Vatican Wealth: Chapter Seven

Here is the seventh chapter of Avro Manhattan's book, Vatican Billions. It details how Rome imposed a complex system of religious taxation on Europeans and, in so doing, multiplied its own wealth far beyond any other entity on the Continent.
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Pay to be a Christian - Whether Alive or Dead

At the close of the first millennium A.D. the accumulation of the wealth by the Roman Church had been carried out in a somewhat haphazard fashion, since , apart from the extensive territorial gifts which she had eight, and ninth centuries, her wealth had grown mostly to the piety of her members

From that tenth and eleven centuries, however, the accretion of her riches gathered momentum. That is, it became systematized. Indeed, it became a fixed feature of her administration. Whereas in the past the money had come from the humble and the poor who donated because of religious motives, from out on words such "donations" became compulsory. It was no longer the humble folk or the Princess who gave her "favors received." Hence forward they were all made for "favors received." That is, they had to give to the Church by mere fact that they were members, the principle being that the children who were cared for by the mother should give her part of their richness as a compensation for her love. The ternet was not new. Its novelty was that now it became systematized, an integral part and parcel of the Vatican's vast machinery.

The popes were anything but slow to incorporate the practice in the expanding structures of ecclesiasticism. They promoted well-planned money-collecting operations through-out Christendom, directing them from the top. The most notorious of these pontiffs, and one of the first creators of Caesaro-Papism, as it was rightly labeled, was Pope Gregory VII , who in 1081 gave orders to his legates in France that every house inhabited by baptized persons in that country should pay an annual tribute of one denarius to the Blessed Peter.

How did the pope justify such a monetary injunction or, to be more precise, taxation? Once more, by virtue of that most rewarding of all letters, the missive which the Blessed Peter wrote with his own golden pen to Pepin . For, said Gregory, a yearly donation to the Blessed Peter (that is, to the pope) was an ancient custom first imposed by the son of Pepin the Short, whom we have already encountered, that is, whom we have already encountered, that is, by the Emperor Charlemagne, who, having overcome the ferocious Saxons, had offered his territories to St. Peter and hence to his successors. Anyone inhabiting the territories thus donated, therefore, was duty bound to give such contributions, because, explained Paul Gregory VII, using the appropriate feudal juridical terms of the times, he, Gregory, considered France and Saxony as belonging to the Blessed Peter. As a result, the denarius which every one of the inhabitants gave was nothing less than a fealty contribution to the Roman See - an argument which was eventually to be confirmed and practice by subsequent popes, such as Gregory IX, Innocent III and others; Pope Martin IV, for instance.

Martin interdicted King Pedro of Aragon, after that king claimed his hereditary right to Sicily following Sicily's rising in 1282 against King Charles. Martin , using the papacy's immense spiritual pressure, deprived King Pedro of his Kingdom. Thereupon, what did the pope do? He presented the whole kingdom to somebody else, namely, to Charles of Valois, but on one important condition : Charles had to pay yearly tribute to the coffers of the Blessed Peter - that is, of the papacy.

Pope Clement IV, in 1265, had done even better. He had, in fact, sold millions of South Italians to Charles of Anjou, for a yearly tribute of 800 ounces of gold - again, to the Blessed Peter's holy coffers; neglect of payment carrying with it, of course, excommunication and interdict, with all that they implied.

Pope Sixtus IV very often caused a notice to be nailed to the door of a church. When the clergy and the faithful went to see what the papal message was, they discovered that unless as certain sum was forthcoming at once that church would be under an "interdict" and furthermore, that its clergy would be under an "interdict" and furthermore, that its clergy would be suspended. This financial expedient proved abundantly productive with other popes and hierarchs for long periods. (1)

Such measures, although frequent, were not, of course, sufficiently methodical to yield a regular and steady income. Hence the creation of regulations, the enforcement of which resulted in a steady flow of riches into St. Peter's coffers. Some of the most common were the "oblations" or offerings at mass or during certain feast days. These oblations were at first voluntary. With the passing of time, however, they became a kind of unwritten contribution of the clergy, until, in the thirteenth century, they were insisted upon as a right.

The canonical tenets which the clergy invoked for their justification were those implying that if an ancient customer is honorable and praiseworthy it acquires the binding force of law. And what habit could be more praiseworthy than that the faithful should offer the Lord some of their money for his Apostle, his Vicar on earth.

