Complete the account of the abuses the reformers attacked.
Trading church office for money was called ______, and clerical marriage was opposed partly because it turned a benefice into a ______ asset. Behind both lay the question of who controlled the church’s enormous landed ______. The monastery founded in 909 that answered directly to Rome was ______.
Word bank: simony · family · wealth · Cluny · nepotism · Cîteaux
Hints
- The first term comes from a figure in Acts who tried to buy spiritual power.
- The second abuse mattered because sons inherit.
Show the answer
Trading church office for money was called simony, and clerical marriage was opposed partly because it turned a benefice into a family asset. Behind both lay the question of who controlled the church’s enormous landed wealth. The monastery founded in 909 that answered directly to Rome was Cluny.
Reading clerical marriage as a moral question alone misses what the reformers were most afraid of: a married clergy produces heirs, heirs inherit benefices, and within two generations a bishopric is a family estate. Celibacy is, among other things, a property rule.
Practise The Renewal of Christendom, Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History II is free to start.
More questions on The Renewal of Christendom, Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries
- Arrange these episodes in the reform and expansion of the Latin church, earliest first.
- Henry IV stood as a penitent at Canossa in 1077 and Gregory VII absolved him. Why do historians hesitate to…
- Eleventh-century reformers attacked clerical marriage not merely as a moral failing, but as an institutional…
- The Concordat of Worms in 1122 removed rulers from the appointment of bishops entirely.
- Match each religious movement to the innovation that distinguishes it.
- Why do historians describe the numbering of the crusades as a modern convenience?
- Arrange the stages of the Investiture Contest in order.
- In which year did the Concordat of Worms settle the investiture dispute by dividing spiritual from temporal…
- Sort each development by whether it extended the church’s reach into ordinary LAY life or reorganised the…
- The mendicant orders differed from earlier monasticism chiefly in going into towns rather than withdrawing…
- Universities appeared at Bologna and Paris as corporations of masters and students holding legal privileges.…