In the frequent peasant revolts that erupted in Europe after the Black Death, hatred of the clergy sometimes boiled over to produce spectacular attacks on priests, bishops, and archbishops. And more generally, an anticlerical spirit rested just below the surface of late-medieval society, where political circumstances might bring it to life.
John ofĬapistrano (1386–1456), who rode a high tide to popularity, in part, by criticizing the immorality of the church. These criticisms also came from famous preachers like St. Rising dissatisfaction with these centuries-old problems, though, can be seen in the attacks on the wealth and sexual immorality of the clergy that litter great works of Renaissance literature like Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron or Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The corruptions people identified-sexual immorality among the clergy, the holding of multiple offices by clerics, and the selling of dispensations from church law, to name just a few-had long existed. A more general anticlerical spirit, motivated by the hatred of the clergy's special rights and privileges, grew as well. Little evidence exists to suggest that corruption was more widespread within the Renaissance church than it had been in previous centuries, but high-profile crises like the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism made the church more vulnerable to critics. Its worldly wealth and power, though, subjected the church to criticism. And finally, religious orders like the Carthusians and the Cistercians were important breeders of sheep and livestock who influenced the international market in wool. Its monasteries and convents produced rich storehouses of agricultural goods that were sometimes sold on the urban market many of these institutions ran breweries and distilleries that could compete more successfully against private concerns because of the church's widespread exemption from local taxation. As Europe's largest landholder, it was a financial powerhouse, levying taxes and collecting revenues that were the envy of many princes. It administered an effective and sophisticated judicial system to which, in theory, all Europeans could bring cases. And locally, the church performed numerous practical functions in society. In the political realm, the institution was an international force that jealously maintained its power against the encroachment of kings and princes. For the orthodox, there was no salvation outside the church. In the spiritual realm, the church provided a necessary link between God and humankind by virtue of its performance of the sacraments and rituals.
The administrative complexities of the Roman Church may have been considerable, but so were the numerous roles the institution fulfilled in society.
Most owed allegiance to their order, which the papacy ultimately supervised that tie could be tenuous when hundreds of miles separated an abbey or a monastery from the church's capital. Over the centuries, these orders had amassed significant wealth, and many enjoyed exemptions from the control of Europe's bishops and archbishops. Throughout Europe often stood outside the structure of the provinces of the church known as diocese. Numerous religious orders of monks, nuns, and friars scattered The pope and his officialdom at Rome supervised the activities of scores of bishops and archbishops throughout Europe, who, in turn, oversaw thousands of priests and their parishes. In theory, the church's governmental structure was a pyramid in which the papacy sat at the top. The late-medieval church was vast and complex, the single largest and most diverse political institution of the Renaissance.
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