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Updated: June 10, 2025
First of all there was the Grotto, the rocky hollow beside the Gave, a savage spot suitable for reverie bushy slopes and heaps of fallen stone, without a path among them; and nothing yet in the way of ornamentation no monumental quay, no garden paths winding among trimly cut shrubs; no Grotto set in order, deformed, enclosed with iron railings; above all, no shop for the sale of religious articles, that simony shop which was the scandal of all pious souls.
Yet, since you cannot do away with the name of simony, and there must be some matter to which the name attaches, you have devised for that purpose an imaginary idea, which never enters the minds of simoniacs at all, and indeed would be quite useless to them. This is, that simony consists in valuing the money, considered in itself, as highly as the spiritual privilege, considered in itself.
Is it possible for the people to respect the clergy when they see everywhere amongst them simony, carelessness in performing the religious rites, and disorder in administering the sacraments?
If, nevertheless, we hold, as we have said, that simony probably did take place, we do so, not so much upon the inconclusive evidence of the fact, as upon the circumstance that it had become almost an established custom to purchase the tiara, and that Roderigo Borgia since his ambition clearly urged him to the Pontificate would have been an exception had he refrained.
As to the new pope, scarcely had he completed the formalities of etiquette which his exaltation imposed upon him, and paid to each man the price of his simony, when from the height of the Vatican he cast his eyes upon Europe, a vast political game of chess, which he cherished the hope of directing at the will of his own genius.
The entry into Bologna, at the end of the 'Iter Julii Secundi' by the Cardinal Adriano da Corneto, has a splendor of its own, and Giovan Antonio Flaminio, in one of the finest elegies, appealed to the patriot in the Pope to grant his protection to Italy. In a constitution of his Lateran Council, Julius had solemnly denounced the simony of the Papal elections.
In moral conduct, while the English clergy could not be held guilty of serious breaches of the general ethical code, they were far from coming up to the special standard which the canon law imposed upon the clergy, and which the monastic reformation was making the inflexible law of the time. Married priests abounded; there were said to be even married bishops. Simony was not infrequent.
Moreover, at Rome sits an ecclesiastical dignitary, known as Papa, to whose doings already attaches considerable importance. One of the last acts of the Senate which had any real meaning was to make a decree with regard to the election of this Bishop, forbidding his advance by the way of Simony. Theodoric, an Arian, interferes only with the Church of Rome in so far as public peace demands it.
His election, it is generally admitted, was simoniacal; and by simony he raised the funds necessary for his campaign to reestablish and support the papal authority. This simony of his, says Dr. Jacob Burckhardt, "grew to unheard-of proportions, and extended from the appointment of cardinals down to the sale of the smallest benefice."
He appeared the inflexible chastiser of simony and ecclesiastical corruption. The very day of his coronation he had obtained the dismissal of a simoniacal deacon. Everywhere he compelled the nominees of Henry to fly, and filled their places with zealous champions of the canonical discipline.
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