ACH A Pope reforms Church

Give Adrian VI a longer pontificate, IOTL he died aged 64, he may have been staunchly opposed to Luthers reformation, but was a strong proponent of church reform from within / top down.
 
Wasn't the Church reformed multiple times? The Cluniacs, Gregory the Great, the Jesuits, etc. were all reformers working within the Catholic Church.
Exactly. It's been tried many times. But once the pious reformers get into power, power corrupts them. That's the problem with a massive all powerful monopoly, it's so tough to keep it clean.
 
Wasn't the Church reformed multiple times? The Cluniacs, Gregory the Great, the Jesuits, etc. were all reformers working within the Catholic Church.

Exactly. The notion of the Catholic Church being an ever static entity until Luther shows up is a tired misconception.
 
Give Adrian VI a longer pontificate, IOTL he died aged 64, he may have been staunchly opposed to Luthers reformation, but was a strong proponent of church reform from within / top down.
Could we then see the conciliar idea that was suggested at the resolution of the last schism where there were 3 rival popes in the end?
 
Exactly. It's been tried many times. But once the pious reformers get into power, power corrupts them. That's the problem with a massive all powerful monopoly, it's so tough to keep it clean.
I don't think that's really a fair appraisal- the Catholic Church was a thousand-year-old organization by the time of the Reformation- the fact that it held together for so long is better proof that it was flexible enough to change with the times than that it was some perpetually corrupt, hidebound institution.
 
And then we get to everyone’s favorite part, the corruption. It’s important to remember that bishops and cardinals and popes were usually second or third sons of Royal or ducal families and used to living like that, so they fleeced their offices for the funds needed to run extravagant courts. I... I don’t even know where to begin to describe some of the extravagances. To give at least one small example though, the cardinal who briefly was a patron for Leonardo da Vinci spent a sum of money equivalent to one year of the artist’s salary on a parrot that could recite the Apostle’s Creed.

It was a major, epic mess and it’s a miracle that even some of it got sorted out at Trent and by the reformers.
Can I get a source on the Parrot? Not that I don't believe you but I want to show other people
 
Further digging on the parrot (and seriously - someone needs to write a timeline based off this bird):

A Roman Cardinal in 1500 is said to have bought a grey parrot for one hundred gold pieces, because it could repeat clearly, and without hesitation, the entire Apostle's Creed.

(Original source - E. Phipson, Animal Lore of Shakespeare's Time (London, 1883), p.214.).

No mention of da Vinci though.
 
Did the Eastern Church become as corrupt as the Western? If not then preventing the Patriarch of Rome from becoming sole authority in the West could help.

You have to define "corruption". :cool:

Patriarchs of the Eastern Chrurch for most of the time had been in a position subservient to a secular authority (Byzantine Emperor, Ottoman Sultan, Tsar of Russia) while the Papacy was, most of the time, quite independent in its actions (including the benefits for the secular relatives). As a result, by the early XVI it was capable (and more or less forced) to develop an effective money-squeezing mechanism. Take, for example Rodrigo Borgia (yes, I know about the bad PR and, anyway, he was not the 1st one, just one with the worst reputation ;)). The Papal army created by Cesare required huge amounts of money hence a massive sale of the Church positions, the Jubilee Year and all other gimmicks. Julius II more or less "inherited" Cesare's army and I don't think that it became cheaper to maintain (but somehow nobody is interested in how Julius was keeping it in the field). Leo X loved arts, so he needed more money and the Rome itself was producing pretty much nothing so there was more "corruption"....

The Eastern Patriarchs simply were not in a position to do anything comparable so your idea could work with, IMO, one necessary addition: there should be no independent Papal state. Even better, create Patriarchate of France and Patriarchate of the HRE in an addition to the Bishop of Rome (in which case Papal secular possessions would be of no importance). With the numerous patriarchs available, this would not be such a big deal: Patriarchate of Moscow had been created only in the XVI century (and abolished by Tsar's whim). Having most of the Eastern patriarchs operating under the Ottoman umbrella greatly simplified things: they always needed money.
 
The Church did reform. At a number of councils and junctures, including First Lateran, Florence, at Fifth Lateran, and most famously, at Trent. A great deal of renewal and spiritual revival occurred in the 13th Century, too, though I'm not sure that counts as "reform", strictly speaking
 

Md139115

Banned
Can I get a source on the Parrot? Not that I don't believe you but I want to show other people

My apologies for this necro, everyone, but I finally found the source where I got this from.

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Now sadly, her bibliography does not make clear where exactly she got this from, but the rest of the work is decently researched.

This was really bugging me.
 
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