Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its HistoryBesant, Annie
Religion
Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History
Besant, Annie
Christianity -- Controversial literature
skilfully taken in detail, and commonly mastered. The ostensible object
of papal intrusion was to secure for the different peoples, moral
well-being; the real object was to obtain large revenues and give
support to large bodies of ecclesiastics. The revenues thus abstracted
were not unfrequently many times greater than those passing into the
treasury of the local power. Thus, on the occasion of Innocent IV.
demanding provision to be made for three hundred additional Italian
clergy by the Church of England, and that one of his nephews, a mere
boy, should have a stall in Lincoln Cathedral, it was found that the sum
already annually abstracted by foreign ecclesiastics from England was
thrice that which went into the coffers of the king. While thus the
higher clergy secured every political appointment worth having, and
abbots vied with counts in the herds of slaves they possessed--some, it
is said, owned not fewer than twenty thousand--begging friars pervaded
society in all directions, picking up a share of what still remained to
the poor. There was a vast body of non-producers, living in idleness and
owning a foreign allegiance, who were subsisting on the fruits of the
toil of the labourers" ("Conflict between Religion and Science," Draper,
pp. 266, 267).
The struggle between the Greek and Latin Churches, hushed for awhile,
broke out again fiercely A.D. 1053, and in 1054 Rome excommunicated
Constantinople, and Constantinople excommunicated Rome. The disputes as
to transubstantiation continued, and shook the Roman Church with their
violence. Outside orthodoxy, some of the old heresies lingered on. The
Paulicians wandered throughout Europe, and became known in Italy as the
Paterini and the Cathari, in France as the Albigenses, Bulgarians, or
Publicans. The Council of Orleans condemned them to be burned alive, and
many perished.
CENTURY XII.
The wars which spread Christianity were not yet entirely over, but we
only hear of them now on the outskirts, so to speak, of Europe, except
where some tribes apostatized now and then, and were brought back to the
true faith by the sword. The struggles between the popes and the more
stiff-necked princes as to their relative rights and privileges
continued, and we sometimes see the curious spectacle of a pontiff on
the side of the people, or rather of the barons, against the king:
whenever this is so, we find that the king is struggling against Roman
supremacy, and that the pope uses the power of the nation to subdue the
rebellious monarch. We do not find Rome interfering to save the people
from oppression when the oppressor is a faithful and obedient son of
Holy Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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