ABSTRACT
In the popular imagination, the medieval church was populated by fat monks given to luxurious living, sinister popes who sought to control a superstitious laity by keeping them ignorant of the true tenets of Christianity, and a corrupted clergy who enriched themselves by exacting tithes from impoverished peasants and extorting indulgence money from misguided believers. The medieval church is often depicted as an authoritarian institution in which dissent or criticism was quickly squelched by the powerful arm of the Holy Inquisition, which burned innocent people at the stake for criticizing the wayward lives of the clergy or for the simple act of reading the Bible. All this may seem a caricature, but it is a pervasive one. Consider, for example, a description of the medieval church from William Manchester’s A World Lit Only by Fire: “[T]he Church became the wealthiest landowner on the Continent, and the life of every European, from baptism through matrimony to burial, was governed by popes, cardinals, prelates, monsignors, archbishops, bishops, and village priests.” While, according to Manchester, “reliable reports of misconduct by priests, nuns, and prelates, much of it squalid, were rising,” the medieval Church still “found its greatest strength in total resistance to change.”2
