It is no secret that during the Middle Ages Christianity had a great influence on all sectors of society. Here the Church had its time of greatest prominence and power, both political and economic. So that you know more about it, we are going to talk to you about The Church in the Middle Ages: influence and power. Thus knowing its scope, you will see that even today, the Church continues to have a preponderant role.
the middle ages
The Middle Ages It is one of the most fascinating stages in history. A period strongly characterized by the existence of the Feudal System or Feudalism. A world of nobles, peasants, tributes, vassals, fiefdoms, and weakened monarchies. But beyond this, the medieval world was dominated by Catholic Church or Christian. That is why it is essential that in order to understand the development of the Middle Ages, we investigate in depth the importance that medieval church.
In fact we can say that the Catholic Church had influence in all walks of life of the medieval age and no sector of society remained oblivious to these influences.
Various circumstances explain this extraordinary ecclesiastical influence during this stage of European history and the deep cultural and religious traces they left in Europe and the Western world.
Was the era of greatest splendor of the Church and specifically of the Catholic Church, since this had a lot of influence on society and, although other creeds existed, in the 11th century Europe was largely Christian. In fact, it is a period of history in which a new concept of union was born in European kingdoms and territories: Christianity.
Christianity experienced a stage of great influence, although it was deeply affected when in the year 1054, the Byzantine bishops denied the authority of the Pope causing the so-called schism of the East. Since then, the European Christian world has been divided in two: the East opted for the Greek Orthodox Church, while the The West remained faithful to the Roman Catholic Church as it is still known today.
More on the economic power of the Church in the Middle Ages:
Role of the Church in the Middle Ages
In the West, the Church became closely linked to feudal society; the church itself was great feudal powersince he owned a third of the land property of the Catholic world and among other things, he had the right to tithe, which was a tenth of the crops of all the people.
In the Middle Ages, the Christian Church played a decisive role. It was the only institution that managed to exercise its power throughout a politically fragmented Europe.
The daily life in the middle ages and the way of thinking of nobles and peasants were greatly influenced by the principles and beliefs of the Christian Church. As a consequence of this, the actions of the people were closely tied to religious norms.
The church was at the same time the center of intellectual life. From this preeminent role, he made possible the consolidation of a particular interpretation of the world, designed and ordered according to God’s designs. Thus, a medieval mentality based on religious precepts was crystallized and lasted for centuries.
Types of Churches in the Middle Ages
We have already told how the Church in the Middle Ages had a lot of power. The main reason is found in its richness, and of course, in a clear organization as well as cultural importance and influence on social life. The church was opposed to the disorder, ignorance and violence of feudal society. All members of the Church made up the clergy, which in turn was divided into two: the secular clergy and the regular clergy. The spiritual leader of all was the Pope.
the secular clergy
The secular clergy were those members of the Church who They lived in the world mixed with the laity: the Pope, archbishops, bishops and parish priests.
The parish priests were the ones in charge and regulated small districts called parishes. Several parishes formed a diocese, whose chief was a bishop and several dioceses formed an archdiocese, headed by an archbishop.
the regular clergy
From the 6th century onwards, in the West, the regular clergy. Their members are those ecclesiastics who chose to isolate themselves from the world and live in monasteries ruled by an abbot. They also followed specific rules. His rule was based on the motto ora et labora, that is, pray and work.
In the West, monasticism was initiated by Saint Benedict of Nursia, who founded the benedictine orderwhich forced its members to fulfill vows of obedience, chastity and poverty. Benedict’s rule was backed by the Papacy.
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The main heretical movements of the Middle Ages
During the long Middle Ages, different interpretations and currents of thought linked to Christianity arose which, in some cases, moved away substantially from the dictates of Rome. The Papacy, through the civil power of the different territories, tried to fight against any hint of heterodoxy that was detected although, in some cases, as we will see below, the forms of Christian religiosity considered heretical had such prominence that they managed to attract thousands of people from different parts of Europe. The major heretical movements (although not the only ones) that convulsed Europe during the Middle Ages were the following that we are going to see.
