found a mouthpiece in Luther. Subsequent councils are full of complaints of the lies and frauds of these peddlers of salvation, who continued to flourish until the Reformation; and Tassoni fairly represents the popular conviction that this was an unfailing resort of the Church in its secular aims—
" Le cose della guerra andavan zoppe;
I Bolognesi richiedean danari
Al Papa, ad egli rispondeva coppe,
E mandava indulgenze per gli altari." [1]
The sale of indulgences illustrates effectively the sacerdotalism which formed the distinguishing feature of mediaeval religion. The believer did not deal directly with his Creator—scarce even with the Virgin or hosts of intercessory saints. The supernatural powers claimed for the priest interposed him as the mediator between God and man; his bestowal or withholding of the sacraments decided the fate of immortal souls; his performance of the mass diminished or shortened the pains of purgatory; his decision in the confessional determined the very nature of sin itself. The implements which he wielded—the Eucharist, the relics, the holy water, the chrism, the exorcism, the prayer—became in some sort fetiches which had a power of their own entirely irrespective of the moral or spiritual condition of him who employed them or of him for whom they were employed; and in the popular view the rites of religion could hardly be more than magic formulas which in some mysterious way worked to the advantage, temporal and spiritual, of those for whom they were performed.
How sedulously this fetichism was inculcated by those who profited from the control of the fetiches is shown by a thousand stories and incidents of the time. Thus a twelfth-century chronicler piously narrates that when, in 887, the relics of St. Martin of Tours were brought home from Auxerre, whither they had been
- ↑ Concil. Lateran. IV. c. 62.—P. de Pilicbdorf contr. Waldenses cap. xxx.—Concil. Biterrens. ann. 1246, c. 5.—Concil. Cenomanens. ann. 1248.—Concil. Burdegalens. ann. 1255, c. 2.—Concil. Vienn. ann. 1311 (Clementin. Lib. v. tit. ix. c. 2).—Concil. Remens. ann. 1303.—Concil. Carnotens. ann. 1325, c. 18.—Martene Thesaur. IV. 858.—Martene Ampliss. Collect. VII. 197, etc.—Concil. Moguntin. ann. 1261, c. 48.—La Secchia Rapita, xii. 1. For the repression of these abuses after the Reformation see cap. 1,2 in Septimo iii. 15.
