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Updated: July 23, 2025
Bishoprics and all benefices were bought and sold; "canons were trodden under foot; ancient traditions were turned out of doors; old customs were laid aside;" boys were made archbishops; ludicrous stories were recited in the churches; the most disgraceful crimes were pardoned for money. Desolation, according to Cardinal Baronius, was seen in the temples of the Lord.
The great ecclesiastics had temporal estates and a temporal jurisdiction, which placed them in a feudal relation, and made them powerful subjects. It was the custom of the kings to invest them with these temporalities by giving to them the ring and the staff. This enabled the kings to keep out of the benefices persons not acceptable to them, who might be elected by the clergy.
The Commons had complained in their petition that the clergy, instead of attending to their duties, were acting as auditors, bailiffs, stewards, or in other capacities, as laymen; they were engaged in trade also, in farming, in tanning, in brewing, in doing anything but the duties which they were paid for doing; while they purchased dispensations for non-residence on their benefices; and of these benefices, in favoured cases, single priests held as many as eight or nine.
Having thus made provision for public safety, the parliament voted a supply of money for the fortifications on the coast and for the expenses of the Irish war; and after transferring to the crown the first-fruits of church benefices, which had been previously paid to the See of Rome, and passing at the same time a large and liberal measure for the appointment of twenty-six suffragan bishops, they separated, not to meet again for more than a year.
The pope enjoyed the right to fill many important benefices in Germany, and frequently appointed Italians, who drew the revenue without dreaming of performing any of the duties attached to the office. A single person frequently held several church offices. For example, early in the sixteenth century, the Archbishop of Mayence was at the same time Archbishop of Magdeburg and Bishop of Halberstadt.
Ladies were freely admitted to the Court, and the Pope mingled with ease in the gallant intercourse. The Countess of Turenne, if not, as general report averred, actually so, had at least many of the advantages of the Pope's mistresses the distribution of preferments and benefices to any extent, which this woman, as rapacious as she was handsome and imperious, sold with shameless publicity."
For example, Anthony remarked on the fact that there had been no breach of succession as to the edifices and endowments of the Church; that the sees had been canonically filled, and even the benefices; and that therefore, like it or not, the Church of England now was identical with the Pre-Reformation Church. "Distinguo," said his friend.
"The inferior sorts of ministers were below all degrees of contempt, in respect of their poverty and their ignorance," and it was told him that one bishop held three and twenty benefices with care of souls.
The Cardinal de Richelieu's health declining, the archbishopric of Paris was now almost within my ken, which, together with other prospects of good benefices, made me resolve not to fling off the cassock but upon honourable terms and valuable considerations; but having nothing yet within my view that I could be sure of, I resolved to distinguish myself in my own profession by all the methods I could.
General measures proving insufficient, more specific legislation soon followed. In 1365 a fresh statute of præmunire was drawn up on the initiative of the crown, enacting that all who obtained citations, offices, or benefices from the Roman court should incur the penalties prescribed by the act of 1353. The prelates dissociated themselves from so stringent a law, but did not actively oppose it.
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