The suitor had to bribe every one, from the doorkeeper to the pope, or his case was lost.

Poor men could neither attain preferment, nor hope for it; and the result was, that every cleric felt he had a right to follow the example he had seen at Rome, and that he might make profits out of his spiritual ministries and sacraments, having bought the right to do so at Rome, and having no other way to pay off his debt.

The transference of power from Italians to Frenchmen, through the removal of the Curia to Avignon, produced no change--only the Italians felt that the enrichment of Italian families had slipped out of their grasp.

They had learned to consider the papacy as their appanage, and that they, under the Christian dispensation, were God's chosen people, as the Jews had been under the Mosaic.
At the end of the thirteenth century a new kingdom was discovered, capable of yielding immense revenues.

This was Purgatory.