The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

For all the impassioned devotion to Christ in His suffering, pitying humanity, the adoration of Christ
as the Man of Sorrows, the new feasts and Masses popularly dedicated to the holy name of Jesus, to
the five wounds, to the crown of thorns, it seemed as though His mercies were not available to the
faithful without mediation. The incessant invocation of saints implies a belief that the sinner could
never reach God without ceaseless intercession. All the intercessions of family and friends, on earth
and in heaven, could never bring souls to God without the mediation of the Church. Belief in the
redemptive power of Christ was central, but the pathway to salvation also led through the seven
sacraments, obedience to the teachings of Holy Church and penitential good works. The authority
of the Church was fundmental; authority which not only in the hierarchy of the Church but in the
sources on which the faith rested. For Catholics, the foundation of faith was not only scripture but
also the 'unwritten verities' which Christ had confided to the Apostles, the decrees of General Councils of the Church, the writings of the Church Fathers, the pronouncements of popes. These only the Church could interpret. The Church had huge reserves of spiritual power whichi it dispensed through
the sacraments and through indulgences. Christ by His sacrifice had won such an amplitude of merit
before God that it might make satisfaction for sin for sinning Christians forever. This, so the Church
taught, was the treasury of merit. And who should control it? The Church itself, came the answer;
especially its hierarchs, especially the Pope. Though the doctrine of indulgences was complex and
disputed, by the end of the middle ages popes were granting remission from all temporal punishments.
This was plenary indulgence. The merits acquired from a plenary indulgence could also be applied
to benefit souls already in purgatory. Popes declared that plenary indulgences gave remission from
both culpa, guilt, and poena, satisfaction for sin; and not only in this life. By the end of the fifteenth
century the Pope was claiming jurisdiction over souls in purgatory as well as over Christians on earth.
Some priests were preaching that he could free souls at will. Such indulgences came at a price,
spiritual as well as financial. The hierarchy of the Church mirrored that of the secular realm; with
the Pope as monarch and General Councils as Parliaments; bishops and cardinals as the nobility;
through a series of lesser clerical orders down to the priest with cure of souls in the humblest parish.