HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ( CHAPTER 1 ) - { PT. 11 }


 { PT.  11 } - Considering the fact that so many of the bishops were engaged in the service of the State to the neglect of their duties in their dioceses, and bearing also in mind the selfish use made too frequently of the rights of lay patronage and the disorganisation to which even the most enlightened use of such patronage was likely to lead, it is little less than marvellous that the great body of the clergy were as education, zealous, and irreproachable as they can be proved to have been. As a result of the disorganisation wrought by the Black Plague, the civil strife which disturbed and peace of the country, and the constant interference of the crown and lay patrons, many of the religious houses, influenced to some extent by the general spirit pf laxity peculiar to the age, fell far short of the standard of severity and discipline that had been set in better days. While on the one hand it should be admitted freely that some of the monastice and conventual establishment stood in urgent need of reform, there is, no sufficient evidence to support the wild charges of wholesale corruption and immorality levelled against the monks and nuns of England by those who thirsted for their destruction. The main foundation for such an accusation is to be sought for in the letters and reports (/ Comperta/ ) of the commissioners sent out to examine into the condition of the monasteries and convents in 1535.

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