Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

PAPAL RAPACITY. 275
But it were any persone obstinat,
What so he were of highe, or low estat,
Him wolde he siiibben sharply for the nones.
A better preest I trowe that nowher non is.
He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him no spiced conscience,
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve. 1
Think of the multitudes of such men, quiet, holy, benignant
village pastors, whom in all ages
the Koman Church has
scattered about Christendom. They have in all ages helped
mightily to save the Church which Popes and Prelates have
done their best to destroy.
^JjOne other feature of the Church of the period
must be
noted its rapacity, which had much to do with Wyclifs
life and work, and in this connection England appears on
the scene. (rpPapal dominion seemed to the Roman states
men to carry with it the right of taxation. The expenses
of the Roman Court were enormous, the waste prodigal.
Q) It was the rapacity of the spiritual rulers which at length
brought them to the dust.(J)The Pope had been allowed
to shear his own sheep, the clergy, pretty closely, though
with some limitation on the part of the secular power,
when he began to put
forth the claim to tax the
people as well as the priests, the hour of his overthrow
drew near. There is a curious calculation of Bishop Grossetete
of Lincoln in the thirteenth century, which Matthew
Paris records :
Innocent, the present Pope, hath impoverished the Church more
than all his predecessors since the first establishment of the Papacy.
The revenues of foreign clerks appointed in England, and enriched by
the Church of Rome, amounts to 70,000 marks. The clear revenue of
the king was reckoned not to amount to more than a third of that
sum. 2
In the Good Parliament of 1376 and men and bodies
1
Prologue, 1. 483 ff. - Matthew Paris, ad ann. 1253.