Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/222

 2io THE LATER MIDDLE AGES Avignon papacy for political reasons ; he came forward to displace Lewis, who was at odds with Pope Clement. Hence Weakness of he began with an air of submission to the papal the Papacy, claims. But he soon found that policy required him to acknowledge the position of the seven electors, and had no qualms about ignoring the papal authority. At the same time the Franciscans were in a state of semi-revolt against the Avignon papacy. Some of the most remark- able men of the time, such as the great scholar William of Occam, belonged to the Franciscan Order, whose members were generally distinguished by the practice of a self-denial, which won them a general respect, and intensified the ordinary layman's objection to the luxury prevalent among the higher clergy. Occam himself was an Englishman ; and another Englishman, John Wycliffe, was to do still more towards under- The mining the papal pretensions. The notable point Reformers: is that hitherto the various heresies, such as that Wycliffe. f ^ Q Albigenses, which discarded those doctrines on which the papacy and the clergy most relied as means to extending or maintaining their own influence, had been for the most part confined to the unlearned. Now it was among the most learned and most cultivated of the clergy that a reforming spirit was becoming prominent, a reforming spirit which attacked the authority of the Church itself by challenging current ecclesiastical doctrines. We must examine matters, however, a little more closely to prevent misapprehension. The great Pope Hildebrand or Gregory vn. and his predecessor Gregory the Great may be Contrast with taken as types of heads of the Church who were the Past. also themselves reformers. They combined a fervent zeal for moral improvement with a fervent belief in their own divine authority, and their moral earnestness made their divine authority credible. The Mendicant Orders at the time of their institution under Innocent in., and for a long time after, were zealous moral reformers ; but the popes, even though they were primarily engaged in magnifying their own office, were still men of high character, who maintained the Church's moral tone. The papacy still upheld the standard of