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In explaining how the Renaissance Papacy was a cause of the Reformation, we should not fall into a monism, as if it were the only cause. It can be argued, however, that this cause has a centrality inasmuch as the various religious, intellectual, cultural, political, and moral phenomena which caused the Reformation could not be adequately dealt with while Christ’s Vicar was, mentally and morally, an “absentee landlord.” I advance the following as the particular reasons why these pontificates led to the Reformation: (1) God’s blessings were certainly diminished in punishment of the crimes of these popes. (2) The Bishops and lower clergy were given a bad example. (3) The faithful were scandalized. (4) The popes were distracted from their real duties....
....The bad example the Supreme Pontiff gave to the bishops and lower clergy would make any chance of a general reform in the Church unlikely. As long as he himself was the criminal, no reform was possible without the pope’s own conversion. And such a reform was badly needed. If we look at the episcopacy and priesthood of the era, we see the scandals of sexual immorality, nonresidence, and the plurality of benefices with its attendant avarice. “Many of [the lower clergy] had women that they kept in their rectories by whom they had children, so they had families to support. Sometimes they were supported by their flock or their parish, at other times they were not.”[4]....
....The follies of these Vicars of Christ gave serious scandal to Christ’s faithful and discouragement to the clergy and religious who were trying to advance the cause of the Church. The former were dissuaded from the practice of virtue and living the fuller life of grace; while the later were rendered virtually ineffective and frustrated in the face of the onslaught of vice. The sins of omission and commission of these popes were not merely private affairs. “[T]he people knew that things were not right, and the popular indignation or the popular discontent was there, and all it needed was for someone to strike a spark to give the people a chance to vent their indignation, primarily at the clergy, who were the prestige-enjoying class, at the pope himself, or at the bishops, or at the cardinals, or at the priests. The occasion for that was Martin Luther’s nailing of the ninety-five theses to the Church door at Wittenberg.”[8] As for the frustration of the would-be reformers, perhaps Fra’ Girolamo Savonarola would not have gone to the excesses he did had it not been for the moral irregularities of Pope Alander VI. For such a zealous preacher, the temptation to conciliarism would have been great when faced with the very public example of a morally bankrupt pope and his curia....

....In short, while the visible head of the Church on earth remained uncommitted to a vigorous program of prayer, penance, preaching, amendment of clerical life and the revival of popular devotion, the spread of evil would not be checked....

I'm just working on lesson plans for my parish "Saints and Pivotal Players" class --- next week we're doing Michelangelo, His Life and Times. Which if course spans almost the entire era of the Renaissance Papacy.

One of the questions I'm asking in my Discussion Starters: is this one:

Oh, wait. What the heck. I'll give you the whole thing. I wonder what my class will say? Maybe some FReepers will comment.

1. Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops were among the major patrons of the arts in the Renaissance. Is this a glorious thing? An embarrassing thing? Comment.

2. All Renaissance artists developed styles and themes derived from pagan Greek/ Roman antiquity, but Michelangelo integrated pagan themes even into his formal religious works. His Sistine Chapel includes five sibyls, or female prophets found in classical myths. His “Last Judgment” shows Charon ferrying souls across the River Styx, a pagan motif which Dante included in his Divine Comedy, but had never been used in Christian iconography. His nudes were not only in the private statuary gardens of the Italian merchant class --- they thronged in the Church! Holy Beefcake! Good? Bad? Comment.

3. Michelangelo was a believing, practicing Catholic all his life; yet as he grew older, he became both more tormented by guilt, and more devout. He feared that his early efforts served to glorify, not God, but vain men, the rich, the proud, the sensual, and even himself. Can even a pessimistic turn of mind be a blessing?

4. Popes urgently spurred, gloriously rewarded, and painfully frustrated Michelangelo’s artistic productivity. Their excesses --- e.g. selling indulgences to fund the building of St. Peter’s --- spurred the splitting and wrecking of Christendom: the Reformation. Did Renaissance popes sometimes? ever? --- despite themselves?--- serve as God’s instruments for good?

5. Michelangelo, even from his early teens, had plenty of opportunity to see Catholic religious figures both at their most austere (the penance-preaching Dominicans) as well as at their most self-glorifying (the Renaissance popes). Savonarola vs. the Medicis: how did both tendencies show up in Michelangelo?