Priscillianism
Priscillianism was a religious movement that originated in the 4th century which receives the name of its main preacher, Prisciliano. This current arose as a rejection of the growing wealth and relaxation of customs presented by the Church of Rome and defended that the Church should return to poverty. Likewise, among other changes, one of the most revolutionary theses defended by Priscillianism at that time was that women should have a leading role in the ecclesiastical sphere, should enjoy a wide freedom and, in addition, should have authority in the Christian context. Priscillianism spread widely throughout the Iberian Peninsula and gained many followers, despite the increasing containment measures put in place by the Church of Rome.
Both Prisciliano and his closest collaborators were excommunicated, but this only made his influence continue to grow and the authorities took increasingly expeditious measures to tackle the Priscilian problem. After being betrayed by some of his companions, Prisciliano was executed, most of his most important followers were imprisoned and the rest of those who professed that religion were considered as hereticscoming to suffer various penalties such as the confiscation of their property or exile.
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Adoptionism
The idea defended by adoptionism was that Jesus was not a divine being from his origin, but rather had been adopted by God to act as his son on Earth. Adoptionism gained great importance during the first centuries of Christianity, since this dictate was easy to link with classical culture, where many heroes had achieved the status of gods in recognition of their acts or deeds, or with the Jewish culture, where he considered that the Messiah was a human chosen by God. Although the adoptionist theories in general were losing strength as the successive councils decided that the Incarnation of God was the orthodox theory recognized by the Church, other theories closely related to this idea knew great strength until well into the sixth century.
The Cathars or Albigensians. The Cathar heresy has become the most popular and well-known of all medieval Christian heresies, largely thanks to the vast number of novels and movies that have been created around it. This current became very popular in the area of southern France and Aragon and had very little to do with the dictates of official Christianity. The Cathars argued that the world was made up of a dual reality, the physical world, created by the Demon or the Devil, and the Kingdom of Heaven or God, which was beyond the limits of the material realm. For them, the soul was the only sacred element of the human being, considering the body as an earthly garment that should not be given importance. Taking the soul as the main element and denying all possible contact with the material world, the Cathars practiced asceticism and a severe abstinence from everything earthly. They denied the sacraments and created their own organization alien to the Church and, to a large extent, also to the rest of society at the time.
Initially, the Church of Rome organized missions to evangelize these communities and return them to Orthodoxy, but these missions not only did not achieve their objective, but they had to resign themselves to the continuous expansion of Cathar ideas. Faced with this failure, the Church of Rome launched a violent offensive and gave the fight against the Cathars the status of a “crusade”, presenting them as dangerous heretics and convincing the civil powers of the territories with a greater presence of Cathars that they should be exterminated by force. Persecuted by both civil and religious authorities and faced with the threat of severe corporal punishment or even execution if they were found to be suspicious of the slightest sympathy towards the Cathars, the few who remained took refuge in the forests and in the strictest secrecy in order to survive, although they probably died out completely by the end of the 14th century.
To learn more about the Cathars, you can take a look at the following documentary dedicated to them:
the hussites
The last of the great medieval heresies before the arrival of the Protestant movements was that of the Hussites. The so-called “Hussite Church” arose in Bohemia in the 15th century and receives the name of its main ideologue, Juan or Jan Hus. John Hus, linked to the University of Prague, defended that the Church had long since departed from the precepts of the Bible, that it had become a rich and degenerate earthly authority and that the only authority to which it owed obedience was the of the Holy Book.
His constant criticism of the ecclesiastical hierarchy aroused considerable rejection within the Church of Rome, but initially the civil authorities lent their support to John Hus, who took control of the University of Prague and became a confessor to Queen Sofia of Bavaria. However, the positions of the Hussites became radicalized and, after John Hus was burned at the stake after going to the Council of Constance to defend his precepts, a true religious and civil revolution broke out in the Bohemian area. In 1419 the so-called Hussite revolts or wars began, in which the religious sphere joined with serious civil problems. These wars lasted until the year 1434.
The main ecclesiastical reforms: the Cluniacs and the Cistercians
Although its great political and social importance never diminished throughout the Middle Ages, the Church and its precepts did evolve over the centuries. One of the most…