poorly educated and underpaid clergy provided most people's pastoral care, while a small minority of prelates grew wealthy on the profits of pluralism, simony, and nepotism. The sale of indulgences - which remitted the punishment of sin in Purgatory after death to those willing to pay in life - particularly offended reformers.
Monasteries were in a sad state of decline. Created for those inspired to a life of work and prayer, they had become dumping grounds for inconvenient relatives. A few orders - Franciscan Observants, Carthusians, Bridgettine nuns - still maintained high standards, but most were lukewarm at best.
Renaissance popes (for example the Borgia, Alexander VI and the Medici, Leo X) led lives of greed, corruption and sensuality, and the small taxes to Rome (annates, Peter's pence) were accordingly resented. Cardinal Wolsey offered a home-town example of the same patterns of conduct.Nonetheless, the Church's problems should not be exaggerated. Before the Reformation began, many English parishes were still vibrant centers of worship - guilds, fraternities and sororities flourished; and much money was voluntarily left for funerals and chantries (i.e. endowment of priests to say masses for the dead).
