A Brief History of Simony
As Christianity grew, church offices acquired greater visibility and influence. This created opportunities for wealthy or politically connected individuals to obtain ecclesiastical positions through money or patronage. Church councils responded early. Canon 2 of the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 ordered the deposition of bishops who ordained people for money. The person purchasing the appointment was also to lose the position, while intermediaries were subject to church discipline.
However, as we covered in my previous article in this series, once Christianity became perceived as a path to social and political advantage, power-hungry pagans began confessing false allegiance to Christ. At the same time, they also began infiltrating the Church leadership through the ecclesiastical sin of simony, the buying and selling of priesthoods and bishoprics to anyone who could afford the fee (also an imported-from-paganism practice).
In other words, church leadership positions became commodities.
The Origin of the Term
The term “simony” comes from Simon Magus — Simon the magician — in Acts 8. After seeing the Holy Spirit given through the apostles’ laying on of hands, Simon offered Peter money for the same authority. Peter sharply rebuked him and told him to repent because he thought God’s gift could be obtained with money (see Acts 8:9–24).
Strictly speaking, Simon was not attempting to purchase a bishopric or priesthood; he was trying to purchase spiritual power. His conduct nevertheless became the biblical model for every subsequent attempt to turn God’s gifts and calling into merchandise.
Paying a minister’s salary, reimbursing his expenses, supporting a congregation, or giving a voluntary offering does not qualify as simony. The offense arises when temporal payment becomes the price or condition for receiving spiritual grace, sacramental ministry, or church office.
Why was Simony so Attractive?
During the early Middle Ages, bishops, abbots, and parish priests often controlled significant property and substantial income. A bishop might be both a spiritual shepherd and a powerful territorial lord. An abbey could possess farms, villages, courts, and political privileges. Church offices consequently became attractive prizes for the greedy.
In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas defined simony as the deliberate intention to buy or sell something spiritual — or something directly connected with a spiritual reality. He also recognized that the “payment” might consist of influence, favors, flattery, or services rather than cash.
Under the “proprietary church” system, a noble who founded or controlled a church frequently treated it as part of his estate. He might appoint the priest, collect part of its income, or give the position to a relative. Kings similarly expected to appoint bishops and abbots because those men administered important territories.
Payment was not always a sack of coins changing hands. It might involve:
- A gift to the ruler
- Political loyalty
- Military or administrative service
- A promise of future income
- Advancement of the ruler’s relatives
- Payment through an intermediary
Church councils repeatedly condemned such arrangements, but the financial and political structure kept reproducing them. Pope Gregory the Great, who served from 590 to 604, also repeatedly denounced the buying of ordinations and ecclesiastical appointments, sometimes calling it “simoniacal heresy.”
Throughout the Middle Ages until well into the Renaissance, rich men could buy for themselves or their male relatives positions as priests, bishops, and cardinals without any of them ever having been ordained, baptized, or even converted to Christ. Church offices often became a means for rich patrons to ensure their shiftless progeny would be able to find employment, and/or to help line their family coffers.
The Tragic Results
As a result of this influx of unbelievers into church leadership, all forms of sin became rampant. Despite the later introduction of the false teaching that priests, bishops, and cardinals must remain celibate, sexual immorality was pervasive — many church leaders at all levels — including popes! — had multiple illegitimate children by their mistresses and homosexual relationships were not at all unheard of.
For centuries, many priests were so illiterate they could neither read nor recite the Mass in Latin, could not recite any of the creeds, any portion of the Bible, or even the Lord’s Prayer (more than a few didn’t even know Who originally said it!) — indeed, many of them could not even read and write in their own native tongue!
False Doctrines & Heresies Multiply
Because of all this, a host of false doctrines — some of them outright heresies — pervaded Roman Catholicism (hereafter RC), all of them with us to this day. A non-exhaustive list of examples includes:
- The exaltation of church tradition to be equal in authority (in actual practice over the centuries, superior) to the Scriptures. This single issue is the primary distinctive between RC and Protestant doctrine. In other words, what controls faith and practice? “We’ve done it that way for centuries” or the Scriptures alone (sola scriptura)?
- The infallibility of the pope (i.e. incapable of making mistakes or uttering a false statement concerning faith and practice). Along with this came the exaltation of papal bulls to be equal to, even superior to God’s Word (the Bible) as authoritative over faith and practice. Papal bulls are treated as holy writ binding upon all Catholics worldwide.