5. Tommaso Dei Cavalieri (1509–1587) was the object of the greatest written expressions of Michelangelo's love. When they met, Cavalieri was 23 years old, Michelangelo 57. He matched the artist’s vision of masculine beauty; their friendship began with the ideals of art; Michelangelo may have seen Cavalieri as a son. However, even in his own time, there was accusatory “talk” about the two which Michelangelo rejected as "the evil, foolish and envious mob, accusing others of their own vile tastes." Yet it’s clear that he struggled with frank desire:

Only I remain burning in the dusk
After the sun has stripped the world of its rays:
Whereas other men take their pleasure, I do but mourn,
Prostrate on the ground, lamenting and weeping.
I had always thought I could come to terms with love,
Now I suffer, and you see how I burn.

The “Gay Movement”, of course, would claim Michelangelo as one of its own, even if he were religiously chaste his whole life long. How does this affect our view of his spirituality?

6. Michelangelo had another kindred spirit: the noblewoman Vittoria Colonna, a well-educated widow --- one of the most popular poets in 16th century Italy --- devoted to Catholic piety, charity, and intellectual pursuits. She, Michelangelo and Cavalieri often met to discuss religious matters, like the controversies of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. She and Michelangelo exchanged many letters and poems: most of his sonnets were written for her. When she died, he was “a long time in despair and as if out of his mind”: he said he regretted that he had never kissed her face as he had kissed her hands. Deep attachment and deep emotional suffering played a role in shaping Michelangelo’s soul as well as his art. Discuss.

7. Michelangelo can seem too, too much in every way: too exuberant, too suffering; too angry, too tender; too sumptuous, too austere; too drawn to the carnal, too driven by the spirit. Is he a kindred spirit with the “balanced” St. Benedict? the obstinately poor St. Francis? Is he a penitent, a converted man, a saint, a kindred spirit with Christ?

The orthodox argument is that there are three sources of authority: scripture/revelation; tradition/magisterium; and right reason. Ideally all three are in harmony. The difficult questions arise when they come into apparent conflict, and the difficult questions are two dimensional: how does one weigh one claim vs. another, and who is entitled to decide?

Chronic and flagrant clerical corruption, especially in the papacy itself, made it impossible for the Remaissance popes to sustain a serious claim to hierarchical and papal authority vs. scripture and right reason. Under the circumstances that obtained at the time, Luther had the upper hand on the merits, and the question was irrepressible when he was ordered to recant, on peril of mortal sin whatever he decided. It is a tragedy that the counter-Reformation came a century too late.

I am pleasant to the young Mormon missionaries when they knock at my door, and I usually work the conversation around to this point. I am not trying to badger them, but it is always interesting to hear them go on about the inerrancy of their prophets. I ask what they will say when their process throws up a loon, a crook, or a flagrant philanderer. They usually respond that God would not allow that to happen. I gently suggest that they need to read more history.

Leo X (1513-21) – On the good side...he did eventually excommunicate Luther.

Why was this a good thing? If the church leadership had taken the 95 Theses seriously and met Luther halfway, the Lutheran schism could have been averted, the church reformed--and it would be just as likely that, without the Lutheran schism, Henry VII would have obtained the Pope's approval to install Henry Fitzroy as his heir apparent, thereby removing the necessity (in Henry's mind) of taking over the church in England. Moreover, a united, less corrupt Catholic Church would have been better equipped to evangelize the world, not for the purpose of blocking the Lutherans, but for the sake of the salvation of the world--and there would have been no need for the Jesuits :-)

Leo X (1513-21) ... On the good side, his pecuniary extravagance benefited many works of charity and he did eventually excommunicate Luther.

Innocent VIII (1484-92) ... One of his arguably good accomplishments was the appointment of Tomás de Torquemada as Grand Inquisitor in Spain.

... Proving once again that "good" resides in the eye of the beholder.

Historical Basis and Context of the Reformation (brief)

• Joseph Lortz, German Roman Catholic theologian:

The real significance of the Western Schism rests in the fact that for decades there was an almost universal uncertainty about where the true pope and the true Church were to be found. For several decades, both popes had excommunicated each other and his followers; thus all Christendom found itself under sentence of excommunication by at least one of the contenders. Both popes referred to their rival claimant as the Antichrist, and to the Masses celebrated by them as idolatry. It seemed impossible to do anything about this scandalous situation, despite sharp protests from all sides, and despite the radical impossibility of having two valid popes at the same time. Time and time again, the petty selfishness of the contenders blocked any solution...

