Examples of simony in the following topics:
-
- Since a substantial amount of wealth and land was usually associated with the office of a bishop or abbot, the sale of church offices (a practice known as simony) was an important source of income for leaders among the nobility, who themselves owned the land and by charity allowed the building of churches.
- The crisis began when a group within the church, members of the Gregorian Reform, decided to rebel against the rule of simony by forcefully taking the power of investiture from the ruling secular power, i.e., the Holy Roman Emperor, and placing that power wholly within control of the church.
- Once Rome regained control of the election of the pope, it was ready to attack the practice of investiture and simony on a broad front.
-
- Although the papacy eventually emerged supreme in ecclesiastical matters by the Fifth Council of the Lateran (1511), it was dogged by continued accusations of corruption, most famously in the person of Pope Alexander VI, who was accused variously of simony, nepotism and fathering four children.