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Updated: June 10, 2025
Herbert's being made Prebend, and tell the Reader, that not long after, his Mother being informed of his intentions to rebuild that Church, and apprehending the great trouble and charge that he was like to draw upon himself, his relations and friends, before it could be finished, sent for him from London to Chelsea, where she then dwelt, and at his coming, said, "George, I sent for you, to persuade you to commit Simony, by giving your patron as good a gift as he has given to you; namely, that you give him back his prebend; for, George, it is not for your weak body, and empty purse, to undertake to build Churches."
In the eleventh century we hear of Cathari in certain places in North Italy, in France, and even in Germany; but although in Italy the name of Patarins came to be applied to the sect, we need trace no connection in the popular rising at Milan, which was stirred up by the Church reformers against the simony and clerical marriage practised by the Church of St. Ambrose.
Beneath the cold forbidding eye of the last of the Hohenstaufen and his friend and avenger here rest, strangely enough, the ashes of that “great and inflexible asserter of the supremacy of the sacerdotal order: the monk Hildebrand, afterwards Pope Gregory the Seventh.” Born the son of a poor carpenter in the Tuscan village of Soana, this extraordinary man rose to eminence as a monk of Cluny, where he became famous for his extreme asceticism of life in an age of undisguised clerical corruption and luxury, when simony, lay investiture and priestly marriages were the rule rather than the exception on all sides, so that but few Churchmen were able to rise above their surrounding temptations.
The first attacks made by the broadside literature were naturally directed against the simony and benefice-grabbing of the clergy, a characteristic of the priestly office that has always powerfully appealed to the popular mind.
It was nearly all out of the Bible and the ancient Fathers of the Church and Councils and things. It couldn't have been simony. You have his letter, haven't you, Hilda? Read it out." Hilda opened the small bag she always carries and took out the letter. It looked to me a very long one. "I don't know," I said, "that Selby-Harrison's letter really matters unless you read it out to the Archdeacon."
At the beginning of his pontificate his harshest phrases were directed against Philip I of France, who added to the crimes of lay investiture and shameless simony a scandalous personal immorality. Ultimately Gregory threatened him with excommunication and deposition. But he never passed beyond threats. The reason is to be found in the fact that Gregory was soon in pursuit of larger game.
The Pope threatened a sumptuary law that they should have but one dish at their table: it was the rule of his own order. He was determined to extirpate simony. A cardinal who should receive presents he menaced with excommunication. He affected to despise wealth. "Thy money perish with thee!" he said to a collector of the papal revenue.
You have seen him endeavouring to his utmost to accomplish the deposition of the Borgia Pope, wielding to that end the lever of simony and seeking a fulcrum for it, first in the King of France and later in Ferdinand and Isabella; but failing hopelessly in both instances.
And that is great sclaundre, for now is simony king crowned in Holy Church: God amend it for his mercy! And they say, that in Lent, men shall not fast, ne sing Mass, but on the Saturday and on the Sunday. And they fast not on the Saturday, no time of the year, but it be Christmas Even or Easter Even.
When Ascanio Sforza saw that he could not ensure his own election, he threw his whole influence on the side of Borgia, who lavished his gold and promises freely among the other members of the Sacred College, with the result that he was elected on the 11th of August, and proclaimed Pope under the title of Alexander VI. The secret Archives of the Vatican give full particulars of this election, which was obtained by the most flagrant simony, and proved a prelude to the days of confusion and misery which Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican of Florence, daily prophesied were in store for the Church.
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