- Salvation by good works replaced salvation by grace. While Roman Catholicism gives lip-service to grace, it immediately it with the concept of merit. That, by definition, negates grace (remember Paul’s Letter to the Galatians already mentioned earlier? Grace + Works = Works).
- Various saints (e.g., starting with the original 12 apostles) were exalted and venerated. It became standard practice for Catholics to pray to them rather than directly to God in Jesus’ name. Along with that, the Virgin Mary was doctrinally transformed into a divine individual equal or superior to Jesus. While various cults had embraced this heresy over the centuries, it became official Catholic doctrine sometime during the Middle Ages.
- They venerated “holy relics” as foci of worship and “holy sites” to be used as destinations for pilgrimages. Examples of holy relics include the bones of various saints, the Spear of Destiny, the Shroud of Turin, so-called slivers of the true cross, and the like. Holy sites included such locations as the Basilica of Saint Peter in Vatican City, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and the Land of Israel itself as “the Holy Land.” That list was later expanded to include locations where the Virgin Mary had supposedly appeared supernaturally to someone centuries, even millennia later (e.g., the springs at Lourdes, France).
- The taking of communion became a requirement for salvation. Thus when someone was “excommunicated” for contradiction of church doctrine/tradition or insubordination toward a church leader, just to name two potential offenses, they were barred from communion and thereby condemned to eternal torment. Some were excommunicated simply because they had ticked off the pope or a local bishop for not paying them a demanded bribe.
- The heresy of purgatory, a purported holding place between heaven and hell, became official doctrine. According to RC teaching, “all who die in God’s grace and friendship are still imperfectly purified, so they undergo a purification process which the Church calls purgatory, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.”
- Celibacy for priests, monks, and nuns became official church policy and remains so to this day. Prior to the Counter-Reformation of the 1600s, this was largely ignored at all levels of RC leadership.
- They established the confessional where Catholics must go to confess their sins to a priest. Penitents must complete their penance (another heresy found nowhere in the Bible) and receive absolution (another word also found nowhere in God’s Word). Absolution means a penitent’s sins are forgiven, thus qualifying them to receive communion. Some folks’ sins (mostly royalty) were of such magnitude their penance was to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem or participate in the Crusades.
- And the false doctrines just keep on coming!
I’ve written a complete analysis of RC dogma elsewhere here at Miscellaneous Ramblings, if you care to dig into the issue in greater detail.
Multiple Attempts to Remedy All This Failed
The late Dr. Rodney Stark, an eminent sociologist of religion and former Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, wrote:
Keep in mind that dissolute living was not peculiar to popes or even to the hierarchy in Rome. At all levels of the church, everywhere, notorious clergy prospered. Many priests kept concubines, came to church drunk, or didn’t show up at all, and otherwise discredited their offices. Not all, of course, but many.
The Triumph of Christianity (p. 302)
Monastic movements arose, attempting to correct this rampant corruption. As a result, the church became split into the Church of Piety and the Church of Power. Stark continues:
In many ways the Church of Piety was sustained as a reaction against the Church of Power. It pressed for virtue over worldliness, as would be expected given that most of its leaders as well as its rank-and-file were monks and nuns…Naturally, those living an ascetic life felt themselves spiritually superior to others, as was in fact acknowledged by Catholic theology. However, their antagonism toward the regular clergy, and especially the church hierarchy, had a different basis; it was not merely that these men were not leading ascetic lives, but that so many were leading dissolute lives. This was an issue that would not subside. Again and again leaders of the Church of Piety attempted to reform the Church of Power, and during several notable periods they managed to gain control of the papacy and impose major changes. But most of the time, the “church” was the Church of Power. This may not have been entirely due to Constantine. Once it became the dominant religion, Christianity was bound to become more bureaucratic and worldly. But Constantine made this shift occur very rapidly and to a remarkable degree.
The Triumph of Christianity (p. 303)
Tragically, the Church of Power held sway until the Protestant Reformation despite several efforts at reform over the centuries. Most such attempts were deflected by the creation of new monastic orders so their religious fervor could be contained through isolation to a monastery. When the Reformation hit, the RC Counter-Reformation theoretically brought the Church of Piety back into power from then until modern times, but in fact the Church of Power simply went underground, the RC version of the so-called Deep State in American government.
Thanks for reading!
Part 5: When the Church Became Respectable Part 7: The Reformation — and the Work Left Undone Return to the Series Index
