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Indulgences were a source of income for Cathedral builders. That's where you pay money to get a sin forgiven outright. I know the relic trade and pilgrimage fed into the coffers. It was often quite cynical. I remember that you could commute big penances like pilgrimage, to the holy land into large payments of land, money, or goods.

9th to 10th century, England and the continent started to recover from the severe devastation and depopulation they'd experienced, due to things like better nutrition and secular organization (the feudal system). This led to a big upsurge in genuine religious feeling. Basically, improved security and prosperity allowed people to put more energy into things besides survival starting about 1100. This included things like law courts, expanding literacy, more elaborate material culture (art, decoration, stone architecture, improved textiles, better tools, agricultural innovation etc..) Basically, you need surplus to start experimenting or put energy into making stuff pretty. The Church benefited from this along with everybody else. During the course of the 10th cent, trade expanded, and wealth and population increased steadily and rather dramatically.

11-12th century there was a huge economic flowering and all the stuff that started in the 10th really bore fruit. People were living better than they had since well before Rome fell. A real middle class developed and prospered. The Church had benefited from land donations in the 10th and this allowed powerful abbeys to do things like manuscript copying and church building. It also meant that there was a lot of intellectual experimentation, as the 12th century Reconquest of Spain (fueled by the expanding wealth of the French nobility) brought a whole lot of lost classical learning and literature back into circulation in the west. There is a theological explosion and things are very diverse, since the Papacy is weak, but the national churches and faith are strong. Meanwhile, the artisan/merchant class are expanding exponentially. You need architects, sculptors, glass workers, artists, carpenters, etc.. to build castles and churches and about the 11th cent, that infrastructure falls into place at a time when people really want things like fancy churches and castles.

What happens in the 13th cent is the European economies are cranking along happily, but the papacy actually has the resources to crack down on things like uppity women, kings who think they run there own countries, jews, and people with divergent religious opinions (heretics). A series of strong popes push Roman Law, which is the basis of church law, and Italian states and France adopt it into their systems. The HRE and England do not. The Inquisition gets cracking, although they are light on the torture compared to later stuff.

I think the thesis that the love of ostentation was fueled by the middle class is a good one. Ordinary people gave and gave to the church.

Medieval standard was the whole family was involved in the trade. This meant wives and daughters too.