage people, overrun with barbarism and superstition: for indeed no nation of Europe, where the Christian religion received so early and universal admittance, was ever so late or slow in feeling its effects upon their manners and civility.
Henry instructed his ambassador at Rome to inform Clement VII. that this legislation against Annats was entirely the work of the Parliament, and that if the Pope wished for its withdrawal he must show a more conciliatory spirit towards the king and people of England. The Pope, however, refused to yield to such intimidation.
Dispensations for the marriage of relatives should, they think, be granted by French bishops, and the fees payable therefor should be kept in the country. Annats, or payments to the Pope on the occasion of appointment to French benefices, should be discontinued. An importance far beyond what their amount alone would seem to justify was attached in French minds to these payments to the Holy See.
The clergy and people resented generally the wholesale rights of reservation exercised by the Pope in regard to English benefices, the appointment of foreigners to offices in England, the heavy taxes levied by the Roman Curia directly or indirectly in the shape of Annats or First Fruits, the withdrawal of comparatively trivial cases from the local courts, and the exercise of jurisdiction over the highest dignitaries of England by the legates commissioned by the Holy See.
It was moreover enacted that men could not burden their estates beyond twenty years by providing priests to sing masses for their souls. The Parliament likewise abolished annats, a custom which had long prevailed in Europe, which required one year's income to be sent to the Pope on any new preferment; a great burden to the clergy; a sort of tribute to a foreign power.
An Act was passed abolishing the Annats or First Fruits paid to Rome by all bishops on their appointment to vacant Sees. If the Pope should refuse to appoint without such payments, it was enacted that the consecration should be carried out by the archbishop of the province without further recourse to Rome.
But kings and princes and bishops and abbots were getting tired of this everlasting drain of money to Rome, in the shape of annats and taxes; so Leo revived an old custom of the Dark Ages, he would sell indulgences for sin; and he sent his agents to peddle them in every country. The agent in Saxony was a very vulgar, boisterous, noisy, bullying Dominican, by the name of Tetzel.
The law passed the previous year against the payment of annats was now promulgated. According to this Act the Pope was not to be consulted for the future regarding appointments to English Sees.
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