Reflections of a stormy petrel

That is not actually the case. I suggest you have a look at what was routinely done to teachers of heresy such as Gottschalk. It is rather true that, until the great reforms of the mid-eleventh century, the Church of Rome had been reduced to the plaything of the Roman nobility. This was a by-product of the general situation of Western Christianity, which was desperate: for a century and a half - from the collapse of Charles the Great's premature empire to the great victory of the Emperor Otto over the Hungarians - there was no part of the Christian West, not even the mountains of modern Switzerland, that was not constantly under the threat of Arabic, Viking or Magyar raids, or pagan Slav encroachment. Between 950 and 150, Hungary, Croatia, Denmark, Norway, the British and Irish Vikings, Iceland, Sweden, Poland, Bohemia, and Russia converted to the Christian faith; all, except Russia, to the Roman rite (and even Kiev, then capital of Russia, received an Irish mission). This pacified and enormously strengthened the West, and was immediately followed by reform at home and advance abroad, including the Crusades - caused by the collapse of an overextended Byzantine Empire at Mantzikert (1071) and after.