Daily Life During The Reformation (8 page)

Abuses arose in the way many ecclesiastical benefices were
conferred often for the personal interests of the petitioner rather than the
spiritual needs of the faithful. The lives of the higher ecclesiastics in Rome,
in tune with the Humanist and Renaissance ideals, became more worldly than
spiritual, leading to a love of luxury and profligacy. Ignorance and lack of
training among the lower clergy left much to be desired.

Although the Church imposed clerical celibacy as a legal
principle, in practice it was often ignored. Clergymen kept mistresses who were
supported with Church funds, and male offspring of bishops or abbots (referred
to as nephews) often found lucrative positions in the Church, universities, or
the law. The female children (or nieces) might find themselves administering
convents or marrying members of the nobility.

In 1492, Rodrigo Borgia became pope under the name of
Alexander VI. His immoral way of life outraged many Christians. At his
coronation he appointed his 18-year-old son, Caesare, to the Archbishopric of
Valencia; however, Caesare neither went to Spain nor took religious orders. The
pope’s daughter, Lucrezia, married three times, had children with other lovers,
and was the subject of much scandal. Tales of wild orgies at the Vatican were
rampant, but anyone who denounced such abuses could be excommunicated or worse.
Free preaching was prohibited, and all papers and books that were tainted with
the ideas of previous reformers such as Wycliffe or Hus were burned.

A boy could become a bishop, a profitable position, if his
father paid the price. Then there were dispensations or exemption from normal
Church laws and practices available to those who could afford them.

The sale of sacred relics believed to have the power to
heal and bring good fortune was another matter of contention. For some
skeptics, this was pure superstition, of no value, and most often, a swindle. A
splinter of the true cross, a tooth, or a piece of bone of a saint, some object
said to have been once used by the Virgin Mary or by Christ Himself—all were
peddled throughout Europe.

Among the uneducated, village priests were generally
treated with respect. They gave counseling and advice in matters both in and
outside a religious context and were usually available to assist with family
problems.

But priests were not always in favor with their
parishioners. In 1524, the parish of Saint Michael in Worms deposed its priest,
Johann Leininger, who then made an official complaint. The matter was taken up
by the town council, and church wardens and parishioners were asked to explain
their actions. They had often complained, they said, of the scandalous life of
the priest who lived in sin with a woman and had sired a child. In addition,
the woman had taken on the position of sexton. Leininger was also accused of
misusing church funds: an expensive green cloth had been bought to make Mass
vestments, but the priest had used it to have a coat made for his son. He had
also misspent 10 gulden belonging to the church and then given his parish
registers to the dean of the cathedral, although they were under the control of
the church wardens. Finally, he had refused to administer the sacraments to a
gravely ill woman until he was first paid the Mass penny.

While Spain, England, and France had usurped the right of
the pope to appoint bishops and other high clergy in their realms, people of
the Holy Roman Empire, especially the secular rulers, resented the pallium, the
large tax payable to Rome for the investiture or change in the diocese of an
archbishop, bishop, or abbot. The tax had to be raised by the inhabitants. In
addition, the entire income of the first year after the investiture (
annates
)
accrued to the papal treasury. This constituted a continuous drain on the local
economy. Added to these onerous costs were the journeys to Rome, where prelates
during their residence held court in a style of sumptuous magnificence, all
paid for by the parishioners.

It was to the benefit of the Church to maintain an
ignorant, illiterate, and unenlightened peasantry. Even people who could read
Latin were not allowed to read the Bible. Possession of it was a criminal
offense and could result in the execution of the accused. Sometimes translators
and publishers were burned along with their work.

The Catholic Church could use the scriptures selectively.
The peasant population remained in perpetual fear of hell’s fires, making it
easier to extract their last pennies. Moreover, the sale of indulgences for
remission of sins committed up to the time of purchase was now being practiced
as never before with a view to meeting the increased expenditure of the
Vatican. Even the monk, Martin Luther, asked why people should pay for a church
so far away and one they would never see.

The unifying cultural foundation of Europe for well over a
thousand years, the Roman Catholic Church, was complacent in its power and
failed to recognize the coming maelstrom that would engulf the continent. Careful
inquiry into the scriptures and a desire among some Catholic scholars to return
to the earliest and basic principles of Christianity were ignored until it was
too late.

4 - WITCHES, MAGIC, AND SUPERSTITION

Since
remote times, witches, village healers, and spell-makers in Europe had been
both respected and feared because of their powers to bring forth good or evil,
health or death. By the sixteenth century this had not changed. Much of western
Europe engaged in massive witch hunts from about 1550 to about 1680 when an
estimated 100,000 villagers were sentenced to death for sorcery, the vast
majority either spinsters or widows.

Those suspected represented a threat to Church authority,
accused of being in league with the devil and casting spells. The penalty for
witchcraft was death by strangulation, drowning, public burning, or
decapitation.

It was widely believed that the condemned had an intimate
knowledge of the use of herbs and other ingredients to concoct potions, which
could both cure diseases or cause harm to recipients. Rituals, magic words,
snakes, and lizards were often part of their ceremonies. They could prevent
storms and make crops grow, and if malevolent, they could ruin a crop, family,
or individual.

