Note 80 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

With the evidence as to Christian practice in the fourth century on the one hand, and the later evidence as to clerical life on the other, we are certain of a common play of financial motive throughout the Middle Ages. And whereas it is intelligible that such rapacity as we have seen described by Libanius should evoke a heresy which rejected alike religious ceremonial and the claims of the priest, it is further reasonable to surmise that resentment of priestly rapacity and luxury helped men to similar heresy in Western Europe when the doctrine reached them. If any centuries are to be singled out as those of maximum profligacy and extortion among the clergy, they are the ninth and the three following.80 It had been part of the policy of Charlemagne everywhere to strengthen the hands of the clergy by way of checking the power of the nobles;81 and in the disorder after his death the conflicting forces were in semi-anarchic competition. The feudal habit of appointing younger sons and underlings to livings wherever possible; the disorders and strifes of the papacy; and the frequent practice of dispossessing priests to reward retainers, thereby driving the dispossessed to plunder on their own account, must together have created a state of things almost past exaggeration. It was a matter of course that the clergy on their part should make the utmost possible use of their influence over men’s superstitious fears in order to acquire bequests of lands;82 and such bequests in turn exasperated the heirs thus disinherited.