Simony

Simony is the buying or selling of spiritual offices or ecclesiastical privileges. Christian churches have condemned it as the commercial exchange of things understood to be sacred.

Ecclesiastical benefice: A church office that provides its holder with income from property or other revenues. A benefice could be treated as property and transferred for payment.
Simon Magus: A figure in the Acts of the Apostles who offered money for the power to confer the Holy Spirit. His attempted purchase gave simony its name and its foundational scriptural example.
Pope Gregory VII: The pope from 1073 to 1085 who pursued church reform and asserted papal authority. He made the suppression of simony central to his reform program.
Clerical celibacy: The practice or requirement that clergy abstain from marriage or sexual relations. It was a separate target of medieval reform, not a form of buying spiritual office.
Indulgence: In Catholic teaching, a remission of temporal punishment for sins whose guilt has been forgiven. Selling an indulgence could turn a spiritual privilege into a source of revenue.
Acts of the Apostles: A New Testament book recounting the early Christian movement and the work of the apostles. Its account of Simon Magus supplied the biblical episode behind the term.
Peter Damian: An Italian monk, cardinal, and church reformer of the eleventh century. His writings condemned clerical corruption, including the purchase of church offices.
Lay investiture: The appointment or installation of clergy by secular rulers rather than church authorities. It challenged ecclesiastical control of appointments, even when no payment changed hands.
Investiture: The formal installation of someone in an office, often accompanied by symbols of authority. Secular rulers’ control over appointments created opportunities to exchange offices for political or financial gain.
Gratian's Decretum: A twelfth-century compilation that organized and reconciled authorities on canon law. Its treatment helped systematize medieval legal discussion of simony.

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