Sublime

of Jesus Christ).

Their theology was such as to diminish the power of the Church. They abolished purgatory, from which the souls of the dead could be delivered by masses. They rejected the doctrine of Indulgences, upon which a large part of the papal revenue depended. By the doctrine of predestination, the fate of the soul after death was made wholly independent of

Unlike the Languedoc, where Catharism was extinguished in a Church-sponsored holocaust that ended with the Inquisition of James Fournier and the burning of William Bélibaste, Catharism in Italy faded away slowly. The last active Cathar bishop was arrested in 1321, and the last known Cathar in Florence was hauled up before the Inquisition in 1342.

These new churches in suburban America were the height of secular: no time-bending gravity permeated their walls. They looked more like Johnson & Johnson headquarters than the Duomo. But these buildings played an important part in the recasting of the pastor.

By the end of the fifteenth century, the Church was not only as corrupt as the nation-state today; it was also a major drag on economic growth. The Church engrossed large amounts of capital in unproductive ways, imposing burdens that limited the output of society and suppressed commerce. These burdens, like those imposed by the nation-state today,

With their feet held fast to the fire, the Saints ultimately had no choice but to renounce polygamy. But even as LDS leaders publicly claimed, in 1890, to have relinquished the practice, they quietly dispatched bands of Mormons to establish polygamous colonies in Mexico and Canada, and some of the highest-ranking LDS authorities secretly continued

The great institutional renewal of the Roman Church, though, began when Pope Paul III (1468–1549) convoked the Council of Trent in 1545. This council continued (with occasional interruptions) under a number of popes until 1563. It instituted a massive reform and regularization of the Western liturgy, dealt systematically with a number of clerical a