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Updated: June 10, 2025
A number of other allegorical figures are next introduced, Conscience, Reason, Meed, Simony, Falsehood, etc., and after a series of speeches and adventures, a second vision begins in which the seven deadly sins pass before the poet in a succession of graphic impersonations; and finally all the characters set out on a pilgrimage in search of St.
It was the object of the Church to make him renounce it utterly; to make him regard himself no longer as Englishman, Frank, Lombard, or Goth: but as the representatives by an hereditary descent, considered all the more real because it was spiritual and not carnal, of the Roman Church; to prevent his being entangled, whether by marriage or otherwise, in the business of this life; out of which would flow nepotism, Simony, and Erastian submission to those sovereigns who ought to be the servants, not the lords of the Church.
The Saxons were then in no favor at Rome; they had refused to accept a Norman Primate appointed by Edward; and Stigand, their chosen Archbishop, was at present suspended by the Court of Rome, for having obtained his office by simony: the whole Anglo-Saxon Church was reported to be in a very bad and corrupt state, and besides, Rome had never enjoyed the power and influence there that the Normans had permitted her.
As John XII. had renounced the dress and decencies of his profession, the soldier may not perhaps be dishonored by the wine which he drank, the blood that he spilt, the flames that he kindled, or the licentious pursuits of gaming and hunting. His open simony might be the consequence of distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if it be true, could not possibly be serious.
Pope Gregory VII. tried again to do something for the cause of public morality, in 1074, when he issued edicts against both concubinage and simony or the then prevalent custom of buying or selling ecclesiastical preferment; but the edict was too harsh and unreasonable with regard to the first, inasmuch as it provided that no priest should marry in the future, and that those who already possessed wives or concubines were to give them up or relinquish their sacred offices.
Unfortunately the nepotism and simony which resulted had direct example and sanction in the relation to Scotland of the Head of the Church at Rome.
Della Rovere, conceiving that in France he had a stouter ally than in Naples, and seeing that he had once more incurred the papal anger by his open enmity, fled back to Ostia; and, not feeling safe there, for the pontifical forces were advancing upon his fortress, took ship to Genoa, and thence to France, to plot the Pope's ruin with the exasperated Charles; and, the charge of simony being the only weapon with which they could attack Alexander's seat upon the papal throne, the charge of simony was once more brandished.
It was the state of things during the dreadful Arian ascendancy, when the flock had to keep aloof from the shepherd, and the unsuspicious Fathers of the Western Councils trusted and followed some consecrated sophist from Greece or Syria. It was the case in those passages of medieval history when simony resisted the Supreme Pontiff, or when heresy lurked in Universities.
But before that he had a difficult task to perform. He had no friend to consult, no one of whom he could ask advice, nothing to rely on but his own head and his own heart. That suggestion as to simony perplexed him. Had he the right, or could he have it, to appropriate the income of the living according to terms laid down by the lay impropriator?
For what do simonfacal persons demand, if not that they shall receive money in return for their benefices? But that is precisely the transaction which you have cleared from the guilt of simony.
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