This custom eventually became so widespread that the clergy treated the collection of oblations, not only as a duty on the part of their parishioners, but as a right of the clergy, to such an extent that ultimately the oblations were exported from the utmost disregard, indeed, with such cynicism that many Councils attempted to check the Hierarchy's rapacity. This came about when it was discovered that many priests were putting pressure to bear even in the confessional. In fact, round about 1210, church councils were compelled to inflict penalties on some of their clergy who had gone so far as to refuse to administer the Sacrament to those who had not given their oblation or who were in arrears with their Easter offerings

The result was not only growing resentment but also of avoidance of payment. Many, so as not to pay the oblations, began to stay from mass. The clergy retorted by making it to punishable for them to do so. Indeed, they find their own parishioners if the latter frequented churches in other parishes. Fines were enforced on those who omitted confession or communion , at Christmas and Easter, for instance; upon those who neglected church fasts. The higher clergy also imposed fines, both lay folk and the lower clergy, every act of immorality, as system which became the cause of frequent extortion by unscrupulous high prelates, the immorality of clergymen having thus been turned into a regular and constant source of revenue for those above.

The most efficient and steady method that of extracting money, as well as the most widespread, was certainly that of the tithes, which were a direct and indirect tax on the faithful. The latter had to give to the church one tenth of all they produced. This applied not only to cottages and farmers, but equally to merchants, shopkeepers and even to the poorest artisans. The laws, both ecclesiastical and temporal -which, of course, had been interlinked in such a manner as to make the custom compulsory - were considered to include even the down of his wife's geese, pot herbs in the gardens of laborers, and grass cut by the roadside.

Farmers were compelled to cart their timing sheaves to the very houses of the priests. They had to bring also the milk which they owed, not as milk but in the form of cheese, since cheese was more durable. This last injunction so incensed many farmers that they resorted to some most un-Christian habits to spite both the ecclesiastic recipients and the Church! Since the priest said that all their offerings were to God, they took such words literally, "So that," wrote English bishop, Bishop Quivil, at the end of the thirteenth century, many farmers in the Exeter diocese, instead of following "the ancient and approved custom in our archdiocese, namely that men should bring their tithes of milk in the form of cheese.. some than maliciously bring the milk to church in its natural state, and," adds the good bishop with genuine horror, "what is even more iniquitous, finding none there to receive it.. pour it out before the altar.. in scorn to God and His Church."

The spirit which prompted the Exeter farmers to act thus was, of course, widespread , particularly in times of scarcity , so that it was common for farmers, laborers and others to think of all kinds of subterfuges to avoid paying. Many of these subterfuges, complained another hierarch Archbishop Stratford, addressing the Synod of London in 1342, "were of excessive of malice ... to the manifest prejudice of ecclesiastical rights."

In addition to giving tithes while they were still alive, the faithful had to give more while they were still alive, the faithful had to give more while they were dying and after they were dead. Thus a man who had his will written was bound to give tithes in his legacy. "A legatee is bound to give tithes in his legacy, even though it have been already tithed by the testator," as a fourteenth-century manual for parish priests, the Pupilla Oculi, asserted, and since it was realized by the Church that even the most devout of her members might fail at times to give her dues, she made of such an omission nothing less than a mortal sin; after which her clergy invented a yet more profitable device: that of the mortuary

The mortuary fell with the weight of a millstone upon the estate of every dead Roman Catholic. The claim consisted of taking over the second best animal from the stock of anyone who had died possessed of not less than three , a claim which was not only regulated but also legalized. It was imposed by Archbishop Winchelsey about 1305 and confirmed by Langham in 1367. As a result the mortuary became a kind of tax, amounting to succession duty of thirty-three percent on the personal property of the defunct Roman Catholic. It was soon turned into a set custom, acknowledged by both spiritual and temporal authorities in practically every country of Christendom. In this manner the Church began to appropriate one-third of the dead man's personal estate.

Many people, like the Exeter farmers, tried to avoid payment. A typical case is that found among the many pleas to the English Parliament in year 1330. One Thomas le Forter had paid what he claimed to be a just mortuary on the estate of William le Forter; this in his capacity the executor. The deceased's parson, however, the Abbot of Wenlock, sued him in the episcopal court, claiming a full third of the deceased's property, saying that this was the usual mortuary. Thomas appealed to the king, who decreed that "exactions of this kind.. manifestly redound to the oppression of the realm." He therefore forbade the bishop to side with the abbot. Parliament intervened and set up a kind of commission, presided over by three abbots, These, invoking a statute of Edward I to the effect that no prohibition could avail to stop proceedings in the episcopal court on a question of tithers or mortuary, compelled their heir to pay in full.

