Economically, the causes of the Protestant Revolt were twofold. In the first place, the Catholic Church had grown so wealthy that many people, particularly kings and princes, coveted her possessions. In the second place, financial abuses in ecclesiastical administration bore heavily upon the common people and created serious scandal. Let us say a word about each one of these difficulties. At the opening of the sixteenth century, many bishops and abbots in wealth and power were not unlike great lay lords: they held vast fair dominions--in the Germanics a third of the whole country, in France a fifth, etc.--and they were attended by armies of retainers. Most of them were sons of noblemen who had had them consecrated bishops so as to insure them fine positions. Even the monks, who now often lived in rich monasteries as though they had never taken vows of poverty, were sometimes of noble birth and quite worldly in their lives. The large estates and vast revenues of Catholic ecclesiastics were thus at first the lure and then the prey of their royal and princely neighbors. The latter grew quite willing to utilize any favorable opportunity which might enable them to confiscate church property and add it to their own possessions. Later such confiscation was euphemistically styled "secularization." On the other hand, many plain people, such as peasants and artisans, begrudged the numerous and burdensome ecclesiastical taxes, and an increasing number felt that they were not getting the worth of their money. There was universal complaint, particularly in the Germanies, that the people were exploited by the Roman Curia. Each ecclesiastic, be he bishop, abbot, or priest, had right to a benefice, that is, to the revenue of a parcel of land attached to his post. When he took possession of a benefice, he paid the pope a special assessment, called the "annate," amounting to a year's income--which of course came from the peasants living on the land. The pope likewise "reserved" to himself the right of naming the holders of certain benefices: these he gave preferably to Italians who drew the revenues but remained in their own country; the people thus supported foreign prelates in luxury and sometimes paid a second time in order to maintain resident ecclesiastics. The archbishops paid enormous sums to the pope for their badges of office (_pallia_). Fat fees for dispensations or for court trials found their way across the Alps. And the bulk of the burden ultimately rested upon the backs of the people. At least in the Germanics the idea became very prevalent that the pope and Curia were really robbing honest German Christians for the benefit of scandalously immoral Italians.