THE PAPACY AND FEUDALISM

T1he popes endeavoured to make the disturbed state of society, to which each of these changes gave rise, an occasion for the intervention of their authority; but the interest of the growth of states was too firmly established to allow them to make their own interest of absolute authority valid against it. Princes and peoples were indifferent to papal clamour urging them to new crusades. The emperor Louis set to work to deduce from Aristotle, the Bible, and the Roman law a refutation of the assumptions of the papal see; and the electors declared at the diet held at Rense in 1338, and afterwards still more decidedly at the imperial diet held at Frankfort, that they would defend the liberties and hereditary rights of the empire, and that to make the choice of a Roman emperor or king valid, no papal confirmation was needed. So, at an earlier date, 1302, on occasion of a contest between Pope Boniface and Philip the Fair, the assembly of the states convoked by the latter had offered opposition to the pope. For states and communities had arrived at the consciousness of independent moral worth.

2Various causes had united to weaken the papal authority; the great schism of the church, which led men to doubt the pope’s infallibility, gave occasion to the decisions of the councils of Constance and Bâle, which assumed an authority superior to that of the pope, and therefore deposed and appointed popes. The numerous attempts directed against the ecclesiastical system confirmed the necessity of a reformation. Arnold of Brescia, Wycliffe, and Huss met with sympathy in contending against the dogma of the papal vicegerency of Christ, and the gross abuses that disgraced the hierarchy. These attempts were, however, only partial in their scope. On the one hand the time was not yet ripe for a more comprehensive onslaught; on the other hand the assailants in question did not strike at the heart of the matter, but (especially the two latter) attacked the teaching of the church chiefly with the weapons of erudition, and consequently failed to excite a deep interest among the people at large.