Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Weaknesses of the Catholic Church - Coggle Diagram
Weaknesses of the Catholic Church
Corruption
Pluralism
receiving profits of more than one post
Simony
purchase of Church office
Non-residence
receiving profits of one post but not present to perform duties
Best example of corruption is Cardinal Wolsey
Anticlericalism
Opposition to political and social importance of the clergy
Some common lawyers objected to the influence of canon law
Murder of Richard Hunne, 1514
Found dead in his cell in the Bishop of London's prison
Had apparently hung himself
Coroner's jury stated that Hunne had been murdered
Disastrous in the short term for the reputation of the church
Much less likely to have been at forefront of the minds of critics of the Church
Decline of monasticism
Wolsey securing dissolution
of 20 houses in 1520s
to fund establishment of Cardinal College in Oxford
Monasticism having lost its sense of direction
larger monasteries becoming substantial
businesses with huge resource
land
buildings
Observant Franciscans and Bridgettines flourishing until final days of the dissolution
Evidence of early English Protestantism
1517, Martin Luther's attack on the Catholic Church
Future reformers based in Cambridge in 1520s
met for religious discussions at the White Horse
led by Robert Barnes, converted to Protestantism by Thomas Bilney
both burned as heretics later in Henry's reign