A common type of sorcery, sympathetic magic, involved a
piece of clothing, jewelry, or a lock of hair that belonged to the person on
whom an evil spell was to be cast. The victim who strongly believed he or she
would sicken and die, sometimes did.

It was also thought that witches could fly, breaking away
from earthly constraints to travel in the spiritual world, riding on demons
accompanied by crows and ravens. They could also change their shape and become
goats, cows, or other animals, making it difficult for witch hunters to find
them.

A depiction of a witches’
sabbath, by Frans Francken the Younger, 1607. This early seventeenth-century
painting shows some of the alleged practices of witches, including flying on
brooms, murder, spells, and bubbling cauldrons.

AGENTS OF THE DEVIL

A prominent charge was that witches participated in
activities known as the Witches’ Sabbat. According to the Church, such
festivals were secret and involved obscene rites with the devil. Alleged
witches often confessed under prolonged torture that they had been to Sabbats
where they pledged service to Satan and admitted that Sabbat ceremonies began
with new initiates having sex with the devil or his demons. Initiation
ceremonies might also include sacrificing an animal or child. The torturers
were eager to hear such stories, and the victim, preferring death to gruesome
prolonged agony (that would continue until the desired outcome), was ready to
confess to anything.

Christians believed that Satan was able to counter some of
God’s designs and saw this as an apocalyptic struggle between good and evil in
which no one was certain whether events happened because of divine or evil
influence. It was impossible to determine how much of human conduct was based
on individual freedom, how much determined by God, angels, stars, fortune, or
luck, and how much was regulated by profane intervention. The question that
always arose in learned circles was how these forces could be influenced in
such a way that one could avoid misfortune while fulfilling God’s laws and gain
eternal life.

In 1568, Jean Weir, a physician, spoke of the existence of
72 princes of the underworld, and over seven million infernal spirits formed
into 111 legions each with 6,666 fiends. Others proclaimed more than one
billion demons organized into legions, cohorts, and companies, each containing
over six million individuals.

It was believed there were demons confined to the air
responsible for storms and lightning and others to the ground living in
forests. Still others were in the sea (female devils), but all had one
purpose—to torment man. These kinds of stories were believed not only by the
average person but also by the elite and by educated priests. People were
frightened by the different forms, human and animal or even vapor and
invisibility, which devils could take to conceal their presence. Theologians of
the time attached great importance to the incube (male demon) and succube
(female demon) who could invade and possess the human body. In such cases, they
would call for the victim to undergo exorcism.

PROTECTION FROM EVIL

Evil was everywhere and had to be countered by any and all
means authorized by the Church. Talismen such as trinkets or candles, blessed
by a priest, would ward off evil spirits. On the day of the Feast of the
Purification of the Virgin, candles of all sizes were brought to the church to
be blessed. Large ones were brought by heads of households, slim, tapered ones
by women and girls, and penny candles by boys. They were piled up in baskets
before the altar and after being blessed, were taken home and used in family
devotions. The large house candle symbolizing Christ was lit by the death-bed
or carried along behind the bier in funeral processions. It was also lit during
bad weather to ward off crop-damaging hail, storms, or malevolent spirits. The
tapered candles of the women were lit during childbirth and placed by the hands
and feet of the mother to discourage the presence of malignant spirits. Penny
candles were lit on All-Souls Day and Advent for family devotions.

Holy water, blessed by a priest, had similar properties to
charms and candles as protection against evil forces that caused hail,
lightning, thunder, and severe storms. The Augsburg ritual book relates that
whoever was touched or sprinkled by the water would be free from all
uncleanness and all attacks of evil spirits. Further, all places where it was
sprinkled would be preserved free from harm, and no pestilent spirits would
reside there. Holy water could heal sickness, shield domestic animals from wolves,
and protect plants and seedlings over which it was distributed. It had
beneficial power over homes, food, herbs, grain and threshing floors, and much
more.

In Paris there were some fifty religious buildings in the
Ile
de la Cite´
alone, many of which had been built to commemorate a saint.
Saints played a large role as everyone looked first to them to cure illnesses,
insure a good harvest or safe childbirth, as well as stave off evil spells and
malevolent spirits.

Each saint was assigned certain responsibilities, and everyone
knew which one to appeal to for which ailments, which pilgrimages to undertake
to benefit their well being, and who would take care of them and watch over
them as they traveled. A great number of saints’ relics, some in the form of
powder or potions, were carried. Servants often kept a piece of bread in their
pocket, blessed by a priest, to protect them, prevent them from contracting
rabies, and to kill rats. Many people believed that the end of the world was
imminent, but meanwhile, God was keeping His eye on them. His pleasure was
manifested when the harvest was good; His ire when it was bad.

CROWS, RAVENS, AND CATS

Crows and ravens were both despised and revered. It was
forbidden in England to kill either of them. It was possible to incur a large
fine for harming ravens for if they did not consume carrion, the putrified
flesh would poison the air.