• The Reformation—The Search Took a New Turn
    Mankind’s Search for God

    • 5. What did contemporary records show regarding the moral conduct of the clergy?

      5 Corruption and immorality were not limited to the papacy. A common saying of the time was: “If you want to ruin your son, make him a priest.” This is backed up by records of that time. According to Durant, in England, among “accusations of [sexual] incontinence filed in 1499, . . . clerical offenders numbered some 23 per cent of the total, though the clergy were probably less than 2 per cent of the population. Some confessors solicited sexual favors from female penitents. Thousands of priests had concubines; in Germany nearly all.” (Contrast 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Ephesians 5:5.) Moral lapses also reached into other areas. A Spaniard of the time is said to have complained: “I see that we can scarcely get anything from Christ’s ministers but for money; at baptism money . . . at marriage money, for confession money​—no, not extreme unction [last rites] without money! They will ring no bells without money, no burial in the church without money; so that it seemeth that Paradise is shut up from them that have no money.”​—Contrast 1 Timothy 6:10.

  • The Reformation—The Search Took a New Turn
    Mankind’s Search for God

    • Protests From Within the Church

      9. Who was John Wycliffe, and against what did he preach?

      9 Often referred to as “the morning star of the Reformation,” John Wycliffe (1330?-84) was a Catholic priest and a professor of theology at Oxford, England. Well aware of the abuses in the church, he wrote and preached against such matters as corruption in the monastic orders,

  • The Reformation—The Search Took a New Turn
    Mankind’s Search for God

    • 14. (a) Who was Girolamo Savonarola? (b) What did Savonarola attempt to do, and what was the outcome?

      14 Another early Reformer was the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98) of the San Marcos monastery in Florence, Italy. Swept along by the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, Savonarola spoke out against the corruption in both Church and State.