Gregory VII imagined that the reason for the existence of bad clergymen was that the kings and feudal lords forced their favorites into the offices of the Church. The root of the difficulty lay, however, in the wealth and power of the Church itself. It would have needed saints always to exercise righteously the tremendous powers which the clergy had acquired, and to resist the temptations to which they were subjected. When we consider the position of a rich prelate, it is not surprising that corruption abounded. The offices of the Church offered the same possibilities of money-making that civil offices, especially those in the great American cities, offer to the mere schemer to-day. The descriptions of some of the churchmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries remind us far more of the professional politician than of a modern clergyman, whether Catholic or Protestant. [Sidenote: The chief forms of corruption in the Church.] 85. At least a brief description of the more notorious forms of corruption among the clergy will be necessary to an understanding of the various heresies or revolts against the Church. These began seriously to threaten its power in the twelfth century and culminated in the successful Protestant revolt of the sixteenth. The vices of the clergy serve to account also for the appearance of the begging monks, the Franciscans and Dominicans, and to explain the need of the great reform which they undertook in the thirteenth century. [Sidenote: Simony.] [Sidenote: The worldly and immoral lives of many bishops and abbots.] In the first place, there was simony, a disease so deep-seated and persistent that Innocent III declared it incurable. This has already been described in an earlier chapter. Even boys were made bishops and abbots through the influence of their friends and relatives. Wealthy bishoprics and monasteries were considered by feudal lords an admirable means of support for their younger sons, since the eldest born usually inherited the fief. The life led by bishops and abbots was often merely that of a feudal prince. If a prelate had a taste for fighting, he organized military expeditions for conquest or to satisfy a grudge against a neighbor, exactly as if he belonged to the bellicose laity of the period. [Sidenote: Corruption in the ecclesiastical courts.]