Journal: Central Bible Quarterly
Volume: CENQ 06:2 (Summer 1963)
Article: Could Francis Of Assisi Have Reformed The Roman Church?
Author: Robert Delnay

CenQ 6:2 (Summer 1963) p. 17

Could Francis Of Assisi Have Reformed The Roman Church?

Robert Delnay

Chairman, Church History Department Central Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary

The medieval church offered an excellent field for a reformer’s talents. It not only had a great deal wrong with it, but its very unity and monopoly would seem to give leverages to a brilliant reformer. The period was indeed an age of faith, if faith is the word for the credulity that accepted miracles, relics, and saint worship. Hildebrand, in the decades after 1050, attempted reforms of a sort, but for the sake more of power than of holiness, and he seems to have left the system as unholy as he received it, A century later Francis of Assisi appeared (l182-1226), and the church was still fully in need of reform.

The Roman Catholic system had been half a millennium in taking shape. As early as 100 A .D., the simple apostolic order had begun to change and the office of bishop was beginning to appear. The writings of this time suggest that the doctrine of grace was in eclipse. The superstition of baptismal regeneration may date as early as the year 200, and by 250 Cyprian was writing that there was no salvation outside the visible church. Worldly prestige came with Constantine, and a priesthood was well entrenched within a generation. The liturgy of the mass had approached its present form by about 450, and about the year 600 there was a strong movement under Gregory the Great to standardize it throughout the western world. By this time Mary had become an object of widespread veneration (a euphemism for “worship”) and the papacy had virtually taken shape as an institution. The system had lost almost all resemblance to what the Apostles had left; but it had gained a convincing resemblance to the old paganism that Christianity is thought to have displaced. And for another nine hundred years no revival or protest group was to make any significant impact upon it.

Francis of Assisi was apparently born again about the year 1207. At this time Innocent III was pope, a brilliant administrator who can be said never to have lost a battle. Scripture was virtually a forgotten book. The ideal of life was asceticism, and the expression of this was the monastery. The leading accusations against the

CenQ 6:2 (Summer 1963) p. 18

clergy were simony, nepotism, immorality, violence, greed, and ignorance. Europe itself was under Moslem pressure in both east and west, and Italy had been hurt by repeated invasions.

Francis’ ministry seems to have begun very soon after his conversion, as he gave himself to the repair of run-down chapels. About 1209 he heard Matthew 10 read in church and set...