Corruption and the Beginnings of Reform

Lecture 35

T

hroughout its history, Christianity has had the ability to generate
reform movements based on the conviction that its high ideals
were being compromised by actual practice. Early monasticism, for
example, can be seen as a form of organized resistance to what the monks
perceived to be the compromised position of the church after Christianity
became the imperial religion. Later, such popes as Gregory VII and Innocent
III worked for the reform of the clergy and fought the practice of simony. In
this lecture, however, we consider the sort of corruption those reforms could
not touch: the deep and systemic dysfunction in late-medieval Christianity
and the first efforts at structural—as distinct from moral—reform.

Christendom in the Middle Ages
• Given the chaotic state of the West during the migration of nations
in the 4th and 5th centuries, the medieval synthesis is remarkable
both for its stability and its comprehensiveness.
o If we mark the starting date for this synthesis as the coronation
of Charlemagne in 800, Catholic culture shaped Europe for
some 800 years.

o This culture gathered a bewildering variety of warring tribes

and diverse languages into a single coherent civilization from

Poland to England, from Italy and Spain to Scandinavia.

o Coherence was achieved not least by the use of a single

language (Latin), a single creed, and a single religious authority

(the pope).

•    For all the tensions and corruptions that it created, the political

dance between pope and emperor (and, later, between pope and

kings) provided a fundamental stability to society and mutual

legitimation of both institutions.