Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/655

 DEMORALIZATION OF THE CHURCH. G39 plorable consequences. The writers of the period are as emphatic as their predecessors in describing the superaboundin^- and univer- sal turpitude of the Church during the remainder of the century. That they do not exaggerate may be assumed from one or two in- stances. In 1459 there died at Arras, at the age of eighty, N icaise le Yasseur, canon and head of the chapter of Arras. He not only had daughters and committed incest with them, but also with a daughter-granddaughter whom he had by one of them. Yet so blunted was the moral sense of Church and people that, as we are told, this monster officiated " tres honorablement " in divine service on all feasts and holidays, and the only comment of the chronicler is that he did it most becomingly. When, in 1474, the death of Sixtus IY. was received in Rome with a psean of joy, people com- mented not so much upon his selling benefices to the highest bid- der and his other devices of extorting money, as upon the manner in which he rewarded the boys who served his unnatural lusts by granting to them rich bishoprics and archbishoprics. Under such men as Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., there could only be deeper degradation expected. Julius II. was a condottiere rather than a priest ; but when political exigencies led him to summon the Lateran Council, earnest souls like Jacob Wimpfeling per- mitted themselves to hope that he would set bounds to the moral plague which pervaded all the churches. When he died, and Leo X. conducted the labors of the assembled fathers, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola addressed him an epistle describing the evils for which reformation was requisite. It is a repetition of the old complaints. The worship of God was neglected, the churches were held by pimps and catamites ; the nunneries were dens of prosti- tution, justice was a matter of hatred or favor ; piety was lost in superstition ; the priesthood was bought and sold ; the revenues of the Church ministered only to the foulest excesses, and the peo- ple were repelled from religion by the example of their pastors. The author of a little anonymous tract printed about the year 1500 feels obliged to prove by laborious citations that fornication is for- bidden to the clergy, and he attributes the contempt generally en- tertained for the Church to the openly scandalous lives of its mem- bers. To appreciate fully the effect on the popular mind of this degradation of the Church, we must keep in view the supernatural powers claimed and exercised by the priesthood, which made it the