Well, I think the Church hadn't preached poverty in quite some time before the 13th century. The Mendicant orders, Dominicans and Franciscans, were founded in the 12th century as a response to the increasing opulence of the church. These orders were embroiled in a long debate on the poverty of Christ (whether Christ and the Apostles owned any property, including their clothes), unforgettably memorialized in fiction in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, which was a roundabout way of talking about whether the Church should embrace wealth. And Pardoning (selling indulgences, see Chaucer's Pardoner;s Tale), is much older than the 13th century, as the article in the Catholic Encyclopedia (see URL below) indicates.
--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> Andie:
>
>
> Indulgences, I believe, that's the way I learned it
> in
> Catholic School. Doug, isn't that right?
>
> http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm
>
> > Voila, guilt-free
> > consumption! It reminds us of the era when rich
> > Catholics paid the
> > church for "dispensations" that would shorten
> their
> > terms in Purgatory.
> >
>
> [WS:] Historically speaking, that was an adaptation
> to changing economic
> conditions toward the end of the Middle ages (13th
> -14th century). The
> Catholic Church preached poverty when Europe was
> dirt poor and barbaric vis
> a vis the Islamic world, but that started to change
> with the Portuguese and
> Spanish maritime adventures. As the fortuned were
> made, people started
> wondering whether that would be an impediment to
> their salvation. The
> Church's answer was simple and ingenious - use your
> wealth to do the "works
> of mercy" (build churches, hospitals, shelters for
> widows and orphans, etc.)
> and you will be saved. The indulgences were a
> relatively late development
> along that road, if I remember my history correctly.
>
> I think they became a problem only because an
> alternative theology, that
> viewing wealth as a sign from god of being
> predestined for salvation was
> already taking hold and the rich merchants preferred
> it to the Catholic
> "works of mercy" - if we were to believe Max Weber.
> The Protestant doctrine
> did not require them to part with their wealth to
> achieve salvation.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
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