Corruption in The Medieval Church

This is Matt Sokol, my account's forcing me into using the wrong internet moniker right now for some reason.


The Medieval Church was, to a large degree, a corrupt and greedy institution. By declaring itself to be the voice of the lord, it took advantage of the faith of its people to scam them from money, goods, and even religious well-being – using concepts of redemption and holiness as selling points for various scams. In addition, popular literature of the time depicted nuns and monks to be rich and gluttonous, despite their vows of poverty. Men in high positions of the Church would even use their power to siphon some of its wealth to their friends and allies. With such people in top positions of the clergy, it's no surprise that the corruption would be as far-reaching and long-lasting as it was.
In the 1500s, there was little fear of eternal damnation by sinners – they could simply buy the redemption they needed! Corrupt priests would absolve criminals of their sins, often at a steep price. This, when combined with the strong fear of hell by many peasants of the era, lead to a constant stream of worried men who were more than willing to pay for their passage into heaven. Clergy members would also go so far as to selling bits of animal bone and other false items as having been from or once owned by Christ. This allowed them to make even more money off of the uneducated worshipers that were members of their churches.
Meanwhile, this money was not going towards appropriate religious causes. As many accounts from people of the time attest to, it was being siphoned directly into the hands of the clergy. The Canterbury Tales, a collection of short stories in poetic form by Geoffrey Chaucer, is a prime example of a work of literature that shed a negative light on the clergy. In its introduction, it describes a nun as an overweight and wasteful woman, feeding her dog with better food than the average peasant would ever eat. This is especially hypocritical and corrupt when contrasted with the vows that nuns of that era took – pledging to live without excess, in a state of poverty. Rather than living up to this humble standard, the money that the church took in would afford to pay for their overpriced lifestyles. Such lives proved to be common across the entire spectrum of clergy members, from the simple nun to the Pope himself.
Another issue of corruption in the medieval church was that higher-ups in the clergy would use their power to favor their friends and relatives. New offices would be created, and absorb large amounts of taxpayer money, with the sole purpose of providing a job for an individual with connections inside the clergy. An example of similar corruption was pope Nicholas III, who aided his sons and nephews by attempting to create states which they could then take control of. This was an extreme example – the creation of an entire state for the purpose of getting a son into power was not a common action by other popes.
The corruption of the medieval church, while morally repulsive, is not too surprising. It was an institution with incredible power, being able to scare the common citizens by defining sins and the horrible punishments that would follow – but then being able to sell the solution to these problems. It was able to declare all competing institutions as heathenous and evil, and thereby maintain what amounted to a monopoly on their 'market' of religion. With little to no checks and balances to prevent greed from taking advantage of such a powerful system, it was only a matter of time before human nature took its course and people began to use it for their own benefit. What's more, once such actions had started, they would become normal and spread like a sort of virus, as it became less and less taboo amongst the clergy to take part in this corruption. With all of these factors working together, the corrupt medieval church was a mistake bound to happen, and one that would take many centuries of work to begin to change.

http://library.thinkquest.org/10949/fief/hichurch.html
http://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/625.html
http://www.cfpeople.org/Books/Pope/POPEp186.htm