The significance of the break-up of medieval unity in the thirteenth century, but even more during the Avignon period, is evident in the most distinctive historical consequence of the Avignon Papacy: the Great Western Schism. The real meaning of this event may not be immediately apparent. It can be somewhat superficially described as a period when there were two popes, each with his own Curia, one residing in Rome, the other in Avignon

When Luther asserted that the pope of Rome was not the true successor of Saint Peter and that the Church could do without the Papacy, in his mind and in their essence these were new doctrines, but the distinctive element in them was not new and thus they struck a sympathetic resonance in the minds of many. Long before the Reformation itself, the unity of the Christian Church in the West had been severely undermined

— " The Reformation: A Problem for Today” (Maryland: The Newman Press, 1964), “The Causes of the Reformation," pp. 35-37; . http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2011/10/roman-catholic-scholar-look-at-causes.html

• The Avignon Papacy (1309-76) relocated the throne to France and was followed by the Western Schism (1378-1417), with three rival popes excommunicating each other and their sees. Referring to the schism of the 14th and 15th centuries, Cardinal Ratzinger observed,

"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution. It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation.

— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/

• Catholic Encyclopedia>Council of Constance:

The Western Schism was thus at an end, after nearly forty years of disastrous life; one pope (Gregory XII) had voluntarily abdicated; another (John XXIII) had been suspended and then deposed, but had submitted in canonical form; the third claimant (Benedict XIII) was cut off from the body of the Church, "a pope without a Church, a shepherd without a flock" (Hergenröther-Kirsch). It had come about that, whichever of the three claimants of the papacy was the legitimate successor of Peter, there reigned throughout the Church a universal uncertainty and an intolerable confusion, so that saints and scholars and upright souls were to be found in all three obediences. On the principle that a doubtful pope is no pope, the Apostolic See appeared really vacant, and under the circumstances could not possibly be otherwise filled than by the action of a general council. — http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04288a.htm

• Cardinal Bellarmine:

"Some years before the rise of the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresy, according to the testimony of those who were then alive, there was almost an entire abandonment of equity in ecclesiastical judgments; in morals, no discipline; in sacred literature, no erudition; in divine things, no reverence; religion was almost extinct. — Concio XXVIII. Opp. Vi. 296- Colon 1617, in “A History of the Articles of Religion,” by Charles Hardwick, Cp. 1, p. 10,

• Erasmus, in his new edition of the “Enchiridion,” “What man of real piety does not perceive with sighs that this is far the most corrupt of all ages? When did iniquity abound with more licentiousness? When was charity so cold?” — “The Evolution of the English Bible: A Historical Sketch of the Successive,” p. 132 by Henry William Hamilton-Hoare

• At the time of the Reformation, the Catholic historian Paul Johnson described the existing social situation among the clergy:

“Probably as many as half the men in orders had ‘wives’ and families. Behind all the New Learning and the theological debates, clerical celibacy was, in its own way, the biggest single issue at the Reformation. It was a great social problem and, other factors being equal, it tended to tip the balance in favour of reform. As a rule, the only hope for a child of a priest was to go into the Church himself, thus unwillingly or with no great enthusiasm, taking vows which he might subsequently regret: the evil tended to perpetuate itself.” (History of Christianity, pgs 269-270)

In the same candid spirit is the following statement of de Mézeray, the historiographer of France: [Abrege’ Chronol. VIII. 691, seqq. a Paris, 1681.]

“As the heads of the Church paid no regard to the maintenance of discipline, the vices and excesses of the ecclesiastics grew up to the highest pitch, and were so public and universally exposed as to excite against them the hatred and contempt of the people. We cannot repeat without a blush the usury, the avarice, the gluttony, the universal dissoluteness of the priests of this period, the licence and debauchery of the monks, the pride and extravagance of the prelates, and the shameful indolence, ignorance and superstition pervading the whole body .... These were not, I confess, new scandals: I should rather say that the barbarism and ignorance of preceding centuries, in some sort, concealed such vices; but,, on the subsequent revival of the light of learning, the spots which I have pointed out became more manifest, and as the unlearned who were corrupt could not endure the light through the pain which it caused to their eyes, so neither did the learned spare them, turning them to ridicule and delighting to expose their turpitude and to decry their superstitions.”

Bossuet* in the opening statements of his “Histoire des Variations,” admits the frightful corruptions of the Church for centuries before the Reformation; and he has been followed in our own times by Frederic von Schlegel [Philosophy of History, 400, 401, 410, Engl. Transl. 1847.] and Möhler. [Symbolik, II. 31, 32, Engl. Transl.]

While all of them are most anxious to prove that the Lutheran movement was revolutionary and subversive of the ancient faith, they are constrained to admit the universality of the abuses, which, in the language of Schlegel, “lay deep, and were ulcerated in their very roots.” — Charles Hardwick A History of the Articles of Religion;

http://www.anglicanbooksrevitalized.us/Oldies/Thirty-Nine/hardwick39.htm

Lost candlestick.

How the Renaissance Papacy contributed to the Reformation

Flip side...

How the Protestant Reformation contributed to the Catholic COUNTER-Reformation