Theological Origins of Modernity

102 chapter four
system. Th e growth of cities and the middle class, the increasing dissatisfaction
of the peasantry with their lot, and the consolidation of principalities
into states based on ethnic and linguistic similarities were the main
characteristics of this transformation. France, England, and Spain stood
at the forefront of this development and were the strongest states in Europe.
Two great medieval institutions remained, the Holy Roman Empire,
cobbled together out of a number of smaller and ethnically quite diverse
principalities, and the Roman Catholic Church, which exercised considerable
secular authority not only in Italy but in Germany as well, where
many German bishops and archbishops exercised political power over vast
domains. 1 Th ese institutions, however, clearly rested on shaky ground, due
to rising ethnic and national feeling within the empire and northern resentment
of Italian domination in the church. 2
Th e spiritual strength of the church was further weakened by its growing
wealth and corruption. Corruption in the church was not new. As we
have seen, Petrarch and Boccacio had already castigated the church on this
account. However, corruption had grown greater and more widespread as
manifold abuses from misfeasance and malfeasance to concubinage, gluttony,
and political assassination had become more widely practiced within
the church and better known to those outside it. Th e longing for a more
original and purer Christianity had given rise in preceding centuries to a
series of radical movements that had severely challenged church authority.
Th e Fraticelli, the Cathers (or Albigensians), and the Waldensians had
raised the banner of a more original Christianity. Th ey had been subdued
by force, but the longing for a purer religious practice that had engendered
them was only satisfi ed when mendicant orders were established within
church. 3 However, as we have seen, even this concession to those who
longed for a purer Christianity did not solve the problem but only internalized
it, for it brought the papacy and curia into open confl ict with the
Franciscans, the most popular religious order of its day. While an accommodation
was reached between them, the resolution of the Poverty Dispute
did not put an end to eff orts to reform church practice. Th e Observant
movements that arose in the fourteenth century and the concomitant development
of associated lay fraternities such as the Brethren of the Common
Life are only one example of the way this movement continued within
the church. 4 Th ey at least could be folded into the larger community of the
church. Th e more radical attempts at reform by fi rst Wycliff in England
and then Hus in Bohemia could not. Wycliff advocated reading the Bible
in the vernacular, rejected celibacy, and attacked transubstantiation. He
also argued that the state had the right to seize church property because