By the end of the thirteenth century, however, the clerical power was already beginning to decline.  It was not the corruption of the Church, but its enormous wealth which engendered the hatred, with which it was by many regarded.  Temporal princes and haughty barons began to dispute the right of ecclesiastics to enjoy vast estates, while refusing the burthen of taxation, and unable to draw a sword for the common defence.  At this period, the Counts of Flanders, of Holland, and other Netherland sovereigns, issued decrees, forbidding clerical institutions from acquiring property, by devise, gift, purchase, or any other mode.  The downfall of the rapacious and licentious knights-templar in the provinces and throughout Europe, was another severe blow administered at the same time.  The attacks upon Church abuses redoubled in boldness, as its authority declined.  Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the doctrines of Wicklif had made great progress in the land.  Early in the fifteenth, the executions of Huss and Jerome of Prague, produce the Bohemian rebellion.  The Pope proclaims a crusade against the Hussites.  Knights and prelates, esquires and citizens, enlist in the sacred cause, throughout Holland and its sister provinces; but many Netherlanders, who had felt the might of Ziska’s arm, come back, feeling more sympathy with the heresy which they had attacked, than with the Church for which they had battled.

Meantime, the restrictions imposed by Netherland sovereigns upon clerical rights to hold or acquire property, become more stern and more general.  On the other hand, with the invention of printing, the cause of Reformation takes a colossal stride in advance.  A Bible, which, before, had cost five hundred crowns, now costs but five.  The people acquire the power of reading God’s Word, or of hearing it read, for themselves.  The light of truth dispels the clouds of superstition, as by a new revelation.  The Pope and his monks are found to bear, very often, but faint resemblance to Jesus and his apostles.  Moreover, the instinct of self-interest sharpens the eye of the public.  Many greedy priests, of lower rank, had turned shop-keepers in the Netherlands, and were growing rich by selling their wares, exempt from taxation, at a lower rate than lay hucksters could afford.  The benefit of clergy, thus taking the bread from the mouths of many, excites jealousy; the more so, as, besides their miscellaneous business, the reverend traders have a most lucrative branch of commerce from which other merchants are excluded.  The sale of absolutions was the source of large fortunes to the priests.  The enormous impudence of this traffic almost exceeds belief.  Throughout the Netherlands, the price current of the wares thus offered for sale, was published in every town and village.  God’s pardon for crimes already committed, or about to be committed, was advertised according to a graduated tariff.  Thus, poisoning, for example, was absolved for eleven ducats, six livres tournois.