The rapacity of the Church and her clergy reached unprecedented lengths. Suffice it to state that, following Thomas Aquinas, the Doctor Angelicus, theologians came to learned conclusions that the Church had the right to collect tithes even from lepers and beggars, who were under an obligation to pay one tenth of their collections. What of prostitutes? Following a modest hesitation and few clerical blushes, the battalion of theological bachelors decided that Holy Mother Church must refuse the prostitutes' contributions to her chaste coffers. But, they added (and here is the theological gem) so long as they were unrepentant, lest she, the Church, would give the impression that she shared in their sins. Should, however, the prostitutes repent of their sins, or should their sins remain secret to the average burgh or burghers, although the Church knew about them, then, yes, "the tithes may be taken." (2)

In addition to the oblations, tithes, and mortuaries, there were other means by which to replenish the Church's treasuries with individual sizeable amounts - from the heretics.

The Inquisition was very precise about it. Listen to Diana. In his 43rd Resolution he put the question: "Are the possessions of heretics turned over to the Inquisitors? - "I speak not, " answers Diana, "for other countries, but the Spanish custom is to confiscate to the royal treasury (fisco regio) all the possession of heretics (omnia bona haereticorum) because our King, who is a pillar of orthodoxy (columna fidel), generously supplies the Inquisitors and their agents with whatever the Holy Office requires." (Inquistitoribus et eorum ministris abunde suppeditat quidquid necessarium est ad conservationem sanctae Inquisionis.)

Thanks to this principle, the Church could obtain vast estates or substantial wealth when prosperous individuals were, as happened often, accused of heresy and condemned - sometimes in collusion with the temporal authorities. Witness, for instance, the case of Philip II (1556-98). Two-thirds of the income of the Inquisition went to him, the rest of the Roman Catholic institution.

Further to the Inquisition were the weapons of interdiction and excommunication. These were used with increasing frequency to compel the faithful to pay under practically any pretext. Thus, for example, church and temporal powers would often used the Inquisition. Witness Regent Blache of Castille, who in 1228 issued an edict addressed to the authorities of Nimes and Narbonne, directing thad the excommunicated who remained for a whole year should be forced to seek absolution by the seizure of their property. To quicken the process, a fine of ten livres was exacted on all those excommunicated who had not entered the church within forty days.

To make money, the clergy - as already mentioned - forced the faithful to purchase escapes from excommunication. Their threats often related to the most trivial matters . For instance, at vintage time the tithers time the tithers forbade, under pain of excommunication, the gathering of gathering of grapes until they could choose the best, so that very often the peasants, owing to frequent delays, saw the ruin of their crops.

Some popes, besides thundering on behalf of the Church as a whole, did so in their own personal interests. Pope John VIII, for example, who reigned from 872 to 882, left on record at least 382 epistles, no less than 150 of which referred to excommunication. And, it is interesting to relate, almost all dealt with temporal possessions of the Church - some with worthwhile substantial solid affairs like the transfer or promise of a whole kingdom, but some with the most ridiculous and petty concerns. To mention one: excommunication hurled by good Pope John against those miscreants who stole.. what? Nothing other than the papal horse on which the pope was traveling through France. Or that other papal bolt against the "knaves" who had pilfered his plate while he was staying at the Abbey of Avigny. And, said the Pope, to add insult to injury , "probably with the connivance of the Abbeys monks". (3)

But one of the grossest abuses of excommunication was that perpetrated by bishops and even by hierarchs who began to excommunicate the neighbors of the originally excommunicated person, the result being that when finally the family of the latter was exiled in his whole property confiscated, dozens of others, his neighbors, were placed under the same ban and hence the same penalties that is their properties could be, and as a rule were, in new , and as our role in new and NC same penalties; that is, their properties could be, and as a rule were, confiscated.

The excommunications employed by the popes down to the lowest priests , the motives of the basest avarice, became so frequent and scandalous that many individuals and temporal authorities, including numerous genuinely devout persons, complained bitterly about them. Owing to such abuses, multitudes were driven to desperation, as the Diet of Nuremberg stated in 1522.

The immense wealth thus collected finally reached such proportions that her economic stranglehold upon all and sundry was no less massive than her spiritual dominion, and almost paralyzed whole countries. During the reign of Francis I (1515-47), for instance, a mere six hundred abbots, bishops and archbishops controlled so much land throughout France that the income they derived from it equalled that of the French state itself. (4)

France was not an exception. Practically every other country in Western Europe was in the same situation. The economic dominion of Holy Mother Church had become a collective stranglehold that was slowly but inexorably paralyzing the most vital structures of the land tenancies, commerce and finance of Christendom. She had become such a dead weight that the revolt which her practices provoked, after simmering below the surface for hundreds of years, in due course exploded with the violence of an earthquake. It came, disguised in theological garb, when the hammer of a rebel monk, nailing some theses upon a church door, made Rome totter on her foundations for decades, indeed, for centuries to come.